Canon John Martin Hayes, 1887-1957
The man who lit rural Ireland
Hayes was born in a Land League hut in Murroe, County Limerick, in 1887. Seven of his ten siblings died of malnutrition and disease in childhood. He was ordained, worked in Liverpool's industrial slums, came home, and by 1937 had founded Muintir na Tíre from his base in Tipperary Town - a parish-council model for rural self-organisation that spread across Ireland. When the ESB launched the Rural Electrification Scheme in the late 1940s, Muintir na Tíre helped organise the uptake parish by parish. Bansha was chosen as the national switch-on ceremony on 24 May 1948: 1,613 poles erected, 121 kilometres of line strung, 423 premises connected in a day. Hayes became parish priest of Bansha and Kilmoyler in 1946 and never left. The village became known as 'The Model Parish.' He died in January 1957. His funeral drew the leaders of Church and State. He is buried in Bansha.
An Arc winner bred at the foot of the Galtees
Rheingold
Dr. James Russell acquired Bansha Castle in the early 1950s and ran it as a stud farm. On the castle lands he bred a colt called Rheingold, born 1969. Trained in England by Barry Hills and ridden by Lester Piggott, Rheingold won the 1973 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp - beating Allez France by two and a half lengths. Bansha is not a village you'd associate with France's most prestigious flat race, which is part of what makes it a better story.
The battle painter and the IRA, 1922
Lady Butler walks out
Bansha Castle's most storied resident was Elizabeth Thompson - Lady Butler - Victorian Britain's most celebrated painter of military scenes. The Roll Call, Scotland Forever, The Charge: her large-format battle paintings hung in the Royal Academy and were reproduced across the empire. She came to Bansha when her husband, General Sir William Butler, was given the castle as a grace-and-favour house after the Boer War. In 1922, during the Civil War period, the IRA occupied the castle. Lady Butler, then in her seventies, walked out and left everything behind. She died in 1933. The paintings survived.
The movement that started in a parish hall
Muintir na Tíre
Muintir na Tíre - 'People of the Land' - launched in Tipperary Town in November 1937. The idea was simple: each parish would organise itself through a community council, pooling labour and resources instead of waiting for government to act. The movement grew quickly, shaped Irish rural policy through the mid-century decades, and its advocacy contributed to speeding the electrification of rural Ireland. It still exists as an active organisation. The archive of Canon Hayes's papers is held at the University of Galway library.