WATER FOUNTAINS IN NAAS IN BYGONE DAYS RECALLED
LEINSTER LEADER 16 JANUARY 1982
Water fountains of Naas in
bygone days recalled
UP TO twenty years ago the water fountains on streets and byways of Naas were a familiar sight in the town – so familiar that not too many noticed their gradual disappearance as the water supply improved. They were not missed because they had been taken for granted – like the water troughs at Popular Square and the Fairgreen – for so many years.
In fact, no one is quite sure when the fountains, worked by twisting a handle, with water coming through the distinctive lion’s mouth, exactly disappeared. The town was minus what is now called “street furniture” in Tidy Towns adjudicator’s reports. The handsome pumps would have been an additional earner of marks for the town in the competition if even a few of the twenty or so had remained.
Recently, I went on the trail of the vanished “watering places” of Naas, with local historian and raconteur John Mahon. We succeeded in locating a number of them, and the former horse trough which was located at Popular Square. We found the remnants of one pump still remaining in Naas – at Millbrook. But shortly after our photograph was taken it had mysteriously disappeared, leaving no trace of a former age of water supply to be seen in the town.
Up to recent decades the water supply for Naas population then about 3,500 came from the “Seven Springs” on the Tipper Road. These flowed into “Sunday’s Well”, off the Blessington Road on the site where house-building is taking place. It was once a “blessed well” at which there were days of devotion at certain times of the year – but the exactitude of its history is vague as apparently no one living remembers those religious observances.
Well Remains
The Well has now been “capped” and all that remains to sow its former use as a local water installation are the twisted remains of the ornate wrought-iron railings which once surrounded it. The water flowed by gravity to the pump house located in part to Millhouse to Millbrook. From there it was pumped to the old water tower on the Fairgreen.
After being obsolete for some years, the tower was practically demolished in 1973 and the ground floor area converted into the town’s fire station. The tower had a chequered history, (being the location of the first technical school in Naas). Even though the town had a comparatively small population a few decades ago compared with to-day’s rapidly increasing number of inhabitants, the tank was not sufficient to supply all the town’s needs.
The water, John Mahon recalls, was turned off from midnight to 8 o’clock in the morning to allow the tank to refill after the day’s supply had been used up. Indeed, John remembers when there were very few bathrooms and flush toilets in the town. Sewage was collected weekly, and disinfected containers distributed at the same time to each household which had not got a W.C.
The water fountains were installed in the last century at strategic points along the main streets, sidestreets, backlanes, and housing areas which then existed. The citizens drew water from them for all their daily needs. Gradually they went out of use as water on tap was installed in older houses and of course, in all Council housing schemes over the past fifty years.
But up to their removal the fountains were used in locations near schools and in some of the older housing schemes.
Locations
Their old locations as far can be ascertained were: one at St. Brigid’s Tce., near the Caragh road (Ploopluck) bridge; two in New Row; one up Rathasker road at Callan’s (where a tap has since been installed); at the water tower in the Fairgreen; at the old mart site; at St. John’s Hall on the Kilcullen road (a former boys primary school taught by secular teachers).
They were also located at St. Corban’s Lane at the backlane to the business premises in South Main St; at the former Lawlor’s ballroom; where the agricultural offices now stand at Friary road; in Popular Square where the phone boxes now are; at Mrs. Brennan’s shop on Dublin road; between Smith’s garage and the Protestant school; at Bladder’s Lane; on the Sallins road near the parochial house; on John’s Lane at the rear of Hayden’s pub; at the back gate to De Burgh’s; in Abbey street (then housing a number of families); in the Convent grounds; outside the Moat Hall the former CBS school, and at St. Corban’s Cemetery and Gleann na Greine. There was, as far as can be recalled, only one fountain on Main Street itself as its citizens obviously had their own tap water supply. The location was the old weigh-house in the square in South Main St.
Working order
Two of the pumps are now located in Sallins – one in good working order and the other emits a mere dribble of water. One is beside Simon Hughes’s shop and the other is on the opposite side of the canal beyond Fanning’s pub.
Two were rescued by Mr. Mahon from the Town Hall yard and erected as handsome ornaments in the garden of his former home at Osberstown. There were similar water fountains in Kilcullen and Ballymore, but they are assumed to have been erected long before the Naas ones were removed. It is thought most of the Naas pumps were sold for scrap by the Urban Council. The fountains were cast by the Glenfield foundry in Kilmarnock, Scotland.
The decline of horse-drawn traffic in the ‘fifties meant that the days of the horse troughs in Naas were numbered. The original cast-iron trough at Popular Square had to be replaced when it was damaged by a lorry backing into it about 40 years ago. It was replaced by a reinforced concrete structure ‘made by Cretestone of Dublin. It is one of the early examples of the use of that process. No one is sure when it was removed, but it occurred within the last 20 years.
The trough was bought by local farmer Mr. Willie Bradley of Rathasker road, and is now in use on his farm at Clownings, near Newbridge. The cast-iron trough on the Fairgreen was removed about the same time and is thought to have been sold for scrap.
There is no doubt that the fountains and troughs were an adornment to the town – even as an echo of bygone days. But aesthetically the fountains, at least, were quite beautifully designed, and unlike the merely functional pumps which existed in most other provincial towns.
The value of these relics of the past was recognised in Dublin about 20 years ago when an energetic committee led by the indefatigable “Quidnunc” of the “Irish Times”, the late Seamus Kelly prevented Dublin Corporation from removing some troughs and fountains in the centre of the city, and managed to have some restored. Perhaps it is not too late to see something similar done in Naas, even if to enhance the town’s architecture, regarded by leading experts as fairly impressive.
Story: JOHN LYNCH
Research: JOHN MAHON
Retyped: Mary Murphy
