Work is nearing completion in Keenagh, Co Longford, on what must be one of the most unusual monuments of its size in the Republic. In a month or so, work will be completed on the millennium project to restore the clock tower which dominates the village, a few miles west of Longford town.
The clock tower was built as a tribute to "a good landlord" by the citizens of the village which has a population of more than 300. The landlord in question was Lord King-Harmon who controlled thousands of acres of land and the lives of tens of thousands of people in the last century.
His family owned estates in Mitchelstown, Co Cork, Boyle, Co Roscommon, Straffan, Co Kildare, and his family seat near Ballymahon, Co Longford.
Little is remembered of his charitable work, even though thousands of people turned up to his torchlight funeral in Bally mahon following his death in Bray, Co Wicklow. In the mid 1870s the tenants collected money to build the clock tower in Keenagh as a memorial to him.
The tower was designed by Robert Edis, of London, one of the best-known architects of his age, who went on to work on Sandringham Palace in East Anglia some years after he designed the clock tower.
The monument survived the War of Independence and the Civil War, but according to a local publican, Paddy Newman, whose business stands beside the tower, it fell into disrepair in the 1940s. "There were threats against the monument all right over the years, but the only damage visited on it in those troubled times was that the nose was knocked off the statue a couple of times," he said.
Paddy was one of a committee of local people who in the late 1940s approached the last surviving relative of King-Harmon to tidy up the monument, which had fallen into disrepair.
"He gave us the key and his blessing and an interdenominational committee - we were always ahead of the rest of the country - raised the £132 necessary to put railings around the clock and tidy up the monument," he said.
"That was a great deal of money in those days when you could buy a pint for 10 old pence and the gallon of petrol cost one shilling and sixpence," he said.
Last year, because dry rot had set in to the woodwork on the structure, it became too dangerous to wind the clock, which had marked time in the village for well over 100 years.
Once again Paddy turned to the local community to help restore the village memorial to a man who is almost totally forgotten in the area.
Inflation had caught up with Keenagh, too. The pint there is now £2 and a gallon of petrol nearly double that, and the local community faces a bill of £20,000.
However, the local Leader 2 organisation promised to come up with half the money if the locals could raise the rest.
"We got some help from Longford County Council and the Historical Society. We are talking to the Millennium Committee and even though we have written to the Georgian Society for help, they have not replied," he said.
The restoration work will be completed in a month, and it will be safe again for Paddy and his neighbours to wind the old clock without risking life and limb.
"We hope that it will ring in the new century and it will be floodlit. It will be good to hear the bell again in the village. It is part of the history of this part of the world," he said.