Straffan
Straffan is a village in County Kildare, Ireland. It is situated on the banks of the River Liffey, 25 km upstream of the Irish capital Dublin. As of the 2022 census, the village had a population of 1,158, an over three-fold increase since the 2002 census.
Straffan is the name of the surrounding electoral division which is within the 'Celbridge Number 1 Rural Area', and which had a population of 1,449. At one time a separate parish, it is today joined to the parishes of Celbridge and Celbridge and Newcastle, in the respective Dublin dioceses.
Straffan is home to the K Club, formally the Kildare Hotel and Golf Club, and its two championship golf courses. These courses have staged several international tournaments, including the European Open and the Ryder Cup tournament.
Geography
Location
Straffan is situated at a low lying point in the Liffey valley and is surrounded by flood meadows along the Liffey and River Morell. Agriculture is important to the local economy. Since the 18th century, Straffan farmers were prominent in the prize lists at events run by the Royal Dublin Society. The research station for the agriculture department of University College Dublin is situated at nearby Lyons Hill. As with the rest of County Kildare, racehorse breeding and training is common in the area. In the 1920s, Straffan Station stud was one of the leading horse breeding studs in the country when owned by Edward "Cub" Kennedy.Contemporary village
The contemporary village is concentrated around two crossroads on which are situated a Roman Catholic church and Church of Ireland respectively. Development evolved through the building of estate houses, land commission cottages, the Murray local council cottages, and eight estates around the village. Housing developments also took place on the grounds of the K Club in the 2000–2004 period. As of 2007, a planning application had been lodged with Kildare County Council to develop a separate town to the south west at Turnings.Etymology
The village is named for St. Srafán, whose feast day in the Martyrology of Tallaght was 23 May. Straffan was also one of 300 Irish locations accorded its own place-legend in Dinnshenchas Érenn. It consisted of a poem called "Lumman Tige Srafain", about a warrior named Lumann who possessed a wonderful shield and who, according to the poem, died of his wounds at Tech Srafáin. Two forms of the name cited in the tale, Tech Srafáin and Tige Srafáin, are Middle Irish nominative and genitive case forms. The spelling Strafáin is unusual. "Straphan" or "Straffan" is a shortened Anglicised form of the original Irish Teach Srafáin.The second Irish name of the village is Cluainíní; this refers to the townland of Clownings, to the east of the village. This was formerly the site of Straffan railway station and the post office, and so it has been erroneously used as an Irish name for Straffan itself.
Dinnshenchas Érenn, probably composed by Cináed Ua Hartacáin, also selected the nearby Cnoch Liamhna for mention as one of the "assemblies and noted places in Ireland", an indication of the strength of the local ruling family, the Uí Dúnchada branch of the Uí Dúnlainge who supplied ten kings of Leinster from their base on nearby Lyons Hill between 750 and 1050.
Sruthán was mistakenly cited by Thomas O'Connor in the Ordnance Survey Letters in 1837, and adopted as the Irish form of Straffan. Seosamh Laoide used it in his list of Irish names of post-offices published in Post-Sheanchas. An Sruthán gained currency among those involved in the Irish revival and was promoted as name in the local schools. Research by Domhnall mac Giolla Easpaig declares it "completely at odds with the written evidence cited above and with local pronunciation and appears to be no more than an ad hoc explanation of the name by O'Connor's informant." Sruthán is anglicised struffaun in some parts of the country. One would not expect to find it rendered thus in the Straffan area".
The village post office, opened, was closed in April 1924. A separate office was opened at Straffan Station in May 1872, this adjacent to the former station, 1.5 mi from the village. On the adoption of Irish language names by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs in the 1920s, the name of Cluainíní was adopted for the station office, this being the Irish version of Clownings, the townland in which the post office and former station were situated. That office was closed at which date the office in the village was reopened and the Irish name of Teach Srafáin was adopted, this name appearing in the 1982 Post Office Guide.
History
The area was ravaged in the wars of 1641–2. The Lords of the Pale who allied with Rory O'More in 1642 included Nicholas Wogan of Rathcoffey, Andrew Aylmer of Donadea, Nicholas Sutton of Barberstown, John Gaydon of Irishtown, Garret Sutton of Richardstown and James Eustace of Clongowes. In 1641 Lyons Castle was taken and sacked on the orders of the new LJs William Parsons and John Borlase and two castles belonging to Edward Tipper of Tipperstown burnedWhen James Butler, 12th Earl of Ormond marched into Kildare in 1642, he burned Lyons, Newcastle and Oughterard on 1 February 1642.
General George Monck landed in Dublin in February 1642 for the parliamentarians and camped in Straffan. Rathcoffey was besieged and taken by Monck in June 1642, 70 of the garrison made prisoners and later executed in Dublin. During the campaign Kildare county was burned "for in length and 25 in breadth." William Petty's Census of 1659 recorded "Barbiestowne" with 36 people and Straffan with 23 people, surnames among them included Byrne, Kelly, Doyle, Malone and Murphy.
According to depositions taken after the battle of Ovidstown, a party of 1798 Rebels met at Straffan Bridge including Patrick O'Connor 'a lawyer from Straffan', and spent some time in stables of Straffan Lodge. In 1803 Straffan men marched to Dublin to join Emmet's rebellion, while Barney Daly's pub in Baronrath was used as a rendez-vous.
Local landowner Valentine Lawless, later the second Baron Cloncurry, was sworn into United Irishmen by James O'Coigly. He was elected colonel of United Irishmen in Kildare, was the last proprietor of 'The Press' and became the United Irish organiser in London until his arrest and detention in the Tower of London. He was also related to Robert Emmet and according to Emmet's biographer Ruan O'Donnell provided a link between 1798 and 1803, waiting in Paris for word of success of the rebellion and was to be member of Emmet's government. O'Donnell describes as "disingenuous" Lawless's 1857 account of how he had pleaded with Emmet not to return to Dublin. The Sammon family form Straffan and the Pitts family from Bishopscourt were listed among the rebels.
On 22 January 1812, 100 persons assembled at night with carts for the purpose of retrieving hay which had been seized in lieu of rent. Leading to a confrontation during which Patrick King was shot dead. As a result of the incident, a request was made to have the military at Celbridge strengthened. Eventually in 1871 a neo-gothic RIC barracks was built in the village with distinctive gun turrets designed to repel invading Fenians. The barracks was vacated and passed into private hands in March 1905.
War of Independence and the Troubles
A National League branch for Celbridge and Straffan was established on 24 September 1887. Bertram H. Barton was a member of the Unionist Party and instigator of a sedition charge against the Principal of Ardclough School in 1917. Straffan casualties in the Great War included James Cash,, D.A. Carden, Thomas Goucher, Ronald B.C. Kennedy, G. Kinahan, William Lawless, and Peter McLeish,. Francis Salmon was a civilian casualty in the Easter Rising of 1916.A branch of the Irish National Volunteers was formed in Straffan in 1914. The St Anne's Brass Band from Ardclough played at the Bodenstown commemoration in 1914 at which Thomas Clarke spoke. In February 1917 a Company was reformed in Straffan and a branch of Sinn Féin formed in 1918. Volunteers planned to bomb the bridge at Straffan but the plan was aborted. Telephone wires were destroyed at Bishopscourt and Straffan volunteers took part in the ambush at Stacumny on 5 July 1921. Prominent local volunteers included John Logie, Tom Cornelia, James Travers and John McSweeney. During the Civil war the barnewall homestead near the 13th Lock in Lyons was the North Kildare brigade headquarters for the anti-treaty IRA.
On 22 June 1975 a local man, Christopher Phelan, was stabbed to death when he delayed an attempt to derail a train passing on the main Dublin to Cork railway line by Loyalist paramilitaries near Baronrath bridge, who aimed to derail a train of republicans going to Bodenstown. His intervention saved the lives of 200 people on the train as it delayed the detonation of the bomb which blew a gap in the track.
On 31 March 1976 the biggest train robbery in Irish history took place at Wheatfield. Eight men in fluorescent jackets used emergency signals to stop the mail train bound from Cork to Dublin and escaped with £600,000 in small denomination notes. The incident became the centre of a celebrated miscarriage of justice case, known mistakenly as the Sallins Train Robbery case after the nearest rail station then open, when three men were wrongly convicted of the robbery.