Rockwell, 1903
Dev and the blackboard
Éamon de Valera arrived at Rockwell College in 1903 to teach mathematics. He was twenty years old and not yet anything except a young man from Limerick who was good with numbers. A colleague nicknamed him Dev in the staffroom - the name that would follow him through the War of Independence, the Civil War, thirty years of government, and two terms as President. In 1964, at the centenary of the college, he came back. He was eighty-one. The blackboard was still there.
Poet, teacher, signatory
Thomas MacDonagh
MacDonagh spent seven years at Rockwell training for a missionary career, left the religious life, and became a poet and teacher instead. By 1916 he was a commandant of the Irish Volunteers and one of the seven signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. He was executed in Kilmainham Gaol on 3 May 1916, six weeks after Easter. He was thirty-eight. His connection to this stretch of south Tipperary runs through Rockwell and through the land around it - the same limestone country, the same long view toward Cashel.
The quiet yard
Ballydoyle
Two miles south of the village, Ballydoyle Stables sits on 285 acres of Golden Vale. Vincent O'Brien trained there; Aidan O'Brien has done so since 1996 for the Coolmore partners. The numbers are hard to take in - seventeen Epsom Derbies, over 300 Group 1 wins worldwide. None of this is visible from the road. What is visible is the horses using the back lanes at six in the morning, moving in strings through the mist. It is a good reason to be up early.
The name in the graveyard
Roe's Green
The village's older name was Rathmacarthy - MacCárthaigh's ringfort in Irish. The current name is a corruption of Roe's Green, for Andrew Roe, a landlord who died in 1722. His tomb is in the ruins of the old church on the edge of the village. He gave his name to the place and left a stone. The ringfort was here long before either of them.