Report Paul Murphy
In 1900 the Kells-born nationalist historian Alice Stopford Green visited Navan and produced this bleak picture – “Take Navan, the chief town. The grass grows up its very doors. Not a cottage in it has a garden. The canal lies idle. The hopeless men hang about the public houses. They live on a bit of bread and a glass of porter now and then for holding a horse. Not once a month do they get a square meal. Women and children are pale [pinched?], miserable. Men and women alike have a sad and weary look. In many a poor house when the night falls, there is no light but the little fire, for there is no money for a candle. It is inexpressibly sad to pass by these dark houses, where the tenants’ hope is as dire as the dying fire”.
In a lecture hosted by the Navan and District Historical Society as part of Heritage Week on Saturday Dr Peter Connell said that while Stopford Green, a fierce critic of British rule in Ireland, had her own reasons for painting a bleak picture, her quotation did capture the dismal conditions in which the poorest third of the population of the town live, those who lived in these streets of thatched cabins and back lanes. On the other hand Navan had a long industrial heritage centred on mills along the rivers Boyne and Blackwater, he said. His lecture – From Hovels to Homes, how council housing transformed the town of Navan 1902-1952 – , sponsored by Meath County Council, was attended by 75 people in the garden bar of the Railway Bar in Navan.
Historical society chairperson Paschal Marry thanked Paul and Sinead of the Railway Bar for “providing this wonderful facility”, the Meath County Council Library, Loreto Guinan and the county council for the sponsorship, Clare Ryan of the society, and Peter Connell. The amount of work put in for the talk by Dr Connell and the work put in by Clare Ryan on the booklet accompanying the event was “just amazing”, he said. The event was attended by Councillor’s Eddie Fennessy and Francis Deane.
Dr Connell said that the opening of local sawmills and the birth of the furniture industry gave some hope to the town and some of the people featured in the booklet accompanying the lecture were housed in the first estates built by Navan Urban Council before World War 1, in O’Growney Terrace, St Patrick’s Terrace, and St Finian’s Terrace. However, many others continued to live in sub-standard housing until the 1930s.
Other welcome developments in the town included the completion of a water scheme in 1899 which brought a clean water supply to its inhabitants for the first time. 1923 saw the opening of a hydro- electric station which was built on the site of the Spicers Mill on the River Boyne, off Ludlow Street. Again over time, he said, the light supplied by the Navan gas Company was replaced by electricity and in 1932 the town was connected to the powered by the Shannon Scheme. “Many continued to experience real poverty through these decades but gradually the town’s physical infrastructure improved and Navan took on the appearance of a 20th century town”.
APATHY OF ABSENTEE LANDLORDS
At the beginning of the 20th century Navan had amongst the worst housing conditions of any Irish provincial town mainly due to absentee landlordism and these included the Earl of Essex, Lord de Ros, the Duke of Bedford, and the Earl of Howth. The situation was so bad that in 1905 Navan’s Medical Officer of Health told the urban council that it would have to seriously consider the housing question “as there are over 40 houses which have fallen into disuse owing to the apathy of the landlords whose interest should be to foster the welfare of the town”. He warned that before their next meeting they might see 20 more houses disappearing “and there are several in such a bad state of repair that I fear you will have 90 or 100 out of use before the year is out”.
According to the 1901 census, over 300 households in the town lived in either one or two rooms, all without either running water or proper sanitation. Of the town’s population, 36 per cent lived in overcrowded conditions which, at the time, was defined as more than two persons per room. Areas particularly overcrowded included Brews Hill, Limekiln Street, Barrack lane, Sandymount, Infirmary Hill, Fairgreen, Cornmarket, and New Lane (at the top of Flower Hill). Many houses were less than 350 sq ft in area, consisting of a small kitchen and bedroom.
