County Westmeath
An Iarmhí
- IrishAn Iarmhí
- ProvinceLeinster
- County townMullingar
- Local governmentWestmeath County Council
- Area1,838 km²
- Population96,221 (2022)
- Highest pointMullaghmeen, 258 m
Sergeant Custume
In June 1691 the Irish held the western half of Athlone against Ginkel's Williamite army. The Shannon ran between them. The westernmost arch of the bridge had been broken down.
On the twenty eighth of June the Williamites laid beams and planks across the gap. Sergeant Custume of Maxwell's dragoons offered to pull them down. With ten men in armour he ran onto the bridge under heavy fire, and the planks went into the river.
The Jacobite accounts say he and some of his men got back. The two Williamite accounts say they were all killed and a second party finished the work. The record shows the planks went. It does not settle what became of Custume.
Two days later the Williamites forded the river and took the town. The barracks in Athlone has carried his name since 1922.
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Uisneach
A low hill in the middle of the country with over thirty five recorded monuments on it, from a Neolithic tomb to early medieval enclosures.
On the western slope is the Catstone, Ail na Míreann, the Stone of the Divisions. It is a limestone boulder left by a glacier, four and a half metres tall. Tradition says the provinces met there and that it marks the centre of Ireland.
Excavations in the 1920s found signs of high status occupation, thought to go with assemblies and kingship. Uisneach is on the state's tentative list for World Heritage status, as one of the five Royal Sites of Ireland.
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John McCormack
Born in Athlone on the fourteenth of June 1884, the son of Scottish mill workers.
In 1903 he won the gold medal for tenors at the Feis Ceoil. The story that James Joyce competed against him that year is a myth. Joyce entered the next year and won the bronze.
In 1907, at twenty three, he sang Turiddu at Covent Garden, the youngest tenor ever to take a major role there. He became an American citizen in 1919 and a papal count in 1928. At the eucharistic congress of 1932 he sang Panis Angelicus in the Phoenix Park, with a million people present.
He died at Booterstown in 1945 and was buried in his papal uniform.
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