The Blakes

†The Blakes of Mionloch

The Blakes of Mionloch were held in high esteem amongst their tenants but when on 25^th June 1807, Sir John Blake apostatized, the tenants were not happy. The tenants boycotted the school (now Mionloch School) built by the Blakes in 1860 as a ‘Souper’ school, to proselytize the children of Mionloch and in January 1875 the tenants insisted that Sir Thomas be buried according to the Catholic Rites.

The income the Blakes received from their tenants fell far short of what a family with a Dublin and London house needed. Soon they were in deep debt and Sir Valentine dared not appear in Galway City lest the bailiffs would serve writs on him. As writs could not be served on Sundays

Sir Valentine would boat down to Woodquay on that day and strut arrogantly through the town making sure that he boated home to Mionloch before midnight. By this he earned the nickname ‘Sunday Boy’ Blake. Of course when he was elected MP for Galway he could no longer be arrested for debt.

On July 26^th 1919, a fatal fire broke out in the house and despite the efforts of a fire brigade from Renmore Barracks the building was gutted. The Blake family was away in Dublin with the exception of a sickly daughter, Ellen Blake. Two servant girls, Delia Earley and Annie Browne wee also in the house, and were sleeping in the attic. When the fire broke out they crawled out from their room on to the parapet and faced with the choice of being burned to a cinder or risking their lives by jumping they chose the latter. A man named Ward was the gate lodge keeper and a man named Kirwan, a caretaker of the house, ran to the barn and took hay to place on the spot where the girls would land when they jumped. Delia Earley jumped first unfortunately to her death. Annie Browne then jumped and suffered many bruises and fractures. Annie gives a graphic account of the fire on page 153 of Maurice Semple’s ‘By the Corribside’.

After sieving through the ashes and debris of the castle and failing to find any trace of his sister, Elen, T.P. Blake decided to bury all that remained of the debris in a huge grave, away from the house over which he ericed a monument, which alsa today is smothered with bushes and briars.

† The above history of the Blakes is from Padraic Ó Laoi, History of Castlegar Parish (~1996), p. 171.