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This beautiful Degas print once hung in a pub in the horse racing crazy county of Kildare and we couldn't resist bringing it home with us.Beautifully framed, it is a wonderful example of the great impressionists work. Naas Co Kildare 46cm x 50cm Edgar Degas born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas; 19 July 1834 – 27 September 1917) was a French artist famous for his paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings. He is especially identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers. Regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, he rejected the term, preferring to be called a realist.He was a superb draftsman, and particularly masterly in depicting movement, as can be seen in his rendition of dancers, racecourse subjects and female nudes. His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and for their portrayal of human isolation At the beginning of his career, Degas wanted to be a history painter, a calling for which he was well prepared by his rigorous academic training and close study of classical art. In his early thirties, he changed course, and by bringing the traditional methods of a history painter to bear on contemporary subject matter, he became a classical painter of modern life. -
Corbetts Liqueur Irish Whiskey is a long defunct brand that was distilled in Coleraine Co Antrim.This delightful and quaint advert depicts the thrills and spills of a hard days hunting which was inevitably punctuated by plenty of swigs from whiskey containing hip flasks. 45cm x 55cm Ballymena Co Antrim -
70cm x 50cm Nassau St Dublin 2 One of the most inglorious,farcical and drawn out sagas in Irish Political History was commonly known as the Beef Tribunal as this witty cartoon depicts.Corruption was endemic at all levels of Irish society at the time and the Beef Tribunal itself illustrated that with a rather anaemic conclusion offered after a marathon report and hundreds of hours of cross examinations. Albert Reynolds,Taoiseach at the time was triumphant when the Beef Tribunal presented its final report in 1994, its 580 pages containing bizarrely benign conclusions about the key players under its scrutiny.“I have been fully and totally vindicated, both personally and as a minister,” he told the Dáil.“My decisions at the time, the report confirms, were taken in the national interest.”However, it was a hollow victory for the then taoiseach as the tribunal had already cost him one government and was about to play a part in the collapse of another. -
This very clever,limited edition print chronicles the various categories of members of the fairer sex who have been known to populate the facing world from time to time although of course we would never generalise here at the irishpubemporium! Some hilarious paddock notes on some various fictitious female characters, this print would make a superb present for the racing man in you life with an obvious mischievous sense of humour. Naas Co Kildare 55cm x 65cm -
Very unusual, humorous 19th century caricature of a Horse race with over sized jockeys getting stuck in at the finish with a few interested older spectators by the Artist Liborio Prosperi. 36cm x 43cm London Liborio Prosperi ('Lib') a.k.a. Liberio Prosperi (Foligno, 1854 – Foligno, 1928), was an Italian-born artist who belonged to a group of international artists producing caricatures for the British Vanity Fair magazine. He contributed 55 caricatures between 1885 and 1903, signed 'Lib', and concentrating mainly on the racing set. His 1886 multi-portrait caricature The Lobby of the House of Commons is on view in the Victorian Gallery of the National Portrait Gallery in London. The figures depicted by the artists of Vanity Fair included royalty, statesmen, scientists, authors, actors, soldiers, scholars and sporting men. The last issue of Vanity Fair appeared in 1914. In its forty-five year run, it provided readers a variety of memorable caricatures of Victorian and Edwardian personalities.Image gallery
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John Corlett, founder and editor of The Sporting Times of London
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55cm x 45cm Doneraile Co Cork Classic Players Please Navy Cut advertising showcard depicting the great steeplechaser Cottage Rake with regular jockey Aubrey Brabazon on board.The advert states boldly "Cottage Rake,called by many Irish judges the most brilliant chaser ever foaled, won the Cheltenham Gold Cup in a desperate finish in 1948 and then won it again and again.No horse has ever jumped faster and more surely-Quality always leads the field." Aside from the ad mens claims and in a generation before the arrival of the great Arkle,theres no doubting the greatness of Cottage Rake. His breeder was Richard Vaughan from Hunting Hall, Castletown Roche, Co. Cork, Ireland. Before he embarked on his jumping career, he was failed by a vet on three different examinations. On the last of these occasions, the vet was overheard by young trainer Vincent O'Brien saying that the horse's wind infirmity would not interfere with his racing performance. O'Brien contacted wool merchant Frank Vickerman who bought the horse to be trained by O'Brien. Cottage Rake ultimately set his trainer on the route to the top of the training ladder by becoming only the second horse to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup three years in a row. He achieved this hat trick from 1948–1950, beating Finnure by ten lengths in the last of these races. His hardest-won triumph had come the previous year when he only got the better of Cool Customer in the final 100 yards. Such was his partnership with jockey Aubrey Brabazon that a verse was composed about their success. Cottage Rake lost his form after his third Cheltenham Gold Cup triumph. He moved over to Gerald Balding's stable in England, but the change of scenery did not resurrect his success. -
Magnificent oil painting of the great Arkle by renowned Irish artist L Fitzgerald,with regular jockey Pat Taafe on board wearing the distinctive yellow and black silks of Arkle's owner Anne,Duchess of Westminster. 50cm x 70cm Kilcock Co Kildare Arkle (19 April 1957 – 31 May 1970) was an Irish Thoroughbred racehorse. A bay gelding by Archive out of Bright Cherry, he was the grandson of the unbeaten (in 14 races) flat racehorse and prepotent sire Nearco. Arkle was born at Ballymacoll Stud, County Meath, by Mrs Mary Alison Baker of Malahow House, near Naul, County Dublin. He was named after the mountain Arkle in Sutherland, Scotland that bordered the Duchess of Westminster’s Sutherland estate. Owned by Anne Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster, he was trained by Tom Dreaper at Greenogue, Kilsallaghan in County Meath, Ireland, and ridden during his steeplechasing career by Pat Taaffe. At 212, his Timeform rating is the highest ever awarded to a steeplechaser. Only Flyingbolt, also trained by Dreaper, had a rating anywhere near his at 210. Next on their ratings are Sprinter Sacre on 192 and then Kauto Star and Mill House on 191. Despite his career being cut short by injury, Arkle won three Cheltenham Gold Cups, the Blue Riband of steeplechasing, and a host of other top prizes. On 19th April, 2014 a magnificent 1.1 scale bronze statue was unveiled in Ashbourne, County Meath in commemoration of Arkle. In the 1964 Cheltenham Gold Cup, Arkle beat Mill House (who had won the race the previous year) by five lengths to claim his first Gold Cup at odds of 7/4. It was the last time he did not start as the favourite for a race. Only two other horses entered the Gold Cup that year. The racing authorities in Ireland took the unprecedented step in the Irish Grand National of devising two weight systems — one to be used when Arkle was running and one when he was not. Arkle won the 1964 race by only one length, but he carried two and half stones more than his rivals. The following year's Gold Cup saw Arkle beat Mill House by twenty lengths at odds of 3/10. In the 1966 renewal, he was the shortest-priced favourite in history to win the Gold Cup, starting at odds of 1/10. He won the race by thirty lengths despite a mistake early in the race where he ploughed through a fence. However, it did not stop his momentum, nor did he ever look like falling. Arkle had a strange quirk in that he crossed his forelegs when jumping a fence. He went through the season 1965/66 unbeaten in five races. Arkle won 27 of his 35 starts and won at distances from 1m 6f up to 3m 5f. Legendary Racing commentator Peter O'Sullevan has called Arkle a freak of nature — something unlikely to be seen again. Besides winning three consecutive Cheltenham Gold Cups (1964, 1965, 1966) and the 1965 King George VI Chase, Arkle triumphed in a number of other important handicap chases, including the 1964 Irish Grand National (under 12-0), the 1964 and 1965 Hennessy Gold Cups (both times under 12-7), the 1965 Gallagher Gold Cup (conceding 16 lb to Mill House while breaking the course record by 17 seconds), and the 1965 Whitbread Gold Cup(under 12-7). In the 1966 Hennessy, he failed by only half a length to give Stalbridge Colonist 35 lb. The scale of the task Arkle faced is shown by the winner coming second and third in the two following Cheltenham Gold Cups, while in third place was the future 1969 Gold Cup winner, What A Myth. In December 1966, Arkle raced in the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park but struck the guard rail with a hoof when jumping the open ditch, which resulted in a fractured pedal bone; despite this injury, he completed the race and finished second. He was in plaster for four months and, though he made a good enough recovery to go back into training, he never ran again. He was retired and ridden as a hack by his owner and then succumbed to what has been variously described as advanced arthritis or possibly brucellosis and was put down at the early age of 13. Arkle became a national legend in Ireland. His strength was jokingly claimed to come from drinking 2 pints of Guinness a day. At one point, the slogan Arkle for President was written on a wall in Dublin. The horse was often referred to simply as "Himself", and he supposedly received items of fan mail addressed to 'Himself, Ireland'. The Irish government-owned Irish National Stud, at Tully, Kildare, Co. Kildare, Ireland, has the skeleton of Arkle on display in its museum. A statue in his memory was erected in Ashbourne Co. Meath in April 2014. -
Great piece of old Irish Musical Nostalgia- an old poster advertising Joe Dolan playing at the Central theatre in Tullamore Co Offaly on Sunday 19th March,some time in the late 1970s. Joseph Francis Robert "Joe" Dolan (16 October 1939 – 26 December 2007), otherwise known as Boots, was an Irish entertainer, recording artist, and pop singer. Chiefly known in Ireland for his association with showbands and for his innovative style and high pitched singing voice, he had a wide appeal with many international fans. His energetic and charismatic stage performances were well known as was his long standing advertising slogan: "There's no show like a Joe show". The only Irish singer to reach number one in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Dolan was a constant presence on the hit parade in Ireland and overseas. Dolan was born at the County Hospital, now known as the Midland Regional Hospital, Mullingar, County Westmeath on 16 October 1939, the youngest of eight children in a Roman Catholicfamily. He was orphaned at a young age – his father, a bicycle shop proprietor, died when Joe was eight; his mother when he was fifteen. He sang in school, and his mother had encouraged him to take up the piano. He made his first stage appearance at a talent show held in a marquee on the Fair Green in his native Mullingar. Dolan's voice was high with a comprehensive range without the use of falsetto and he made comprehensive use of a technique known as melisma which gives the vocal a plaintive edge reminiscent of Arabic religious chanting. Vocal gymnastics such as this were not common in the 1960s and 1970s but were later made popular by artists such as Mariah Carey, Stevie Wonder and Whitney Houston, among others. As well as securing his first (and last) "real" job as a compositor in local newspaper The Westmeath Examiner in 1958, he got his first guitar. After learning some skills on the instrument, he and his saxophone-playing brother Ben started to play in local bands. They soon formed a band of their own – The Drifters. Not long afterward, the band was renamed Joe Dolan and the Drifters and finally Joe Dolan and His Drifters to avoid legal action from the American band of the same name. The Irish musical landscape in the 1960s was dominated by the showbands. The first single "The Answer to Everything", (previously released as a B side by Del Shannon) was released in September 1964, quickly reaching number 4 in the Irish charts. Dolan and his band were managed by Seamus Casey. In the summer of 1968, however, some of the band left, with Dolan and Casey citing "musical differences" as the reason, although in the official biography by Ronan Casey (Seamus Casey's son) further elaboration includes references to unhappiness about financial issues. Dolan never achieved any notable chart success in the U.S. but had good acclaim with concert audiences in carefully targeted areas. His first tour in 1965 followed an offer, which he refused, to play in Las Vegas. Instead, he decided to play a whistle-stop tour of Irish-American venues in places such as Chicago, New York and Boston. An added benefit to this string of engagements was the opportunity to hear American music which hadn't yet been played in the UK and Ireland. The first song gleaned in this fashion was the Jim Reeves classic, (That's When I see the Blue in Your) Pretty Brown Eyeswhich Dolan released on the Pye label in 1966. A second US tour in 1967 led to an appraisal in Las Vegas and a substantial offer to appear there but he turned it down. Eventually in 1980 he accepted $10,000 a week plus board and lodgings to perform for six weeks over September and October at the Continental Lounge of the Silverbird Casino on the Strip in Las Vegas. Eventually playing 64 shows and selling out most of them, he and his band returned to Ireland to be immediately rebooked for Vegas in January 1981. Although this trip was a further success, he turned down subsequent offers to return to Vegas. When word of this got out, other venues approached him with increased offers, thinking he was merely hunting around for the best deal, but the singer refused them all. Several other attempts were made through the years to entice him back but he never returned – except on holiday. In 1978, he became the first Irish artist and one of the first Western acts to tour communist Russia. Joe toured the segregation era in South Africa and was on a UN blacklist for defying the artists' ban.After reforming the band Dolan recorded a song called "Make Me an Island", written by the songwriting duo Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood, for Pye Records in conjunction with Shaftesbury Publishing. The track was a hit in England and led to Dolan's first appearance on the BBC's Top of the Pops and helped to make him the biggest Irish star in the world at that time,eventually becoming a number one hit in 14 countries, as well as reaching Number 3 in the UK, becoming Joe Dolan's only British Top 10 hit, and one of only four hit singles Dolan ever had in the UK (all of these hits performed better in the Irish Charts). In Ireland, the song peaked at number 2 in August 1969, the same week it was Number 3 in the UK. It has been claimed that Dolan was the first Irish star to appear on Top of the Pops,[18] although this supposes that neither The Bachelors nor Val Doonican appeared on the show between 1964 and 1969 (which seems at least doubtful given that both had several big hits in both the UK and Ireland in the mid-'sixties). After the recording of Make Me An Island, Dolan was approached and signed by the MAM Agency whose major star was Tom Jones. Follow-up singles "Teresa" and "You're Such a Good Looking Woman" also made an impact. Other single releases such as "It Makes No Difference" and "You and the Looking Glass" were not big hits at home in Ireland or in the UK, but they were international successes. A collaboration with writers Roberto Danova and Peter Yellowstone in the mid-1970s produced more singles which made little impact on the British domestic market but did well internationally. "Sweet Little Rock 'n’ Roller" (1974) was the first of a number of reasonable successes for this team but wasn't a major hit in the UK until later recorded by Showaddywaddy, who had a Top 20 hit with the song in 1979. His next single, "Lady in Blue" was his biggest ever hit, winning five gold records and selling one million copies. It was popular in Europe, Australasia, Africa and South America but not in Ireland or the UK. Further hits including "Crazy Woman", "Sister Mary", "Midnight Lover", "Hush Hush Maria" and "I Need You" followed. Reflective songs such as "If I Could Put My Life on Paper" were a collaborative attempt to show a more maturing artist, whilst definitive versions of songs such as "Danny Boy" maintained a touch of Irish on disc and in concert. In any given month Dolan could be touring the Middle East one week, Australia the next, then South Africa and then back to Europe and Ireland. Further international successes and tours followed, with hits such as "More and More" and "It's You, It's You, It's You". With his own record label, studio and material Dolan became one of the biggest selling independent artists of the 1990s with albums such as 'Endless Magic' keeping him near the top of the charts. At the end of the decade he refined his voice for the 21st century when he hooked up with EMI for a series of albums (such as Joe's 90s, 21st Century Joe and Home Grown) which saw him tackle more contemporary music from acts as diverse as Oasis, Pulp, Blur, U2, Bruce Springsteen, The Coral, R.E.M., Mundy and his old pal Robbie Williams. At the Oxegen Festival 2009, Blur's Damon Albarn dedicated the song "The Universal" to Dolan. Dolan never married and dealt with speculation about his sexuality throughout his life. He dismissed persistent rumours that he was gay. The official biography suggests that he had a quiet offstage presence and preferred to keep romances out of the public eye but cites a long relationship with Isabella Fogarty whom he met in 1977, started dating in the 1980s and subsequently lived with.She was with him when he became ill on 25 December 2007. In September 1970, Dolan and his band were performing at the Wookie Hollow Club in Liverpool. Dolan and a member of his road crew stayed in the venue for drinks and to chat to their fans. Some people at a nearby table were attempting to bully the (by now closed) bar into providing them with champagne. Dolan joked that they should come back in a few hours for a "champagne breakfast". The men took exception to this and became abusive. Dolan and his companion tried to leave but were prevented from doing so. During the following fracas Dolan was headbutted, (breaking his nose) kicked, punched and slammed into lavatory fittings and a wall in a sustained attack which was only halted when the sound of police sirens could be heard. It took six weeks for the singer to recover well enough to return to work. The club was sued but went into liquidation. The police attempted to identify the perpetrators and held identity parades which Dolan attended but no-one was ever prosecuted. In October 1976, Dolan and a group of friends were flying with Aer Lingus to Corfu for a golfing trip.On several occasions during the flight Dolan was moving around talking to other passengers who knew him. One of the party remembers they were "quite merry". The singer was asked several times by cabin staff to return to his seat and, finally, after being threatened with being "restrained" he did so. Upon landing, he attempted to leave the airport without his luggage and passport but was prevented from doing so by security staff, one of whom drew his pistol and pointed it at Dolan. The tour operator subsequently received a fax from Aer Lingus refusing to fly the star back to Dublin. Newspaper headlines in Ireland proclaimed the star's airline ban for life although, as it transpired, the ban only lasted for close to two years, eventually being lifted after the airline negotiated with the star following his continued references to it on stage and in the media. Dolan's health began to decline after he underwent a hip replacement in 2005, which put him off the road for 12 months and led to the discovery of Type 2 Diabetes which appeared to account for the low energy levels he had been experiencing. In a bizarre twist, following a discussion with Keith Duffy of the boyband Boyzone, the hip bone which was replaced was signed and auctioned for €650, the proceeds being given to Irish Autism Action. Dolan returned to his schedule in 2006, initially with vigour, but soon began to report further signs of low energy. Doctors diagnosed a low blood platelet count and Dolan began a series of blood transfusions, After each, he felt better for a period, but always began to feel weaker again. At this same time, Dolan was also suffering from unexplained nosebleeds. In autumn 2007, on advice from his doctors, Dolan cancelled his Vicar Street concerts due to "exhaustion". On 16 December 2007, the front page of the Sunday Independent reported that Dolan was suffering from a "bad virus" and had been forced to cancel his entire Christmas tour. Dolan's website was inundated with well wishes in the wake of the article, which was reproduced in several newspapers the following day. Despite the blood transfusions and other medical interventions, Dolan became weaker and he was finally discharged from the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin on 23 December 2007 in a wheelchair. Dolan spent Christmas Day 2007 at his home in Foxrock in southeast Dublin with some friends. Later that evening, his illness suddenly worsened, and he was rushed by ambulance to the Mater Hospital. En route to the hospital, Dolan suffered a massive intracerebral haemorrhage, at which he became unconscious, and was connected to life support equipment upon his arrival. At approximately 14:30 hours on St Stephen's Day, surrounded by family and friends, the machines were switched off and Dolan died within 20 minutes, never regaining consciousness. He was pronounced dead at 15:03 hours. He was 68 years old. His funeral mass was held at the Cathedral of Christ the King, Mullingar, on 29 December 2007. Many famous faces from both sides of the border attended, including singer Ronnie Drew from The Dubliners, comedian Frank Carson, snooker legend Denis Taylor and former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds.Dolan is interred in Walshestown Cemetery, Walshestown North, County Westmeath. A 540 metres (1,770 ft) bridge was named after him in the Clonmore Industrial Estate in his hometown of Mullingar, it opened officially on 6 September 2010; it is the longest bridge in the Republic Of Ireland. There is a statue of Dolan in Mullingar's Market Square.Dolan's hip bone is the only body part to ever be sold on eBay. The singer had initially sold his bone at a charity auction before his death and it was later sold on eBay. Origins : Co Offaly Dimensions : 54cm x 40cm 6kg
Grave of Joe Dolan at Walshestown Cemetery, Mullingar -
Brilliant photograph from 1960 as proud owner/trainer Denis Hyland lovingly buys a second pint of Guinness for his undefeated 3 time Heavyweight Cockfighting Champion of Ireland -Ginger.For more information on the ancient sport of cockfighting please read on . 50cm x40cm Stradbally Co Laois Nowadays Gaelic Games, soccer and rugby lead the way. But there used to be a time when cockfighting was the most popular spectator "sport" in Ireland.Naturally the gruesome nature of the activity means it is illegal today in most parts of the world.UCD professor Paul Rouse has shared the history of many Irish sports, and this week cockfighting was under the microscope. "From the Middle Ages onwards, from 1200 to 1300 onwards, there is evidence of cockfighting taking place [in Ireland] and actually not just evidence of it taking place but the simple fact that it was central to Irish life," he said. Indeed it was so central to life that for example, shortly after 1798 in the market of Kildare Town, a cockpit was build to stage fights. "And that is a unique thing. We know that there were cockfighting pits all across Ireland," Rouse adds. "All across the place you have evidence of cockfighting. And they're only the ones that were dedicated purpose-built cockpits. We know that there was cockfighting in pubs, theatres, on streets, in sheds, in back lanes, out in fields. It was everywhere."Rouse also explained that cockfighting transcended class and social divisions, also adding that bull-baiting and bear-baiting were also popular in the United Kingdom in previous centuries with only a few detractors. An RTE report from 1967 further investigated this clandestine sport, roughly around the same era that Ginger was ruling the roost (so to speak!)Cockfighting is an illegal sport, it is still practised in Ireland, and shows no signs of dying out.
A cockfight is a blood sport where two cockerels are placed in a ring, called a ‘pit’, and fight one another, often until the death, for the entertainment of onlookers. Gambling also takes place at these events. Cathal O’Shannon talks to a man identified as Charlie, who trains cockerels, attends cockfights and also acts as an adjudicator at cockfighting matches. Charlie explains what happens at a cockfight, or ‘main’. The birds are placed in the pit and advance on one another. Men pick the birds up, or ‘haunt the cocks’, when one of the cockerels is injured, or when he goes outside the pit, and go back to their station again. The adjudicator then starts counting to 30. This gives the birds a brief rest before the next bout commences. When asked if he thinks that the metal spurs tied to the cockerels’ feet are cruel, he says "A cock can run if he likes...he can quit fighting." Contrary to popular opinion, Charlie does not believe the sport is a cruel one, as he loves the birds, and looks after them in the best way possible prior to a fight, "Get him cleaned up, and give him the sweet milk and the porridge, and get him dosed up again, a wee taste of rice, you get him closed...you put him on the bread then...give him three feeds...bread, and the whites of eggs, and spiced port wine or sherry." When there is a ‘main’ on, the news is spread by word of mouth, often less than 24 hours in advance. Cathal O’Shannon notes that the best place to find a cockfight is, ironically, often where there is a large police presence, such as a football match, a parade, or a Fleadh Cheoil. Any place where the police are too busy to notice. This report for Newsbeat was broadcast on 19 May 1967. The reporter was Cathal O’Shannon. ‘Newsbeat’ was a half-hour feature programme presented by Frank Hall and ran for 7 years from September 1964 to June 1971. ‘Newsbeat’ went out from Monday to Friday on RTE television and reported on current affairs and issues of local interest from around Ireland. The final programme was broadcast on the 11 June 1971. Origins : Co Laois Dimensions :60cm x 50cm 6kg -
Beautiful depiction of Youghal Co Cork. These beautiful quaint scenes from six individual towns were originally table and have been superbly mounted and framed to create a memorable souvenir collection.Originally painted by talented local artist Roisin O Shea,the prints depict everyday scenes of streetlife in Killarney,Kilkenny,Blarney,Galway,Kinsale and Youghal. Lahinch Co Clare 33cm x 39cm -
Pair of tastefully framed portraits (after the paintings by R.M Hodgetts) of one of the greatest statesmen, orators and wits in Irish history -Daniel O'Connell 28cm x 25cm Daniel O'Connell (18th August 1775 – 15 May 1847), often referred to as The Liberator or The Emancipator,was an Irish political leader in the first half of the 19th century. He campaigned for Catholic emancipation—including the right for Catholics to sit in the Westminster Parliament, denied for over 100 years—and repeal of the Acts of Union which combined Great Britain and Ireland. Throughout his career in Irish politics, O'Connell was able to gain a large following among the Irish masses in support of him and his Catholic Association. O'Connell's main strategy was one of political reformism, working within the parliamentary structures of the British state in Ireland and forming an alliance of convenience with the Whigs. More radical elements broke with O'Connell to found the Young Ireland movement. O'Connell was born at Carhan near Cahersiveen, County Kerry, to the O'Connells of Derrynane, a once-wealthy Roman Catholic family that had been dispossessed of its lands. His parents were Morgan O'Connell and Catherine O'Mullane. Among his uncles was Daniel Charles, Count O'Connell, an officer in the Irish Brigades of the French Army. A famous aunt was Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, while Sir James O'Connell, 1st Baronet, was his younger brother. Under the patronage of his wealthy bachelor uncle Maurice "Hunting Cap" O'Connell. O'Connell was first sent with his brother Maurice to Reddington Academy at Long Island, near Queenstown (Cobh) They both studied at Douai in France from 1790 and O'Connell was admitted as a barrister to Lincoln's Inn in 1794, transferring to Dublin's King's Inns two years later. In his early years, he became acquainted with the pro-democracy radicals of the time and committed himself to bringing equal rights and religious tolerance to his own country.While in Dublin studying for the law, O'Connell was under his Uncle Maurice's instructions not to become involved in any militia activity. When Wolfe Tone's French invasion fleet entered Bantry Bay in December 1796, O'Connell found himself in a quandary. Politics was the cause of his unsettlement. Dennis Gwynn in his Daniel O'Connell: The Irish Liberator suggests that the unsettlement was because he was enrolled as a volunteer in defence of Government, yet the Government was intensifying its persecution of the Catholic people—of which he was one.He desired to enter Parliament, yet every allowance that the Catholics had been led to anticipate, two years previously, was now flatly vetoed. As a law student, O'Connell was aware of his own talents, but the higher ranks of the Bar were closed to him. He read the Jockey Club as a picture of the governing class in England and was persuaded by it that, "vice reigns triumphant in the English court at this day. The spirit of liberty shrinks to protect property from the attacks of French innovators. The corrupt higher orders tremble for their vicious enjoyments." O'Connell's studies at the time had concentrated upon the legal and political history of Ireland, and the debates of the Historical Society concerned the records of governments, and from this he was to conclude, according to one of his biographers, "in Ireland the whole policy of the Government was to repress the people and to maintain the ascendancy of a privileged and corrupt minority". On 3 January 1797, in an atmosphere of alarm over the French invasion fleet in Bantry Bay, he wrote to his uncle saying that he was the last of his colleagues to join a volunteer corps and "being young, active, healthy and single" he could offer no plausible excuse.Later that month, for the sake of expediency, he joined the Lawyers' Artillery Corps. On 19 May 1798, O'Connell was called to the Irish Bar and became a barrister. Four days later, the United Irishmen staged their rebellion which was put down by the British with great bloodshed. O'Connell did not support the rebellion; he believed that the Irish would have to assert themselves politically rather than by force. He went on the Munster circuit, and for over a decade, he went into a fairly quiet period of private law practice in the South of Ireland.He was reputed to have the largest income of any Irish barrister but, due to natural extravagance and a growing family, was usually in debt; his brother remarked caustically that Daniel was in debt all his life from the age of seventeen. Although he was ultimately to inherit Derrynane from his uncle Maurice, the old man lived to be almost 100 and in the event Daniel's inheritance did not cover his debts. He also condemned Robert Emmet's Rebellion of 1803. Of Emmet, a Protestant, he wrote: "A man who could coolly prepare so much bloodshed, so many murders—and such horrors of every kind has ceased to be an object of compassion." Despite his opposition to the use of violence, he was willing to defend those accused of political crimes, particularly if he suspected that they had been falsely accused, as in the Doneraile conspiracy trials of 1829, his last notable court appearance. He was noted for his fearlessness in court: if he thought poorly of a judge (as was very often the case) he had no hesitation in making this clear. Most famous perhaps was his retort to Baron McClelland, who had said that as a barrister he would never have taken the course O'Connell had adopted: O'Connell said that McClelland had never been his model as a barrister, neither would he take directions from him as a judge. He did not lack the ambition to become a judge himself: in particular he was attracted by the position of Master of the Rolls in Ireland, yet although he was offered it more than once, finally refused. O'Connell returned to politics in the 1810s. In 1811, he established the Catholic Board, which campaigned for Catholic emancipation, that is, the opportunity for Irish Catholics to become members of parliament. In 1823, he set up the Catholic Association which embraced other aims to better Irish Catholics, such as: electoral reform, reform of the Church of Ireland, tenants' rights, and economic development. The Association was funded by membership dues of one penny per month, a minimal amount designed to attract Catholic peasants. The subscription was highly successful, and the Association raised a large sum of money in its first year. The money was used to campaign for Catholic emancipation, specifically funding pro-emancipation members of parliament (MPs) standing for the British House of Commons.
O'Connell's home at Derrynane Co KerryMembers of the Association were liable to prosecution under an eighteenth-century statute, and the Crown moved to suppress the Association by a series of prosecutions, with mixed success. O'Connell was often briefed for the defence, and showed extraordinary vigour in pleading the rights of Catholics to argue for emancipation. He clashed repeatedly with William Saurin, the Attorney General for Ireland and most influential figure in the Dublin administration, and political differences between the two men were fuelled by a bitter personal antipathy. In 1815 a serious event in his life occurred. Dublin Corporation was considered a stronghold of the Protestant Ascendancy and O'Connell, in an 1815 speech, referred to it as a "beggarly corporation".Its members and leaders were outraged and because O'Connell would not apologise, one of their number, the noted duellist John D'Esterre, challenged him. The duel had filled Dublin Castle (from where the British Government administered Ireland) with tense excitement at the prospect that O'Connell would be killed. They regarded O'Connell as "worse than a public nuisance", and would have welcomed any prospect of seeing him removed at this time. O'Connell met D'Esterre and mortally wounded him (he was shot in the hip, the bullet then lodging in his stomach), in a duel at Oughterard, County Kildare. His conscience was bitterly sore by the fact that, not only had he killed a man, but he had left his family almost destitute. O'Connell offered to "share his income" with D'Esterre's widow, but she declined; however, she consented to accept an allowance for her daughter, which O'Connell regularly paid for more than thirty years until his death. The memory of the duel haunted him for the remainder of his life, and he refused ever to fight another, being prepared to risk accusations of cowardice rather than kill again. As part of his campaign for Catholic emancipation, O'Connell created the Catholic Association in 1823; this organisation acted as a pressure group against the British government so as to achieve emancipation. The Catholic Rent, which was established in 1824 by O'Connell and the Catholic Church raised funds from which O'Connell was able to help finance the Catholic Association in its push for emancipation. Official opinion was gradually swinging towards emancipation, as shown by the summary dismissal of William Saurin, the Attorney General and a leading opponent of religious toleration, whom O'Connell called "our mortal foe". O'Connell stood in a by-election to the British House of Commons in 1828 for County Clare against William Vesey Fitzgerald, who had just joined the British Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade. By law at the time, Cabinet office was deemed to be "an office of profit" under the Crown, requiring the promoted man to obtain the endorsement of his constituents by standing for re-election. After O'Connell won election, he was unable to take his seat as members of parliament had to take the Oath of Supremacy, which was incompatible with Catholicism. The Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, and the Home Secretary, Sir Robert Peel, even though they opposed Catholic participation in Parliament, saw that denying O'Connell his seat would cause outrage and could lead to another rebellion or uprising in Ireland, which was about 85% Catholic. Peel and Wellington managed to convince King George IV that Catholic emancipation and the right of Catholics and Presbyterians and members of all Christian faiths other than the established Church of Ireland to sit in Parliament needed to be established; with the help of the Whigs, it became law in 1829. However, the Emancipation Act was not made retroactive, meaning that O'Connell had either to seek re-election or to attempt to take the oath of supremacy. When O'Connell attempted on 15 May to take his seat without taking the oath of supremacy, Solicitor-General Nicholas Conyngham Tindal moved that his seat be declared vacant and another election ordered; O'Connell was elected unopposed on 30 July 1829. He took his seat when Parliament resumed in February 1830, by which time Henry Charles Howard, 13th Duke of Norfolk and Earl of Surrey, had already become the first Roman Catholic to have taken advantage of the Emancipation Act and sit in Parliament. "Wellington is the King of England", King George IV once complained, "O'Connell is King of Ireland, and I am only the dean of Windsor." The regal jest expressed the general admiration for O'Connell at the height of his career. The Catholic emancipation campaign led by O'Connell served as the precedent and model for the emancipation of British Jews, the subsequent Jews Relief Act 1858 allowing Jewish MPs to omit the words in the Oath of Allegiance "and I make this Declaration upon the true Faith of a Christian". Ironically, considering O'Connell's dedication to peaceful methods of political agitation, his greatest political achievement ushered in a period of violence in Ireland. There was an obligation for those working the land to support the established Church (i.e., the United Church of England and Ireland) by payments known as tithes. The fact that the vast majority of those working the land in Ireland were Catholic or Presbyterian tenant farmers, supporting what was a minority religion within that island (but not the United Kingdom as a whole), had been causing tension for some time. In December 1830, he and several others were tried for holding a meeting as an association or assemblage in violation of the orders of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, but the statute expired in course of judgment and the prosecution was terminated by the judiciary. An initially peaceful campaign of non-payment turned violent in 1831 when the newly founded Irish Constabulary were used to seize property in lieu of payment resulting in the Tithe War of 1831–1836. Although opposed to the use of force, O'Connell successfully defended participants in the Battle of Carrickshock and all the defendants were acquitted. Nonetheless O'Connell rejected William Sharman Crawford's call for the complete abolition of tithes in 1838, as he felt he could not embarrass the Whigs (the Lichfield House Compact secured an alliance between Whigs, radicals and Irish MPs in 1835). In 1841, Daniel O'Connell became the first Roman Catholic Lord Mayor of Dublin since the reign of James II, who had been the last Roman Catholic monarch of England, Ireland and Scotland.
Statue of Daniel O'Connell outside St Patrick's Cathedral, MelbourneOnce Catholic emancipation was achieved, O'Connell campaigned for repeal of the Act of Union, which in 1801 had merged the Parliaments of the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. To campaign for repeal, O'Connell set up the Repeal Association. He argued for the re-creation of an independent Kingdom of Ireland to govern itself, with Queen Victoria as the Queen of Ireland. To push for this, he held a series of "Monster Meetings" throughout much of Ireland outside the Protestant and Unionist-dominated province of Ulster. They were so called because each was attended by around 100,000 people. These rallies concerned the British Government and the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, banned one such proposed monster meeting at Clontarf, County Dublin, just outside Dublin city in 1843. This move was made after the biggest monster meeting was held at Tara.
The Monster Meeting at Clifden in 1843 by Joseph Patrick Haverty. O'Connell is depicted in the center addressing the gathered masses.Tara held great significance to the Irish population as it was the historic seat of the High Kings of Ireland. Clontarf was symbolic because of its association with the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, when the Irish King Brian Boru defeated his rival Maelmordha, although Brian himself died during the battle. Despite appeals from his supporters, O'Connell refused to defy the authorities and he called off the meeting, as he was unwilling to risk bloodshed and had no others. He was arrested, charged with conspiracy and sentenced to a year's imprisonment and a fine of £2,000, although he was released after three months by the House of Lords, which quashed the conviction and severely criticised the unfairness of the trial. Having deprived himself of his most potent weapon, the monster meeting, O'Connell with his health failing had no plan and dissension broke out in the Repeal Association.
O'Connell Monument on O'Connell Street in Dublin
Daniel O'Connell is honoured on the first commemorative stamps of Ireland, issued in 1929. 
The round tower marking O'Connell's mausoleumO'Connell died of softening of the brain (cerebral softening) in 1847 in Genoa, Italy, while on a pilgrimage to Rome at the age of 71; his term in prison had seriously weakened him, and the appallingly cold weather he had to endure on his journey was probably the final blow. According to his dying wish, his heart was buried in Rome (at Sant'Agata dei Goti, then the chapel of the Irish College), and the remainder of his body in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, beneath a round tower. His sons are buried in his crypt. On 6 August 1875, Charles Herbert Mackintosh won the gold and silver medals offered by the St. Patrick's Society during the O'Connell centenary at Major's Hill Park in Ottawa, Ontario for a prize poem entitled The Irish Liberator. O'Connell's philosophy and career have inspired leaders all over the world, including Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) and Martin Luther King (1929–1968). He was told by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) "you have done more for your nation than any man since Washington ever did". William Gladstone (1809–1898) described him as "the greatest popular leader the world has ever seen". Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) wrote that "Napoleon and O'Connell were the only great men the 19th century had ever seen." Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné (1794–1872) wrote that "the only man like Luther, in the power he wielded was O'Connell". William Grenville (1759–1834) wrote that "history will speak of him as one of the most remarkable men that ever lived". O'Connell met, befriended, and became a great inspiration to Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) a former American slave who became a highly influential leader of the abolitionist movement, social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. O'Connell's attacks on slavery were made with his usual vigour, and often gave great offence, especially in the United States: he called George Washington a hypocrite, and was challenged to a duel by Andrew Stevenson, the American minister, whom he was reported to have called a slave breeder. Notwithstanding his pronounced opposition to slavery, however, O'Connell, in the words of Lee M. Jenkins in her 1999 Irish Review article "Beyond the Pale: Frederick Douglass in Cork", "accepted money for his Repeal cause from Southern slaveholders". The founder of the Irish Labour Party and executed Easter Rising leader James Connolly, devoted a chapter in his 1910 book "Labour in Irish History" entitled "A chapter of horrors: Daniel O'Connell and the working class" in which he criticised O'Connell's parliamentary record, accusing him of siding consistently with the interests of the propertied classes of the United Kingdom. And Patrick Pearse, Connolly's fellow leader of the Easter Rising, wrote: "The leaders in Ireland have nearly always left the people at the critical moment. ... O'Connell recoiled before the cannon at Clontarf" though adding "I do not blame these men; you or I might have done the same. It is a terrible responsibility to be cast on a man, that of bidding the cannon speak and the grapeshot pour". In O'Connell's lifetime, the aims of his Repeal Association—an independent Kingdom of Ireland governing itself but keeping the British monarch as its Head of State—proved too radical for the British government of the time to accept, and brought upon O'Connell persecution and suppression. O'Connell is known in Ireland as "The Liberator" or "The Great Emancipator" for his success in achieving Catholic Emancipation. O'Connell admired Latin American liberator Simón Bolívar, and one of his sons, Morgan O'Connell, was a volunteer officer in Bolívar's army in 1820, aged 15. The principal street in the centre of Dublin, previously called Sackville Street, was renamed O'Connell Street in his honour in the early 20th century after the Irish Free Statecame into being.His statue (made by the sculptor John Henry Foley, who also designed the sculptures of the Albert Memorial in London) stands at one end of the street, with a statue of Charles Stewart Parnell at the other end. The main street of Limerick is also named after O'Connell, also with a statue at the end (in the centre of the Crescent). O'Connell Streets also exist in Ennis, Sligo, Athlone, Kilkee, Clonmel. Dungarvan and Waterford. The Daniel O'Connell Bridge was built over the Ophir River, Central Otago, New Zealand in 1880. There is a statue honouring O'Connell outside St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne, Australia.There is a museum commemorating him in Derrynane House, near the village of Derrynane, County Kerry, which was once owned by his family.He was a member of the Literary Association of the Friends of Poland as well.
Mausoleum of Daniel O'Connell in Glasnevin CemeteryIn 1802 O'Connell married his third cousin, Mary O'Connell. It was a love marriage, and to persist in it was an act of considerable courage, since Daniel's uncle Maurice was outraged (as Mary had no fortune) and for a time threatened to disinherit them. They had four daughters (three surviving), Ellen(1805–1883), Catherine (1808), Elizabeth (1810), and Rickarda (1815) and four sons. The sons—Maurice (1803), Morgan (1804), John (1810), and Daniel(1816)—all sat in Parliament. The marriage was happy and Mary's death in 1837 was a blow from which her husband never fully recovered. He was a devoted father; O'Faoláin suggests that despite his wide acquaintance he had few close friends and therefore the family circle meant a great deal to him. O'Connell assisted his younger son, Daniel junior, to acquire the Phoenix Brewery in James's Street, Dublin in 1831. The brewery produced a brand known as "O'Connell's Ale" and enjoyed some popularity. By 1832, O'Connell was forced to state that he would not be a political patron of the brewing trade or his son's company, until he was no longer a member of parliament, particularly because O'Connell and Arthur Guinness were political enemies. Guinness was the "moderate" liberal candidate, O'Connell was the "radical" liberal candidate. The rivalry caused dozens of Irish firms to boycott Guinness during the 1841 Repeal election. It was at this time that Guinness was accused of supporting the "Orange system", and its beer was known as "Protestant porter". When the O'Connell family left brewing, the rights to "O'Connell Dublin Ale" was sold to John D'Arcy. The brewing business proved to be unsuccessful though, and after a few years was taken over by the manager, John Brennan, while Daniel junior embraced a political career. Brennan changed the name back to the Phoenix Brewery but continued to brew and sell O'Connell's Ale. When the Phoenix Brewery was effectively closed after being absorbed into the Guinness complex in 1909, the brewing of O'Connell's Ale was carried out by John D'Arcy and Son Ltd at the Anchor Brewery in Usher Street. In 1926, D'Arcy's ceased trading and the firm of Watkins, Jameson and Pim carried on the brewing until they too succumbed to the pressures of trying to compete with Guinness. Daniel junior was the committee chairman of the licensed trade association of the period and gave considerable and valuable support to Daniel O'Connell in his public life. Some time later a quarrel arose and O'Connell turned his back on the association and became a strong advocate of temperance. During the period of Fr. Mathew's total abstinence crusades many temperance rallies were held, the most notable being a huge rally held on St. Patrick's Day in 1841. Daniel O'Connell was a guest of honour at another such rally held at the Rotunda Hospital.
1834 portrait of Daniel O'Connell by George HayterMichael Doheny, in his The Felon's Track, says that the very character of emancipation has assumed an "exaggerated and false guise" and that it is an error to call it emancipation. He went on, that it was neither the first nor the last nor even the most important in the concessions, which are entitled to the name of emancipation, and that no one remembered the men whose exertions "wrung from the reluctant spirit of a far darker time the right of living, of worship, of enjoying property, and exercising the franchise".Doheny's opinion was, that the penalties of the "Penal Laws" had been long abolished, and that barbarous code had been compressed into cold and stolid exclusiveness and yet Mr. O'Connell monopolised its entire renown. The view put forward by John Mitchel, also one of the leading members of the Young Ireland movement, in his "Jail Journal" was that there were two distinct movements in Ireland during this period, which were rousing the people, one was the Catholic Relief Agitation (led by O'Connell), which was both open and legal, the other was the secret societies known as the Ribbon and White—boy movements. The first proposed the admission of professional and genteel Catholics to Parliament and to the honours of the professions, all under British law—the other, originating in an utter horror and defiance of British law, contemplated nothing less than a social, and ultimately, a political revolution. According to Mitchel, for fear of the latter, Great Britain with a "very ill grace yielded to the first". Mitchel agrees that Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington said they brought in this measure, to avert civil war; but says that "no British statesman ever officially tells the truth, or assigns to any act its real motive." Their real motive was, according to Mitchel, to buy into the British interests, the landed and educated Catholics, these "Respectable Catholics" would then be contented, and "become West Britons" from that day.
O'Connell is on the left edge in this painting which is of the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention.A critic of violent insurrection in Ireland, O'Connell once said that "the altar of liberty totters when it is cemented only with blood", and yet as late as 1841, O'Connell had whipped his MPs into line to keep the (First) Opium War going in China. The Tories at the time had proposed a motion of censure over the war, and O'Connell had to call upon his MPs to support the Whig Government. As a result of this intervention, the Government was saved. Politically, he focused on parliamentary and populist methods to force change and made regular declarations of his loyalty to the British Crown. He often warned the British establishment that if they did not reform the governance of Ireland, Irishmen would start to listen to the "counsels of violent men". Successive British governments continued to ignore this advice, long after his death, although he succeeded in extracting by the sheer force of will and the power of the Catholic peasants and clergy much of what he wanted, i.e., eliminating disabilities on Roman Catholics; ensuring that lawfully elected Roman Catholics could serve their constituencies in the British Parliament (until the Irish Parliament was restored); and amending the Oath of Allegiance so as to remove clauses offensive to Roman Catholics who could then take the Oath in good conscience. Although a native speaker of the Irish language, O'Connell encouraged Irish people to learn English to better themselves.Although he is best known for the campaign for Catholic emancipation; he also supported similar efforts for Irish Jews. At his insistence, in 1846, the British law "De Judaismo", which prescribed a special dress for Jews, was repealed. O'Connell said: "Ireland has claims on your ancient race, it is the only country that I know of unsullied by any one act of persecution of the Jews".In April 1835, misled by inaccurate press reports, O'Connell thought Disraeli had slandered him and launched an outspoken attack upon him: Disraeli sought satisfaction by challenging O'Connell's son Morgan to a duel, Daniel having sworn never to duel again after previously killing a man. Morgan declined, replying that he was not responsible for his father's words.
"Daniel O'Connell: The Champion of Liberty" poster published in Pennsylvania, 1847
O'Connell's grave in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. In accordance with his final words – "My body to Ireland, my heart to Rome, and my soul to heaven" – his embalmed heart was interred in a silver casket and sent to Rome, though it is now lost.- "The altar of liberty totters when it is cemented only with blood." (Written in his Journal, December 1796, and one of O'Connell's most well-known quotes. Quoted by O'Ferrall, F., Daniel O'Connell, Dublin, 1981, p. 12)
- "Gentlemen, you may soon have the alternative to live as slaves or die as free men." (speaking in Mallow, County Cork)
- "Good God, what a brute man becomes when ignorant and oppressed. Oh Liberty! What horrors are committed in thy name! May every virtuous revolutionist remember the horrors of Wexford!" (Written in his journal, 2 January 1799, referring to the recent 1798 Rebellion. Quoted from Vol I, p. 205, of O'Neill Daunt, W. J., Personal Recollections of the Late Daniel O'Connell, M.P., 2 Vols, London, 1848.)
- "My days—the blossom of my youth and the flower of my manhood—have been darkened by the dreariness of servitude. In this my native land—in the land of my sires—I am degraded without fault as an alien and an outcast." (July 1812, aged 37, reflecting on the failure to secure equal rights or Catholic Emancipation for Catholics in Ireland. Quoted from Vol I, p. 185, of O'Connell, J. (ed.) The Life and Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, 2 Vols, Dublin, 1846)
- "How cruel the Penal Laws are which exclude me from a fair trial with men whom I look upon as so much my inferiors ...'. (O'Connell's Correspondence, Letter No 700, Vol II)
- "I want to make all Europe and America know it—I want to make England feel her weakness if she refuses to give the justice we [the Irish] require—the restoration of our domestic parliament ..." (Speech given at a 'monster' meeting held at Drogheda, June 1843)
- "There is an utter ignorance of, and indifference to, our sufferings and privations ... What care they for us, provided we be submissive, pay the taxes, furnish recruits for the Army and Navy and bless the masters who either despise or oppress or combine both? The apathy that exists respecting Ireland is worse than the national antipathy they bear us." (Letter to T. M. Ray, 1839, on English attitudes to Ireland (O'Connell, Correspondence, Vol VI, Letter No. 2588))
- "No person knows better than you do that the domination of England is the sole and blighting curse of this country. It is the incubus that sits on our energies, stops the pulsation of the nation's heart and leaves to Ireland not gay vitality but horrid the convulsions of a troubled dream." (Letter to Bishop Doyle, 1831 (O'Connell Correspondence, Vol IV, Letter No. 1860))
- "The principle of my political life ... is, that all ameliorations and improvements in political institutions can be obtained by persevering in a perfectly peaceable and legal course, and cannot be obtained by forcible means, or if they could be got by forcible means, such means create more evils than they cure, and leave the country worse than they found it.' (Writing in The Nationnewspaper, 18 November 1843)
- "No man was ever a good soldier but the man who goes into the battle determined to conquer, or not to come back from the battle field (cheers). No other principle makes a good soldier." (O'Connell recalling the spirited conduct of the Irish soldiers in Wellington's army, at the Monster meeting held at Mullaghmast.)
- "The poor old Duke [of Wellington]! What shall I say of him? To be sure he was born in Ireland, but being born in a stable does not make a man a horse." (Shaw's Authenticated Report of the Irish State Trials (1844), p. 93)
- "Every religion is good—every religion is true to him who in his good caution and conscience believes it." (As defence counsel in R. v Magee (1813), pleading for religious tolerance.)
- "Ireland is too poor for a poor law." (In response to the Poor Relief Act of 1839 that set up the workhouses.
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Large,colourful,beautifully illustrated and wonderfully eclectic poster depicting Irish Traditional Music instruments,scenes and imagery which have been such an integral part of Irish culture and heritage, featuring such luminaries as Sean O'Riada,The Chieftains etc. 85cm x 55cm Irish Traditional music (also known as Irish trad, Irish folk music, and other variants) is a genre of folk music that developed in Ireland. In A History of Irish Music (1905), W. H. Grattan Flood wrote that, in Gaelic Ireland, there were at least ten instruments in general use. These were the cruit (a small harp) and clairseach (a bigger harp with typically 30 strings), the timpan (a small string instrument played with a bow or plectrum), the feadan (a fife), the buinne (an oboe or flute), the guthbuinne (a bassoon-type horn), the bennbuabhal and corn (hornpipes), the cuislenna (bagpipes – see Great Irish warpipes), the stoc and sturgan (clarions or trumpets), and the cnamha (bones). There is also evidence of the fiddle being used in the 8th century. There are several collections of Irish folk music from the 18th century, but it was not until the 19th century that ballad printers became established in Dublin. Important collectors include Colm Ó Lochlainn, George Petrie, Edward Bunting, Francis O'Neill, James Goodman and many others. Though solo performance is preferred in the folk tradition, bands or at least small ensembles have probably been a part of Irish music since at least the mid-19th century, although this is a point of much contention among ethnomusicologists. Irish traditional music has endured more strongly against the forces of cinema, radio and the mass media than the indigenous folk music of most European countries. This was possibly because the country was not a geographical battleground in either of the two World Wars. Another potential factor was that the economy was largely agricultural, where oral tradition usually thrives. From the end of the Second World War until the late fifties folk music was held in low regard. Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (an Irish traditional music association) and the popularity of the Fleadh Cheoil(music festival) helped lead the revival of the music. The English Folk music scene also encouraged and gave self-confidence to many Irish musicians. Following the success of The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem in the US in 1959, Irish folk music became fashionable again. The lush sentimental style of singers such as Delia Murphy was replaced by guitar-driven male groups such as The Dubliners. Irish showbands presented a mixture of pop music and folk dance tunes, though these died out during the seventies. The international success of The Chieftains and subsequent musicians and groups has made Irish folk music a global brand. Historically much old-time music of the USA grew out of the music of Ireland, England and Scotland, as a result of cultural diffusion. By the 1970s Irish traditional music was again influencing music in the US and further afield in Australia and Europe. It has occasionally been fused with rock and roll, punk rock and other genres. Irish dance music is isometric and is built around patterns of bar-long melodic phrases akin to call and response. A common pattern is A Phrase, B Phrase, A Phrase, Partial Resolution, A Phrase, B Phrase, A Phrase, Final Resolution, though this is not universal; mazurkas, for example, tend to feature a C Phrase instead of a repeated A Phrase before the Partial and Final Resolutions, for example. Many tunes have pickup notes which lead in to the beginning of the A or B parts. Mazurkas and hornpipes have a swing feel, while other tunes have straight feels. Tunes are typically binary in form, divided into two (or sometimes more) parts, each with four to eight bars. The parts are referred to as the A-part, B-part, and so on. Each part is played twice, and the entire tune is played three times; AABB, AABB, AABB. Many tunes have similar ending phrases for both A and B parts; it is common for hornpipes to have the second half of each part be identical. Additionally, hornpipes often have three quavers or quarternotes at the end of each part, followed by pickup notes to lead back to the beginning of the A part of onto the B part. Many airshave an AABA form.While airs are usually played singly, dance tunes are usually played in medleys of 2-4 tunes called sets. Irish music generally is modal, using ionian, aeolian, dorian, and mixolydian modes, as well as hexatonic and pentatonic versions of those scales. Some tunes do feature accidentals.Singers and instrumentalists often embellish melodies through ornamentation, using grace notes, rolls, cuts, crans, or slides. While uilleann pipes may use their drones and chanters to provide harmonic backup, and fiddlers often use double stops in their playing, due to the importance placed on the melody in Irish music, harmony is typically kept simple or absent.Usually, instruments are played in strict unison, always following the leading player. True counterpoint is mostly unknown to traditional music, although a form of improvised "countermelody" is often used in the accompaniments of bouzouki and guitar players. In contrast to many kinds of western folk music, there are no set chord progressions to tunes; many accompanyists use power chords to let the melody define the tonality or use partial chords in combination with ringing drone strings to emphasize the tonal center. Many guitarists use DADGAD tuning because it offers flexibility in using these approaches, as does the GDAD tuning for bouzouki. Like all traditional music, Irish folk music has changed slowly. Most folk songs are less than 200 years old. One measure of its age is the language used. Modern Irish songs are written in English and Irish. Most of the oldest songs and tunes are rural in origin and come from the older Irish language tradition. Modern songs and tunes often come from cities and towns, Irish songs went from the Irish language to the English language. Unaccompanied vocals are called sean nós ("in the old style") and are considered the ultimate expression of traditional singing. This is usually performed solo (very occasionally as a duet). Sean-nós singing is highly ornamented and the voice is placed towards the top of the range. A true sean-nós singer will vary the melody of every verse, but not to the point of interfering with the words, which are considered to have as much importance as the melody. Sean-nós can include non-lexical vocables, called lilting, also referred to by the sounds, such as "diddly die-dely". Non-sean-nós traditional singing, even when accompaniment is used, uses patterns of ornamentation and melodic freedom derived from sean-nós singing, and, generally, a similar voice placement. Caoineadh is Irish for a lament, a song which is typified by lyrics which stress sorrow and pain. Traditionally, the Caoineadh song contained lyrics in which the singer lamented for Ireland after having been forced to emigrate due to political or financial reasons. The song may also lament the loss of a loved one (particularly a fair woman). Many Caoineadh songs have their roots/basis in The Troubles of Northern Ireland with particular reference to the presence of the British military during this period. Examples of Caoineadh songs include: Far Away in Australia, The Town I Loved So Well and Four Green Fields. Caoineadh singers were originally paid to lament for the departed at funerals, according to a number of Irish sources. Irish traditional music and dance has seen a variety of settings, from house parties, country dances, ceili dances, stage performances and competitions, weddings, saint's days or other observances. The most common setting for Irish dance music is the seisiun, which very often features no dancing at all.The concept of "style" is of large importance to Irish traditional musicians. At the start of the last century (1900), distinct variation in regional styles of performance existed. With the release of American recordings of Irish traditional musicians (e.g. Michael Coleman 1927) and increased communications and travel opportunities, regional styles have become more standardised. Regional playing styles remain nonetheless, as evidenced by the very different playing styles of musicians from Donegal (e.g. Tommy Peoples), Clare (e.g. brothers John & James Kelly) and Sliabh Luachra (e.g. Jacky Daly). Donegal fiddle playing is characterised by fast, energetic bowing, with the bow generating the majority of the ornamentation; Clare fiddle playing is characterised by slower bowing, with the fingering generating most of the ornamentation. While bowed triplets (three individual notes with the bow reversed between each) are more common in Donegal, fingered triplets and fingered rolls (five individual notes fingered with a single bow stroke) are very common in Clare. Stage performers from the 1970s and 1980s (groups such as The Bothy Band, or soloists such as Kevin Burke) have used the repertoire of traditional music to create their own groups of tunes, without regard to the conventional 'sets' or the constraint of playing for dancers. Burke's playing is an example of an individual, unique, distinctive style, a hybrid of his classical training, the traditional Sligo fiddle style and various other influences. The most common instruments used in Irish traditional dance music, whose history goes back several hundred years, are the fiddle, tin whistle, flute and Uilleann pipes. Instruments such as button accordion and concertina made their appearances in Irish traditional music late in the 19th century. The 4-string tenor banjo, first used by Irish musicians in the US in the 1920s, is now fully accepted. The guitar was used as far back as the 1930s first appearing on some of the recordings of Michael Coleman and his contemporaries. The bouzouki only entered the traditional Irish music world in the late 1960s. The word bodhrán, indicating a drum, is first mentioned in a translated English document in the 17th century. The saxophone featured in recordings from the early 20th century most notably in Paddy Killoran's Pride of Erin Orchestra. Céilidh bands of the 1940s often included a drum set and stand-up bass as well as saxophones. Traditional harp-playing died out in the late 18th century, and was revived by the McPeake Family of Belfast, Derek Bell, Mary O'Hara and others in the mid-20th century. Although often encountered, it plays a fringe role in Irish Traditional dance music. The piano is commonly used for accompaniment. In the early 20th century piano accompaniment was prevalent on the 78rpm records featuring Michael Coleman, James Morrison, John McKenna, PJ Conlon and many more. On many of these recordings the piano accompaniment was woeful because the backers were unfamiliar with Irish music. However, Morrison avoided using the studio piano players and hand-picked his own. The vamping style used by these piano backers has largely remained. There has been a few recent innovators such as Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, Brian McGrath, Liam Bradley, Josephine Keegan, Ryan Molloy and others.
The Haymakers jigOne of the most important instruments in the traditional repertoire, the fiddle (or violin – there is no physical difference) is played differently in widely varying regional styles. It uses the standard GDAE tuning. The best-known regional fiddling traditions are from Donegal, Sligo, Sliabh Luachra and Clare. The fiddling tradition of Sligo is perhaps most recognisable to outsiders, due to the popularity of American-based performers like Lad O'Beirne, Michael Coleman, John McGrath, James Morrison and Paddy Killoran. These fiddlers did much to popularise Irish music in the States in the 1920s and 1930s. Other Sligo fiddlers included Martin Wynne and Fred Finn. Notable fiddlers from Clare include Mary Custy, Yvonne Casey, Paddy Canny, Bobby Casey, John Kelly, Patrick Kelly, Peadar O'Loughlin, Pat O'Connor, Martin Hayes and P. Joe Hayes. Donegal has produced James Byrne, Vincent Campbell, John Doherty, Tommy Peoples, and Con Cassidy. Sliabh Luachra, a small area between Kerry and Cork, is known for Julia Clifford, her brother Denis Murphy, Sean McGuire, Paddy Cronin and Padraig O'Keeffe. Contemporary fiddlers from Sliabh Luachra include Matt Cranitch, Gerry Harrington and Connie O'Connell, while Dubliner Séamus Creagh, actually from Westmeath, is imbued in the local style. Modern performers include Kevin Burke, Máire Breatnach, Matt Cranitch, Paddy Cronin, Frankie Gavin, Paddy Glackin, Cathal Hayden, Martin Hayes, Peter Horan, Sean Keane, James Kelly, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Brendan Mulvihill, Máiréad Nesbitt, Gerry O'Connor, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, and Paul O'Shaughnessy. There have been many notable fiddlers from United States in recent years such as Winifred Horan, Brian Conway, Liz Carroll, and Eileen Ivers.
A fiddleThe flute has been an integral part of Irish traditional music since roughly the middle of the 19th century, when art musicians largely abandoned the wooden simple-system flute (having a conical bore, and fewer keys) for the metal Boehm system flutes of present-day classical music. Although the choice of the Albert-system, wooden flute over the metal was initially driven by the fact that, being "outdated" castoffs, the old flutes were available cheaply second-hand, the wooden instrument has a distinct sound and continues to be commonly preferred by traditional musicians to this day. A number of excellent players—Joanie Madden being perhaps the best known—use the Western concert flute, but many others find that the simple system flute best suits traditional fluting. Original flutes from the pre-Boehm era continue in use, but since the 1960s a number of craftsmen have revived the art of wooden flute making. Some flutes are even made of PVC; these are especially popular with new learners and as travelling instruments, being both less expensive than wooden instruments and far more resistant to changes in humidity.
Tin whistles, and a low whistle (right), in a variety of makes and keysThe tin whistle or metal whistle, which with its nearly identical fingering might be called a cousin of the simple-system flute, is also popular. It was mass-produced in 19th century Manchester England, as an inexpensive instrument. Clarke whistles almost identical to the first ones made by that company are still available, although the original version, pitched in C, has mostly been replaced for traditional music by that pitched in D, the "basic key" of traditional music. The other common design consists of a barrel made of seamless tubing fitted into a plastic or wooden mouthpiece. Skilled craftsmen make fine custom whistles from a range of materials including not only aluminium, brass, and steel tubing but synthetic materials and tropical hardwoods; despite this, more than a few longtime professionals stick with ordinary factory made whistles. Irish schoolchildren are generally taught the rudiments of playing on the tin whistle, just as school children in many other countries are taught the soprano recorder. At one time the whistle was thought of by many traditional musicians as merely a sort of "beginner's flute", but that attitude has disappeared in the face of talented whistlers such as Mary Bergin, whose classic early seventies recording Feadóga Stáin (with bouzouki accompaniment by Alec Finn) is often credited with revolutionising the whistle's place in the tradition. The low whistle, a derivative of the common tin whistle, is also popular, although some musicians find it less agile for session playing than the flute or the ordinary D whistle. Notable present-day flute-players (sometimes called 'flautists' or 'fluters') include Matt Molloy, Kevin Crawford, Peter Horan, Michael McGoldrick, Desi Wilkinson, Conal O'Grada, James Carty, Emer Mayock, Joanie Madden, Michael Tubridy and Catherine McEvoy, while whistlers include Paddy Moloney, Carmel Gunning, Paddy Keenan, Seán Ryan, Andrea Corr, Mary Bergin, Packie Byrne and Cormac Breatnach.
A (keyless) Irish fluteUilleann pipes (pronounced ill-in or ill-yun depending upon local dialect) are a complex instrument. Tradition holds that seven years learning, seven years practising and seven years playing is required before a piper could be said to have mastered his instrument. The uilleann pipes developed around the beginning of the 18th century, the history of which is depicted in carvings and pictures from contemporary sources in both Britain and Ireland as pastoraland union pipes. Its modern form had arrived by the end of the 18th century, and was played by gentlemen pipers such as the mid-18th century piper Jackson from Limerick and the Tandragee pipemaker William Kennedy, the Anglican clergyman Canon James Goodman (1828–1896) and his friend John Hingston from Skibbereen. These were followed in the 20th century by the likes of Séamus Ennis, Leo Rowsome and Willie Clancy, playing refined and ornate pieces, as well as showy, ornamented forms played by travelling pipers like John Cash and Johnny Doran.The uilleann piping tradition had nearly died before being re-popularized by the likes of Paddy Moloney (of the Chieftains), and the formation of Na Píobairí Uilleann, an organisation open to pipers that included such players as Rowsome and Ennis, as well as researcher and collector Breandán Breathnach. Liam O'Flynn is one of the most popular of modern performers along with Paddy Keenan, John McSherry, Davy Spillane, Jerry O'Sullivan, Mick O'Brien and many more. Many Pavee (Traveller) families, such as the Fureys and Dorans and Keenans, are famous for the pipers among them. Famous was also the McPeake Family, who toured Europe. Uilleann pipes are among the most complex forms of bagpipes; they possess a chanter with a double reed and a two-octave range, three single-reed drones, and, in the complete version known as a full set, a trio of (regulators) all with double reeds and keys worked by the piper's forearm, capable of providing harmonic support for the melody. (Virtually all uilleann pipers begin playing with a half set, lacking the regulators and consisting of only bellows, bag, chanter, and drones. Some choose never to play the full set, and many make little use of the regulators.) The bag is filled with air by a bellows held between the piper's elbow and side, rather than by the performer's lungs as in the highland pipes and almost all other forms of bagpipe, aside from the Scottish smallpipes, Pastoral pipes (which also plays with regulators), the Northumbrian pipes of northern England, and the Border pipes found in both parts of the Anglo-Scottish Border country. The uilleann pipes play a prominent part in a form of instrumental music called Fonn Mall, closely related to unaccompanied singing an sean nós ("in the old style"). Willie Clancy, Leo Rowsome, and Garret Barry were among the many pipers famous in their day; Paddy Keenan, Davy Spillane and Robbie Hannan play these traditional airs today, among many others.
Liam O'Flynn playing uilleann pipesThe harp is among the chief symbols of Ireland. The Celtic harp, seen on Irish coinage and used in Guinness advertising, was played as long ago as the 10th century. In ancient times, the harpers were greatly respected and, along with poets and scribes, assigned a high place amongst the most significant retainers of the old Gaelic order of lords and chieftains. Perhaps the best known representative of this tradition of harping today is Turlough Ó Carolan, a blind 18th century harper who is often considered the unofficial national composer of Ireland. Thomas Connellan, a slightly earlier Sligo harper, composed such well known airs as "The Dawning of the Day"/"Raglan Road" and "Carolan's Dream".
A medieval clarsach in the National Museum of Scotland in EdinburghThe native Irish harping tradition was an aristocratic art music with its own canon and rules for arrangement and compositional structure, only tangentially associated with the folkloric music of the common people, the ancestor of present-day Irish traditional music. Some of the late exponents of the harping tradition, such as O'Carolan, were influenced by the Italian Baroque art music of such composers as Vivaldi, which could be heard in the theatres and concert halls of Dublin. The harping tradition did not long outlast the native Gaelic aristocracy which supported it. By the early 19th century, the Irish harp and its music were for all intents and purposes dead. Tunes from the harping tradition survived only as unharmonised melodies which had been picked up by the folkloric tradition, or were preserved as notated in collections such as Edward Bunting's, (he attended the Belfast Harp Festival in 1792) in which the tunes were most often modified to make them fit for the drawing room pianofortes of the Anglicised middle and upper classes. The first generations of 20th century revivalists, mostly playing the gut-strung (frequently replaced with nylon after the Second World War) neo-Celtic harp with the pads of their fingers rather than the old brass-strung harp plucked with long fingernails, tended to take the dance tunes and song airs of Irish traditional music, along with such old harp tunes as they could find, and applied to them techniques derived from the orchestral (pedal) harp and an approach to rhythm, arrangement, and tempo that often had more in common with mainstream classical music than with either the old harping tradition or the living tradition of Irish music. A separate Belfast tradition of harp-accompanied folk-singing was preserved by the McPeake Family. Over the past thirty years a revival of the early Irish harp has been growing, with replicas of the medieval instruments being played, using strings of brass, silver, and even gold. This revival grew through the work of a number of musicians including Arnold Dolmetsch in 1930s England, Alan Stivell in 1960s Brittany, and most importantly Ann Heymann in the US from the 1970s to the present. Notable players of the modern harp include Derek Bell (of The Chieftains), Laoise Kelly (of The Bumblebees), Gráinne Hambly, Máire Ní Chathasaigh, Mary O'Hara, Antoinette McKenna, Michael Rooney, Áine Minogue, Patrick Ball and Bonnie Shaljean. The best of these have a solid background in genuine Irish traditional music, often having strong competency on another instrument more common in the living tradition, such as the fiddle or concertina, and work very hard at adapting the harp to traditional music, as well as reconstructing what they can of the old harpers' music on the basis of the few manuscript sources which exist. However, the harp continues to occupy a place on the fringe of Irish traditional music.
Photograph of Patrick Byrne, harper,
The accordion plays a major part in modern Irish music. The accordion spread to Ireland late in the 19th century. In its ten-key form (melodeon), it is claimed that it was popular across the island. It was recorded in the US by John Kimmel, The Flanagan Brothers, Eddie Herborn and Peter Conlon. While uncommon, the melodeon is still played in some parts of Ireland, in particular in Connemara by Johnny Connolly. Modern Irish accordion players generally prefer the 2 row button accordion. Unlike similar accordions used in other European and American music traditions, the rows are tuned a semi-tone apart. This allows the instrument to be played chromatically in melody. Currently accordions tuned to the keys of B/C and C#/D are by far the most popular systems. The B/C accordion lends itself to a flowing style; it was popularised by Paddy O'Brien of Tipperary in the late 1940s and 1950s, Joe Burke and Sonny Brogan in the 1950s and 60s. Dublin native James Keane brought the instrument to New York where he maintained an influential recording and performing career from the 1970s to the present. Other famous B/C players include Paddy O'Brien of County Offaly, Bobby Gardiner, Finbarr Dwyer, John Nolan, James Keane, and Billy McComiskey. The C#/D accordion lends itself to a punchier style and is particularly popular in the slides and polkas of Kerry Music. Notable players include Tony MacMahon, Máirtín O'Connor, Sharon Shannon, Charlie Piggott, Jackie Daly, Joe Cooley and Johnny O'Leary. The piano accordion became highly popular during the 1950s and has flourished to the present day in céilí bands and for old time Irish dance music. Their greater range, ease of changing key, more fluent action, along with their strong musette tuning blended seamlessly with the other instruments and were highly valued during this period. They are the mainstay of the top Irish and Scottish ceilidh bands, including the County Antrim-based Haste to the Wedding Celidh Band, the Gallowglass Céilí Band, the Fitzgerald Céilí Band, Dermot O'Brien, Malachy Doris, Sean Quinn and Mick Foster are well known Irish solo masters of this instrument and were well recorded. The latest revival of traditional music from the late 1970s also revived the interest in this versatile instrument. Like the button key accordion, a new playing style has emerged with a dry tuning, lighter style of playing and a more rhythmically varied bass. The most notable players of this modern style are Karen Tweed (England) and Alan Kelly (Roscommon).A girl playing an accordion on Saint Patrick's Day in Dublin, 2010Concertinas are manufactured in several types, the most common in Irish traditional music being the Anglo system with a few musicians now playing the English system. Each differs from the other in construction and playing technique. The most distinctive characteristic of the Anglo system is that each button sounds a different note, depending on whether the bellows are compressed or expanded. Anglo concertinas typically have either two or three rows of buttons that sound notes, plus an "air button" located near the right thumb that allows the player to fill or empty the bellows without sounding a note. Two-row Anglo concertinas usually have 20 buttons that sound notes. Each row of 10 buttons comprises notes within a common key. The two primary rows thus contain the notes of two musical keys, such as C and G. Each row is divided in two with five buttons playing lower-pitched notes of the given key on the left-hand end of the instrument and five buttons playing the higher pitched notes on the right-hand end. The row of buttons in the higher key is closer to the wrist of each hand. 20 key concertinas have a limited use for Irish traditional music due to the limited range of accidentals available. Three-row concertinas add a third row of accidentals (i.e., sharps and flats not included in the keys represented by the two main rows) and redundant notes (i.e., notes that duplicate those in the main keys but are located in the third, outermost row) that enable the instrument to be played in virtually any key. A series of sequential notes can be played in the home-key rows by depressing a button, compressing the bellows, depressing the same button and extending the bellows, moving to the next button and repeating the process, and so on. A consequence of this arrangement is that the player often encounters occasions requiring a change in bellows direction, which produces a clear separation between the sounds of the two adjacent notes. This tends to give the music a more punctuated, bouncy sound that can be especially well suited to hornpipes or jigs. English concertinas, by contrast, sound the same note for any given button, irrespective of the direction of bellows travel. Thus, any note can be played while the bellows is either expanded or compressed. As a consequence, sequential notes can be played without altering the bellows direction. This allows sequences of notes to be played in a smooth, continuous stream without the interruption of changing bellows direction. Despite the inherent bounciness of the Anglo and the inherent smoothness of the English concertina systems, skilled players of Irish traditional music can achieve either effect on each type of instrument by adapting the playing style. On the Anglo, for example, the notes on various rows partially overlap and the third row contains additional redundant notes, so that the same note can be sounded with more than one button. Often, whereas one button will sound a given note on bellows compression, an alternative button in a different row will sound the same note on bellows expansion. Thus, by playing across the rows, the player can avoid changes in bellows direction from note to note where the musical objective is a smoother sound. Likewise, the English system accommodates playing styles that counteract its inherent smoothness and continuity between notes. Specifically, when the music calls for it, the player can choose to reverse bellows direction, causing sequential notes to be more distinctly articulated. Popular concertina players include Niall Vallely, Kitty Hayes, Mícheál Ó Raghallaigh, Tim Collins, Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, Mary MacNamara, Noel Hill, Kate McNamara
English concertina made by Wheatstone around 1920 -
Very interesting map of Co Limerick from the 1825 surveys by the well known cartographer James Coffey.From the Latest Surveys. By James Coffey. 1825. Engraved by Sidney Hall, Bury Street, Bloomsbury. Published and sold by George McKern, 106, George Street, Limerick. Scale in Irish and English Miles. Framed and glazed. Bruree Co Limerick 45cm x 60cm -
Interesting old display print on a wooden background depicting the historical,cultural and sporting highlights of the Emerald Isle.Although the frame is showing signs of age related wear,this piece will make a wonderful addition to your collection or decorative item for your wall . Kilkee Co Clare 60cm x 55cm -
Lovely set of 4 sepia toned hand printed framed photographs of Limerick City scenes taken from the original glass plates of the well known photographer W.Lawrence.The four scenes depict the Treaty Stone,St Marys Cathedral & ,A steamboat docked at Limerick Quays and a busy O'Connell Street scene. Origins : Co Clare Dimensions :16cm x 18cm 3kg (set of 4) -
Exquisitely presented Limerick Soviet of 1919 Historical Display. Origins: Limerick City Dimensions: 72cm x 44cm Glazed The Limerick Soviet was a self-declared Irish soviet that existed from 15 to 27 April 1919 in County Limerick, Ireland. At the beginning of the Irish War of Independence, a general strike was organised by the Limerick Trades and Labour Council, as a protest against the British Army's declaration of a "Special Military Area" under the Defence of the Realm Act, which covered most of Limerick city and a part of the county. The soviet ran the city for the period, printed its own money and organised the supply of food. The Limerick Soviet was one of a number of Irish soviets declared between 1919 and 1923.From January 1919 the Irish War of Independence developed as a guerrilla conflict between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) (backed by Sinn Féin's Dáil Éireann), and the British government. On 6 April 1919 the IRA tried to liberate Robert Byrne, who was under arrest by the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) police in a hospital, being treated for the effects of a hunger strike. In the rescue attempt Constable Martin O'Brien was fatally wounded and another policeman was seriously injured. Byrne was also wounded and died later on the same day. In response, on 9 April British Army Brigadier Griffin declared the city to be a Special Military Area, with RIC permits required for all wanting to enter and leave the city as of Monday 14 April.British Army troops and armoured vehicles were deployed in the city. On Friday 11 April a meeting of the United Trades and Labour Council, to which Byrne had been a delegate, took place. At that meeting Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU) representative Sean Dowling proposed that the trade unions take over Town Hall and have meetings there, but the proposal was not voted on. On Saturday 12 April the ITGWU workers in the Cleeve's factory in Lansdowne voted to go on strike. On Sunday 13 April, after a twelve-hour discussion and lobbying of the delegates by workers, a general strike was called by the city's United Trades and Labour Council. Responsibility for the direction of the strike was devolved to a committee that described itself as a soviet as of 14 April.The committee had the example of the Dublin general strike of 1913 and "soviet" (meaning a self-governing committee) had become a popular term after 1917 from the soviets that had led to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
Money printed by the Limerick SovietA transatlantic air race was being organised from Bawnmore in County Limerick at the same time, but was cancelled. The assembled journalists from England and America took up the story of an Irish soviet and interviewed the organisers. The Trades Council chairman John Cronin was described as the "father of the baby Soviet." Ruth Russell of the Chicago Tribune remarked on the religiosity of the strike committee, observed "the bells of the nearby St. Munchin's Church tolled the Angelus and all the red-badged guards rose and blessed themselves." The Sinn Féin Mayor of Limerick, Phons O'Mara told Russell there is no prospect of socialism, as "There can't be, the people here are Catholics." The general strike was extended to a boycott of the troops. A special strike committee was set up to print their own money, control food prices and publish newspapers. The businesses of the city accepted the strike currency. Outside Limerick there was some sympathy in Dublin, but not in the main Irish industrial area around Belfast. The National Union of Railwaymen did not help. The strike committee organised food and fuel supplies, printed its own money based on the British shilling, and published its own newspaper called 'The Worker's Bulletin'Cinemas opened with the sign “Working under authority of the strike committee” posted. Local newspapers were allowed to publish once a week as long as they had the caption "Published by Permission of the Strike Committee". On 21 April 'The Worker's Bulletin' remarked that "A new and perfect system of organisation has been worked out by a clever and gifted mind, and ere long we shall show the world what Irish workers are capable of doing when left to their own resources." On Easter Monday 1919, the newspaper stated "The strike is a worker's strike and is no more Sinn Féin than any other strike." Liam Cahill argues "The soviet attitude to private property was essentially pragmatic. So long as shopkeepers were willing to act under the soviet's dictates, there was no practical reason to commandeer their premises."While the strike was described by some as a revolution, Cahill adds that: "In the end the soviet was basically an emotional and spontaneous protest on essentially nationalist and humanitarian grounds, rather than anything based on socialist or even trade union aims." After two weeks the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Limerick, Phons O'Mara, and the Catholic bishop Denis Hallinan called for the strike to end, and the Strike Committee issued a proclamation on 27 April 1919 stating that the strike was over. Origins : Limerick Dimensions : 72cm x 44cm 4kg
Members of the Limerick Soviet -
Atmospheric photo from 1946 of two of the greatest hurlers in the history of the GAA in its original vintage frame -a veteran Mick Mackey of Limerick and a fresh faced Christy Ring of Cork.The only shame was they never met on the playing field while at the peak of their powers,Mackey being older and in decline when Ring was lording it on the pitch.Although they had their controversial moments together ,there was a massive mutual respect between the two men.this photo was taken after a challenge match between their respective clubs,Mackey's Ahane of Limerick and Ring's Glen Rovers of Cork - it proved to be the last time the two legends met on the field of play. Origins : Co Limerick Dimensions : 31cm x 25cm 1kg -
We at the Irishpubemporium just love this unique and unusual watercolour of a pipe smoking Guinness drinker .With his eyes closed, the tobacco smoke wafting from his lit pipe and a freshly poured pint of the black stuff waiting for him, the scene is one of peace and tranquility as one man enjoys his own company.The six sided frame also adds another unusual and eclectic aspect to this beautiful piece by the artist Tomkins or Tomkus ? Roscarberry Co Cor k26cm x 24cm -
Beautifully atmospheric lithograph of the pre match parade by the Cork and Dublin Hurlers in 1952.This lithograph was sponsored by the National Flour Mills Co.Ltd. 42cm x 46cm Douglas Cork
The 1952 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship Final was the 65th All-Ireland Final and the culmination of the 1952 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship, an inter-county hurling tournament for the top teams in Ireland. The match was held at Croke Park, Dublin, on 7 September 1952, between Cork and Dublin. The Leinster champions lost to their Munster opponents on a score line of 2-14 to 0-7.1952 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Final 
Event 1952 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship Cork Dublin 
2-14 0-7 Date 7 September 1952 Venue Croke Park, Dublin Referee W. O'Donoghue (Limerick) Attendance 71,195 Origins : Co CorkDimensions : 31cm x 36cm 1.5kg -
65cm x 52cm Naas Co Kildare RDS (Royal Dublin Society) Dublin Horse Show advertising print from August 1953 featuring a beautiful painting depicting horses at pasture by the artist Olive Whitmore.The advert was printed by Alex Thom & Co Ltd Dublin and also describes the various modes of transport available to prospective horseshow goers, namely the GNR or Great Northern Railway. This print is available as a high quality reproduction with an antique frame.For price details on the original ,please email us directly at irishpubemporium@gmail.com Founded in 1876,the GNR was a merger between the Irish North Western Railway,Northern Railway of Ireland and Ulster Railway.The company was nationalised later in 1953 before being finally liquidated 5 years later with its assets divided upon national lines between the Ulster Transport Authority & Ćoras Iompair Éireann (CIE). The first Dublin Horse Show took place in 1864 and was operated in conjunction with the Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland. The first solely Society-run Horse Show was held in 1868 and was one of the earliest "leaping" competitions ever held.Over time it has become a high-profile International show jumping competition, national showing competition and major entertainment event in Ireland. In 1982 the RDS hosted the Show Jumping World Championshipsand incorporated it into the Dublin Horse Show of that year. The Dublin Horse Show has an array of national & international show jumping competitions and world class equestrian entertainment, great shopping, delicious food, music & fantastic daily entertainment. There are over 130 classes at the Show and they can be generally categorised into the following types of equestrian competitions: showing classes, performance classes and showjumping classes.- The first show was held in 1864 under the auspices of the Society, but organised by the Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland.
- There were 366 entries in the first Show with a total prize fund of £520.
- On the 28, 29 and 30 July 1868 the first show was held and organised by the Royal Dublin Society on the lawns of Leinster House. The Council granted £100 out of the Society's funds to be awarded in prizes. It started as a show of led-horses and featured ‘leaping' demonstrations.
- The first prize for the Stone Wall competition (6ft) in 1868 was won by Richard Flynn on hunter, Shane Rhue (who sold for £1,000 later that day).
- Ass and mule classes were listed at the first show!
- In 1869 the first Challenge Cup was presented for the best exhibit in the classes for hunters and young horses likely to make hunters.
- In 1870 the Show was named ‘The National Horse Show', taking place on the 16-19 August. It was combined with the Annual Sheep Show organised by the Society.
- 1869 was the year ‘horse leaping' came to prominence. There was the high leap over hurdles trimmed with gorse; the wall jump over a loose stone wall of progressive height not exceeding 6 feet; and the wide leap over 2 ½ ft gorse-filled hurdle with 12 ft of water on the far side.
- The original rules for the leaping competitions were simply ‘the obstacles had to be cleared to the satisfaction of the judges'.
- The prizes for the high and wide leaps were £5 for first and £2 for second with £10 and a cup to the winner of the championship and a riding crop and a fiver to the runner up.
- In 1881 the Show moved to ‘Ball's Bridge', a greenfield site. The first continuous ‘leaping' course was introduced at the Show.
- In 1881 the first viewing stand was erected on the site of the present Grand Stand. It held 800 people.
- With over 800 entries in the Show in 1895, it was necessary to run the jumping competitors off in pairs - causing difficulties for the judges at the time!
- Women first took part in jumping competitions from 1919.
- A class for women was introduced that year on the second day of the Show (Wednesday was the second day of the Show in 1919. Ladies' Day moved to Thursday, the second day, when the Show went from six to five days). Quickly after that, from the 1920s onwards, women were able to compete freely in many competitions at the Show.
- Women competed in international competitions representing their country shortly after WWII.
- As the first "Ladies' Jumping Competition" was held on the second day of the Show this day become known as Ladies' Day. A name that has stuck ever since.
- In 1925 Colonel Zeigler of the Swiss Army first suggested holding an international jumping event. The Aga Khan of the time heard of this proposal and offered a challenge trophy to the winner of the competition.
- In 1926 International Competitions were introduced to the show and was the first time the Nations' Cup for the Aga Khan Challenge trophy was held.
- Six countries competed in the first international teams competition for the Aga Khan Challenge trophy - Great Britain, Holland, Belgium, France, Switzerland and Ireland. The Swiss team won the title on Irish bred horses.
- The Swiss team won out the original trophy in 1930. Ireland won the first replacement in 1937 and another in 1979, Britain in 1953 and 1975. The present trophy is the sixth in the series and was presented by His Highness the Aga Khan in 1980.
- Up until 1949 the Nations' Cup teams had to consist of military officers.
- The first Grand Prix (Irish Trophy) held in 1934 was won by Comdt.J.D.(Jed) O'Dwyer, of the Army Equitation school. The Irish Trophy becomes the possession of the rider if it is won three times in succession or four times in all.
- The first timed jumping competition was held in 1938. In 1951 an electric clock was installed and the time factor entered most competitions.
- In 1976, after 50 years of international competition, the two grass banks in the Arena were removed so the Arena could be used for other events. The continental band at the western end of the Main Arena was added later.
- Shows have been held annually except from 1914-1919 due to WW1 and from 1940-1946 due to WW2.
- In 2003 the Nations Cup Competition for the Aga Khan Trophy became part of the Samsung Super League under the auspices of the Federation Equestre Internationale.
- The Nations Cup Competition for the Aga Khan Trophy is part of the Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup™ Series.
- The Dublin Horse Show is Ireland's largest equestrian event, and one of the largest events held on the island.
- The Show has one of the largest annual prize pools for international show jumping in the world.
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88cm x 52cm In olden times the traditional Irish country pub also often functioned as a grocery,sweetshop,veterinary chemist,hardware store and haberdashery where patrons could partake in a soothing drink after shopping alongside displays of chocolate bars, tins of canned fruit, reels of hay bailer twine, and tubs of sheep dip.Sadly grocery bars are now few and far between but the ones that survive are a throwback to an old and innocent way of life.Dingle in Co Kerry is home to many of the best surviving examples of the pub-grocer.In the famous Currans on Main Street ,the pub always doubled as a general merchant.They sold everything and supplied the townspeople and farmers who would pile into the town on Fairday.The old ledgers still in existence are stuffed with billheads from all types of suppliers- everything was sold -ropes.twines,seeds,ales,buckets,hams,jams,fishing nets,flowers,ladies rubber heels and tights, cloth caps, shirts,boots- the list is endless. -
45cm x 52cm Broadford Co ClareCroke Park (Irish: Páirc an Chrócaigh) is a Gaelic games stadium located in Dublin, Ireland. Named after Archbishop Thomas Croke, it is sometimes called Croker by GAA fans and locals. It serves as both the principal stadium and headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). Since 1891 the site has been used by the GAA to host Gaelic sports, including the annual All-Ireland in Gaelic football and hurling. A major expansion and redevelopment of the stadium ran from 1991–2005, raising capacity to its current 82,300 spectators. This makes Croke Park the third-largest stadium in Europe, and the largest not usually used for association football. Other events held at the stadium include the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2003 Special Olympics, and numerous musical concerts. In 2012, Irish pop group Westlife sold out the stadium in record-breaking time: less than 5 minutes. From 2007–10, Croke Park hosted home matches of the Ireland national rugby union team and the Republic of Ireland national football team, while their new Aviva Stadium was constructed. This use of Croke Park for non-Gaelic sports was controversial and required temporary changes to GAA rules. In June 2012, the stadium hosted the closing ceremony of the 50th International Eucharistic Congress during which Pope Benedict XVI gave an address over video link.
The 1951 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final was the 64th All-Ireland Final and the deciding match of the 1951 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship, an inter-county Gaelic football tournament for the top teams in Ireland. Mayo and Meath met to decide the destination of the Sam Maguire Cup. Mayo won their second title in a row with goals by Tom Langan and Joe Gilvarry. This was Mayo's second consecutive All-Ireland football title. They have not won an All-Ireland football title since. It is said that a legendary curse overshadows Mayo football since 1951 Mayo players Willie Casey, Paddy Jordan and former GAA President Dr Mick Loftus belatedly received their All-Ireland senior football medals 55 years later. Though squad members, they had not appeared as substitutes in the final and had initially been denied their medals.1951 All-Ireland Senior Football Final 
Event 1951 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Mayo Meath 
2-8 0-9 Date 23 September 1951 Venue Croke Park, Dublin Attendance 78,201 City and Suburban Racecourse
The area now known as Croke Park was owned in the 1880s by Maurice Butterly and known as the City and Suburban Racecourse, or Jones' Road sports ground. From 1890 it was also used by the Bohemian Football Club. In 1901 Jones' Road hosted the IFA Cup football final when Cliftonville defeated Freebooters.
A fireworks and light display was held in Croke Park in front of 79,161 fans on Saturday 31 January 2009 to mark the GAA's 125th anniversaryHistory
Recognising the potential of the Jones' Road sports ground a journalist and GAA member, Frank Dineen, borrowed much of the £3,250 asking price and bought the ground in 1908. In 1913 the GAA came into exclusive ownership of the plot when they purchased it from Dineen for £3,500. The ground was then renamed Croke Park in honour of Archbishop Thomas Croke, one of the GAA's first patrons. In 1913, Croke Park had only two stands on what is now known as the Hogan stand side and grassy banks all round. In 1917, a grassy hill was constructed on the railway end of Croke Park to afford patrons a better view of the pitch. This terrace was known originally as Hill 60, later renamed Hill 16 in memory of the 1916 Easter Rising. It is erroneously believed to have been built from the ruins of the GPO, when it was constructed the previous year in 1915. In the 1920s, the GAA set out to create a high capacity stadium at Croke Park. Following the Hogan Stand, the Cusack Stand, named after Michael Cusack from Clare (who founded the GAA and served as its first secretary), was built in 1927. 1936 saw the first double-deck Cusack Stand open with 5,000 seats, and concrete terracing being constructed on Hill 16. In 1952 the Nally Stand was built in memorial of Pat Nally, another of the GAA founders. Seven years later, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the GAA, the first cantilevered "New Hogan Stand" was opened. The highest attendance ever recorded at an All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final was 90,556 for Offaly v Down in 1961. Since the introduction of seating to the Cusack stand in 1966, the largest crowd recorded has been 84,516.Bloody Sunday
During the Irish War of Independence on 21 November 1920 Croke Park was the scene of a massacre by the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). The Police, supported by the British Auxiliary Division, entered the ground and began shooting into the crowd, killing or fatally wounding 14 civilians during a Dublin-Tipperary Gaelic football match. The dead included 13 spectators and Tipperary player Michael Hogan. Posthumously, the Hogan stand built in 1924 was named in his honour. These shootings, on the day which became known as Bloody Sunday, were a reprisal for the killing of 15 people associated with the Cairo Gang, a group of British Intelligence officers, by Michael Collins' 'squad' earlier that day.
Bloody Sunday remembrance plaqueDublin Rodeo
In 1924, American rodeo promoter, Tex Austin, staged the Dublin Rodeo, Ireland's first professional rodeo at Croke Park Stadium. For seven days, with two shows each day from August 18 to August 24, sell out crowds saw cowboys and cowgirls from Canada, the United States, Mexico, Argentina and Australia compete for rodeo championship titles.Canadian bronc riders such as Andy Lund and his brother Art Lund, trick riders such as Ted Elder and Vera McGinnis were among the contestants. British Pathe filmed some of the rodeo events.Stadium design
In 1984 the organisation decided to investigate ways to increase the capacity of the old stadium. The design for an 80,000 capacity stadium was completed in 1991. Gaelic sports have special requirements as they take place on a large field. A specific requirement was to ensure the spectators were not too far from the field of play. This resulted in the three-tier design from which viewing games is possible: the main concourse, a premium level incorporating hospitality facilities and an upper concourse. The premium level contains restaurants, bars and conference areas. The project was split into four phases over a 14-year period. Such was the importance of Croke Park to the GAA for hosting big games, the stadium did not close during redevelopment. During each phase different parts of the ground were redeveloped, while leaving the rest of the stadium open. Big games, including the annual All-Ireland Hurling and Football finals, were played in the stadium throughout the development.
The outside of the Cusack StandPhase one – New Cusack Stand
The first phase of construction was to build a replacement for Croke Park's Cusack Stand. A lower deck opened for use in 1994. The upper deck opened in 1995. Completed at a cost of £35 million, the new stand is 180 metres long, 35 metres high, has a capacity for 27,000 people and contains 46 hospitality suites. The new Cusack Stand contains three tiers from which viewing games is possible: the main concourse, a premium level incorporating hospitality facilities and finally an upper concourse. One end of the pitch was closer to the stand after this phase, as the process of slightly re-aligning the pitch during the redevelopment of the stadium began. The works were carried out by Sisk Group.Phase two – Davin Stand
Phase Two of the development started in late 1998 and involved extending the new Cusack Stand to replace the existing Canal End terrace. It involved reacquiring a rugby pitch that had been sold to Belvedere College in 1910 by Frank Dineen. In payment and part exchange, the college was given the nearby Distillery Road sportsgrounds.[19] It is now known as The Davin Stand (Irish: Ardán Dáimhím), after Maurice Davin, the first president of the GAA. This phase also saw the creation of a tunnel which was later named the Ali tunnel in honour of Muhammad Ali and his fight against Al Lewis in July 1972 in Croke Park.Phase three – Hogan Stand
Phase Three saw the building of the new Hogan Stand. This required a greater variety of spectator categories to be accommodated including general spectators, corporate patrons, VIPs, broadcast and media services and operation staff. Extras included a fitted-out mezzanine level for VIP and Ard Comhairle (Where the dignitaries sit) along with a top-level press media facility. The end of Phase Three took the total spectator capacity of Croke Park to 82,000.Phase four – Nally Stand & Nally End/Dineen Hill 16 terrace
After the 2003 Special Olympics, construction began in September 2003 on the final phase, Phase Four. This involved the redevelopment of the Nally Stand, named after the athlete Pat Nally, and Hill 16 into a new Nally End/Dineen Hill 16 terrace. While the name Nally had been used for the stand it replaced, the use of the name Dineen was new, and was in honour of Frank Dineen, who bought the original stadium for the GAA in 1908, giving it to them in 1913. The old Nally Stand was taken away and reassembled in Pairc Colmcille, home of Carrickmore GAA in County Tyrone. The phase four development was officially opened by the then GAA President Seán Kelly on 14 March 2005. For logistical reasons (and, to a degree, historical reasons), and also to provide cheaper high-capacity space, the area is a terrace rather than a seated stand, the only remaining standing-room in Croke Park. Unlike the previous Hill, the new terrace was divided into separate sections – Hill A (Cusack stand side), Hill B (behind the goals) and the Nally terrace (on the site of the old Nally Stand). The fully redeveloped Hill has a capacity of around 13,200, bringing the overall capacity of the stadium to 82,300. This made the stadium the second biggest in the EU after the Camp Nou, Barcelona. However, London's new Wembley stadium has since overtaken Croke Park in second place. The presence of terracing meant that for the brief period when Croke Park hosted international association football during 2007–2009, the capacity was reduced to approximately 73,500, due to FIFA's statutes stating that competitive games must be played in all-seater stadiums.Pitch
The pitch in Croke Park is a soil pitch that replaced the Desso GrassMaster pitch laid in 2002. This replacement was made after several complaints by players and managers that the pitch was excessively hard and far too slippery. Since January 2006, a special growth and lighting system called the SGL Concept has been used to assist grass growing conditions, even in the winter months. The system, created by Dutch company SGL (Stadium Grow Lighting), helps in controlling and managing all pitch growth factors, such as light, temperature, CO2, water, air and nutrients.
Croke Park floodlights in use during Six Nations Championship matchFloodlighting
With the 2007 Six Nations clash with France and possibly other matches in subsequent years requiring lighting the GAA installed floodlights in the stadium (after planning permission was granted). Indeed, many other GAA grounds around the country have started to erect floodlights as the organisation starts to hold games in the evenings, whereas traditionally major matches were played almost exclusively on Sunday afternoons. The first game to be played under these lights at Croke Park was a National Football League Division One match between Dublin and Tyrone on 3 February 2007 with Tyrone winning in front of a capacity crowd of over 81,000 – which remains a record attendance for a National League game, with Ireland's Six Nations match with France following on 11 February. Temporary floodlights were installed for the American Bowl game between Chicago Bears and Pittsburgh Steelers on the pitch in 1997, and again for the 2003 Special Olympics.Concert
U2's Vertigo Tour at Croke Park in 2005
U2's 360° Tour at Croke Park in 2009Date Performer(s) Opening act(s) Tour/Event Attendance Notes 29 June 1985 U2 In Tua Nua, R.E.M., The Alarm, Squeeze The Unforgettable Fire Tour 57,000 First Irish act to have a headline concert. Part of the concert was filmed for the group's documentary Wide Awake in Dublin. 28 June 1986 Simple Minds Once Upon A Time Tour Guest appearance by Bono 27 June 1987 U2 Light A Big Fire, The Dubliners, The Pogues, Lou Reed The Joshua Tree Tour 114,000 28 June 1987 Christy Moore, The Pretenders, Lou Reed, Hothouse Flowers 28 June 1996 Tina Turner Brian Kennedy Wildest Dreams Tour 40,000/40,000 16 May 1997 Garth Brooks World Tour II 18 May 1997 29 May 1998 Elton John & Billy Joel Face to Face 1998 30 May 1998 24 June 2005 U2 The Radiators from Space, The Thrills, The Bravery, Snow Patrol, Paddy Casey, Ash Vertigo Tour 246,743 25 June 2005 27 June 2005 20 May 2006 Bon Jovi Nickelback Have a Nice Day Tour 81,327 9 June 2006 Robbie Williams Basement Jaxx Close Encounters Tour 6 October 2007 The Police Fiction Plane The Police Reunion Tour 81,640 Largest attendance of the tour. 31 May 2008 Celine Dion Il Divo Taking Chances World Tour 69,725 Largest attendance for a solo female act 1 June 2008 Westlife Shayne Ward Back Home Tour 85,000 Second Irish act to have a headline concert. Largest attendance of the tour. Part of the concert was filmed for the group's documentary and concert DVD 10 Years of Westlife - Live at Croke Park Stadium. 14 June 2008 Neil Diamond 13 June 2009 Take That The Script Take That Present: The Circus Live 24 July 2009 U2 Glasvegas, Damien Dempsey U2 360° Tour 243,198 25 July 2009 Kaiser Chiefs, Republic of Loose 27 July 2009 Bell X1, The Script The performances of "New Year's Day" and "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" were recorded for the group's live album U22 and for the band's remix album Artificial Horizon and the live EP Wide Awake in Europe, respectively. 5 June 2010 Westlife Wonderland, WOW, JLS, Jedward Where We Are Tour 86,500 Largest attendance of the tour. 18 June 2011 Take That Pet Shop Boys Progress Live 154,828 19 June 2011 22 June 2012 Westlife Jedward, The Wanted, Lawson Greatest Hits Tour 187,808[24] The 23 June 2012 date broke the stadium record for selling out its tickets in four minutes. Eleventh largest attendance at an outdoor stadium worldwide. Largest attendance of the tour and the band's music career history. Part of the concert was filmed for the group's documentary and concert DVD The Farewell Tour - Live in Croke Park. 23 June 2012 26 June 2012 Red Hot Chili Peppers Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, The Vaccines I'm with You World Tour 23 May 2014 One Direction 5 Seconds of Summer Where We Are Tour 235,008 24 May 2014 25 May 2014 20 June 2015 The Script & Pharrell Williams No Sound Without Silence Tour 74,635 24 July 2015 Ed Sheeran x Tour 162,308 25 July 2015 27 May 2016 Bruce Springsteen The River Tour 2016 160,188 29 May 2016 9 July 2016 Beyoncé Chloe x Halle, Ingrid Burley The Formation World Tour 68,575 8 July 2017 Coldplay AlunaGeorge, Tove Lo A Head Full of Dreams Tour[25] 80,398 22 July 2017 U2 Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds The Joshua Tree Tour 2017 80,901 17 May 2018 The Rolling Stones The Academic No Filter Tour 64,823 15 June 2018 Taylor Swift Camila Cabello, Charli XCX Taylor Swift's Reputation Stadium Tour 136.000 Swift became the first woman headline two concerts in a row there. 16 June 2018 7 July 2018 Michael Bublé Emeli Sandé 24 May 2019 Spice Girls Jess Glynne Spice World - 2019 UK Tour 5 July 2019 Westlife James Arthur Wild Youth The 20 Touror The Twenty Tour The 5 July 2019 date sold out its tickets in six minutes. Second date released were also sold out in under forty-eight hours. 6 July 2019 Non-Gaelic games
There was great debate in Ireland regarding the use of Croke Park for sports other than those of the GAA. As the GAA was founded as a nationalist organisation to maintain and promote indigenous Irish sport, it has felt honour-bound throughout its history to oppose other, foreign (in practice, British), sports. In turn, nationalist groups supported the GAA as the prime example of purely Irish sporting culture. Until its abolition in 1971, rule 27 of the GAA constitution stated that a member of the GAA could be banned from playing its games if found to be also playing association football, rugby or cricket. That rule was abolished but rule 42 still prohibited the use of GAA property for games with interests in conflict with the interests of the GAA. The belief was that rugby and association football were in competition with Gaelic football and hurling, and that if the GAA allowed these sports to use their ground it might be harmful to Gaelic games, while other sports, not seen as direct competitors with Gaelic football and hurling, were permitted, such as the two games of American football (Croke Park Classic college football game between The University of Central Florida and Penn State, and an American Bowl NFL preseason game between the Chicago Bears and the Pittsburgh Steelers) on the Croke Park pitch during the 1990s.[27] On 16 April 2005, a motion to temporarily relax rule No. 42 was passed at the GAA Annual Congress. The motion gives the GAA Central Council the power to authorise the renting or leasing of Croke Park for events other than those controlled by the Association, during a period when Lansdowne Road – the venue for international soccer and rugby matches – was closed for redevelopment. The final result was 227 in favour of the motion to 97 against, 11 votes more than the required two-thirds majority. In January 2006, it was announced that the GAA had reached agreement with the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) and Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) to stage two Six Nations games and four soccer internationals at Croke Park in 2007 and in February 2007, use of the pitch by the FAI and the IRFU in 2008 was also agreed.These agreements were within the temporary relaxation terms, as Lansdowne Road was still under redevelopment until 2010. Although the GAA had said that hosted use of Croke Park would not extend beyond 2008, irrespective of the redevelopment progress, fixtures for the 2009 Six Nations rugby tournament saw the Irish rugby team using Croke park for a third season. 11 February 2007 saw the first rugby union international to be played there. Ireland were leading France in a Six Nations clash, but lost 17–20 after conceding a last minute (converted) try. Raphael Ibanez scored the first try in that match; Ronan O'Gara scored Ireland's first ever try in Croke Park. A second match between Ireland and England on 24 February 2007 was politically symbolic because of the events of Bloody Sunday in 1920.There was considerable concern as to what reaction there would be to the singing of the British national anthem "God Save the Queen". Ultimately the anthem was sung without interruption or incident, and applauded by both sets of supporters at the match, which Ireland won by 43–13 (their largest ever win over England in rugby). On 2 March 2010, Ireland played their final international rugby match against a Scotland team that was playing to avoid the wooden spoon and hadn't won a championship match against Ireland since 2001. Outside half, Dan Parks inspired the Scots to a 3-point victory and ended Irish Hopes of a triple crown. On 24 March 2007, the first association football match took place at Croke Park. The Republic of Ireland took on Wales in UEFA Euro 2008 qualifying Group D, with a Stephen Ireland goal securing a 1–0 victory for the Irish in front of a crowd of 72,500. Prior to this, the IFA Cup had been played at the then Jones' Road in 1901, but this was 12 years before the GAA took ownership. Negotiations took place for the NFL International Series's 2011 game to be held at Croke Park but the game was awarded to Wembley Stadium.World record attendance
On 2 May 2009, Croke Park was the venue for a Heineken Cup rugby semi-final, in which Leinster defeated Munster 25–6. The attendance of 82,208 set a new world record attendance for a club rugby union game.[35] This record stood until 31 March 2012 when it was surpassed by an English Premiership game between Harlequins and Saracens at Wembley Stadium which hosted a crowd of 83,761.This was beaten again in 2016 in the Top 14 final at the Nou Camp which hosted a crowd of 99,124Skyline tour
A walkway, known under a sponsorship deal as Etihad Skyline Croke Park, opened on 1 June 2012.From 44 metres above the ground, it offers views of Dublin city and the surrounding area.The Olympic Torch was brought to the stadium and along the walkway on 6 June 2012.GAA Hall of Fame
On 11 February 2013, the GAA opened the Hall of Fame section in the Croke Park museum. The foundation of the award scheme is the Teams of the Millennium the football team which was announced in 1999 and the hurling team in 2000 and all 30 players were inducted into the hall of fame along with Limerick hurler Eamonn Cregan and Offaly footballer Tony McTague who were chosen by a GAA sub-committee from the years 1970–74.New inductees will be chosen on an annual basis from the succeeding five-year intervals as well as from years preceding 1970. In April 2014, Kerry legend Mick O'Dwyer, Sligo footballer Micheál Kerins, along with hurlers Noel Skehan of Kilkenny and Pat McGrath of Waterford became the second group of former players to receive hall of fame awards.
Statue of Michael Cusack outside the Croke Park GAA Museum -
Beautiful artwork depicting the ultra talented but ill fated Derby Winner Shergar. Origins :Naas Co Kildare. Dimensions: 45cm x 55cm Glazed Shergar was an Irish-bred, British-trained Thoroughbred racehorse. After a very successful season in 1981 he was retired to the Ballymany Stud in County Kildare, Ireland. In 1983 he was stolen from the stud, and a ransom of £2 million was demanded; it was not paid, and negotiations were soon broken off by the thieves. In 1999 a supergrass, formerly in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), stated they stole the horse. The IRA has never admitted any role in the theft. The Aga Khan, Shergar's owner, sent the horse for training in Britain in 1979 and 1980. Shergar began his first season of racing in September 1980 and ran two races that year, where he won one and came second in the other. In 1981 he ran in six races, winning five of them. In June that year he won the 202nd Epsom Derby by ten lengths—the longest winning margin in the race's history. Three weeks later he won the Irish Sweeps Derby by four lengths; a month after that he won the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes by four lengths. In his final race of the year he came in fourth, and the Aga Khan took the decision to retire him to stud in Ireland. After Shergar's Epsom Derby win, the Aga Khan sold 40 shares in the horse, valuing it at £10 million. Retaining six shares, he created an owners' syndicate with the remaining 34 members. Shergar was stolen from the Aga Khan's stud farm by an armed gang on 8 February 1983. Negotiations were conducted with the thieves, but the gang broke off all communication after four days when the syndicate did not accept as true the proof provided that the horse was still alive. In 1999 Sean O'Callaghan, a former member of the IRA, published details of the theft and stated that it was an IRA operation to raise money for arms. He said that very soon after the theft, Shergar had panicked and damaged his leg, which led to him being killed by the gang. An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph concluded that the horse was shot four days after the theft. No arrests have ever been made in relation to the theft. Shergar's body has never been recovered or identified; it is likely that the body was buried near Aughnasheelin, near Ballinamore, County Leitrim. In honour of Shergar, the Shergar Cup was inaugurated in 1999. His story has been made into two screen dramatisations, several books and two documentaries. -
60cm x 45cm Naas Co Kildare RDS (Royal Dublin Society) Dublin Horse Show advertising print from 1938 featuring a beautiful image of a huntsman on horseback with working hounds . The advert was printed by Alex Thom & Co Ltd Dublin and also describes the various modes of transport available to prospective horseshow goers, namely the GNR or Great Northern Railway.The event ,similar to current day took place from August 2nd to August 5th. Founded in 1876,the GNR was a merger between the Irish North Western Railway,Northern Railway of Ireland and Ulster Railway.The company was nationalised later in 1953 before being finally liquidated 5 years later with its assets divided upon national lines between the Ulster Transport Authority & Ćoras Iompair Éireann (CIE). The first Dublin Horse Show took place in 1864 and was operated in conjunction with the Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland. The first solely Society-run Horse Show was held in 1868 and was one of the earliest "leaping" competitions ever held.Over time it has become a high-profile International show jumping competition, national showing competition and major entertainment event in Ireland. In 1982 the RDS hosted the Show Jumping World Championshipsand incorporated it into the Dublin Horse Show of that year. The Dublin Horse Show has an array of national & international show jumping competitions and world class equestrian entertainment, great shopping, delicious food, music & fantastic daily entertainment. There are over 130 classes at the Show and they can be generally categorised into the following types of equestrian competitions: showing classes, performance classes and showjumping classes.- The first show was held in 1864 under the auspices of the Society, but organised by the Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland.
- There were 366 entries in the first Show with a total prize fund of £520.
- On the 28, 29 and 30 July 1868 the first show was held and organised by the Royal Dublin Society on the lawns of Leinster House. The Council granted £100 out of the Society's funds to be awarded in prizes. It started as a show of led-horses and featured ‘leaping' demonstrations.
- The first prize for the Stone Wall competition (6ft) in 1868 was won by Richard Flynn on hunter, Shane Rhue (who sold for £1,000 later that day).
- Ass and mule classes were listed at the first show!
- In 1869 the first Challenge Cup was presented for the best exhibit in the classes for hunters and young horses likely to make hunters.
- In 1870 the Show was named ‘The National Horse Show', taking place on the 16-19 August. It was combined with the Annual Sheep Show organised by the Society.
- 1869 was the year ‘horse leaping' came to prominence. There was the high leap over hurdles trimmed with gorse; the wall jump over a loose stone wall of progressive height not exceeding 6 feet; and the wide leap over 2 ½ ft gorse-filled hurdle with 12 ft of water on the far side.
- The original rules for the leaping competitions were simply ‘the obstacles had to be cleared to the satisfaction of the judges'.
- The prizes for the high and wide leaps were £5 for first and £2 for second with £10 and a cup to the winner of the championship and a riding crop and a fiver to the runner up.
- In 1881 the Show moved to ‘Ball's Bridge', a greenfield site. The first continuous ‘leaping' course was introduced at the Show.
- In 1881 the first viewing stand was erected on the site of the present Grand Stand. It held 800 people.
- With over 800 entries in the Show in 1895, it was necessary to run the jumping competitors off in pairs - causing difficulties for the judges at the time!
- Women first took part in jumping competitions from 1919.
- A class for women was introduced that year on the second day of the Show (Wednesday was the second day of the Show in 1919. Ladies' Day moved to Thursday, the second day, when the Show went from six to five days). Quickly after that, from the 1920s onwards, women were able to compete freely in many competitions at the Show.
- Women competed in international competitions representing their country shortly after WWII.
- As the first "Ladies' Jumping Competition" was held on the second day of the Show this day become known as Ladies' Day. A name that has stuck ever since.
- In 1925 Colonel Zeigler of the Swiss Army first suggested holding an international jumping event. The Aga Khan of the time heard of this proposal and offered a challenge trophy to the winner of the competition.
- In 1926 International Competitions were introduced to the show and was the first time the Nations' Cup for the Aga Khan Challenge trophy was held.
- Six countries competed in the first international teams competition for the Aga Khan Challenge trophy - Great Britain, Holland, Belgium, France, Switzerland and Ireland. The Swiss team won the title on Irish bred horses.
- The Swiss team won out the original trophy in 1930. Ireland won the first replacement in 1937 and another in 1979, Britain in 1953 and 1975. The present trophy is the sixth in the series and was presented by His Highness the Aga Khan in 1980.
- Up until 1949 the Nations' Cup teams had to consist of military officers.
- The first Grand Prix (Irish Trophy) held in 1934 was won by Comdt.J.D.(Jed) O'Dwyer, of the Army Equitation school. The Irish Trophy becomes the possession of the rider if it is won three times in succession or four times in all.
- The first timed jumping competition was held in 1938. In 1951 an electric clock was installed and the time factor entered most competitions.
- In 1976, after 50 years of international competition, the two grass banks in the Arena were removed so the Arena could be used for other events. The continental band at the western end of the Main Arena was added later.
- Shows have been held annually except from 1914-1919 due to WW1 and from 1940-1946 due to WW2.
- In 2003 the Nations Cup Competition for the Aga Khan Trophy became part of the Samsung Super League under the auspices of the Federation Equestre Internationale.
- The Nations Cup Competition for the Aga Khan Trophy is part of the Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup™ Series.
- The Dublin Horse Show is Ireland's largest equestrian event, and one of the largest events held on the island.
- The Show has one of the largest annual prize pools for international show jumping in the world.
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Very unusual Tourist advertisement for Killarney commissioned by the Great |Southern Railway company enticing well heeled holidaymakers to make their way to Killarney from Kingsbridge (now Hueston Station) 55cm x 45cm Tralee Co Kerry The Lakes of Killarney are a scenic attraction located in Killarney National Park near Killarney, County Kerry, in Ireland. They consist of three lakes - Lough Leane, Muckross Lake (also called Middle Lake) and Upper Lake. The lakes sit in a low valley some 20 m (66 ft) above sea level. They are surrounded by the rugged slopes of MacGillycuddy's Reeks. Notable mountains in the range include Carrauntoohil, which, at 1,038 metres (3,406 ft) is Ireland's highest mountain, Purple Mountain, at 832 metres (2,730 ft), Mangerton Mountain, at 843 metres (2,766 ft), and Torc Mountain, at 535 metres (1,755 ft). The N71 road from Killarney to Kenmare passes a viewpoint called Ladies View which offers a view of the lakes and valleys. On the occasion of Queen Victoria's visit in 1861, the point was apparently chosen by the queen's ladies-in-waiting as the finest in the land; hence the name.Lough Leane
Lough Leane (from Irish Loch Léin, meaning 'lake of learning') is the largest and northernmost of the three lakes, approximately 19 square kilometres (4,700 acres) in size. It is also the largest body of fresh water in the region. The River Laune drains Lough Leane to the north-west towards Killorglinand into Dingle Bay. Leane is dotted with small forested islands, including Innisfallen Island, which holds the remains of the ruined Innisfallen Abbey.On the eastern edge of the lake, Ross Island, more properly a peninsula, was the site of some of the earliest Copper Age metalwork in prehistoric Ireland.Ross Castle, a 15th-century keep, sits on the eastern shore of the lake, north of the Ross Island peninsula.
Lough LeaneMuckross Lake
Also known as Middle Lake or Torc Lake, Muckross is just south of Lough Leane. The two are separated by a small peninsula, crossed by a stone arched bridge called Brickeen Bridge. It is Ireland's deepest lake, reaching to 75 metres (246 ft) in parts.A paved hiking trail of approximately 10 km (6.2 mi) circles the lake.
Muckross Lake viewed from Brickeen BridgeUpper Lake
The Upper Lake is the smallest of the three lakes, and the southernmost. It is separated from the others by a winding channel some 4 km (2.5 mi) long.
Upper LakeGallery
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Ross Castle visible across Lough Leane -
View near Ross Castle -
Brickeen Bridge, where Lough Leane and Muckross Lake meet -
The lakes as viewed from Ladies View -
Another view from the Ladies View point -
Hand-drawn map of the Lakes by French artist Alphonse Dousseau, between 1830-1869 -
Photograph of Upper Lake by Fergus O’Connor circa 1920 with commotion in bottom right
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Nice print of the very well known and celebrated Ross Castle,Killarney,Co Kerry. Killarney Co Kerry 22cm x 29cm Ross Castle ( is a 15th-century tower house and keep on the edge of Lough Leane, in Killarney National Park, County Kerry, Ireland. It is the ancestral home of the Chiefs of the Clan O'Donoghue, later associated with the Brownes of Killarney. The castle is operated by the Office of Public Works, and is open to the public seasonally with guided tours.History
Ross Castle was built in the late 15th century by local ruling clan the O'Donoghues Mór (Ross), though ownership changed hands during the Second Desmond Rebellion of the 1580s to the MacCarthy Mór. He then leased the castle and the lands to Sir Valentine Browne, ancestor of the Earls of Kenmare. The castle was amongst the last to surrender to Oliver Cromwell's Roundheads during the Irish Confederate Wars, and was only taken when artillery was brought by boat via the River Laune. Lord Muskerry (MacCarthy) held the castle against Edmund Ludlow who marched to Ross with 4,000 foot soldiers and 200 horse; however, it was by water that he attacked the stronghold. The Irish had a prophecy that Ross could never be taken until a warship could swim on the lake, an unbelievable prospect.
The ships were built in Kinsale, brought by water to Killorglin and then dragged by oxen to Ross Castle. The sight of the ships unnerved the onlookers and the castle soon submitted.-
- Ross may all assault disdain
- Till on Lough Lein strange ship shall sail.
At the end of the wars, the Brownes were able to show that their heir was too young to have taken part in the rebellion and they retained the lands. By about 1688, they had erected a mansion house near the castle, but their adherence to King James II of England after the Glorious Revolution caused them to be exiled. The castle became a military barracks, which remained so until early in the 19th century. The Brownes did not return to live at Ross but built Kenmare House near Killarney. There is a legend that O'Donoghue leaped or was sucked out of the window of the grand chamber at the top of the castle and disappeared into the waters of the lake along with his horse, his table and his library. It is said that O'Donoghue now lives in a great palace at the bottom of the lake where he keeps a close eye on everything that he sees.
Ross Castle in the last decade of the 19th centuryGovernors
Governors of the garrison at Ross Castle included:- -1652: Pierce Ferriter
- Sir John Peyton, Bt (died 1675)
- 1679-1701: Colonel Sir John Edgeworth
- c.1705-1714: Colonel Richard Hedges
- 1715: John Sterling
- 1721: William FitzMaurice, 2nd Earl of Kerry (died 1747)
- 1753-1762: Lieut-General John Folliot
- 1762: Sir Francis Lumm, Bt (died 1797) (High Sheriff of King's County, 1755)
- -1801: Lieut-General Charles Eustace(1736-1801) (MP for Fethard, Wexford)
- 1801–1835: Lieut-General Sir Henry Johnson
Defensive features
Illustration of Ross Castle inner structureBasic structure
The castle is typical of strongholds of Irish chieftains built during the Middle Ages. The tower house had square bartizans on diagonally opposite corners and a thick end wall. The tower was originally surrounded by a square bawn defended by round corner towers on each end. The structure is stacked and mortared stone with thick walls and providing five inner stories plus the roof.Front entrance
The front entrance was a small anteroom secured by an iron grill or 'yett' at the outer wall. The yett could be closed from inside via a chain that could then be secured even if the front door was closed. This room provided small side access holes and a "murder-hole" above which allowed the defenders to attack anybody in the room. The front door, on the inside of the anteroom, was constructed of two layers of thick Irish oak, one layer 90 degrees to the other with the boards riveted together. If the door was a single layer with the wood fibres going in a single direction, it would have been possible to split the door. The second cross layer prevented that. The door opened inward and was backed by two heavy beams fitted into the stone structure.Windows
Windows at the lower levels were vertical thin slits preventing entrance into the structure but allowing persons inside to aim and fire arrows or guns at attackers. The windows on the top levels were larger to allow in light. It was felt that attackers would not be able to scale to those heights so larger windows were safe.Machicolation
Machicolations were stone structures at the top of the castle protruding out from the wall with a hole in the floor. There are two on Ross Castle, one over the front door and another on the back wall. The one at the front would allow defenders to drop stones or boiling oil on attackers at the front door, the only entrance to the castle.
Ross Castle from the lakeParapet
The parapet at roof level is 'crenellated' providing ups, 'merlons' and downs, 'crenels', to allow defenders to hide behind the merlons while firing arrows or guns through the crenels.Inner rooms
The first floor was used for storage. The second floor was a living space for the house attendants and guards. Straw was spread on the floor to sleep on. There was typically no furniture. The third floor was for food preparation and living and eating space for the house attendants and guards. The fourth floor was the sleeping and living space for the chieftain and his family. The fourth floor had an arched stone roof supporting a stone floor of the fifth story as compared to the wood beam floors of the lower stories. The fifth floor was the great room where the chieftain ate and entertained. This room was also the last sanctuary as it had a stone floor as a fire break from fire in the lower floors.Gallery
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Sketch of Ross Castle, 1830 -
Ross Castle
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Worldwide Duty Free selling is a $70 billion business, but it has its origins in the mind of one Clare man. And like many innovations, the concept of duty free, which first came to Shannon Airport in 1952, was born of necessity.Today the global travel retail business is a firm fixture at airports across the world, and the concept has made a lot of money for a lot of people.But not for Brendan O’Regan, the man with the idea.
He was born into “the first generation of free Irish men” in relatively well-off surroundings in Sixmilebridge, Co Clare in 1917. His father, James, was chairman of Clare County Council and a successful businessman. The family was in the hotel business, and for a time leased the renowned Falls Hotel in Ennistymon and the Old Ground in Ennis. Sent as a boarder to Blackrock College in Dublin in 1931, O’Regan enjoyed early renown when he requested that the college, which by then had given up on the camán, field a hurling team in the Leinster Colleges cup.
His next step after school was training in hotel management, an interest that brought him to Germany, France and the UK, before coming home to run The Falls. He then moved to the ailing St Stephen’s Green club in Dublin, before being appointed catering comptroller at Foynes flying boat base in Co Limerick, then a refuelling point for transatlantic seaplanes.
It was here his passion for travel took off, but it was his next move that sealed his legacy.
Shannon Airport
Rineanna on the Shannon estuary in Co Clare, chosen by then taoiseach Seán Lemass as the site for a new airport for both sea and land planes, opened in October 1945, when the first transatlantic commercial air service from Boston landed there. It soon became Europe’s most important transatlantic airport, handling more than 100,000 passengers in 1946, its first full year of operation.
When O’Regan joined the nascent airport, its future was by no means secure. The imminent arrival of jet planes, which meant US planes would no longer have to stop in Shannon to refuel, was of concern, while the political apparatus of the day favoured focusing efforts on one airport in Dublin.
Fearing “economic annihilation” for the new airport, O’Regan sought a new venture that would help secure its future. Inspiration struck when he was returning home by sea from a visit to the United States, arranged under the Marshall Plan to allow the Irish government to study US tourism.
As told in the recently published book Brendan O’Regan: Irish Innovator, Visionary and Peacemaker by Brian O’Connell and Cian O’Carroll, O’Regan had a “eureka” moment on board.
“I saw the shop that was selling duty-free goods and my brain said to me: “If they can do it when you are crossing the sea in a boat, you can surely be able to do [it] when you land for the first time.”
He had to convince the Department of Industry and Commerce and the Revenue Commissioners of the merits of forgoing tax on the sale of goods, while local traders also opposed the move.
Nonetheless, O’Regan got the go-ahead and by July 1950 he had set up an operation in a timber hut outside the terminal, selling whiskey for $1.50 a bottle. The following year, the first duty-free shop in the world opened, with a bottle of whiskey on sale for just 30s, compared with 10s 6d in a regular shop, while in 1954 a mail order service was included. It went on to become a vast operation, mailing to locations all around the world, quality items such as crystal, china, fashionable clothing and jewellery.
Contagious idea
The concept soon caught on. In 1957 Amsterdam became the next airport to open a duty free, with the concept making its way across the Atlantic in 1962. Prince Philip was an early admirer of the concept, and he wanted it extended to all the UK’s international airports.
O’Regan also inspired philanthropist Chuck Feeney, who took the idea of duty free and galloped ahead with it, founding Duty Free Shoppers Group (DFS) in Hawaii in 1962, which later became the largest duty-free retailer in the world.
These years also saw the invention of Irish coffee, after O’Regan asked chef Joe Sheridan to “come up with something special” to warm up transatlantic passengers tired and cold after their trip.
But duty free was only part of the equation. O’Regan’s big dream was to position Shannon as the European manufacturing basis for US companies, and to bring employment and prosperity to the region.
Senator TK Whitaker, Brendan O’Regan (centre) and Dr Jerry Dempsey. Photograph: Peter Thursfield Shaped by the devastating impact poverty and emigration had on the county of his birth, O’Regan often repeated his father’s maxim, that “the most important thing about life is to create work for others, if you can”.
In the 1950s, the post-war boom that lifted the US, Europe and the UK had missed Ireland, and emigration was running at the highest level since independence.
So O’Regan didn’t stop at the duty free.
In 1951, he established the Shannon College of Hotel Management, which is still operating today and the graduates of which have managed the world’s top hotels, while he also leveraged the area’s potential as a tourist hub. He identified the potential of Bunratty Castle as a tourist attraction and, with the co-operation of its owner, Lord Gort, it was renovated and opened to the public in 1960, with the first medieval banquet held shortly thereafter. O’Regan later chaired Bord Fáilte.
Great times
“He was very much a leader and innovative in the sense that he thought up ideas himself,” recalls O’Carroll, who worked alongside O’Regan as estates manager in the Shannon Free Airport Development Company Limited (SFADCO). “He would work very intensively until the project was launched, and then he would go on to the next project”.
It was a time of “brainstorming picnics”, and consultancy reports, to try and hit on a new idea.
“They were great times,” says O’Carroll. “If an idea came up, and it was any way worthwhile, it would stand a very good chance of implementation.”
The big move came in the establishment of the Shannon Free Zone, the world’s first free trade zone, in 1959, overseen by SFADCO. It operated a licensing system, offering qualifying companies a corporation tax rate of just 10 per cent; a model that would later be taken up by the IFSC.
O’Regan’s idea, inspired by the Free Zone in Colon, Panama, was greeted with much scepticism initially, but his ability to build good relationships, particularly with those in government, helped secure the initiative.
“He had the ability to short-circuit a lot of things in terms of procedures in getting approval,” says O’Carroll, adding that “this clearly annoyed civil servants at the time.”
Indeed his initials, BOR, in Shannon came to mean “Bash on regardless”.
So, on an “if you build it they will come” ambition, SFADCO set about building factories – without any tenants. A Dutch piano manufacturer owned by Johan J Rippen was the first real enterprise to come to Shannon, followed by Sony, and diamond company De Beers in 1960.
Tourism smarts
O’Regan also ramped up the region’s renown as a tourist destination, using his tools of persuasion to garner investment.
When Bernard McDonough, a wealthy Irish-American industrialist pulled out of a planned ball-bearing factory in the Shannon Free Zone, O’Regan told him about a nearby castle that was for sale. He took the bait and bought it; in 1963 Dromoland Castle opened as a five-star hotel. McDonough would later open a further three hotels in the area.
When he heard of a plan by German investors to acquire the land leading to the Cliffs of Moher, he rang then Clare county manager Joe Boland, who subsequently got the county council to buy it.
During the 1970s he moved away from his formal roles in Shannon, and turned his attention to the peace process, founding Co-operation North (now Co-operation Ireland) in 1979. He died in 2008, and a bronze bust sculpture was unveiled at Shannon Airport in May 2017 to mark the centenary of his birth.
A man of his time – as O’Carroll recalls, an “infinitely simpler” time – he nonetheless left a significant legacy.
As described when receiving an honorary degree from the National University of Ireland in 1978: “Rare is the man of whom it can be justly said that he transformed the social, economic and industrial life of a whole region”
The Shannon project was not just about creating jobs; it was also about providing homes for the workers who flocked there.
By the late 1950s the housing issue, which had plagued the development of the hub since the early days, was becoming a crisis. So, in 1960, a proposal was tabled for the creation of a new town; an innovation without precedent in post-war Ireland.
Inspired by the British new towns that arose after the war, including Crawleyin Sussex and Stevenage in Hertfordshire, Brendan O’Regan and his team sought to build a new hub for workers of the airport and the industrial zone.
The creation of the first new town in the history of the State was not without challenges; there were political ructions as to who would oversee the project – the government or SFADCO – while residents of nearby Limerick city accused Brendan O’Regan of “empire building”, as they rued the fact that the development did not happen in Limerick instead.
Nonetheless, by 1962 the first residents were moving in, all of whom were tenants of SFADCO and who had to work either in the airport or industrial area to qualify for affordable housing.
As SFADCO estates manager Cian O’Carroll recalls, building the houses so close to a place of huge employment was key, as was the fact that units were small – but even larger families were catered for.
“We often let them two houses and knocked them together,” he says.
Also key to its success was the fact that housing was affordable, and graded and related to people’s incomes. After some time a tenant purchase scheme was introduced, allowing people to buy their homes outright.
Today the town is home to some 10,000 residents, and remains one of the few examples of a new planned town in Ireland.
“It hasn’t grown as much as people might have expected, but it has its own social and economic viability,” says O’Carroll.
As to why subsequent governments haven’t looked to emulate the success of Shannon – particularly given our housing shortages – O’Carroll suggests it’s due to an ideological shift away from the State doing things directly themselves, instead encouraging the private sector to do the same through tax incentives and other methods.
“It’s a shame,” he says.
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A very interesting Royal Munster Fusiliers Regiment WW1 Recruitment Poster exhorting the young men of Kerry,Cork,Clare & Limerick to enlist and join the War effort. Origins:Glin Co Limerick. Dimensions : 40cm x 35cm Glazed The Royal Munster Fusiliers was a line infantry regiment of the British Army from 1881 to 1922. It traced its origins to the East India Company's Bengal European Regiment raised in 1652, which later became the 101st Regiment of Foot (Royal Bengal Fusiliers). The Royal Munster Fusiliers were formed in 1881 by the merger of the 101st Regiment of Foot and the 104th Regiment of Foot (Bengal Fusiliers). One of eight Irish regiments raised largely in Ireland, it had its home depot in Tralee and served as the county regiment for Cork, Clare, Limerick and Kerry. At its formation the regiment comprised two regular and two militia battalions. The Royal Munster Fusiliers served in India before the regiment fought in the Second Boer War. Prior to the First World War, the regiment's three militia battalions were converted into reserve battalions, and a further six battalions were added to the regiment's establishment during the war. The regiment fought with distinction throughout the Great War and won three Victoria Crosses by the conflict's conclusion in 1918.Following establishment of the independent Irish Free State in 1922, the five regiments that had their traditional recruiting grounds in the counties of the new state were disbanded and the Royal Munster Fusiliers ceased to be as a regiment on 31 July 1922.History
Origins
Before the regiment was reformed as part of a reorganization of the British Army in 1881, the Royal Munster Fusilier's historic background went back as far as 1652 with the formation of the Bengal European Regiment by the Honourable East India Company.This regiment would eventually become the 101st Regiment of Foot (Royal Bengal Fusiliers), or the 1st Bengal European Fusiliers. The East India Company formed the 104th Regiment of Foot (Bengal Fusiliers), or 2nd Bengal European Fusiliers, from this regiment in 1765. Both regiments, which were composed exclusively of white soldiers, not Indian sepoys, played pivotal roles in the British conquest of India throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. As well as the Royal Munster Fusilier's origins as part of the East India Company, the regiment's reserve battalions also traced their lineage to the Militia of Munster (namely the South Cork Light Infantry Militia, the Kerry Militia and the Royal Limerick County Militia, which became the 3rd, 4th and 5th Battalions, respectively). While both the fusilier regiments had originated and served as "European" regiments of the East India Company, they were transferred to the British Army in 1861 when the British Crown took control of the company's private army after the Indian Mutiny of 1857.
A painting depicting the 101st Regiment of Foot (Royal Bengal Fusiliers), a predecessor regiment of the Royal Munster Fusiliers, marching to Delhi during the Indian Mutiny of 1857.Formation
The second half of the 19th Century saw the beginning of widespread reforms in the British Army which would eventually result in the formation of the Royal Munster Fusiliers. The first of these reforms saw the localisation of recruiting districts in Britain and Ireland between 1873 and 1874 under the Cardwell Reforms. Five of the historic East India Company's European infantry battalions were given Irish territorial titles under the Childers Reforms of 1881. The former Bengal Fusilier regiments were merged into a single regiment to become the 1st Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers and the 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers, while the 3rd, 4th and 5th Royal Munster Fusilier battalions were the militia units. The Reforms linked regiments to recruiting areas – which in case of the Royal Munster Fusiliers were the counties of Clare, Cork, Kerry, and Limerick. Militarily, the whole of Ireland was administered as a separate command with Command Headquarters at Parkgate (Phoenix Park) Dublin, directly under the War Office in London. The regimental depot was located at Ballymullen Barracks, Tralee, Co. Kerry.Second Boer War
Following the outbreak of the Second Boer War in South Africa in October 1899, a number of regiments from areas containing large centres of population formed additional regular battalions. The Royal Munster Fusiliers were announced to be among those regiments set to form 3rd and 4th regular battalions in February 1900, but they do not appear to have done so.The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers embarked for South Africa in 1899, and would serve there throughout the entire Second Boer War. Initially, the battalion took part in Lord Robert's advance into the Orange Free State. Following this, the battalion was attached to the 20th Brigade and fought at the Battle of Belmont. With the beginning of the war's guerrilla warfare phase, the battalion took part in numerous pacification campaigns against the Boers in Pretoria and Western Transvaal. The 3rd (Militia) Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers, formerly the South Cork Light Infantry, was embodied in early December 1899, and 435 officers and men embarked the SS Sumatra for South Africa on 23 February 1900. The 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers, arrived in South Africa from India in December 1901 and served during the closing stages of the campaign, garrisoning blockhouses in the northeast of the Orange River Colony. Following the end of the war in 1902 the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers were sent to India. More than 520 officers and men left Cape Town on the SS Lake Manitoba in September 1902, arriving at Bombay the following month and were then stationed at Multan in Punjab. They would later take part in actions against the tribes of the North-West Frontier in 1908. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers left South Africa soon after their sister battalion, and 450 officers and men returned to Cork Harbour on the SS Orient in early November 1902.
The 1st Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers in South Africa during the Second Boer War, 1901.First World War
Prior to the First World War, the Royal Munster Fusiliers were an established strength of two regular service and three reserve battalions. With the outbreak of war in August 1914, the need for further divisions resulted in the creation of a New Army made up of volunteers who would serve for the duration of the war. This rapid expansion of the British Army would significantly increase the size of the Royal Munster Fusiliers who between their regular, reserve and volunteer battalions would have a combined strength of 11 raised battalions throughout the war. At the outbreak of war the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was acting as a regular garrison in Rangoon, Burma, having being based in the Far East since they had left Fermoy in 1899 to fight in the Second Boer War. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers were based at Aldershot, England as part of the 1st Army Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division at the outbreak of war.At the outbreak of war the Royal Munster Fusiliers three reserve battalions were all mobilised on 4 August 1914 and the regimental colours were sent to Tralee for safekeeping there until after the ArmisticeRegular Army
1914: Arrival in France and the Great Retreat
At the outbreak of war, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers was under strength, and reservists were called up from the regimental depots at Tralee and Fermoyamid much local cheering, to join the battalion at Aldershot which brought the battalion up to a strength of 27 officers and 971 other ranks before its departure to France on 13 August 1914. As part of the British Expeditionary Force, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers took part in the Battle of Mons and on 27 August were given the arduous task of forming the rearguard to cover the retreat of the 1st Division in the face of the German advance, with instructions to retreat only if ordered. The Munster's made an epic stand in a renowned rearguard action during the defence of Etreux, losing 9 officers and 87 other ranks killed while holding out,with most of the rest of the battalion being surrounded and taken prisoner after running out of ammunition. The Munster's had stemmed the Germans, who were five or six times their strength, for over a day, allowing their division to escape. The loss on an entire battalion so early in the war was a disaster for the regiment. When the scattered battalion reassembled on 29 August it was down to a mere 5 officers and 196 other ranks. The remnants of the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers were withdrawn to be recuperated before returning to battle, seeing action most notably at Langemarck, Belgium on 22 October. By 5 November, recruits from home brought its strength up to over 800 men. The battalion next saw action near Zillebeke, Belgium on 12 November and helped to defend against the last great German effort in the First Battle of Ypres. From 15 November, as snows began, they drove off further attacks, with trench warfare now becoming dominant. In early December they aided in the evacuation of the Ypres Benedictine Convent, whose occupants subsequently established Kylemore Abbey in Connemara, Ireland. The battalion was moved south to the Festubert sector in France, after a 36-hour march were ordered on 22 December to fill a gap by taking two lines of trenches. There were 200 casualties in the first 10 minutes of heavy fire. Withdrawing in total exhaustion on the next day, many wounded drowned in water-filled shell holes. Throughout Christmas and New Year they were fully occupied maintaining the trenches. On 25 January, the Kaiser's birthday the Germans tried unsuccessfully to break through with terrific shellfire. There then followed three months of rebuilding and training the battalion when it numbered 28 officers and 700 other ranks in May. Only four of the officers were pre-war.
Men of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers in Aldershot just prior to the outbreak of the First World War, 1914.1915: Gallipoli and the Second Battle of Ypres
The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, who had been stationed in Burma, arrived back at Avonmouth, UK in January 1915, and were entrained for Coventrywhere it was assigned to the 86th Brigade of the 29th Division (United Kingdom). In March it sailed for the Dardanelles, Turkey, when it numbered 28 officers and 1,002 other ranks. Turkey had joined the Central Powers's side in November 1914, the object of the landing on the Dardanelles peninsula was to open the Dardanelles Strait in the Battle of Gallipoli to enable Allied relief convoys reach Russia. Aboard the SS River Clyde, a converted collier with a capacity for over 2,000 men, they arrived on 25 April together with the 1st Battalion The Royal Dublin Fusiliers and some companies of the Royal Hampshires. The SS River Clyde ran gently ashore, its exit bows facing the beach, for what was to be the troubled British landing at Cape Helles. Small boats first carried companies of Dubliners to the beach, however four hidden Turkish machine gun posts opened fire and decimated them. Lighters to the shore were roped together and two companies of Munsters poured out on to the bow's gangway but were also hit by machine gun fire, with one survivor saying they were 'literally slaughtered like rats in a trap'. Many of the Munsters jumped from the gangway in the face of the withering fire and some drowned under their heavy equipment. Those men who continued down the gangway were mown down until all the boats and lighters were filled with dead and wounded. The ship's commanding officer, Captain Edward Unwin, on being informed that they were not succeeding, replied "in British military tradition, offensives once begun are never called off". Unwin was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions that day. At daybreak the next day, just three companies of Munsters, two companies of Hampshires and one company of Dubliners had made it to the shelter of some dunes. On 26 April they took fort Sedd-el-Bahr overlooking the bay, charging and taking the village behind and held off several Turkish counterattacks. It was in this attack that the heroic actions of William Cosgrove won the regiment's first Victoria Cross. The 28 April saw a renewed attack in the Battle for Krithia village, but the survivors of the landing were withdrawn by 29 April due to heavy losses and amalgamated with the surviving Dublin Fusiliers, to form the "Dubsters" battalion of 8 officers and 770 men.
The SS River Clyde holds dead of the Royal Munster Fusiliers who were killed while attempting to get ashore at Sedd el Bahr during the Gallipoli Campaign.The Turks launched a renewed attack on the night of 1 May, with one Royal Munster Fusilier saying "they crept up in the dark into our trenches bayoneting our men before we knew it had begun. Bayoneting on both sides was terrible. At dawn the Turks were mowed down, and heaps of bodies and streams of blood remaining everywhere."The battalion was reduced to 4 officers and 430 men, with the Turks attempting further attacks the following days only to be driven off once again, but the combined force of Munster and Dublin Fusiliers were down to 372 men by 11 April. Both the Munsters and Dubliners received new drafts on 29 May and became separate units again. By 4 June, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers numbered 40 officers and 500 other ranks, but many the new recruits were young and inexperienced. The Munsters withheld a further Turkish attack on 17 June, killing over 300 Turks. The arrival of further new drafts replenished the battalion to 23 officers and other 588 ranks. The Munsters took part in the Division's assault on 28 June which secured five trench lines. This provoked a general attack by the Turkish side along the Cape Helles front on 5 July, but the Turks were repulsed after suffering heavy losses. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers participated in limited actions into the middle of July. A month's rest was promised on 15 July, but by 22 July the battalion were back in action, their strength around 500 of whom only 3 officers and 314 men remained from those who first landed on 25 April. The climax of the Gallipoli came with the Suvla attack on 21 August in the Battle of Scimitar Hill, the Turks inflicted severe casualties. The unsuccessful attack cost the Munsters 3 officers and 79 men that day alone. There was little further action other than holding front lines from September through to November, when the weather worsened. Late in November, gales swept over the peninsula, hundreds were drowned in the flooded trenches or from exposure and frostbite. Faced with defeat, the British decided to withdraw from the peninsula and the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was evacuated as it arrived, on the River Clyde, sailing on 2 January 1916 for Alexandria. From there it sailed with the rest of the 29th Division and arrived in France on 22 March. 3 years of warfare still remained for the battalion on the Western Front, but the battalion had already suffered 45% of its total losses for the entire war at Gallipoli, and numbered just 24 officers and 287 men when disembarking in France.
The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue du Bois administered by their chaplain Father Francis GleesonWhile their sister battalion had been fighting on the shores of Gallipoli, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers had continued to serve on the Western Front and faced their first major action of 1915 in the Second Battle of Ypres, during which they fought at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. The day before the attack was to be launched on 9 May, the battalion received Absolution from their chaplain, Father Francis Gleeson,an event which would become depicted in the famous "Rue du Bois" painting by Fortunino Matania.The British bombardment began at 5 a.m. and the Munsters then pressed forward with extraordinary bravery, with German fire sweeping no-mans-land. Some of the Munsters audaciously charging ahead through the German lines, briefly waving a green flag on its breastwork, then moved beyond until cut off by the British artillery bombardment that followed, which killed many men sheltering in shell craters. By 11 a.m. the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers was withdrawn with only 3 officers and 200 men remaining, having lost 19 officers and 370 men killed, wounded or captured. The Munsters was one of only two British battalions to reach the German lines but they had suffered the regiment's highest loss of any one day of the war, with 11 officers and 140 men killed in action. It was an unsuccessful day for the British forces overall, with casualties exceeding 11,000, the devastating losses exposing the British forces weakness in artillery. The summer was relatively quiet for the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers after the battalion moved to the Loos sector in June, with casualties in July and August occurring from shelling. With other forces being withdrawn to reinforce the Gallipoli Campaign, no reinforcements or recruits arrived during the summer, keeping the battalion weak as the Loos offensive began on 25 September 1915. The Munsters were held in reserve at first but they were soon tasked with holding the line and suffered over 200 casualties, leaving the battalion with around 350 soldiers all ranks, which further reduced to 250 by the time the battle died down on 13 October. John Redmond M.P., the Irish leader, visited the battalion a month later on 15 November and promised to fill the depleted 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers with Irish recruits. There followed three months of bitter winter weather in appalling trench conditions. New recruits began arriving over the winter, but in the relative inactivity, 65 men were hit by harassing random fire while 40 men went down with frostbite and trench fever in the Arctic weather before the winter had ended.
Certifying attendance at Father Gleeson's Mission, 1915.1916: The Battle of the Somme
The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers entered the front lines in France for the first time on 23 April 1916 at the Somme sector, where they slowly built up strength to 26 officers and 476 men. On 29 May, the battalion was assigned to the 48th Brigade of the 16th (Irish) Division at Béthune and they were reinforced by members from the disbanded 9th Royal Munster Fusiliers, bringing the Battalion up to full strength. The Munsters remained in the area of the Loos salient into August with only intermittent casualties.When the 16th Irish Division was ordered south of the Somme battlefield, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers entered the line facing the strategic town of Ginchy on 5 September, having suffered over 200 casualties by gas-shelling on the way. The Munsters took part in the ensuing attack and triumphant capture of Ginchy by the 16th Division but at a high cost for the battalion which was reduced to 5 officers and 305 other ranks. A London newspaper headlined How the Irish took Ginchy – Splendid daring of the Irish troops In May, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers received many of the personnel from the disbanded 9th Royal Munster Fusiliers, bringing it up to strength for the summer campaign. The battalions' first noteworthy operation was the carefully planned Liévin raid on 25 June. It was during this action that Lieutenant Arthur Batten-Pooll would win the regiment's second Victoria Cross, although losses were heavy for the battalion with 5 officers and 60 other ranks killed or wounded. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers were transferred with its division down to the Somme sector in July for the opening of the Battle of the Somme, entering the lines on 14 July and capturing its objectives two days later. The battalion repulsed the German counterattack on 18 July, with an officer and 26 men killed, 127 wounded and 50 gassed. The Munsters were in reserve until 20 August, when they entered the lines once again for steady fighting but ran into heavy off-target and ineffective British artillery bombardment, killing 4 officers and 29 other ranks. A continual toll of casualties made September a costly month for the battalion. After a month's break in October, the 2 Royal Munster Fusiliers returned to the Somme for maintenance duties, then went into the mud filled front-line trenches from 27 November onwards, with a steady stream of casualties from frostbite and raids continuing to the end of December. Throughout the Somme campaign the 2RMF retained its local and Irish character. Following the end of their involvement in the Battle of the Somme, 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was moved northwards to Ypres in Belgium and also absorbed the remnants of the 8th Royal Munster Fusiliers on 23 November to bring it up to a strength of 48 officers and 1,069 men by 1 December. The Munsters spent Christmas 1916 in the trenches, but as the New Year arrived, an official report relates "as if by mutual consent both sides ceased fire a minute or two before the close of the old year. On the stroke of midnight the pipers tuned up and gave us The Old Year out and the New Year in, A Nation Once Again ,God Save Ireland, and a few more songs of the old country, N.C.O.s and men joining lustily in the choruses".
An illustration depicting men of the Royal Munster Fusiliers returning victoriously from their capture of Ginchy during the Battle of the Somme.1917: The Battle of Messines and Passchendaele
Old Royal Munster Fusiliers insignia
Following a period of rest in January 1917, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers were returned the front trenches again in February at Barleux, with the thawing weather resulting in extremely muddy conditions in the trenches. In March, the first major event was the German withdrawal from the old Somme battlefield to the newly constructed Hindenburg Line. The battalion followed across the Somme, but was held up into May removing mines and booby-traps and repairing communications. The Munsters then moved to near Nieuwpoort in Flanders for an intended amphibious landing, with an impressive strength of 43 officers and 1,070 men, which was aborted following a surprise German attack on 10 July. The Munsters were then moved with their division to Dunkirk for another amphibious attempt near Zeebrugge to link with a land offensive through Passchendaele, but this was also cancelled when the land offensive did not gain enough footing. For the men of the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, rotating routine trench duties continued up to the middle of March with light casualties (2 officers and 20 men killed). The battalion rehearsed special training during April and May for the assault on the strategic Messines Ridge. The Flanders offensive began at 3.10am on 7 June 1917 with the detonation of nineteen huge mines previously burrowed under the German lines. This was followed by the advance of the 16th Irish Division opposite the village of Wytschaete, to the right the 36th (Ulster) Division opposite the village of Messines, the largest ever concentration of Irish soldiers on a battlefield. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers took all its objectives on schedule despite the loss of nearly all of its supporting tanks. The subsequent battle was a complete success militarily for the British, with the two Irish divisions showing great fortitude, advancing over two miles in a few days with minimal losses, which was exceptional by Western Front standards. The battalion was then relieved, and returned to the Ypres salient front section in August. Continuous rain turned the battlefront into a sea of mud causing a multitude of casualties and failure to take specific positions, reducing the battalion to 37 officers and 701 men. The Munsters were moved with its Division back south into France where it built up to 1,089 all ranks. The 16th (Irish) Division, and with it the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, took up positions north of the main attack during the first Battle of Cambrai which opened on 21 November with the use of over 450 British tanks. The Munsters advanced with such speed that only one enemy machine gun post was manned in time to open fire, which was taken with one loss. Considering the success of capturing a difficult objective without tank support and taking 170 prisoners, losses were light, and followed previously unsuccessful attempts by other units during the summer. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers final front tour of 1917 ended on 2 December when the Division was moved south to take over a French section. By 6 November 1917, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers now numbered 20 officers and 630 other ranks when it arrived at "Irish Farm" in the Ypres salient. The ground was a quagmire full of water-logged shell-holes following four months of battle. It was to be the last British effort of the Passchendaele campaign. The Munsters were to be one of two battalions leading the 1st Division's attack at 6 a.m. on 10 November. Weighed down with equipment, they waded waist deep through mud and water, initially taking all objectives within 45 minutes. Seeing the progress by the Canadians on the right, the men of the Munsters pressed on. However, the South Wales Borders advance had left a gap the Germans made use of to cut off most of the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers who then had to fight their way back to the British lines. A roll call took three hours later saw only 7 officers and 240 other ranks present with 12 officers and 393 other ranks having become casualties. The battalion was moved out to Brieulles for reforming for the rest of the year.The Kaiser knows each Munster, by the Shamrock on his cap, and the famous Bengal Tiger, ever ready for a scrap. With all his big battalions, Prussian guards and grenadiers, he feared to face the bayonets of the Munster Fusiliers.— Verse from a song published during the Great War1918: The German Spring Offensive and Final Victory
From January through to March, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was involved in various engagements in snow, frost and mud. By St. Patrick's Day 1918, it became clear that the Germans were gaining the initiative and their forecast "Big Move" was awaited. By the end of January 1918 the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers numbered 44 officers and 823 other ranks, and was then transferred to the 48th Brigade of the 16th (Irish) Division on 3 February near Peronnewhere it entered the lines a week later. The division was now under the command of General Hubert Gough. The British front was at its lengthiest when the German Spring Offensive opened with a devastating bombardment early on 21 March 1918, after which a fierce attack by fresh troops was launched. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers suffered badly from the shelling but held the Germans up all night, before they broke through and overwhelmed the Munsters who dashed to retreat, with some making it to a high ridge trench where they were driven out and retired to Epehy by dark, fog having allowed the Germans to infiltrate easily. The next day the battalion was withdrawn to Tincourt where the depleted 16th (Irish) Division was concentrated, with the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers now numbering only 290 other ranks, from 629 the day before. On 22 March, the battalion crossed back over the Somme at Péronne.By 25 March, the battalion had lost 27 officers and 550 men, as the rest tried to reform, holding off several attacks and near encirclements. The Munsters formed a 400-man column and attempted a night retreat, half reaching friendly positions next morning at Hamel. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was fortunate to be in reserve as the Germans opened the offensive with a gas-bombardment. By the next day, the battalion was heavily engaged, the enemy using a new zigzag attack strategy. The battalion retaliated but was forced to withdraw and were quickly down to 7 officers and 450 men. There was then a general withdrawal across the Somme at Peronne, by which time the battalion was reduced to just 290 men. The German offensive had decimated the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers to a shadow of its previous strength. The 16th (Irish) Division was reduced to cadre, having suffered the heaviest losses of any British division during the March retreat. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was transferred to the 57th (2nd W.Lancs) Division which had not seen action since its arrival in February 1917.The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers was largely destroyed by the German offensive, losing 36 officers and 796 other ranks since 21 March. The battalion moved northwards to amalgamate with the equally hard hit 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers at Inghem on 14 April, with the resulting unit numbering 28 officers and 896 other ranks. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers was then reduced to a training cadre of 11 officers, who left the 16th (Irish) Division to provide instruction for newly arrived American Expeditionary Force. In May, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers entered the lines again at Gommecourt, a quiet sector during the summer. On 27 August, the battalion again entered the line for an attack near Croisilles, taking enemy support trenches on the Hindenburg Line in half an hour with minimal losses. This was followed by the assault of 2 September when Martin Doyle won the battalion's third Victoria Cross on the Drocourt–Queant Line south of the river Scarpe, with the battalion suffering 350 casualties. The battalion was then relieved and received replacements and trained in preparation for the assault on the Cambrai to St. Quentin line. With a 3,000-yard advance on 27 September, Graincourt was captured by the Munsters. The Germans counter-attacked, recapturing many positions. The battalion remained under shellfire even behind the lines and was reduced to 7 officers and 261 men by 3 October.The battalion supported the final attack of the Battle of Cambrai on 8 October, which was found to be evacuated the following day as the Germans were in disorganised retreat. The 57th Division was then sent north to Armentières, with the Munsters entering the line on 17 October, with no resistance. Lille was captured the following day and the battalion provided a guard of honour for the French President's visit to the city on 21 October. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was billeted in Lille until the Armistice of 11 November 1918. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers began reconstruction on 7 June 1918 when most of the 6th Royal Munster Fusiliers who had returned from Palestine were transferred to the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers. The battalion made its last transfer to the 150th Brigade of the 50th Division at Arras for the beginning of the Hundred Days Offensive. On 1 October, the battalion was transported to Épehy, which had been the scene of its Spring Offensive experiences back in March, and it was again ordered into the lines on 4 October, to capture Le Catelet. The Munsters largely gaining their objective, however, they had to retire after encountering heavy counterattacks and failures elsewhere on the line, losing many 6st Royal Munster Fusiliers pre-war veterans who had survived Gallipoli. The 50th Division's advance was resumed on 10 October, and the battalion was reduced to 13 officers and 411 men by 16 October. The Battle of Épehy began on 18 October to drive the Germans behind the river, with the Munsters going in next day in fog surprising the Germans and taking many prisoner as well the objectives. The Munsters overran their objectives and were caught in another Division's barrage, with heavy losses experienced. They were then withdrawn and reorganised for what to be their final operation of the war, successfully taking a large area around Haute Noyelles on 4 November, the number of prisoners taken indicative of the low state of German morale. After a counter-bombardment on 7 November the battalion was withdrawn for the remaining days up until the Armistice.
Two officers of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers man a machine gun on the Western Front.New Army
With the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 the immediate need for a considerable expansion of the British Army resulted in the formation of the New Army under Lord Kitchener. The war target was seventy divisions in all, the New Army to have thirty volunteer divisions separate and under Army Order 324, as additional from the Regular Army, with a planned period of service of at least three years. On 7 August a general United Kingdom-wide call for 100,000 volunteers aged 19–30 was issued. The battalions were to be distinguished by the word 'Service' after their number. The first new battalions were raised as units of Kitchener's new K1 Army Group, which led to the formation of the 6th and 7th (Service) Battalions, Royal Munster Fusiliers which were a part of the 30th Brigade of the 10th (Irish) Division, under the command of General Bryan Mahon. The 8th and 9th (Service) Battalions, Royal Munster Fusiliers followed as units of the 16th (Irish) Division's 47th and 48th Brigades, part of Kitchener's second new K2 Army Group. The 16th Division was placed under the command of Major General William Hickie.In the course of the war heavy losses suffered by the two Regular Royal Munster Fusilier Battalions caused the new service battalions to be disbanded and absorbed in turn by the regular battalions, the last on 2 June 1918 when the 8th (Service) Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers was amalgamated with the 1st Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers. -
Unusual advertising print -History of Irish Whiskey -featuring a cartoon type character and a bottle of Jameson Whiskey(Cooper's Croze). 48cm x 60cm Kilmallock Co Limerick Named in honour of Jameson's Master Cooper, Ger Buckley. The aim of this whiskey is to showcase the diversity of the barrels used at Jameson and the influence of the oak on the whiskey. Fittingly this is aged in a variety of barrels including ex-Bourbon, ex-Sherry and some virgin oak barrels. According to Irish Distillers: 'The Cooper’s Croze is a carefully crafted whiskey that effortlessly carries vanilla sweetness, rich fruit flavours, floral and spice notes and the undeniable influence of oak. You can take whiskey out of wood but you can never take the wood out of whiskey.'
Origins:Kilmaley Co Clare Dimensions : Glazed -
Humorous,Guinness showcard designed by the artist Tony Escott from the 1960s.Escott was an English cartoonist & illustrator synonymous with Guinness adverts in the 1960s.Advertising showcards such as this excellent example were supplied by Guinness to be displayed on prominent locations in pubs such as counter tops and window sills etc Guinness advertising has become an institution, virtually since Arthur Guinness set up the brewery in 1779.Today Guinness advertising is not just a subject for fond remembrance of past campaigns - nowadays its a subject for the specialist collector.Every item, from original artwork to old Guinness labels -has a price and a buyer. All Guinness advertising has done is create a focal point for peoples interest in and affection for,Guinness itself- that curious looking drink with a curious sounding name. Indeed its tempting to talk about Guinness advertising as if it were a generic term,describing a particular type or style of advertising.This is not the case-in its form, content and approach ,Guinness advertising has been as varied as the communications media it has enployed. When the brewery giant first began advertising in 1928,there had been very little study done in the field of market research and the critical analysis of what became to be called the "persuasion industry' had yet to take place.In launching its first campaign, however,Guinness decreed that its advertisements 'should at all times be done extremely well and in good taste -S.H Benson Ltd.,the venerable advertising agency charged with carrying out that edict,began with a refreshing directness- an appetising pint of what is affectionately called the 'black stuff' and the simple slogan:'GUINNESS is good for you.' Guinness has since always been among the leaders in the development of the craft of advertising and from the outset, they have been particularly conscious of their public responsibilities as an advertiser.Its fair to say no other alcoholic beverage has acquired the universal goodwill possessed by Guinness.Stanley Penn,one of Bensons copyrighters once remarked ' Guinness always enjoyed their advertising.They liked their advertising to be liked'.and so Bensons gave the already household Guinness name character and personality ,they made its friend more than a mere acquaintance. After a few years ,some money and a lot of imagination later,Bensons began mixing their Guinness with a dash or two of levity and humour.It was the beginning of many years of fun and frolics-starting with John Gilroys' charming menagerie of Guinness guzzling animals and the most outrageous puns and parodies- right up to the present day. Origins : Dublin Dimensions :40cm x 34cm -
Nearly a Che Guevera style to this poster of the rebel hero Sean South from Garryowen in the heart of Limerick City. Origins : Limerick. Dimensions : 54cm x 42cm Glazed Sean South ( c. 1928 – 1 January 1957)was a member of an IRA military column led by Sean Garland on a raid against a Royal Ulster Constabulary barracks in Brookeborough, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, on New Year's Day 1957.South, along with Fergal O'Hanlon, died of wounds sustained during the raid.Early life
Seán South was born in Limerick where he was educated at Sexton Street Christian Brothers School, later working as a clerk in a local wood-importing company called McMahon's. He was a member of a number of organisations, including Clann na Poblachta, Sinn Féin, the Gaelic League and the Legion of Mary. In Limerick he founded the local branch of Maria Duce, a social Roman Catholic organisation, where he also edited both An Gath and An Giolla. He had received military training as a lieutenant of the Irish army reserve, the Local Defence Force (LDF), which would later become An Fórsa Cosanta Áitiúil (the FCA), before he became a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army. Being a member of An Réalt (the Irish-speaking chapter of the Legion of Mary),South was a devout Catholic and a conservative, even by the standards of the day.It was at a meeting of An Réalt that he met his only serious girlfriend, Máire de Paor. She was a schoolteacher from Limerick, and was a great lover of the Irish language. He was also a member of the Knights of Columbanus. In 1949, South wrote a series of letters to his local newspaper, the Limerick Leader. These letters condemned Hollywood films for what South regarded as their immoral messages. South accused these films of promoting a "stream of insidious propaganda which proceeds from Judeo-Masonic controlled sources, and which warps and corrupts the minds of our youth."South also claimed that the American film industry was controlled by "Jewish and Masonic executives dictating to Communist rank and file." In his letters, South also denounced Irish trade unions, and praised the activities of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the United States.Death
On New Year's Day 1957, 14 IRA volunteers crossed the border into County Fermanaghto launch an attack on a joint RUC/B Specials barracks in Brookeborough. During the attack a number of volunteers were injured, two fatally. South and Fergal O'Hanlon died of their wounds as they were making their escape. Their bodies were brought into an old sandstone barn by their comrades. The stone from the barn was used to build a memorial at the site. A young Catholic constable, John Scalley, was killed in the ensuing gun battle between the IRA unit and the RUC.Commemoration
The attack on the barracks inspired two popular rebel songs: ‘Seán South of Garryowen' and ‘The Patriot Game '.- "Sean South", also known as "Sean South of Garryowen", written by Sean Costelloe from County Limerick, to the tune of another republican ballad "Roddy McCorley" and made famous by the Wolfe Tones.
- South is also mentioned in the Rubberbandits' song "Up Da Ra", which pokes fun at the concept of armchair republicanism using the literary device of the unreliable narrator.
- There is a plaque dedicated to him outside his birthplace on Henry Street, Limerick.
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Very unusual framed Che Guevera style iconic image of Bobby Sands. 48cm x 38cm Belfast Bobby Sands or Riobard Gearóid Ó Seachnasaigh; 9 March 1954 – 5 May 1981) was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who died on hunger strike while imprisoned at HM Prison Maze in Northern Ireland after being sentenced for firearms possession. He was the leader of the 1981 hunger strike in which Irish republican prisoners protested against the removal of Special Category Status. During Sands's strike, he was elected to the British Parliament as an Anti H-Block candidate.His death and those of nine other hunger strikers was followed by a new surge of Provisional IRA recruitment and activity. International media coverage brought attention to the hunger strikers, and the Republican movement in general, attracting both praise and criticism. Sands was born in 1954 to John and Rosaleen Sands.After marrying, they relocated to the new development of Abbots Cross, Newtownabbey, County Antrim, outside North Belfast.Sands was the eldest of four children. His younger sisters, Marcella and Bernadette, were born in 1955 and 1958, respectively. He also had a younger brother, John, born 1962. After experiencing harassment and intimidation from their neighbours, the family abandoned the development and moved in with friends for six months before being granted housing in the nearby Rathcoole development. Rathcoole was 30% Catholic and featured Catholic schools as well as a nominally Catholic but religiously mixed, youth football club, an unusual circumstance in Northern Ireland, known as Stella Maris, the same as the school Sands attended and where the training was held. Sands was a member of this club and played left-back.There was another youth club in nearby Greencastle called Star of the Sea and many boys went there when the Stella Maris club closed. By 1966, sectarian violence in Rathcoole, along with the rest of Belfast, had considerably worsened, and the minority Catholic population there found itself under siege. Despite always having had Protestant friends, Sands suddenly found that none of them would even speak to him, and he quickly learned to associate only with Catholics. He left school in 1969 at age 15, and enrolled in Newtownabbey Technical College, beginning an apprenticeship as a coach builder at Alexander's Coach Works in 1970. He worked there for less than a year, enduring constant harassment from his Protestant co-workers, which according to several co-workers he ignored completely, as he wished to learn a meaningful trade. He was eventually confronted after leaving his shift in January 1971 by a number of his coworkers wearing the armbands of the local Ulster loyalist tartan gang. He was held at gunpoint and told that Alexander's was off-limits to "Fenian scum" and to never come back if he valued his life. He later said that this event was the point at which he decided that militancy was the only solution. In June 1972, Sands's parents' home was attacked and damaged by a loyalist mob and they were again forced to move, this time to the West Belfast Catholic area of Twinbrook, where Sands, now thoroughly embittered, rejoined them. He attended his first Provisional IRA meeting in Twinbrook that month and joined the IRA the same day. He was 18 years old. By 1973, almost every Catholic family had been driven out of Rathcoole by violence and intimidation, although there were some who remained. In 1972, Sands joined the Provisional IRA.He was arrested and charged in October 1972 with possession of four handguns found in the house where he was staying. Sands was convicted in April 1973, sentenced to five years imprisonment, and released in April 1976. Upon his release, he returned to his family home in West Belfast, and resumed his active role in the Provisional IRA. Sands and Joe McDonnell planned the October 1976 bombing of the Balmoral Furniture Company in Dunmurry. The showroom was destroyed but as the IRA men left the scene there was a gun battle with the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Leaving behind two wounded, Seamus Martin and Gabriel Corbett, the remaining four (Sands, McDonnell, Seamus Finucane, and Sean Lavery) tried to escape by car, but were arrested. One of the revolvers used in the attack was found in the car. In 1977, the four men were sentenced to 14 years for possession of the revolver. They were not charged with explosive offences. Immediately after his sentencing, Sands was implicated in a fight and spent the first 22 days with all furniture removed from his cell in Crumlin Road Prison, 15 days naked, and a diet of bread and water every three days. In late 1980, Sands was chosen Officer Commanding of the Provisional IRA prisoners in the Maze Prison, succeeding Brendan Hughes who was participating in the first hunger strike. Republican prisoners organised a series of protests seeking to regain their previous Special Category Status, which would free them from some ordinary prison regulations. This began with the "blanket protest" in 1976, in which the prisoners refused to wear prison uniforms and wore blankets instead. In 1978, after a number of attacks on prisoners leaving their cells to "slop out" (i.e., empty their chamber pots), this escalated into the "dirty protest", wherein prisoners refused to wash and smeared the walls of their cells with excrement. While in prison, Sands had several letters and articles published in the Republican paper An Phoblacht under the pseudonym "Marcella" (his sister's name). Other writings attributed to him are: Skylark Sing Your Lonely Song and One Day in My Life. Sands also wrote the lyrics of "Back Home in Derry" and "McIlhatton", which were both later recorded by Christy Moore, and "Sad Song For Susan", which was also later recorded. The melody of "Back Home in Derry" was borrowed from Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". The song itself is about the penal transportation of Irishmen in the 19th century to Van Diemen's Land (modern day Tasmania, Australia). Shortly after the beginning of the strike, Frank Maguire, the Independent Republican MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, died suddenly of a heart attack, precipitating the April 1981 by-election. The sudden vacancy in a seat with a nationalist majority of about 5,000 was a valuable opportunity for Sands's supporters "to raise public consciousness". Pressure not to split the vote led other nationalist parties, notably the Social Democratic and Labour Party, to withdraw, and Sands was nominated on the label "Anti H-Block/Armagh Political Prisoner". After a highly polarised campaign, Sands narrowly won the seat on 9 April 1981, with 30,493 votes to 29,046 for the Ulster Unionist Party candidate Harry West. Sands became the youngest MP at the time. Sands died in prison less than a month later, without ever having taken his seat in the Commons. Following Sands's election win, the British government introduced the Representation of the People Act 1981 which prevents prisoners serving jail terms of more than one year in either the UK or the Republic of Ireland from being nominated as candidates in British elections. The enactment of the law, as a response to the election of Sands, consequently prevented other hunger strikers from being elected to the House of Commons. The 1981 Irish hunger strike started with Sands refusing food on 1 March 1981. Sands decided that other prisoners should join the strike at staggered intervals to maximise publicity, with prisoners steadily deteriorating successively over several months. The hunger strike centred on five demands:- the right not to wear a prison uniform;
- the right not to do prison work;
- the right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits;
- the right to one visit, one letter, and one parcel per week;
- full restoration of remission lost through the protest.
Sands died on 5 May 1981 in the Maze's prison hospital after 66 days on hunger strike, aged 27.The original pathologist's report recorded the hunger strikers' causes of death as "self-imposed starvation", later amended to simply "starvation" after protests from the dead strikers' families.The coronerrecorded verdicts of "starvation, self-imposed". Sands became a martyr to Irish republicans, and the announcement his death prompted several days of rioting in nationalist areas of Northern Ireland. A milkman, Eric Guiney, and his son, Desmond, died as a result of injuries sustained when their milk float crashed after being stoned by rioters in a predominantly nationalist area of North Belfast.Over 100,000 people lined the route of Sands's funeral, and he was buried in the 'New Republican Plot' alongside 76 others. Their graves are maintained by the National Graves Association, Belfast.
Bobby Sands's grave in Milltown CemeteryBritain
In response to a question in the House of Commons on 5 May 1981, the United Kingdom Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher said, "Mr Sands was a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life. It was a choice that his organisation did not allow to many of its victims". Cardinal Basil Hume, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, condemned Sands, describing the hunger strike as a form of violence. However, he noted that this was his personal view. The Roman Catholic Church's official stance was that ministrations should be provided to the hunger strikers who, believing their sacrifice to be for a higher good, were acting in good conscience. At Old Firm football matches in Glasgow, Scotland, some Rangers fans have been known to sing songs mocking Sands to taunt fans of Celtic. Rangers fans are mainly Protestant, and predominantly sympathetic to unionists; Celtic fans are traditionally more likely to support nationalists.Celtic fans regularly sing the republican song The Roll of Honour, which commemorates the ten men who died in the 1981 hunger strike, amongst other songs in support of the IRA. Sands is honoured in the line "They stood beside their leader – the gallant Bobby Sands." Rangers' taunts have since been adopted by the travelling support of other UK clubs, particularly those with strong British nationalist ties, as a form of anti-Irish sentiment. The 1981 British Home Championship football tournament was cancelled following the refusal of teams from England and Wales to travel to Northern Ireland in the aftermath of his death, due to security concerns.Europe
In Europe, there were widespread protests after Sands's death. 5,000 Milanese students burned the Union Flag and chanted "Freedom for Ulster" during a march. The British Consulate at Ghent was raided.Thousands marched in Paris behind huge portraits of Sands, to chants of "the IRA will conquer". In the Portuguese Parliament, the opposition stood for Sands. In Oslo, demonstrators threw a tomato at Elizabeth II, the Queen of the United Kingdom, but missed. (One 28-year-old assailant said he had actually aimed for what he claimed was a smirking British soldier.)In the Soviet Union, Pravdadescribed it as "another tragic page in the grim chronicle of oppression, discrimination, terror, and violence" in Ireland. Russian fans of Bobby Sands published a translation of the "Back Home in Derry" song ("На Родину в Дерри" in Russian).Many French towns and cities have streets named after Sands, including Nantes, Saint-Étienne, Le Mans, Vierzon, and Saint-Denis.The conservative-aligned West German newspaper Die Welt took a negative view towards Sands.
A memorial mural to Sands along Falls Road, BelfastAmericas
A number of political, religious, union and fund-raising institutions chose to honour Sands in the United States. The International Longshoremen's Association in New York announced a 24-hour boycott of British ships.Over 1,000 people gathered in New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral to hear Cardinal Terence Cooke offer a reconciliation Mass for Northern Ireland. Irish bars in the city were closed for two hours in mourning. The New Jersey General Assembly, the lower house of the New Jersey Legislature, voted 34–29 for a resolution honouring his "courage and commitment." The American media expressed a range of opinions on Sands's death. The Boston Globe commented, a few days before Sands's death, that "[t]he slow suicide attempt of Bobby Sands has cast his land and his cause into another downward spiral of death and despair. There are no heroes in the saga of Bobby Sands".The Chicago Tribune wrote that "Mahatma Gandhi used the hunger strike to move his countrymen to abstain from fratricide. Bobby Sands's deliberate slow suicide is intended to precipitate civil war. The former deserved veneration and influence. The latter would be viewed, in a reasonable world, not as a charismatic martyr but as a fanatical suicide, whose regrettable death provides no sufficient occasion for killing others". The New York Times wrote that "Britain's prime minister Thatcher is right in refusing to yield political status to Bobby Sands, the Irish Republican Army hunger striker", but added that by appearing "unfeeling and unresponsive" the British Government was giving Sands "the crown of martyrdom".The San Francisco Chronicle argued that political belief should not exempt activists from criminal law:Terrorism goes far beyond the expression of political belief. And dealing with it does not allow for compromise as many countries of Western Europe and United States have learned. The bombing of bars, hotels, restaurants, robbing of banks, abductions, and killings of prominent figures are all criminal acts and must be dealt with by criminal law.
Some American critics and journalists suggested that American press coverage was a "melodrama". Edward Langley of The Pittsburgh Press criticised the large pro-IRA Irish-American contingent which "swallow IRA propaganda as if it were taffy", and concluded that IRA "terrorist propaganda triumphs." Archbishop John R. Roach, president of the US Catholic bishops, called Sands's death "a useless sacrifice".The Ledger of 5 May 1981 under the headline "To some he was a hero, to others a terrorist" claims that the hunger strike made Sands "a hero among Irish Republicans or Nationalists seeking the reunion of Protestant-dominated and British-ruled Northern Ireland with the predominantly Catholic Irish Republic to the south". The Ledger cited Sands as telling his friends: "If I die, God will understand" and one of his last messages was "Tell everyone I'll see them somewhere, sometime". In Hartford, Connecticut, a memorial was dedicated to Bobby Sands and the other hunger strikers in 1997, the only one of its kind in the United States. Set up by the Irish Northern Aid Committeeand local Irish-Americans, it stands in a traffic island known as Bobby Sands Circle at the bottom of Maple Avenue near Goodwin Park. In 2001, a memorial to Sands and the other hunger strikers was unveiled in Havana, Cuba.Asia
- In Tehran, Iran, President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr sent a message of condolence to the Sands family.
- Palestinian prisoners incarcerated in the Israeli desert prison of Nafha sent a letter, which was smuggled out and reached Belfast in July 1981, which read: "To the families of Bobby Sands and his martyred comrades. We, revolutionaries of the Palestinian people...extend our salutes and solidarity with you in the confrontation against the oppressive terrorist rule enforced upon the Irish people by the British ruling elite. We salute the heroic struggle of Bobby Sands and his comrades, for they have sacrificed the most valuable possession of any human being. They gave their lives for freedom."
- The Hindustan Times said Margaret Thatcher had allowed a fellow Member of Parliament to die of starvation, an incident which had never before occurred "in a civilised country".
- In the Indian Parliament, opposition members in the upper house Rajya Sabha stood for a minute's silence in tribute. The ruling Congress Party did not participate. Protest marches were organised against the British government and in tribute to Sands and his fellow hunger strikers.
- The Hong Kong Standard said it was "sad that successive British governments have failed to end the last of Europe's religious wars".
The Grateful Dead played the Nassau Coliseum the following night after Sands died and guitarist Bob Weir dedicated the song "He's Gone" to Sands.The concert was later released as Dick's Picks Volume 13, part of the Grateful Dead's programme of live concert releases. Songs written in response to the hunger strikes and Sands's death include songs by Black 47, Nicky Wire, Meic Stevens, The Undertones, Eric Bogle, Soldat Louis and Christy Moore. Moore's song, "The People's Own MP", has been described as an example of a rebel song of the "hero-martyr" genre in which Sands's "intellectual, artistic and moral qualities" are eulogised. The U.S. rock band Rage Against the Machine listed Sands as an inspiration in the sleeve notes of their self-titled debut album and as a "political hero" in media interviews. Celtic F.C., a Scottish football club, received a €50,000 fine from UEFA over banners depicting Sands with a political message, which were displayed during a game on 26 November 2013 by Green Brigade fans. Bobby Sands has been portrayed in the following films:
The Éire Nua flute band inspired by Bobby Sands, commemorate the 1916 Easter Rising on the 91st anniversary.- Sands was played by John Lynch in the 1996 film Some Mother's Son. It was directed by Terry George and written by George and Jim Sheridan.
- Sands was played by Mark O'Halloran in the 2001 film H3.
- Michael Fassbender played Sands in Hunger, a 2008 film by Steve McQueen about the last six weeks of Sands's life in the context of the 1981 Irish hunger strike. It premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and won McQueen the prestigious Caméra d'Or award for first-time filmmakers. It was broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK for the first time on 15 December 2009.
- The 2016 documentary film, Bobby Sands: 66 Days
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Superb limit edition artwork venerating the great Ruby Walsh,one of the greatest jump jockeys in history, signed by Ruby himself and champion trainers Paul Nicholls & Willie Mullins. Origins :Lismore Co Waterford Dimensions : 70cm x 85cm Rupert "Ruby" Walsh (born 14 May 1979 in Kill, County Kildare, Ireland) is an Irish former jockey. He is the second child, and eldest son, of former champion amateur jockey Ted Walsh and his wife Helen. Walsh is the third most prolific winner in British and Irish jump racing history behind only Sir Anthony McCoy and Richard Johnson.Career
Showing talent from an early age, Walsh won the Irish amateur title twice, in 1996/97 (aged 18) and 1997/98, before turning professional. He won the English Grand National in 2000 at his first attempt, aged 20, on Papillon,a horse trained by his father and owned by Mrs J Maxwell Moran.Father and son then went on to win the Irish Grand National with Commanche Court the same year. In the 2004/05 season Walsh won three of the four Nationals: the Irish on the 2006 Grand National winner, Numbersixvalverde, the Welsh on subsequent 2007 Grand National winner Silver Birch, and the English on Hedgehunter. He rode Cornish Rebel in the Scottish, but was beaten a short head by Joe's Edge. However, he had earlier success in that race on Take Control in 2002 and following the retirement in 2015 of Tony McCoy, became the only jockey currently riding to have won all four Nationals. Walsh has one of the best Grand National records amongst current jockeys having won the race twice (2000, 2005), finished second once (2006), third once (2009) and fourth twice (2001, 2002). Walsh rode over 2500 winners including 59 winners at the Cheltenham Festival since his first win in 1998 on Alexander Banquet. These include the 2004 Queen Mother Champion Chase on Azertyuiop, the 2007 and 2009 Cheltenham Gold Cup on the favourite, Kauto Star and two subsequent Queen Mother successes in 2008 and 2009 on the brilliant Master Minded. He also won both the 2006 Tingle Creek Chase and the King George VI Chase on Kauto Star. He repeated the King George feat, again on Kauto Star, in 2007 (just days after returning from injury), 2008 and 2009 when Kauto Star won impressively by 36 lengths. He reclaimed the King George VI Chase in 2011 on board Kauto Star after Long Run won the race in 2010. He won the Hennessy Gold Cup twice, in 2003 on Strong Flow, and in more recent times, 2009 with Denman. He also won the Whitbread Gold Cup twice, in 2001 and 2003 (the latter when it was run as the Attheraces Gold Cup), both times on Ad Hoc. In 2007, Walsh won the inaugural British Horseracing Board Jockeys' Order of Merit award. Walsh was been Irish jump jockey champion twelve times – 1998/99, 2000/01, 2004/05, 2005/06, 2006/07, 2007/08, 2008/09, 2009/10, 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16 and 2016/17. Walsh's recent dominance of the jockeys' championship in Ireland is all the more remarkable given that for more than ten years he had a unique riding arrangement with two powerful stables, one on either side of the Irish Sea. Based in Calverstown, County Kildare, where he lives with his wife Gillian, he rode predominantly for Willie Mullins in Ireland. Formerly he also spent a substantial proportion of his time riding in England for Somerset-based champion trainer Paul Nicholls, the former trainer of Kauto Star. In January 2007, Walsh achieved the fastest ever century of winners in Irish jumps racing history aboard Bluestone Lad at Gowran Park. He ended the 2006/07 season with a combined total in Ireland and the UK of 198 winners, higher than any other jockey from either country that year. (This total was later increased to 200 on the disqualification of two horses for positive tests to banned substances. In both instances, Walsh had ridden the subsequently-promoted runners-up.) He repeated this feat in 2007/08, riding his 200th winner on Andreas at Sandown on his penultimate ride of the season. He rode his 1,000th Irish winner, Rare Article, at Sligo in May 2008. At the 2009 Cheltenham Festival Walsh rode a record-breaking seven winners over the four days. He equalled that record at the 2016 Cheltenham Festival. On the second day of the 2010 festival he rode Sanctuaire to victory in the Fred Winter Juvenile Novices Handicap Hurdle and therefore became the jockey with the most wins in the history of the Cheltenham festival. In March 2011, Walsh rode Hurricane Fly to victory in the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham, finishing ahead of Peddlers Cross and Oscar Whisky. It was Walsh's first victory in the feature race of the opening day at the Cheltenham Festival. He won his 2,500 race on Au Quart De Tour at Gowran park on 20 January 2016. As of 2019, Walsh is the Festival's most successful rider with 59 wins and has won the leading rider's award eleven times within the last fourteen years. In August 2015 Walsh won the Australian Grand National on Bashboy. On 1 May 2019, Walsh announced his retirement from racing with immediate effect after a career spanning 24 years. The announcement was made after he rode Kemboy to victory in the Punchestown Gold Cup. It was the 213th Grade One win for Walsh -
65cm x 75cm Caherciveen Co Kerry Stunning & imposing original oil painting depicting the Wild Atlantic coastline Co Kerry.In this case the part of the coastline featured is near The Glen or St Finians Bay between Ballinskelligs and Port Magee on the Beara Peninsula where there are absolutely magnificent,uninterrupted views of the Skellig Islands . The artist is RC Duffield .The current frame is need of replacing and will be completed before sale/shipping to the purchasers satisfaction.The Glen / St Finians Bay
St. Finan’s Bay commonly called (The Glen) stretches from Duchalla head in the south to Puffin Island in the north encompassing Skellig rocks and the lemon. The area got its name from St. Finian, a man who lived in the 10th century and travelled from Skelligs to Keel frequently to say mass. He had a monastery at Keel but the area is much older than that era. There is evidence of habitation from the bronze age and there are many soubterrains, galtans and the remains of an earthen fort at Rathkerin. The Glen is also a well known surfer’s paradise, St Finian’s Bay in The Glen has the smallest beach with the strongest rip tides, but often has the best waves. Not a place for the beginner, you need to be able to read the water well, but for the more experienced boarder it can be a thrill. HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY The area is probably best known for its christian or ecclesiastical sites. The root word keel (cill) meaning church is common. Kilaboona Oratory is an early Christian site located to the west of the settlement there is a well dedicated to St. Buaine. The medieval church at keel was built near the site of St. Finans monastery and was the parish church for the glen and portmagee for centuries. To the South of the church is a “Pagan’s Grave”, an enclosure of standing stones, 18ft x 11ft. In ballynabloun stands templecashel oratory a small church which was said to be used by nuns. Nearby is a walled kitchen garden on an acre of ground built by the o’connell landlords in 1831. Keelonecaha is another holy site and it is said there was a fight between the irish and the danes there. Evidence of habitation has been found dating from the Bronze Age and there are the remains of a fort at Rathkerin. Many of the heritage sites have spellbinding views of the Skellig Rocks. Some more Christian sites include an Aifrinn,which is a ‘Mass Rock‘ used in Penal times this can be found in the town land of Aghort , another interesting site is Dún Canuig Promontory in the town land of Cloghanecanuig. FLORA AND FAUNA There is an abundance of plant life here due to it mild climate. Flowers include buttercup, primrose, daisy, bluebell, spurge, great celadineand orchid. The fuchsia and hawthorn add colour and scent to the ditches in summer and the montbretia with its orange flowers decorate the roadsides. Birds are plentiful here too from the small, which include the wren, robin, yellowhammer, stonechat, wagtail to the large seabirds including all species of gull from, heron, curlew, cormorant, razorbill and gannet. Puffin island is a bird sanctuary which gives protection to all seabirds including the beautiful puffins. There are many varieties of fish in the bay like pollack, mackerel, wrasse, cod, haddock, lobster, cray and crab. To enjoy the beauty one needs to walk through out the glen. Parking the car at the beach one can walk south towards ducalla, north towards glenaragh or east to killabuonia. These walks are signposted. Panoramic views can be had from com an easboig in the north and from the tower in bolus in the south. To sweeten your walk there is also a chocolate factory close to the beach which provides hand made chocolate. Just don’t drive through – stop and take in the scenery and walk or cycle.
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55cm x 45cm Dublin Beautiful print from the original of a Guinness inspired Irish Pub session.Encapsulates brilliantly the atmosphere and revelry when a few pints of porter and traditional Irish music combine ,with a classic John Gilroy Advert in the background adding to the authenticity of the scene. Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain. Arthur Guinness started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading.[12] The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.The Guinness brewery in Park Royal, London closed in 2005. The production of all Guinness sold in the UK and Ireland was moved to St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin. Guinness has also been referred to as “that black stuff”. Guinness had a fleet of ships, barges and yachts. The Irish Sunday Independent newspaper reported on 17 June 2007 that Diageo intended to close the historic St James’s Gate plant in Dublin and move to a greenfield site on the outskirts of the city.This news caused some controversy when it was announced.The following day, the Irish Daily Mail ran a follow-up story with a double page spread complete with images and a history of the plant since 1759. Initially, Diageo said that talk of a move was pure speculation but in the face of mounting speculation in the wake of the Sunday Independent article, the company confirmed that it is undertaking a “significant review of its operations”. This review was largely due to the efforts of the company’s ongoing drive to reduce the environmental impact of brewing at the St James’s Gate plant. On 23 November 2007, an article appeared in the Evening Herald, a Dublin newspaper, stating that the Dublin City Council, in the best interests of the city of Dublin, had put forward a motion to prevent planning permission ever being granted for development of the site, thus making it very difficult for Diageo to sell off the site for residential development. On 9 May 2008, Diageo announced that the St James’s Gate brewery will remain open and undergo renovations, but that breweries in Kilkenny and Dundalk will be closed by 2013 when a new larger brewery is opened near Dublin. The result will be a loss of roughly 250 jobs across the entire Diageo/Guinness workforce in Ireland.Two days later, the Sunday Independent again reported that Diageo chiefs had met with Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, the deputy leader of the Government of Ireland, about moving operations to Ireland from the UK to benefit from its lower corporation tax rates. Several UK firms have made the move in order to pay Ireland’s 12.5 per cent rate rather than the UK’s 28 per cent rate. Diageo released a statement to the London stock exchange denying the report.Despite the merger that created Diageo plc in 1997, Guinness has retained its right to the Guinness brand and associated trademarks and thus continues to trade under the traditional Guinness name despite trading under the corporation name Diageo for a brief period in 1997. In November 2015 it was announced that Guinness are planning to make their beer suitable for consumption by vegetarians and vegans by the end of 2016 through the introduction of a new filtration process at their existing Guinness Brewery that avoids the need to use isinglass from fish bladders to filter out yeast particles.This went into effect in 2017, per the company’s FAQ webpage where they state: “Our new filtration process has removed the use of isinglass as a means of filtration and vegans can now enjoy a pint of Guinness. All Guinness Draught in keg format is brewed without using isinglass. Full distribution of bottle and can formats will be in place by the end of 2017, so until then, our advice to vegans is to consume the product from the keg format only for now. Guinness stout is made from water, barley, roast malt extract, hops, and brewer’s yeast. A portion of the barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark colour and characteristic taste. It is pasteurisedand filtered. Until the late 1950s Guinness was still racked into wooden casks. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Guinness ceased brewing cask-conditioned beers and developed a keg brewing system with aluminium kegs replacing the wooden casks; these were nicknamed “iron lungs”.Until 2016 the production of Guinness, as with many beers, involved the use of isinglass made from fish. Isinglass was used as a fining agent for settling out suspended matter in the vat. The isinglass was retained in the floor of the vat but it was possible that minute quantities might be carried over into the beer. Diageo announced in February 2018 that the use of isinglass in draught Guinness was to be discontinued and an alternative clarification agent would be used instead. This has made draught Guinness acceptable to vegans and vegetarians. Arguably its biggest change to date, in 1959 Guinness began using nitrogen, which changed the fundamental texture and flavour of the Guinness of the past as nitrogen bubbles are much smaller than CO2, giving a “creamier” and “smoother” consistency over a sharper and traditional CO2 taste. This step was taken after Michael Ash – a mathematician turned brewer – discovered the mechanism to make this possible. Nitrogen is less soluble than carbon dioxide, which allows the beer to be put under high pressure without making it fizzy. High pressure of the dissolved gas is required to enable very small bubbles to be formed by forcing the draught beer through fine holes in a plate in the tap, which causes the characteristic “surge” (the widget in cans and bottles achieves the same effect). This “widget” is a small plastic ball containing the nitrogen. The perceived smoothness of draught Guinness is due to its low level of carbon dioxide and the creaminess of the head caused by the very fine bubbles that arise from the use of nitrogen and the dispensing method described above. “Foreign Extra Stout” contains more carbon dioxide, causing a more acidic taste. Contemporary Guinness Draught and Extra Stout are weaker than they were in the 19th century, when they had an original gravity of over 1.070. Foreign Extra Stout and Special Export Stout, with abv of 7.5% and 9% respectively, are perhaps closest to the original in character.Although Guinness may appear to be black, it is officially a very dark shade of ruby. The most recent change in alcohol content from the Import Stout to the Extra Stout was due to a change in distribution through North American market. Consumer complaints have influenced recent distribution and bottle changes.
The Guinness Brewery Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers found that “‘antioxidantcompounds’ in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.”Guinness ran an advertising campaign in the 1920s which stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint, the slogan, created by Dorothy L. Sayers–”Guinness is Good for You”. Advertising for alcoholic drinks that implies improved physical performance or enhanced personal qualities is now prohibited in Ireland.Diageo, the company that now manufactures Guinness, says: “We never make any medical claims for our drinks.”
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