Martin Crampin: 'Major Thomas Swift of Holyhead' (2023)

Description

Lede
The Irish Ferries catamaran, Dublin Swift, is named after Jonathan Swift, the eighteenth-century dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. But he was not the only Swift to loom large in the history of the crossing from Holyhead to Dublin.

Story
Towards the end of the Civil War, Major Thomas Swift took control of the fort of Holyhead in 1649, and in the following year he was made Postmaster. This gave him responsibility for the ships carrying the mail to Ireland, which was a troublesome charge. Pirates – English, Irish, French and even Turkish – were documented in the Irish Sea in the seventeenth century, seizing ships and their cargoes, and holding ships to ransom. Naval vessels were periodically called in to patrol the route between Holyhead and Dublin.

Thomas Swift remained in Holyhead throughout the Cromwellian and Restoration periods and built an inn to the north of the church. Swift Court, later known as Welch’s Inn, offered superior accommodation for travellers, including Dean Swift in the 1720s. By comparison, other more primitive dwellings of the town used by travellers were roofed with driftwood and thatch. The area to the north of the church is still sometimes known as Swift Square, but the inn can no longer be found. The immediate area suffered bomb damage in the Second World War when Church House on Boston Street was hit on 5 October 1940, although it was probably the bomb which fell on 9 April 1941 that damaged the former inn, along with Bethel Wesleyan Methodist Chapel on the corner of Victoria Road (previously Lands End) and Swift Square. The houses nearby on Church Lane were cleared along with any trace of Swift Court in the 1950s or 60s and the area is now a car park.

In 1658, the tower of the Church of St Cybi was raised seventeen feet by Swift as a lookout tower to watch for pirates, and he also served as the churchwarden of St Cybi’s. The garrison of the fort was quartered in the church in the 1650s, which was not uncommon for Parliamentarian troops, and it seems likely that soldiers under his command despoiled the medieval furnishings of the church, including tombs, and were responsible for the loss of carved figures from niches and the medieval font. After the Restoration in 1660 a new font was installed in the church, and the names of new churchwardens were inscribed in October 1662 (Robert Lloyd and Robert ap H.V. Probert). Thomas Swift continued to serve as Postmaster after he was confirmed in the role under Charles II.

It is not clear where Thomas Swift came from, but if he, like others who held the title of Postmaster in Holyhead in the later seventeenth century, came from Dublin, he could have even have been distantly related to Jonathan Swift.

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