Milo Spillane (b.1936), Part 2

In this section of the recording, Milo Spillane, while walking towards the Franciscan Friary, explains the origin of the name Southwell’s Cross on the turnpike road. A man named Southwell was the occupier or tenant of the gate lodge at the cross, according to the Tithe Applotment Books. This was possibly the main entrance from the turnpike road to Adare House. The road to the left leads to Lantern Lodge and the old entrance to Adare Manor, and the old road to the right leads to Croom. The Franciscan monks who came to Adare in 1460 are remembered, and while walking through the ruins of the Friary Milo indicates the library, the common room, the sacristan’s room, the Great East window, the effigys, the cloisters and the tomb of the Earl of Kildare. Moving outside the ruins, he indicates the monument to John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church, who delivered a speech at this spot in 1756 while on his way to Limerick, having visited Palatine settlements around Rathkeale. Milo discusses this story and has his own theory relating to that event. Moving onwards, the Augustinian Priory appears in the distance, and it is explained that in 1814 the rectory was roofed and converted into a school. In 1817 it was renovated and in c.1852 Caroline, Lady Dunraven, the widow of Windham Henry Quin, 2nd Earl of Dunraven, was involved in its renovation. While heading towards the River Maigue, Milo indicates the road bridge over the river which was built by the Earls of Kildare around the 1300s. A very narrow bridge, in the last century when it was being widened, the Earl of Dunraven ensured that the original and interesting pedestrian refuges at the south side of the bridge were retained, and the work was undertaken at the north side. Today, it stands as an eight-arch bridge. The River Maigue was always a busy passageway from the Shannon Estuary to the Abbeys, down through the centuries. The source of the river is near Milford in Co. Cork. Milo Spillane, a secondary schoolteacher who worked in Limerick city until his retirement in 1997, declares that no other golf course in the British Isles can compare with that at Adare because of the extraordinary historical context in which it is set.