The Irish Souvenir Emporium - The Irish Pub Emporium

Limited edition print of The Guinness Storehouse (Artist Pat Liddy)

€140.00

Stunning limited edition print of the iconic Guinness Storehouse Building by the artist Pat Liddy. Origins : Dublin Dimensions : 50cm x 45cm 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 before he 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. 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 Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.

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.

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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Limited Edition Fionn Mac Cumhaill & The One Eyed Aodh Guinness Advert

€350.00

82cm x 64cm Limited edition prototype Guinness advert taken from a tea-towel, printed in the early 1960s and believed to be unique.By the renowned artist Piet Sluis.
Dutch born, Sluis came to Ireland in the 1950s and had a distinguished career as a graphic designer. In recent years his paintings have become widely known and are much sought after. He called himself a colourist and in his own words liked “to push the transparency of oil paints, to give them weight and opacity” (in conversation with Paul O’Kelly). Sluis was also an accomplished jazz musician. In Pieter Sluis, Ireland has a unique emissary from the Dutch postwar COBRA movement. The movement, founded by Karol Appel and other Dutch and Belgian artists, was an attempt to wrest art-world interest back from the New York abstract expressionists of the 1950s. As Pieter began to make his mark in Dublin galleries from the late 1960s onwards, he continued to pursue his interests in graphic art, typography and calligraphy, and to take an active interest, as performer and listener, in his beloved jazz music. Many of his paintings incorporated images of his jazz heroes, while others, such as his masterpiece Breath of Life, refer indirectly to rhythm and music. The COBRA movement formed much of Pieter’s work from the late 1950s to the early 1960s – so much so that Pieter often referred to these paintings as “my Appels”. He and his contemporaries would use COBRA’s pro-figurative ethos to mount a challenge to Dublin’s 1960s infatuation with bland, corporate abstraction.
Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool or MacCool, is a hero in Irish mythology, as well as in later Scottish and Manx folklore. He is the leader of the Fianna bands of young roving hunter-warriors, as well as being a seerand poet. He is said to have a magic thumb that bestows him with great wisdom. He is often depicted hunting with his hounds Bran and Sceólang, and fighting with his spear and sword. The tales of Fionn and his fiannform the Fianna Cycle or Fenian Cycle (an Fhiannaíocht), much of it narrated by Fionn's son, the poet Oisín. 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 before he 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. 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 Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.

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.

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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Limerick Rugby Legend Dodo Reddan

€70.00

Classic photo of the legendary Limerick Character and Young Munster RFC Rugby supporter Dodo Reddan,wheeling her beloved pet dogs onto the pitch at Limericks Thomond Park in 1980 at the Munster Senior Cup Final between Munster's & Bohemians. 28cm x 34cm Limerick
This year marks the 25th anniversary since the passing of Limerick legend Dodo Reddan, and we want to take a look back at her iconic life as one of the city’s most colourful and memorable characters. Dodo, whose real name is Nora Quirke, embodied everything that is great about Limerick – kindness, passion, determination, generosity, and of course, the love of rugby – and we want to pay tribute to her life, and the legacy that she left behind.

Born on Nelson Street in 1922, Dodo came from a working-class background. She was educated at the Presentation Convent, Sexton Street, and throughout her life she worked with the Limerick Leader newspaper, using its columns to speak about causes and topics close to her heart.

Dodo Reddan and her dogs. Picture: Limerick Leader Archive

Dodo was a huge advocate for helping those less fortunate than herself, both animal and human. Well known for her pram full of pet dogs which she was rarely seen without, Dodo was an animal lover who would rescue and take in dozens of dogs throughout her life. She would also distribute food to the homeless, give toys to the city’s poorest children, and use her columns to give a voice to the voiceless – speaking about subjects such as animal welfare, her opinions on proposed domestic water charges, and much more.

The extent of Dodo’s work in caring for animals was not truly realised until after her death in 1995, when it was found that she had been running what was essentially a one-woman Animal Rescue Centre, with her own limited resources and no financial support. Dodo left behind 24 dogs, and Limerick Animal Welfare was assigned with the task of rehoming them all, as it was Dodo’s wish, or more so instruction, that none of the dogs would be put down.

Dodo’s other love was rugby, more specifically Young Munsters RFC, and she naturally became an iconic mascot for the club, appearing at every game with her pram of dogs, dressed to the nines in the team colours of black and amber. One of Dodo Reddan’s most memorable ventures was her journey to Lansdowne Road in Dublin, for the 1993 League Final between Young Munsters RFC and St Mary’s. Prohibited from using passenger accommodation on the train from Limerick as a result of her insistence on bringing her dogs, the ever determined Dodo travelled in the goods compartment of the train. Arriving in Dublin, no taxi or bus would carry her, so she walked her pram of dogs all the way to Lansdowne Road, arriving just in time to witness Young Munsters’ historic victory. The crowd roared with glee at the sight of Dodo and her dogs, and her appearance has been documented as a fundamental memory from that day.

Dodo Reddan and her dogs dressed in the black and amber of Young Munsters RFC

Sadly, Dodo died on September 3, 1995, at the age of 73, following a short illness. Her funeral mass was held at St. Saviour’s Dominican Church on September 5, and she was buried thereafter at Mount Saint Oliver Cemetery. Loved and cherished by the whole of Limerick, to this day, ongoing requests continue for a statue to be erected in her honour. Or better yet, a dog’s home to be established by the County Council in her name, a feat that she was always disappointed didn’t happen in her lifetime.

Speaking about Dodo, one Twitter user wrote, “Dodo Reddan was a true legend. Her regular appearances with all her dogs kitted out in black and amber was a fantastic sight. Fondly remembered.” Another said, “Can a Dodo Reddan mural be next? Strong Limerick woman, amazing animal lover and saver, and rugby obsessed.”

To this day, Dodo Reddan is a name which causes the ears of any Limerick native or rugby fan to prick up, and she has now gone down in history as a dearly cherished Limerick character, legend, and icon. Her love of rugby and her passion and determination for creating change and advocating for the less fortunate will never be forgotten.

We all Miss Dodo

By Sinead Benn, Garryowen

A legendary Limerick lady,

Rugby filled her soul,

Kindness was her passion

As her famous pram she’d roll

Her dogs togged out to perfection,

Everyone would stop and stare

Nature at its utmost

For them she showed great care

A student of Presentation School

Nobody can succeed her

She gave great points of view

At the offices of the Limerick Leader

Legends of our city

We take pride in passing through

“NORA DODO REDDAN”

With great soul we remember you

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Limerick Hams Ireland 1949 Cast iron Souvenir Pig

€100.00
Quaint castiron miniature pig advertising Limerick Ham from 1949 onone side and exhibiting the different parts of the pig carcase on the other. Limerick is well-known and famed for its bacon production, “everything but the squeak was used”. And was often referred to as 'Pigtown".Many of the households in areas such as the Abbey kept pigs along with the more traditional chickens usually fed on domestic scraps as well as on root crops. Although the majority of the pigs were imported from the local environs. Thousands of pigs were slaughtered and processed weekly in the Limerick Bacon factories, who in the height of their production were the most consumed pork products in the British Isles. In the 19th century Limerick Hams became renowned throughout the British Empire with Queen Victoria insisting on Limerick hams at her Christmas dinner. Limerick pork through the O’Mara’s was even exporting as far away as Russia and Romania in 1891 and 1902 respectively. The four great bacon factories in Limerick were Matterson’s, Shaw’s, O’Mara’s and Denny’s each competing for local, national and international trade out of Limerick city during the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Other Bacon Merchants in Limerick City during this period were Hogan, Longbottom, Looney, Lynch & Spain, Neazor, O’Brien, O’Connor, O’Halloran, Prendergast, Rea, Sullivan, Thompson though this article concentrates on the four major players. The bacon industry was wrought with tragedy and some of the stories can be read on the Factory Fatalities page. Further reading on the bacon factories can be found in this issue of The Old Limerick Journal.

MATTERSON’S
J Matterson & Sons operated out of Roches Street, while their rival company O’Mara’s operated across the road on the same street from 1839. Mattersons was established in 1816 by John Russell and J Matterson, who were brother-in-laws of a kind. Both men married a Mossop sister, Mary and Eleanor. After the death of Joseph Matterson Snr in 1854, Joseph Matterson Jnr took over the Limerick aspect of the company. While Joseph Matterson Snr’s other son William Matterson, oversaw the London branch of the business. William Matterson died aged 71 in London in January 1903. Not only was Joseph Matterson Jnr. a business owner in the city but he was also a key player in the community. He was vice president of the Protestant Young Mens Association which stained-glass window still remains in-situ in O’Connell Street. Below are the funeral notices from the Limerick Chronicle, from the Limerick City Library Local Studies, for members of the Matterson Family.

Matterson, Alfred, Castletroy, Limerick Chronicle 12 August 1848, son of Joseph Matterson Snr

Matterson, Mary, Castletroy, Limerick Chronicle 25 June 1853, aged 16, daughter of Joseph Matterson Snr

Matterson, Anne, Castletroy, Limerick Chronicle 26 July 1854, aged 20, daughter of Joseph Matterson Snr

Matterson, Joseph Snr, Castletroy, Limerick Chronicle 08 July 1854, provision merchant, manufacturer of Limerick Hams; int at Kilmurry church

Matterson, Henry, Castletroy, Limerick Chronicle 23 January 1858, aged 32, son of late Joseph Matterson Snr

Matterson, Elizabeth , Castletroy, Limerick Chronicle 24 February 1858, aged 23, daughter of late Joseph Matterson Snr

Matterson, Henry Sutherland, 81 George Street, Limerick Chronicle 12 September 1876, aged 13 months; son of Joseph Matterson Jnr.

Matterson, Mary, Castletroy House, Limerick Chronicle 1st June 1886 aged 82, widow of late Joseph Matterson Snr, death notice.

Matterson, Evely Gordon, 81 George Street, 4 January 1890, death notice, aged 4 months, daughter of J. Matterson Jnr

Matterson, Mary Gordon (Molly), Castletroy House, Limerick Chronicle 05 May 1896, aged 17, daughter of Joseph Jnr and Agnes Matterson (funeral report) (reply to condolences).

Matterson, Joseph, Castletroy House, Limerick Chronicle 3 April 1906, (further report 1) (further report 2) (funeral report) – buried in Kilmurry Graveyard.

In 1901 Joseph Matterson, Jnr aged 60 was living with his 46 year old wife Agnes and children Leopold (18), Vera Sunderland(9), Victor (7), Eva (5) and a seven various servants. Joseph Matterson Jnr and his wife Agnes had 12 children in total with 9 still living in 1911, married 33 years. After Joseph’s death in 1906, Agnes and family moved to the Ennis Road, her children Ian Gordon and Vera Sunderland were living with her in 1911. The following also courtesy of Pat Mossop is a wonderful letter written by a Limerick lady in 1873: Eleanor McGhie, an article by Sharon Slater based on the letter was published in the Old Limerick Journal.

SHAW’S
Shaw & Sons operated out of Mulgrave Street. It was founded in 1831 by William John Shaw, whose family originated in Co. Down. In 1892 Shaw’s factory was using electric lights, lifts, a mini-railway and even telephonic communications, the Shaw’s factory was well ahead of it’s time. It is now owned by the Kerry Group. Below are the funeral notices from the Limerick Chronicle, from the Limerick City Library Local Studies, for members of the Shaw Family.

Shaw, Martha, Rose Cottage, Limerick Chronicle 14 April 1868, wife of William John Shaw – buried in St. Munchin’s Graveyard.

Shaw, William John, Rose Cottage, Limerick Chronicle 02 December 1869 – buried in St. Munchin’s Graveyard

Shaw, Harriett E., Willowbank, Limerick Chronicle 30 August 1879, second daughter of William John Shaw, Esq.

Shaw, James Thompson, South Kensington, London, Limerick Chronicle 18th October 1892, senior partner of W. J. Shaw & Sons (further death report) (sympathy vote) (acknowledgement) – Eldest son of William John Shaw.

Shaw, Anna Gertrude Thompson, Cheltenham 13 June 1918, daughter of late William John Shaw, Limerick.

Alexander William Shaw – 27 October 1847 – 29 November 1923Derravoher North Circular Road,bacon curer and local politician and the founder of Limerick and Lahinch golf clubs. He was born in County Limerick, the second son of John Shaw (son of WJ Shaw) of Willowbank, bacon merchant. The family firm was already thriving when he took it over, but under his astute management it grew to become one of the largest bacon curing businesses in Europe, and Shaw became one of the most prominent businessmen in the city.

O’MARA’S
J. O’Mara & Sons was founded by James O’Mara who was born in Toomevara, Co. Tipperary. James O’Mara’s originally began curing bacon in the basement of his house on Mungert Street. In 1839 he moved his business to a purpose built factory on 30 Roches Street at the junction of Anne Street, across from their rival Matterson Bacon Factory. He also moved his family during this time to Hartstonge Street. The O’Mara’s factory was demolished in the late 1980s to make way for the multi-story which stands in the spot today. O’Mara’s 100 year lease on the site on Roches Street ended on 18 June 1979. Below are the funeral notices from the Limerick Chronicle, from the Limerick City Library Local Studies, for members of the O’Mara Family.

O’Mara, James, jun., Limerick Chronicle 8th July 1893, son of James O’Mara, J.P. (funeral report 10/7/1893) (2,420 Kb) – buried Mount Saint Lawrence Cemetery.

O’Mara, Mysie, London, England, Limerick Chronicle 05/07/1898, dau of Thomas McKenna, late of Waterford; widow of late James O’Mara of Limerick

O’Mara, James, Thomas Street, Limnerick Chronicle 20th April 1899, MD of J O’Mara & Sons bacon curers and local politician; obituary (funeral report 25/4/1899)

O’Mara, Nannie, Alexander Terrace, L. Chronicle 28th January 1905, address that of her sister; daughter of late James O’Mara; obituary and death notice, (funeral report 31/1/1905)

More information on the O’Mara factory in Limerick can be read on this Old Limerick Journal article. More information on the O’Mara family can be found at Mark Humphry’s Site.

DENNY’S
Denny’s and Sons operated out of 27 Upper William Street in in 1891 as well as Mulgrave Street. It was founded by Henry Denny in the 1870s and first operated as a Provision Merchants out of Newtown Mahon, Upper William Street. Denny operated out of Limerick, Cork and Waterford. Denny’s sausages make an appearance in James Joyce’s Ulysses, where Leopold Bloom watches a young girl in Dlugacz’s butcher’s shop buy a pound and a half of Denny’s sausages, as he waits to buy a pork kidney for his and wife Molly’s breakfast. Denny’s is now owned by the Kerry Food group, after they acquired it in 1982. Dimensions :230cm x 10cm x 8cm
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Lets go to Ireland Home of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey Advert

€200.00

Another beautiful example of the joint Tourism-Irish whiskey adverts Jameson ran in the 1950s and 1960s,depicting a romantic vision of the "Auld country",its scenic sights and the promise of a glass of Jameson to celebrate a days sightseeing. 60cm x 80cm. Athboy Co Meath John Jameson was originally a lawyer from Alloa in Scotland before he founded his eponymous distillery in Dublin in 1780.Prevoius to this he had made the wise move of marrying Margaret Haig (1753–1815) in 1768,one of the simple reasons being Margaret was the eldest daughter of John Haig, the famous whisky distiller in Scotland. John and Margaret had eight sons and eight daughters, a family of 16 children. Portraits of the couple by Sir Henry Raeburn are on display in the National Gallery of Ireland. John Jameson joined the Convivial Lodge No. 202, of the Dublin Freemasons on the 24^th June 1774 and in 1780, Irish whiskey distillation began at Bow Street. In 1805, he was joined by his son John Jameson II who took over the family business that year and for the next 41 years, John Jameson II built up the business before handing over to his son John Jameson the 3^rd in 1851. In 1901, the Company was formally incorporated as John Jameson and Son Ltd. Four of John Jameson’s sons followed his footsteps in distilling in Ireland, John Jameson II (1773 – 1851) at Bow Street, William and James Jameson at Marrowbone Lane in Dublin (where they partnered their Stein relations, calling their business Jameson and Stein, before settling on William Jameson & Co.). The fourth of Jameson's sons, Andrew, who had a small distillery at Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, was the grandfather of Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of wireless telegraphy. Marconi’s mother was Annie Jameson, Andrew’s daughter. John Jameson’s eldest son, Robert took over his father’s legal business in Alloa. The Jamesons became the most important distilling family in Ireland, despite rivalry between the Bow Street and Marrowbone Lane distilleries. By the turn of the 19th century, it was the second largest producer in Ireland and one of the largest in the world, producing 1,000,000 gallons annually. Dublin at the time was the centre of world whiskey production. It was the second most popular spirit in the world after rum and internationally Jameson had by 1805 become the world's number one whiskey. Today, Jameson is the world's third largest single-distillery whiskey. Historical events, for a time, set the company back. The temperance movement in Ireland had an enormous impact domestically but the two key events that affected Jameson were the Irish War of Independence and subsequent trade war with the British which denied Jameson the export markets of the Commonwealth, and shortly thereafter, the introduction of prohibition in the United States. While Scottish brands could easily slip across the Canada–US border, Jameson was excluded from its biggest market for many years.

Historical pot still at the Jameson distillery in Cork

The introduction of column stills by the Scottish blenders in the mid-19th-century enabled increased production that the Irish, still making labour-intensive single pot still whiskey, could not compete with. There was a legal enquiry somewhere in 1908 to deal with the trade definition of whiskey. The Scottish producers won within some jurisdictions, and blends became recognised in the law of that jurisdiction as whiskey. The Irish in general, and Jameson in particular, continued with the traditional pot still production process for many years.In 1966 John Jameson merged with Cork Distillers and John Powers to form the Irish Distillers Group. In 1976, the Dublin whiskey distilleries of Jameson in Bow Street and in John's Lane were closed following the opening of a New Midleton Distillery by Irish Distillers outside Cork. The Midleton Distillery now produces much of the Irish whiskey sold in Ireland under the Jameson, Midleton, Powers, Redbreast, Spot and Paddy labels. The new facility adjoins the Old Midleton Distillery, the original home of the Paddy label, which is now home to the Jameson Experience Visitor Centre and the Irish Whiskey Academy. The Jameson brand was acquired by the French drinks conglomerate Pernod Ricard in 1988, when it bought Irish Distillers. The old Jameson Distillery in Bow Street near Smithfield in Dublin now serves as a museum which offers tours and tastings. The distillery, which is historical in nature and no longer produces whiskey on site, went through a $12.6 million renovation that was concluded in March 2016, and is now a focal part of Ireland's strategy to raise the number of whiskey tourists, which stood at 600,000 in 2017.Bow Street also now has a fully functioning Maturation Warehouse within its walls since the 2016 renovation. It is here that Jameson 18 Bow Street is finished before being bottled at Cask Strength. In 2008, The Local, an Irish pub in Minneapolis, sold 671 cases of Jameson (22 bottles a day),making it the largest server of Jameson's in the world – a title it maintained for four consecutive years.

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Legendary Kerry Footballer Pat Spillane

€70.00

28cm x 34cm Great portrait of the legendary Kerry Gaelic Footballer,Pat Spillane Patrick Gerard Spillane (born 1 December 1955), better known as Pat Spillane, is an Irish Gaelic football pundit and former player. His leagueand championship career with the Kerry senior team spanned seventeen years from 1974 to 1991. Spillane is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the game. Born in Templenoe, County Kerry, Spillane was born into a strong Gaelic football family. His father, Tom, and his uncle, Jerome, both played with Kerry and won All-Ireland medals in the junior grade. His maternal uncles, Jackie, Dinny, Mickey, and Teddy Lyne, all won All-Ireland medals at various grades with Kerry throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Spillane played competitive Gaelic football as a boarder at St Brendan's College. Here he won back-to-back Corn Uí Mhuirí medals, however, an All-Ireland medal remained elusive. Spillane first appeared for the Templenoe club at underage levels, before winning a county novice championship medal in 1973. With the amalgamated Kenmare District team he won two county senior championship medals in 1974 and 1987. While studying at Thomond College Spillane won an All-Ireland medal in the club championship in 1978. He also won one Munster medal and a county senior championship medal in Limerick. Spillane made his debut on the inter-county scene at the age of sixteen when he was picked on the Kerry minor team. He enjoyed two championship seasons with the minor team, however, he was a Munster runner-up on both occasions. Spillane subsequently joined the Kerry under-21 team, winning back-to-back All-Ireland medal in 1975 and 1976. By this stage he had also joined the Kerry senior team, making his debut during the 1973–74 league. Over the course of the next seventeen years, Spillane won eight All-Ireland medals, beginning with a lone triumph in 1975, a record-equalling four championships in-a-row from 1978 to 1981 and three championships in-a-row from 1984 to 1986. He also won twelve Munster medals, two National Football League medals and was named Footballer of the Year in 1978 and 1986. He played his last game for Kerry in August 1991. Spillane was joined on the Kerry team by his two brothers, Mick and Tom, and together won a total of 19 All-Ireland medals – a record for a set of brothers.^[1] After being chosen on the Munster inter-provincial team for the first time in 1976, Spillane was an automatic choice on the starting fifteen for the following six years. During that time he won four Railway Cup medals. In retirement from playing Spillane combined his teaching career with a new position as a sports broadcaster. His media career began with RTÉ in 1992, where he started as a co-commentator before progressing to the role of studio analyst with the flagship programme The Sunday Game. He also enjoyed a four-year tenure as host of the evening highlights edition of the programme. Spillane also writes a weekly column for the Sunday World. Even during his playing days Spillane came to be recognised as one of the greatest players of all time. After fighting his way back from a potentially career-ending anterior cruciate ligament injury, he was named in the right wing-forward position on the Football Team of the Century in 1984. Spillane was one of only two players from the modern era to be named on that team. He switched to the left-wing forward position when he was named on the Football Team of the Millennium in 1999. Spillane's collection of nine All-Stars is a record for a Gaelic footballer, while his tally of eight All-Ireland medals is also a record which he shares with fellow Kerry players Páidí Ó Sé, Mikey Sheehy, Denis "Ógie" Moran and Ger Power

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Legendary Irish Antarctic Explorer Tom Crean Framed Portrait

€70.00
38cm x 32cm Castlegregory Co Kerry Fine framed portrait of the legendary Irish Antarctic explorer and hero,Tom Crean. Thomas Crean (c. 16 February 1877 – 27 July 1938) was an Irish seaman and Antarctic explorer who was awarded the Albert Medal for Lifesaving. Crean was a member of three major expeditions to Antarctica during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, including Robert Falcon Scott's 1911–1913 Terra Nova Expedition. This saw the race to reach the South Pole lost to Roald Amundsen and ended in the deaths of Scott and his party. During the expedition, Crean's 35-statute-mile (56 km) solo walk across the Ross Ice Shelf to save the life of Edward Evans led to him receiving the Albert Medal. Crean left the family farm near Annascaul, in County Kerry, to enlist in the Royal Navy at age 16. In 1901, while serving on Ringarooma in New Zealand, he volunteered to join Scott's 1901–1904 Discovery Expedition to Antarctica, thus beginning his exploring career. After his experience on the Terra Nova, Crean's third and final Antarctic venture was as second officer on Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. After the ship Endurance became beset in the pack ice and sank, Crean and the ship's company spent 492 days drifting on the ice before undertaking a journey in the ship's lifeboats to Elephant Island. He was a member of the crew which made a small-boat journey of 800 nautical miles (1,500 km) from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island to seek aid for the stranded party. After retiring from the navy on health grounds in 1920, Crean ran his pub the South Pole Inn in County Kerry with his wife and daughters. He died in 1938. Crean was born around 16 February 1877 in the farming area of Gurtuchrane near the village of Annascaul on Corca Dhuibhne in County Kerry, Ireland, to Patrick and Catherine (née Courtney) Crean. One of 11 siblings with 7 brothers and 3 sisters. He attended the local Catholic school (at nearby Brackluin), leaving at the age of 12 to help on the family farm. Many sources, including Smith, give Crean's date of birth as 20 July 1877,but more recent scholarship demonstrates this is unlikely given parish records. At the age of 16, he enlisted in the Royal Navy at the naval station in nearby Minard Inlet, possibly after an argument with his father.His enlistment as a boy second class is recorded in Royal Navy records on 10 July 1893. Crean's initial naval apprenticeship was aboard the training ship Impregnable at Devonport. In November 1894, he was transferred to Devastation. In December 1894, Crean was posted to HMS Wild Swan a screw sloop as the ship headed to South America to join the Pacific Station. In 1895, Crean was serving in the Americas aboard Royal Arthur, the flagship assigned to the Pacific squadron’s base at Esquimalt in Canada. He was by this time, rated an ordinary seaman. Less than a year later, while serving a second term of service aboard Wild Swan he was rated an able seaman.He later joined the Navy's torpedo school ship, Defiance. By 1899, Crean had advanced to the rate of petty officer, second class and was serving in Vivid.In 1900, Crean was ledgered to the cruiser HMS Ringarooma, which was part of the Royal Navy's Australian Squadron based in Sydney. On 18 December 1901, he was demoted from petty officer to able seaman for an unspecified misdemeanour.In December 1901, the Ringarooma was ordered to assist Robert Falcon Scott's ship Discovery when it was docked at Lyttelton Harbour awaiting to departure to Antarctica. When an able seaman of Scott's ship deserted after striking a petty officer, a replacement was required; Crean volunteered, and was accepted.
Discovery Expedition, 1901–1904

Aerial view of Hut Point, McMurdo Sound, Antarctica – the location of Discovery's base, in 1902–04

Discovery sailed to the Antarctic on 21 December 1901, and seven weeks later, on 8 February 1902, arrived in McMurdo Sound, where she anchored at a spot which was later designated "Hut Point".Here the men established the base from which they would launch scientific and exploratory sledging journeys. Crean proved to be one of the most efficient man-haulers in the party; over the expedition as a whole, only seven of the 48-member party logged more time in harness than Crean's 149 days.^]Crean had a good sense of humour and was well liked by his companions. Scott's second-in-command, Albert Armitage, wrote in his book Two Years in the Antarctic that "Crean was an Irishman with a fund of wit and an even temper which nothing disturbed." Crean accompanied Lieutenant Michael Barne on three sledging trips across the Ross Ice Shelf, then known as the "Great Ice Barrier". These included the 12-man party led by Barne which set out on 30 October 1902 to lay depots in support of the main southern journey undertaken by Scott, Shackleton and Edward Wilson. On 11 November the Barne party passed the previous furthest south mark,set by Carsten Borchgrevink in 1900 at 78°50'S, a record which they held briefly until the southern party itself passed it on its way to an eventual 82°17'S. During the Antarctic winter of 1902 Discovery became locked in the ice. Efforts to free her during the summer of 1902–03 failed, and although some of the expedition's members (including Ernest Shackleton) left in a relief ship, Crean and the majority of the party remained in the Antarctic until the ship was finally freed in February 1904. After returning to regular naval duty, Crean was promoted to petty officer, first class, on Scott's recommendation.
Between expeditions, 1904–1910
Crean came back to regular duty at the naval base at Chatham, Kent, serving first in Pembroke in 1904 and later transferring to the torpedo school on Vernon. Crean had caught Captain Scott's attention with his attitude and work ethic on the Discovery Expedition, and in 1906 Scott requested that Crean join him on Victorious.Over the next few years, Crean followed Scott successively to Albemarle, Essex and Bulwark.By 1907, Scott was planning his second expedition to the Antarctic. Meanwhile, Ernest Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition, 1907–09, despite reaching a new furthest south record of 88°23'S, had failed to reach the South Pole. Scott was with Crean when the news of Shackleton's near miss became public; it is recorded that Scott observed to Crean: "I think we'd better have a shot next."
Terra Nova Expedition, 1910–1913

Scott's polar party at 87°S, 31 December 1911, before Crean's return with the last supporting party

Scott held Crean in high regard, so he was among the first people recruited for the Terra Nova Expedition, which set out for the Antarctic in June 1910, and one of the few men in the party with previous polar experience. After the expedition's arrival in McMurdo Sound in January 1911, Crean was as part of the 13-man team who established "One Ton Depot",130 statute miles (210 km) from Hut Point.so named because of the large amount of food and equipment cached there on the projected route to the South Pole. Returning from the depot to base camp at Cape Evans, Crean, accompanied by Apsley Cherry-Garrard and Henry "Birdie" Bowers, experienced near-disaster when camping on unstable sea ice. During the night the ice broke up, leaving the men adrift on an ice floe and separated from their sledges. Crean probably saved the group's lives, by leaping from floe to floe until he reached the Barrier edge and was able to summon help.

Petty officers Edgar Evans and Crean mending sleeping bags (May 1911)

Crean departed with Scott in November 1911, for the attempt at the South Pole. This journey had three stages: 400 statute miles (640 km) across the Barrier, 120 statute miles (190 km) up the heavily crevassed Beardmore Glacier to an altitude of 10,000 feet (3,000 m) above sea level, and then another 350 statute miles (560 km) to the Pole.At regular intervals, supporting parties returned to base; Crean was in the final group of eight men that marched on to the polar plateau and reached 87°32'S, 168 statute miles (270 km) from the pole. Here, on 4 January 1912, Scott selected his final polar party: Crean, William Lashly and Edward Evans were ordered to return to base, while Scott, Edgar Evans, Edward Wilson, Bowers and Lawrence Oates continued to the pole. Crean's biographer Michael Smith suggests that Crean would have been a better choice for the polar party than Edgar Evans, who was weakened by a recent hand injury (of which Scott was unaware). Crean, considered one of the toughest men in the expedition, had led a pony across the Barrier and had thus been saved much of the hard labour of man-hauling.Scott's critical biographer Roland Huntford records that the surgeon Edward L Atkinson, who had accompanied the southern party to the top of the Beardmore, had recommended either Lashly or Crean for the polar party rather than Edgar Evans.Scott in his diary recorded that Crean wept with disappointment at the prospect of having to turn back, so close to the goal.

Tom Crean and Edgar Evans exercising ponies, winter 1911

Soon after heading north on the 700-statute-mile (1,100 km) journey back to base camp, Crean's party lost the trail back to the Beardmore Glacier, and were faced with a long detour around a large icefall.With food supplies short, and needing to reach their next supply depot, the group made the decision to slide on their sledge, uncontrolled, down the icefall. The three men slid 2,000 feet (600 m),dodging crevasses up to 200 feet (61 m) wide, and ending their descent by overturning on an ice ridge. Evans later wrote: "How we ever escaped entirely uninjured is beyond me to explain". The gamble at the icefall succeeded, and the men reached their depot two days later.However, they had great difficulty navigating down the glacier. Lashly wrote: "I cannot describe the maze we got into and the hairbreadth escapes we have had to pass through."In his attempts to find the way down, Evans removed his goggles and subsequently suffered agonies of snow blindness that made him into a passenger. When the party was finally free of the glacier and on the level surface of the Barrier, Evans began to display the first symptoms of scurvy. By early February he was in great pain, his joints were swollen and discoloured, and he was passing blood. Through the efforts of Crean and Lashly the group struggled towards One Ton Depot, which they reached on 11 February. At this point Evans collapsed; Crean thought he had died and, according to Evans's account, "his hot tears fell on my face". With over 100 statute miles (160 km) still to travel before the relative safety of Hut Point, Crean and Lashly began hauling Evans on the sledge, "eking out his life with the last few drops of brandy that they still had with them".On 18 February they arrived at Corner Camp, still 35 statute miles (56 km) from Hut Point, with only one or two days' food rations left and still four or five days' man-hauling to do. They then decided that Crean should go on alone, to fetch help. With only a little chocolate and three biscuits to sustain him, without a tent or survival equipment,Crean walked the distance to Hut Point in 18 hours, arriving in a state of collapse to find Atkinson there, with the dog driver Dmtri Gerov. Crean reached safety just ahead of a fierce blizzard, which probably would have killed him, and which delayed the rescue party by a day and a half.Atkinson led a successful rescue, and Lashly and Evans were both brought to base camp alive. Crean modestly played down the significance of his feat of endurance. In a rare written account, he wrote in a letter: "So it fell to my lot to do the 30 miles for help, and only a couple of biscuits and a stick of chocolate to do it. Well, sir, I was very weak when I reached the hut." Scott's party failed to return. The winter of 1912 at Cape Evans was a sombre one, with the knowledge that the polar party had undoubtedly perished. Frank Debenhamwrote that "in the winter it was once again Crean who was the mainstay for cheerfulness in the now depleted mess deck part of the hut." In November 1912, Crean was one of the 11-man search party that found the remains of the polar party. On 12 November they spotted a cairn of snow, which proved to be a tent against which the drift had piled up. It contained the bodies of Scott, Wilson, and Bowers.Crean later wrote, referring to Scott in understated fashion, that he had "lost a good friend". On 12 February 1913 Crean and the remaining crew of the Terra Nova arrived in Lyttelton, New Zealand, and in June the ship returned to Cardiff.At Buckingham Palace the surviving members of the expedition were awarded Polar Medals by King George and Prince Louis of Battenberg, the First Sea Lord.Crean and Lashly were both awarded the Albert Medal, 2nd Class for saving Evans's life, these were presented by the King at Buckingham Palace on 26 July 1913. Crean was promoted to the rank of chief petty officer, retroactive to 9 September 1910.
Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Endurance Expedition), 1914–1917

Members of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition aboard Endurance, 1914. Crean is second from the left in the first standing row. Shackleton (wearing soft hat) is in the centre of the picture.

In October 1913, a close friend of Captain Scott, Joseph Foster Stackhouse, announced plans for a British Antarctic Expedition with a mission to explore the uncharted coastlines between King Edward VII Land and Graham Land. The expedition was due to depart England in August 1914 aboard RRS Discovery, the ship of Crean’s first mission to Antarctica. In February 1914, Stackhouse confirmed that Crean was to join the expedition as Boatswain, however, in April 1914, Stackhouse’s plans were postponed. This left Shackleton free to recruit Crean to his expedition which was also scheduled to depart in August 1914. Shackleton knew Crean well from the Discovery Expedition, and also knew of his exploits on Scott's last expedition. Like Scott, Shackleton trusted Crean:he was worth, in Shackleton's own word, "trumps".Crean joined Shackleton's Imperial Transantarctic Expedition on 25 May 1914, as second officer, with a varied range of duties. In the absence of a Canadian dog-handling expert who was hired but never appeared, Crean took charge of one of the dog-handling teams,and was later involved in the care and nurture of the pups born to one of his dogs, Sally, early in the expedition. On 19 January 1915 the expedition's ship, the Endurance, was beset in the Weddell Sea pack ice. In the early efforts to free her, Crean narrowly escaped being crushed by a sudden movement in the ice. The ship drifted in the ice for months, eventually sinking on 21 November. Shackleton informed the men that they would drag the food, gear, and three lifeboats across the pack ice, to Snow Hill or Robertson Island, 200 statute miles (320 km) away. Because of uneven ice conditions, pressure ridges, and the danger of ice breakup which could separate the men, they soon abandoned this plan: the men pitched camp and decided to wait. They hoped that the clockwise drift of the pack would carry them 400 statute miles (640 km) to Paulet Island where they knew there was a hut with emergency supplies. But the pack ice held firm as it carried the men well past Paulet Island, and did not break up until 9 April. The crew then had to sail and row the three ill-equipped lifeboats through the pack ice to Elephant Island, a trip which lasted five days. Crean and Hubert Hudson, the navigating officer of the Endurance, piloted their lifeboat with Crean effectively in charge as Hudson appeared to have suffered a breakdown.

Tom Crean, in full polar travelling gear

Upon reaching Elephant Island, Crean was one of the "four fittest men" detailed by Shackleton to find a safe camping-ground.Shackleton decided that, rather than waiting for a rescue ship that would probably never arrive, one of the lifeboats should be strengthened so that a crew could sail it to South Georgia and arrange a rescue. After the party was settled on a penguin rookeryabove the high-water mark, a group of men led by ship's carpenter Harry McNish began modifying one of the lifeboats—the James Caird—in preparation for this journey, which Shackleton would lead. Frank Wild, who would be in command of the party remaining on Elephant Island, wanted the dependable Crean to stay with him;Shackleton initially agreed, but changed his mind after Crean begged to be included in the boat's crew of six. The 800-nautical-mile (1,500 km) boat journey to South Georgia, described by polar historian Caroline Alexander as one of the most extraordinary feats of seamanship and navigation in recorded history, took 17 days through gales and snow squalls, in seas which the navigator, Frank Worsley, described as a "mountainous westerly swell".After setting off on 24 April 1916 with just the barest navigational equipment, they reached South Georgia on 10 May 1916. Shackleton, in his later account of the journey, recalled Crean's tuneless singing at the tiller: "He always sang when he was steering, and nobody ever discovered what the song was ... but somehow it was cheerful".

Crean and "his" pups

The party made its South Georgia landfall on the uninhabited southern coast, having decided that the risk of aiming directly for the whaling stations on the north side was too great; if they missed the island to the north they would be swept out into the Atlantic Ocean.The original plan was to work the James Caird around the coast, but the boat's rudder had broken off after their initial landing, and some of the party were, in Shackleton's view, unfit for further travel. The three fittest men—Shackleton, Crean, and Worsley—were decided to trek 30 statute miles (48 km) across the island's glaciated surface, in a hazardous 36-hour journey to the nearest manned whaling station. This trek was the first recorded crossing of the mountainous island, completed without tents, sleeping bags, or map—their only mountaineering equipment was a carpenter's adze, a length of alpine rope, and screws from the James Caird hammered through their boots to serve as crampons.They arrived at the whaling station at Stromness, tired and dirty, hair long and matted, faces blackened by months of cooking by blubber stoves—"the world's dirtiest men", according to Worsley.They quickly organized a boat to pick up the three on the other side of South Georgia, but thereafter it took Shackleton three months and four attempts by ship to rescue the other 22 men still on Elephant Island.
Later life
After returning to Britain in November 1916, Crean resumed naval duties. On 15 December 1916 he was promoted to the rank of warrant officer (as a boatswain), in recognition of his service on the Endurance, and was awarded his third Polar Medal. A month later, in April, he was granted a licence for the sale and consumption of alcohol from his dwelling house, a premises he had purchased in 1916. The business was left in the care of family while he served out his time in the Royal Navy. On 5 September 1917, Crean married Ellen Herlihy of Annascaul. In early 1920, Shackleton was organising another Antarctic expedition, later to be known as the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition. He invited Crean to join him, along with other officers from the Endurance. By this time, however, Crean's second daughter had arrived, and he had plans to open a business following his naval career. He turned down Shackleton's invitation.On his last naval assignment, with HMS Hecla, Crean suffered a bad fall which caused lasting effects to his vision. As a result, he was retired on medical grounds on 24 March 1920. He and Ellen opened a small public house in Annascaul, which he called the South Pole Inn.The couple had three daughters, Mary, Kate, and Eileen, although Kate died when she was four years old. Throughout his life, Crean remained an extremely modest man. When he returned to Kerry, he put all of his medals away and never again spoke about his experiences in the Antarctic. There is no reliable evidence of Crean giving any interviews to the press.Smith speculates that this may have been because Kerry was a hotbed of Irish nationalism and later Irish republicanism, and, along with County Cork, an epicentre of violence.The Crean family were once subject to a Black and Tan raid during the Irish War of Independence. Their inn was ransacked until the raiders happened across Crean's framed photo in Royal Navy dress uniform and medals. They then left his inn.On 13 April 1920, Tom Crean was present among crowds gathered in Tralee to protest against the treatment of republican prisoners who had gone on a hunger strike in Mountjoy jail. Crean's older brother was Cornelius Crean, a sergeant in the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC).Cornelius was based in County Cork, where he served with the RIC during the War of Independence.Sgt. Crean was killed during an IRA ambush near Upton on 25 April 1920.

Statue of Crean in Annascaul

In 1938, Crean became ill with a burst appendix. He was taken to the nearest hospital in Tralee, but as no surgeon was available, he was transferred to the Bon Secours Hospital in Cork, where his appendix was removed. Because the operation had been delayed, an infection developed, and after a week in the hospital he died on 27 July 1938. He was buried in his family's tomb at the cemetery in Ballynacourty, Corkaguiney, County Kerry.
Legacy

Mount Crean 8,630 feet (2,630 m) in Victoria Land, Antarctica and Mount Crean 2,300 feet (700 m) in Greenland

Crean Glacier on South Georgia.

Crean Lake on South Georgia.

An eight-part 1985 television series, The Last Place on Earth, told the story of Scott's expedition to the South Pole. Hugh Grant and Max von Sydow starred with Irish actor Daragh O'Malley, who portrayed Tom Crean.

A one-man play, Tom Crean – Antarctic Explorer, has been widely performed since 2001 by author Aidan Dooley, including a special showing at the South Pole Inn, Annascaul, in October 2001. Present were Crean's daughters, Eileen and Mary, both in their 80s. Apparently he never told them stories of his exploits; according to Eileen: "He put his medals and his sword in a box ... and that was that. He was a very humble man".

In July 2003, a bronze statue of Crean was unveiled across from his pub in Annascaul. It depicts him leaning against a crate whilst holding a pair of hiking poles in one hand and two of his beloved sled dog pups in the other.

Until its closure in 2017, the Dingle Brewing Company produced 'Tom Crean Lager', named in his honour. In 2016, Crean's granddaughter, Aileen Crean O’Brien, launched 'Expedition Ale' in partnership with Torc Breweries

In February 2021 it was announced that a new research vessel being commissioned by the Irish government’s Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marinewould be named 'RV Tom Crean', in Crean’s honour.
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Legendary Irish Antarctic Explorer Tom Crean

€60.00
27cm x 27cm Castlegregory Co Kerry Fine framed print of the legendary Irish Antarctic explorer and hero,Tom Crean mending blankets with his colleague on Shackleton's final Expedition Thomas Crean (c. 16 February 1877 – 27 July 1938) was an Irish seaman and Antarctic explorer who was awarded the Albert Medal for Lifesaving. Crean was a member of three major expeditions to Antarctica during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, including Robert Falcon Scott's 1911–1913 Terra Nova Expedition. This saw the race to reach the South Pole lost to Roald Amundsen and ended in the deaths of Scott and his party. During the expedition, Crean's 35-statute-mile (56 km) solo walk across the Ross Ice Shelf to save the life of Edward Evans led to him receiving the Albert Medal. Crean left the family farm near Annascaul, in County Kerry, to enlist in the Royal Navy at age 16. In 1901, while serving on Ringarooma in New Zealand, he volunteered to join Scott's 1901–1904 Discovery Expedition to Antarctica, thus beginning his exploring career. After his experience on the Terra Nova, Crean's third and final Antarctic venture was as second officer on Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. After the ship Endurance became beset in the pack ice and sank, Crean and the ship's company spent 492 days drifting on the ice before undertaking a journey in the ship's lifeboats to Elephant Island. He was a member of the crew which made a small-boat journey of 800 nautical miles (1,500 km) from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island to seek aid for the stranded party. After retiring from the navy on health grounds in 1920, Crean ran his pub the South Pole Inn in County Kerry with his wife and daughters. He died in 1938. Crean was born around 16 February 1877 in the farming area of Gurtuchrane near the village of Annascaul on Corca Dhuibhne in County Kerry, Ireland, to Patrick and Catherine (née Courtney) Crean. One of 11 siblings with 7 brothers and 3 sisters. He attended the local Catholic school (at nearby Brackluin), leaving at the age of 12 to help on the family farm. Many sources, including Smith, give Crean's date of birth as 20 July 1877,but more recent scholarship demonstrates this is unlikely given parish records. At the age of 16, he enlisted in the Royal Navy at the naval station in nearby Minard Inlet, possibly after an argument with his father.His enlistment as a boy second class is recorded in Royal Navy records on 10 July 1893. Crean's initial naval apprenticeship was aboard the training ship Impregnable at Devonport. In November 1894, he was transferred to Devastation. In December 1894, Crean was posted to HMS Wild Swan a screw sloop as the ship headed to South America to join the Pacific Station. In 1895, Crean was serving in the Americas aboard Royal Arthur, the flagship assigned to the Pacific squadron’s base at Esquimalt in Canada. He was by this time, rated an ordinary seaman. Less than a year later, while serving a second term of service aboard Wild Swan he was rated an able seaman.He later joined the Navy's torpedo school ship, Defiance. By 1899, Crean had advanced to the rate of petty officer, second class and was serving in Vivid.In 1900, Crean was ledgered to the cruiser HMS Ringarooma, which was part of the Royal Navy's Australian Squadron based in Sydney. On 18 December 1901, he was demoted from petty officer to able seaman for an unspecified misdemeanour.In December 1901, the Ringarooma was ordered to assist Robert Falcon Scott's ship Discovery when it was docked at Lyttelton Harbour awaiting to departure to Antarctica. When an able seaman of Scott's ship deserted after striking a petty officer, a replacement was required; Crean volunteered, and was accepted.
Discovery Expedition, 1901–1904

Aerial view of Hut Point, McMurdo Sound, Antarctica – the location of Discovery's base, in 1902–04

Discovery sailed to the Antarctic on 21 December 1901, and seven weeks later, on 8 February 1902, arrived in McMurdo Sound, where she anchored at a spot which was later designated "Hut Point".Here the men established the base from which they would launch scientific and exploratory sledging journeys. Crean proved to be one of the most efficient man-haulers in the party; over the expedition as a whole, only seven of the 48-member party logged more time in harness than Crean's 149 days.^]Crean had a good sense of humour and was well liked by his companions. Scott's second-in-command, Albert Armitage, wrote in his book Two Years in the Antarctic that "Crean was an Irishman with a fund of wit and an even temper which nothing disturbed." Crean accompanied Lieutenant Michael Barne on three sledging trips across the Ross Ice Shelf, then known as the "Great Ice Barrier". These included the 12-man party led by Barne which set out on 30 October 1902 to lay depots in support of the main southern journey undertaken by Scott, Shackleton and Edward Wilson. On 11 November the Barne party passed the previous furthest south mark,set by Carsten Borchgrevink in 1900 at 78°50'S, a record which they held briefly until the southern party itself passed it on its way to an eventual 82°17'S. During the Antarctic winter of 1902 Discovery became locked in the ice. Efforts to free her during the summer of 1902–03 failed, and although some of the expedition's members (including Ernest Shackleton) left in a relief ship, Crean and the majority of the party remained in the Antarctic until the ship was finally freed in February 1904. After returning to regular naval duty, Crean was promoted to petty officer, first class, on Scott's recommendation.
Between expeditions, 1904–1910
Crean came back to regular duty at the naval base at Chatham, Kent, serving first in Pembroke in 1904 and later transferring to the torpedo school on Vernon. Crean had caught Captain Scott's attention with his attitude and work ethic on the Discovery Expedition, and in 1906 Scott requested that Crean join him on Victorious.Over the next few years, Crean followed Scott successively to Albemarle, Essex and Bulwark.By 1907, Scott was planning his second expedition to the Antarctic. Meanwhile, Ernest Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition, 1907–09, despite reaching a new furthest south record of 88°23'S, had failed to reach the South Pole. Scott was with Crean when the news of Shackleton's near miss became public; it is recorded that Scott observed to Crean: "I think we'd better have a shot next."
Terra Nova Expedition, 1910–1913

Scott's polar party at 87°S, 31 December 1911, before Crean's return with the last supporting party

Scott held Crean in high regard, so he was among the first people recruited for the Terra Nova Expedition, which set out for the Antarctic in June 1910, and one of the few men in the party with previous polar experience. After the expedition's arrival in McMurdo Sound in January 1911, Crean was as part of the 13-man team who established "One Ton Depot",130 statute miles (210 km) from Hut Point.so named because of the large amount of food and equipment cached there on the projected route to the South Pole. Returning from the depot to base camp at Cape Evans, Crean, accompanied by Apsley Cherry-Garrard and Henry "Birdie" Bowers, experienced near-disaster when camping on unstable sea ice. During the night the ice broke up, leaving the men adrift on an ice floe and separated from their sledges. Crean probably saved the group's lives, by leaping from floe to floe until he reached the Barrier edge and was able to summon help.

Petty officers Edgar Evans and Crean mending sleeping bags (May 1911)

Crean departed with Scott in November 1911, for the attempt at the South Pole. This journey had three stages: 400 statute miles (640 km) across the Barrier, 120 statute miles (190 km) up the heavily crevassed Beardmore Glacier to an altitude of 10,000 feet (3,000 m) above sea level, and then another 350 statute miles (560 km) to the Pole.At regular intervals, supporting parties returned to base; Crean was in the final group of eight men that marched on to the polar plateau and reached 87°32'S, 168 statute miles (270 km) from the pole. Here, on 4 January 1912, Scott selected his final polar party: Crean, William Lashly and Edward Evans were ordered to return to base, while Scott, Edgar Evans, Edward Wilson, Bowers and Lawrence Oates continued to the pole. Crean's biographer Michael Smith suggests that Crean would have been a better choice for the polar party than Edgar Evans, who was weakened by a recent hand injury (of which Scott was unaware). Crean, considered one of the toughest men in the expedition, had led a pony across the Barrier and had thus been saved much of the hard labour of man-hauling.Scott's critical biographer Roland Huntford records that the surgeon Edward L Atkinson, who had accompanied the southern party to the top of the Beardmore, had recommended either Lashly or Crean for the polar party rather than Edgar Evans.Scott in his diary recorded that Crean wept with disappointment at the prospect of having to turn back, so close to the goal.

Tom Crean and Edgar Evans exercising ponies, winter 1911

Soon after heading north on the 700-statute-mile (1,100 km) journey back to base camp, Crean's party lost the trail back to the Beardmore Glacier, and were faced with a long detour around a large icefall.With food supplies short, and needing to reach their next supply depot, the group made the decision to slide on their sledge, uncontrolled, down the icefall. The three men slid 2,000 feet (600 m),dodging crevasses up to 200 feet (61 m) wide, and ending their descent by overturning on an ice ridge. Evans later wrote: "How we ever escaped entirely uninjured is beyond me to explain". The gamble at the icefall succeeded, and the men reached their depot two days later.However, they had great difficulty navigating down the glacier. Lashly wrote: "I cannot describe the maze we got into and the hairbreadth escapes we have had to pass through."In his attempts to find the way down, Evans removed his goggles and subsequently suffered agonies of snow blindness that made him into a passenger. When the party was finally free of the glacier and on the level surface of the Barrier, Evans began to display the first symptoms of scurvy. By early February he was in great pain, his joints were swollen and discoloured, and he was passing blood. Through the efforts of Crean and Lashly the group struggled towards One Ton Depot, which they reached on 11 February. At this point Evans collapsed; Crean thought he had died and, according to Evans's account, "his hot tears fell on my face". With over 100 statute miles (160 km) still to travel before the relative safety of Hut Point, Crean and Lashly began hauling Evans on the sledge, "eking out his life with the last few drops of brandy that they still had with them".On 18 February they arrived at Corner Camp, still 35 statute miles (56 km) from Hut Point, with only one or two days' food rations left and still four or five days' man-hauling to do. They then decided that Crean should go on alone, to fetch help. With only a little chocolate and three biscuits to sustain him, without a tent or survival equipment,Crean walked the distance to Hut Point in 18 hours, arriving in a state of collapse to find Atkinson there, with the dog driver Dmtri Gerov. Crean reached safety just ahead of a fierce blizzard, which probably would have killed him, and which delayed the rescue party by a day and a half.Atkinson led a successful rescue, and Lashly and Evans were both brought to base camp alive. Crean modestly played down the significance of his feat of endurance. In a rare written account, he wrote in a letter: "So it fell to my lot to do the 30 miles for help, and only a couple of biscuits and a stick of chocolate to do it. Well, sir, I was very weak when I reached the hut." Scott's party failed to return. The winter of 1912 at Cape Evans was a sombre one, with the knowledge that the polar party had undoubtedly perished. Frank Debenhamwrote that "in the winter it was once again Crean who was the mainstay for cheerfulness in the now depleted mess deck part of the hut." In November 1912, Crean was one of the 11-man search party that found the remains of the polar party. On 12 November they spotted a cairn of snow, which proved to be a tent against which the drift had piled up. It contained the bodies of Scott, Wilson, and Bowers.Crean later wrote, referring to Scott in understated fashion, that he had "lost a good friend". On 12 February 1913 Crean and the remaining crew of the Terra Nova arrived in Lyttelton, New Zealand, and in June the ship returned to Cardiff.At Buckingham Palace the surviving members of the expedition were awarded Polar Medals by King George and Prince Louis of Battenberg, the First Sea Lord.Crean and Lashly were both awarded the Albert Medal, 2nd Class for saving Evans's life, these were presented by the King at Buckingham Palace on 26 July 1913. Crean was promoted to the rank of chief petty officer, retroactive to 9 September 1910.
Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Endurance Expedition), 1914–1917

Members of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition aboard Endurance, 1914. Crean is second from the left in the first standing row. Shackleton (wearing soft hat) is in the centre of the picture.

In October 1913, a close friend of Captain Scott, Joseph Foster Stackhouse, announced plans for a British Antarctic Expedition with a mission to explore the uncharted coastlines between King Edward VII Land and Graham Land. The expedition was due to depart England in August 1914 aboard RRS Discovery, the ship of Crean’s first mission to Antarctica. In February 1914, Stackhouse confirmed that Crean was to join the expedition as Boatswain, however, in April 1914, Stackhouse’s plans were postponed. This left Shackleton free to recruit Crean to his expedition which was also scheduled to depart in August 1914. Shackleton knew Crean well from the Discovery Expedition, and also knew of his exploits on Scott's last expedition. Like Scott, Shackleton trusted Crean:he was worth, in Shackleton's own word, "trumps".Crean joined Shackleton's Imperial Transantarctic Expedition on 25 May 1914, as second officer, with a varied range of duties. In the absence of a Canadian dog-handling expert who was hired but never appeared, Crean took charge of one of the dog-handling teams,and was later involved in the care and nurture of the pups born to one of his dogs, Sally, early in the expedition. On 19 January 1915 the expedition's ship, the Endurance, was beset in the Weddell Sea pack ice. In the early efforts to free her, Crean narrowly escaped being crushed by a sudden movement in the ice. The ship drifted in the ice for months, eventually sinking on 21 November. Shackleton informed the men that they would drag the food, gear, and three lifeboats across the pack ice, to Snow Hill or Robertson Island, 200 statute miles (320 km) away. Because of uneven ice conditions, pressure ridges, and the danger of ice breakup which could separate the men, they soon abandoned this plan: the men pitched camp and decided to wait. They hoped that the clockwise drift of the pack would carry them 400 statute miles (640 km) to Paulet Island where they knew there was a hut with emergency supplies. But the pack ice held firm as it carried the men well past Paulet Island, and did not break up until 9 April. The crew then had to sail and row the three ill-equipped lifeboats through the pack ice to Elephant Island, a trip which lasted five days. Crean and Hubert Hudson, the navigating officer of the Endurance, piloted their lifeboat with Crean effectively in charge as Hudson appeared to have suffered a breakdown.

Tom Crean, in full polar travelling gear

Upon reaching Elephant Island, Crean was one of the "four fittest men" detailed by Shackleton to find a safe camping-ground.Shackleton decided that, rather than waiting for a rescue ship that would probably never arrive, one of the lifeboats should be strengthened so that a crew could sail it to South Georgia and arrange a rescue. After the party was settled on a penguin rookeryabove the high-water mark, a group of men led by ship's carpenter Harry McNish began modifying one of the lifeboats—the James Caird—in preparation for this journey, which Shackleton would lead. Frank Wild, who would be in command of the party remaining on Elephant Island, wanted the dependable Crean to stay with him;Shackleton initially agreed, but changed his mind after Crean begged to be included in the boat's crew of six. The 800-nautical-mile (1,500 km) boat journey to South Georgia, described by polar historian Caroline Alexander as one of the most extraordinary feats of seamanship and navigation in recorded history, took 17 days through gales and snow squalls, in seas which the navigator, Frank Worsley, described as a "mountainous westerly swell".After setting off on 24 April 1916 with just the barest navigational equipment, they reached South Georgia on 10 May 1916. Shackleton, in his later account of the journey, recalled Crean's tuneless singing at the tiller: "He always sang when he was steering, and nobody ever discovered what the song was ... but somehow it was cheerful".

Crean and "his" pups

The party made its South Georgia landfall on the uninhabited southern coast, having decided that the risk of aiming directly for the whaling stations on the north side was too great; if they missed the island to the north they would be swept out into the Atlantic Ocean.The original plan was to work the James Caird around the coast, but the boat's rudder had broken off after their initial landing, and some of the party were, in Shackleton's view, unfit for further travel. The three fittest men—Shackleton, Crean, and Worsley—were decided to trek 30 statute miles (48 km) across the island's glaciated surface, in a hazardous 36-hour journey to the nearest manned whaling station. This trek was the first recorded crossing of the mountainous island, completed without tents, sleeping bags, or map—their only mountaineering equipment was a carpenter's adze, a length of alpine rope, and screws from the James Caird hammered through their boots to serve as crampons.They arrived at the whaling station at Stromness, tired and dirty, hair long and matted, faces blackened by months of cooking by blubber stoves—"the world's dirtiest men", according to Worsley.They quickly organized a boat to pick up the three on the other side of South Georgia, but thereafter it took Shackleton three months and four attempts by ship to rescue the other 22 men still on Elephant Island.
Later life
After returning to Britain in November 1916, Crean resumed naval duties. On 15 December 1916 he was promoted to the rank of warrant officer (as a boatswain), in recognition of his service on the Endurance, and was awarded his third Polar Medal. A month later, in April, he was granted a licence for the sale and consumption of alcohol from his dwelling house, a premises he had purchased in 1916. The business was left in the care of family while he served out his time in the Royal Navy. On 5 September 1917, Crean married Ellen Herlihy of Annascaul. In early 1920, Shackleton was organising another Antarctic expedition, later to be known as the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition. He invited Crean to join him, along with other officers from the Endurance. By this time, however, Crean's second daughter had arrived, and he had plans to open a business following his naval career. He turned down Shackleton's invitation.On his last naval assignment, with HMS Hecla, Crean suffered a bad fall which caused lasting effects to his vision. As a result, he was retired on medical grounds on 24 March 1920. He and Ellen opened a small public house in Annascaul, which he called the South Pole Inn.The couple had three daughters, Mary, Kate, and Eileen, although Kate died when she was four years old. Throughout his life, Crean remained an extremely modest man. When he returned to Kerry, he put all of his medals away and never again spoke about his experiences in the Antarctic. There is no reliable evidence of Crean giving any interviews to the press.Smith speculates that this may have been because Kerry was a hotbed of Irish nationalism and later Irish republicanism, and, along with County Cork, an epicentre of violence.The Crean family were once subject to a Black and Tan raid during the Irish War of Independence. Their inn was ransacked until the raiders happened across Crean's framed photo in Royal Navy dress uniform and medals. They then left his inn.On 13 April 1920, Tom Crean was present among crowds gathered in Tralee to protest against the treatment of republican prisoners who had gone on a hunger strike in Mountjoy jail. Crean's older brother was Cornelius Crean, a sergeant in the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC).Cornelius was based in County Cork, where he served with the RIC during the War of Independence.Sgt. Crean was killed during an IRA ambush near Upton on 25 April 1920.

Statue of Crean in Annascaul

In 1938, Crean became ill with a burst appendix. He was taken to the nearest hospital in Tralee, but as no surgeon was available, he was transferred to the Bon Secours Hospital in Cork, where his appendix was removed. Because the operation had been delayed, an infection developed, and after a week in the hospital he died on 27 July 1938. He was buried in his family's tomb at the cemetery in Ballynacourty, Corkaguiney, County Kerry.
Legacy

Mount Crean 8,630 feet (2,630 m) in Victoria Land, Antarctica and Mount Crean 2,300 feet (700 m) in Greenland

Crean Glacier on South Georgia.

Crean Lake on South Georgia.

An eight-part 1985 television series, The Last Place on Earth, told the story of Scott's expedition to the South Pole. Hugh Grant and Max von Sydow starred with Irish actor Daragh O'Malley, who portrayed Tom Crean.

A one-man play, Tom Crean – Antarctic Explorer, has been widely performed since 2001 by author Aidan Dooley, including a special showing at the South Pole Inn, Annascaul, in October 2001. Present were Crean's daughters, Eileen and Mary, both in their 80s. Apparently he never told them stories of his exploits; according to Eileen: "He put his medals and his sword in a box ... and that was that. He was a very humble man".

In July 2003, a bronze statue of Crean was unveiled across from his pub in Annascaul. It depicts him leaning against a crate whilst holding a pair of hiking poles in one hand and two of his beloved sled dog pups in the other.

Until its closure in 2017, the Dingle Brewing Company produced 'Tom Crean Lager', named in his honour. In 2016, Crean's granddaughter, Aileen Crean O’Brien, launched 'Expedition Ale' in partnership with Torc Breweries

In February 2021 it was announced that a new research vessel being commissioned by the Irish government’s Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marinewould be named 'RV Tom Crean', in Crean’s honour.
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Laurel & Hardy and Wives visit Ireland 1953

€60.00

32cm x 27cm
From the Evening Echo, September 9, 1953

THE famous comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were scheduled to disembark from the liner ‘America’ which called at Cobh today from New York. No elaborate reception was planned, and the shipping officials carried out the usual arrangements for the arrival of important passengers.

The famous pair wanted no fuss, and of course, the liner company officals were anxious to carry out to the letter the wishes of their first-class passengers.

Mr Sean O’Brien, Irish manager of US Lines, said his officials were there to greet them and satisfy their slightest wish.

But often on the occasion when the planning is most careful, something goes wrong. And in this case it did. For neither the comedians, nor their wives, nor the company officials, nor the police nor the many other people associated with the life of a trans- Atlantic port of call, reckoned with the children, to whom the funny faces and the queer screen antics of the cuckoo comedians is better known than the president of the US.

The entire children’s population of Cobh must have played truant from school for they blocked all traffic, and despite the presence of several vastly amused policemen, they clung onto Laurel and Hardy.

They begged for autographs, ruffled their ties and generally gave them a whole-hearted reception.

Non-plussed, but only for a moment, the comedians entered into the fun of the affair, and nobody could accuse them of being stinted in giving autographs.

Twenty-three stone Hardy (22st 12lbs to be exact) commented: “We were absolutely overwhelmed. There scarcely ever was a film scene like it. They are grand children, and Stan and I are grateful to them.”

There was no great advance publicity, but all of Cobh and outlying districts seemed to know that Laurel and Hardy had arrived. Family parties went out in small boats and cheered as the tender bearing the passengers from the liner drew into the quayside.

The party were taken by Mr O’Brien to hear the carillon bells of Cobh Cathedral and the comedians told an Echo reporter that hearing the ‘Cuckoo Song’ played on the bells was one of the greatest thrills of their lives.

Later, the party went to kiss the Blarney Stone. All performed the traditional rite of kissing except Hardy, who commented: “Nobody would hold me. I am too big.”

Ald P McGrath, Lord Mayor of Cork, accompanied by Mr AA Healy, TC, received them at the City Hall and was photographed with them. Asked to nominate their favourite film the bluff Oliver replied: “Fra Diavolo.”

They have been partners for thirty years. Subsequently the comedians and their wives left for Dublin where they are to fulfil a theatrical engagement.

Amongst the others who met them in Cobh was Mrs D Murphy, on behalf of Mr George Heffernan, Tourist Agent, Cork.

Another passenger to disembark from the vessel was the Hon Kit Clardy, Republican Senator from Michigan. He intends to spend a short holiday in this country. In all, 117 disembarked at Cobh.

Embarking passengers included a party of 40 pilgrims from Cork to Lourdes and Liseux. The spiritual director to the party is Rev Maurice Walsh, SMA, and the pilgrimage arrangements were in the hands of Miss B Arnold, of Mr Heffernan’s agency.

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Large,Oval Bushmills Old Irish Whiskey Mirror

€650.00
83cm x 53cm Bushmills is officially the worlds oldest whiskey distillery- when in 1608 King James I granted Sir Thomas Phillips,landowner and Governor of Co Antrim,Ireland - a licence to distill.It was in 1784 when Mr Hugh Anderson registered the Old Bushmills Distillery and the Pot Still became its registered trademark, which is still a mark of genuine distinction to this day. The Bushmills area has a long tradition with distillation. According to one story, as far back as 1276, an early settler called Sir Robert Savage of Ards, before defeating the Irish in battle, fortified his troops with "a mighty drop of acqua vitae". In 1608, a licence was granted to Sir Thomas Phillips (Irish adventurer) by King James I to distil whiskey. The Bushmills Old Distillery Company itself was not established until 1784 by Hugh Anderson. Bushmills suffered many lean years with numerous periods of closure with no record of the distillery being in operation in the official records both in 1802 and in 1822. In 1860 a Belfast spirit merchant named Jame McColgan and Patrick Corrigan bought the distillery; in 1880 they formed a limited company. In 1885, the original Bushmills buildings were destroyed by fire but the distillery was swiftly rebuilt. In 1890, a steamship owned and operated by the distillery, SS Bushmills, made its maiden voyage across the Atlantic to deliver Bushmills whiskey to America. It called at Philadelphiaand New York City before heading on to Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Yokohama.

In the early 20th century, the U.S. was a very important market for Bushmills (and other Irish Whiskey producers). American Prohibition in 1920 came as a large blow to the Irish Whiskey industry, but Bushmills managed to survive. Wilson Boyd, Bushmills' director at the time, predicted the end of prohibition and had large stores of whiskey ready to export. After the Second World War, the distillery was bought by Isaac Wolfson, and, in 1972, it was taken over by Irish Distillers, meaning that Irish Distillers controlled the production of all Irish whiskey at the time. In June 1988, Irish Distillers was bought by French liquor group Pernod Ricard.In June 2005, the distillery was bought by Diageo for £200 million. Diageo have also announced a large advertising campaign in order to regain a market share for Bushmills.In May 2008, the Bank of Ireland issued a new series of sterling banknotes in Northern Ireland which all feature an illustration of the Old Bushmills Distillery on the obverse side, replacing the previous notes series which depicted Queen's University of Belfast. In November 2014 it was announced that Diageo had traded the Bushmills brand with Jose Cuervo in exchange for the 50% of the Don Julio brand of tequila that Diageo did not already own.

Bushmills whiskey range on display at the distillery

Bushmills Original – Irish whiskey blend sometimes called White Bush or Bushmills White Label. The grain whiskey is matured in American oak casks.

Black Bush – A blend with a significantly greater proportion of malt whiskey than the white label. It features malt whiskey aged in casks previously used for Spanish Oloroso sherry.

Red Bush – Like the Black Bush, this is a blend with a higher proportion of malt whiskey than the standard bottling, but in contrast the malt whiskey has been matured in ex-bourbon casks.

Bushmills 10 year single malt – Combines malt whiskeys aged at least 10 years in American bourbon or Oloroso sherry casks.

Bushmills Distillery Reserve 12 year single malt – exclusively available at the Old Bushmills Distillery, this 12 year aged single malt is matured in oak casks for a rich, complex flavour with notes of sherry, dark chocolate and spices.

Bushmills 16 year single malt – Malt whiskeys aged at least 16 years in American bourbon barrels or Spanish Oloroso sherry butts are mixed together before finishing in Port pipes for a few months.

Bushmills 21 year single malt – A limited number of 21 year bottles are made each year. After 19 years, bourbon-barrel-aged and sherry-cask-aged malt whiskeys are combined, which is followed by two years of finishing in Madeira drums.

Bushmills 1608: Originally released as a special 400th Anniversary whiskey; since 2009 it will be available only in the Whiskey Shop at the distillery and at duty-free shops.
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Large,framed Sunday Press Advert-Ireland’s Greatest Newspaper !

€150.00

67cm x 54cm Dublin The Sunday Press was a weekly newspaper published in Ireland from 1949 until 1995. It was launched by Éamon de Valera's Irish Press group following the defeat of his Fianna Fáil party in the 1948 Irish general election. Like its sister newspaper, the daily The Irish Press, politically the paper loyally supported Fianna Fáil. The future Taoiseach Seán Lemass was the managing editor of the Irish Press who spearheaded the launch of the Sunday paper, with the first editor Colonel Matt Feehan. Many of the Irish Press journalists contributed to the paper. 'When I open the pages, I duck' was Brendan Behan's description of reading The Sunday Press, for the habit of published memoirs of veterans (usually those aligned to Fianna Fáil) of the Irish War of Independence. It soon built up a large readership, and overtook its main competitor the Sunday Independent, which tended to support Fine Gael. At its peak The Sunday Press sold up to 475,000 copies every week, and had a readership of over one million, around one third of the Irish population. Like the Evening Press, the paper's readership held up better over the years than that of the flagship title in the group, The Irish Press, and it might have survived as a stand-alone title had it been sold. However, with the collapse of the Irish Press Newspapers group in May 1995, all three titles ceased publication immediately. The launch of Ireland on Sunday in 1997 was initially interpreted by many observers as an attempt to appeal to the former readership of The Sunday Press, seen as generally rural, fairly conservative Catholic, and with a traditional Irish nationalist political outlook. When Christmas Day fell on Sunday in 1949, 1955, 1960, 1966, 1977, 1983, 1988 and 1994 the paper came out on the Saturday. Vincent Jennings at the age of 31 became editor of The Sunday Press in 1968, serving until December 1986, when he became manager of the Irish Press Group. Journalists who worked at the press include Stephen Collins served as political editor his father Willie Collins was deputy editorand Michael Carwood became sports editor of The Sunday Press in 1988^[5] until its closure in 1995.

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Large Vintage Guinness Mirror

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 before he 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. 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 Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.

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.

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.” Origins : Dublin Dimensions : 63cm x 90cm

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Large Irish Writers Charcoal Sketch

€200.00

Striking and large print of a drawing on charcoal depicting five Irish Literary behemoths-James Joyce,W.B Yeats ,Samuel Beckett,Brendan Behan & Sean O'Casey.There is some slight water staining on the bottom of the front as this was stored in the basement of a long closed Dublin pub but now gladly resurrected and reframed. Dublin 90cm x 68cm

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Large Framed Print of The Blind Piper c 1844-Joseph Haverty

€140.00

This painting of Clare piper Pádraig Ó Briain by the artist Joseph Haverty was hugely popular in 19th-century Ireland.

82cm x 58cm. Limerick
An oil painting of a street musician who played regularly in Limerick city, was painted in oil on canvas. The subject, uileann piper Pádraig Ó Briain (there are several variant spellings of his name on record), occupied a space on the corner of the Crescent and Hartstonge Street in Limerick and presumably Haverty noticed him there. Pipers were esteemed in Ireland and were a popular subject. Haverty had a sound instinct for what would appeal to an audience. He transposed the piper from an urban to a woodland setting, which is theatrical but effective, and the painting seems to have been known under several different titles, including The Father and Daughter (O’Brien had two daughters but opinions differ as to whether the girl depicted was one of them), The Blind Piper and The Irish Piper.

Reproduced as a print under the title The Limerick Piper, it sold widely throughout the country and became extremely well-known. Haverty made another quite different painting of the piper, now in the University of Limerick collection, but he also made copies of his own work.

To complicate things slightly: The Blind Piper was exhibited by the RHA in 1845, when it was praised in the Nation. It was perhaps this version that Sir Josslyn Gore-Booth bought and exhibited at the Cork exhibition in 1852. But there were other versions in circulation. Young Irelander William Smith O’Brien reputedly commissioned a copy from Haverty, and bequeathed it to the National Gallery of Ireland in 1864.

The Blind Piper is included in the exhibition Oidhreacht: Transforming Tradition at the Highlanes Gallery, Laurence Street, Drogheda, Co Louth (July 13th – September 14th), timed to coincide with Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann which takes place July 10th-18th in Drogheda.

The annual week-long festival, a lively mix of summer school, competition and a packed programme of traditional music concerts attracts up to 500,000 people from throughout Ireland North and South, the UK and internationally. The exhibition of art and artefacts is drawn from Drogheda’s Municipal Art Collection as well as those of major public museums, including the National Gallery of Ireland and Imma. It aims to explore “the rich social, political and aesthetic contexts in which the traditional arts have been expressed”.

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Large Dubliners Display with Autographs of Band-And Pints of Bass!

€250.00

Fantastic framed .large Dubliners drinking pints of Bass display with autographs of all the band members underneath. 75cm x 66cm Dublin The Dubliners were quite simply one of the most famous Irish folk bands of all time.Founded in 1962,they enjoyed a 50 year career with the success of the band centred on their two lead singers,Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew.They garnered massive international acclaim with their lively Irish folk songs,traditional street ballads and instrumentals eventually crossing over to mainstream culture by appearing on Top of the Pops in 1967 with "Seven Drunken Nights" which sold over 250000 singles in the UK alone.Later a number of collaborations with the Pogues saw them enter the UK singles charts again on another 2 occasions.Instrumental in popularising Irish folk music abroad ,they influenced many generations of Irish bands and covers of Irish ballads such as Raglan Road and the Auld Triangle by Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew tend to be regarded as definitive versions.They also enjoyed a hard drinking and partying image and this advertising collaboration with Bass Ales must be seen as the perfect fit in terms of a target audience !

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Large Dublin Gold Irish Whiskey Advert

€300.00
Fantastic ,imposing Dublin Gold Matured for Seven Years Irish Whiskey Advert in magnificent, gold frame 60 cm x 95cm Dublin

"A whiskey is the creation of something harmonious, balanced and fundamentally social... It brings together the mastery of the distilling process with the mystery of its humble ingredients. It is this indefinable nature that makes a Premium Whiskey far more than the sum of its parts.” The Jameson Masters

In order to be called an “Irish Whiskey”, distilled spirit must be;

- aged in wood barrels for a minimum of 3 years.

- a minimum of 40% ABV.

- distilled and matured on the island of Ireland.There are several types of Irish Whiskey including; Pot still Irish Whiskey Pot still whiskey is whiskey made from a combination of malted barley and unmalted barley and is distilled in traditional copper pot stills. Pot Still Irish Whiskeys are characterised by full bodied flavours and a wonderful creamy mouth feel. Blended Irish Whiskey A blended whiskey is a combination of 2 or more styles of whiskey (grain, pot still or malt whiskey). Grain Irish Whiskey Grain whiskey is typically produced from a mash of maize and malted barley. Grain whiskey is lighter in character than pot still whiskey and generally the characteristics display delicate, fragrant and floral notes. Malt Irish WhIskey A single malt whiskey is made exclusively from malted barley and is distilled using a pot still.

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Large ,illustrated Map of Ireland

€180.00

80cm x 65cm. Ballysimon Co Limerick Detailed and illustrated large Map of Ireland outlining the numerous antiquities & places of historical interest to be visited .

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Knock Pottery Marble Clock

€60.00

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Kinihan’s Irish Whisky Vintage Advert

€80.00

Vintage Kinihans Irish Whiskey Framed Advert 27cm x 35cm Tullow Co Carlow
Foundation

1779
The Kinahans brand was founded on Trinity Street, Dublin in 1779 by Daniel Kinahan, who set out to do things differently. The brand began its epic saga, a journey through time and an odyssey across generations.

Leading The Whiskey Evolution

1780
It is fascinating to think that today's rich, deeply complex and flavoursome glass of matured whiskey, originally was made and consumed completely differently. Known as moonshine (or Poitin) today, the original whiskey was a mere distillate, which was consumed as a raw colourless spirit with little character and a very rough taste. Maturation was not part of whiskey making process, let alone being as fundamental as it is today. The wooden casks, widely used for maturation today, originally had nothing to do with whiskey-making and have been invented and used for storage and transportation of all kinds of goods including metals and gold. With dozens of small and large factories distilling and selling whiskey on the Isle of Ireland at the time, Kinahans believed in a different kind of future for what whiskey should be. In 1980 Kinahans acquired impressive Vaults at Hamilton Row, Dublin, to enable it to store casks and mature whiskey. Built to the rear of No.11 Merrion Square, the Vaults became the epicentre of whiskey maturation, with Kinahans becoming one of the first whiskey brands to make and export only matured whiskeys.

Growing Popularity & The "LL" Mark

1807
With a history dating back more than 239 years it is inevitable that many myths and legends about Kinahans whiskey steeped into storytelling. But the origins of the L.L. mark have been well documented. In 1807, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (the head of state), Charles Lennox, was so impressed with the whiskeys made by Kinahans that he ordered all stocks at the Kinahans Dublin vaults to be taken exclusively for his private use, marking each cask with “L.L.”. The news, which were highly advertised, led to Kinahans becoming one of the most sought after whiskeys both, domestically and in neighbouring countries.

The Carlisle Building

1819
In 1819, the popularity of the Kinahans brand allowed to set up its own four story headquarters, at the corner of Burgh Quay and D’Olier Street, Dublin, Named the Carlisle Building, to resonate with nearby Carlisle Bridge, the premises were built as part of the re-development of the city being overseen by the city's Wide Street Commissioners. By the middle of 20th Century the historic building has been taken down.

London's Gateway to Global Trade

1841
As Kinahans popularity grew, London became a natural base for the company in 1800s wishing to expand into international markets. On 31 December 1841, Kinahans appointed Mr. George Smyth as its first agent in the city of London, with an address at no.1 White Hart Court, London, UK. For over half a century the company's London base has formed the centre of a great volume of export trade to the Continent, China, India, Australia and all the foreign markets.

The Royal Warrants

1845
Throughout 1800s Kinahans continued to offer the highest level of differentiated taste and craftsmanship, for which Queen Victoria awarded it a Royal Warrant in 1845. With major accolades in hand, the recruitment of the agents and retail outlets continued.

The Preferred Whiskey Of Jerry Thomas

1862
With popularity in the British Isles, by the middle of 19th century Kinahans whiskey came to be the notice of many American authors and connoisseurs. In 1860s Kinahans came to the attention of the legendary Jerry Thomas. Also known as "the father of American mixology", Jerry Thomas was a revolutionary character, who due to his creativity and showmanship transformed the image of the bartender as a creative professional. In his 1862 "Guide on How to Mix Drinks", Jerry Thomas featured Kinahans in one of his book's recipes. The Bartender's "Guide on How to Mix Drinks" was the first drinks and mixology book ever published in the United States and can be counted amongst very few most influential drinks publications to date.

Protected Trademark

1863
Since its rise to popularity Kinahans faced hazardous times. Because of the brand's accolades, unscrupulous merchants publicans and others were restless in using the Kinahans bottles, labels and brand marks in order to sell their own products. In 1863, the activities of William Bolton, a grocer in Dublin's Westmoreland Street, led to the final and landmark case of legal redress. In the Irish case of Kinahan v. Bolton, the Irish Courts granted an injunction to restrain others from invading the Kinahans L.L. mark.

A Household Name

1881
The terms “Kinahans” and “Kinahans L.L.” is by 1881 a household name, becoming widely accepted as shorthand for a whisky of a specific price, quality and reputation. Confirmation for this is found in the 1881 Edition of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrases and Fables, in which the origin of L.L. trademark is also described. It is against this background that familiarity with the Kinahans brand name found expression in books written by countless British and American authors.

Decline Of The Irish Whiskey Industry

1902-1911
The new century began favourably. However, nothing could shield the company from the tribulations that were about to unfold. One of the key family members, George Kinahan died in 1903 and with him ended the family's long association with Dublin civic life as well as the prestige and opportunities which would have created. As the longest serving director, he took with him an intimate knowledge of the company's history as well as a wealth of practical business experience. Additionally, his long directorship at the Bank of Ireland would also have been of great practical value, not least because at various times his fellow directors at the bank included senior members of the Jameson whiskey family. On top of the departure of George Kinahan, the company had to cope with changing and more difficult economy in Ireland. Overall Irish whiskey exports declined spectacularly between 1900 and 1914. In Ireland itself both consumption and production fell, aided by increase of almost a third in spirit duty, as proposed by Lloyd George in his 1909 budget.

Transfer Of The Brand

1912-1920
In June 1911 Kinahans business operations were being transferred to Bagot & Hutton, another long established Dublin wine and spirit enterprise. This company bottled and distributed Kinahans L.L. whiskey up until the time of Prohibition in the United States in 1920.

A Long Break

1920
In November 1920, following the Prohibition in the United States, an economic decline and a forthcoming Civil War in Ireland, the two spirit houses combined and were registered as Bagot Hutton & Kinahan. This arrangement continued until October 1988, when the shareholders decided to take a long break for one of Dublin's most prominent business houses, until better times.

The Renaissance Of The Original Pioneers

2014
Today Kinahans is enjoying an overdue renaissance. Currently operating from a number of production locations across Ireland. The new whiskey making team is drawing inspiration from the Kinahans long-lasting heritage, returning to the brand's original pioneering culture, focus on wood and different maturation methods.

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Kerry Footballers 3 in a row Team Photo 1986

€200.00

Original poster & lovely collectors item as supplied by the Lee Strand Co-Op after Kerry collected their 3 in a row.You would think though that the rest of his team mates should have moved over on the bench and given Denis "Ogie" Moran a seat after all his great years of service to the Kingdom!

Event

1986 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship

Kerry	Tyrone

2-15	1-10

Date

21 September 1986

Venue

Attendance

68,628

The 1986 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final was the 99th All-Ireland Final and the deciding match of the 1986 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship.Tyrone were seven points clear at one point, but went on to lose by eight, Pat Spillane and Mikey Sheehy scoring goals.It was the fifth of five All-Ireland football titles won by Kerry in the 1980s.But amazingly after over a decade of dominance Kerry would not even contest or win another All-Ireland football Final until 1997, Annascaul Co Kerry 64cm x 83cm

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Kerry Football Legend Mick O’Connell- And now its back to Valentia Island

€70.00

32cm x 24cm Caherciveen Co Kerry Framed print of one of there greatest Gaelic Footballers of all time - the legendary Mick O'Connell. Michael "Mick" O'Connell (born 4 January 1937) is an Irish retired Gaelic footballer. His league and championship career with the Kerry senior team spanned nineteen seasons from 1956 to 1974. O'Connell is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the game. Born on Valentia Island, County Kerry, O'Connell was raised in a family that had no real link to Gaelic football. In spite of this he excelled at the game in his youth and also at Cahersiveen CBS. By his late teens O'Connell had joined the Young Islanders, and won seven South Kerry divisional championship medals in a club career that spanned four decades. He also lined out with South Kerry, winning three county senior championshipmedals between 1955 and 1958. O'Connell made his debut on the inter-county scene at the age of eighteen when he was selected for the Kerry minor team. He enjoyed one championship season with the minors, however, he was a Munster runner-up on that occasion. O'Connell subsequently joined the Kerry senior team, making his debut during the 1956 championship. Over the course of the next nineteen seasons, he won eight All-Ireland medals, beginning with lone triumphs in 1959 and 1962, and culminating in back-to-back championships in 1969 and 1970. O'Connell also won twelve Munster medals, six National Football League medals and was named Footballer of the Year in 1962. He played his last game for Kerry in July 1974. Recollecting his early years on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta and Radio Kerry, O’Connell spoke of how he was introduced to Gaelic football.He also revealed he had regularly played soccer with Spanish fishermen on his native Valentia Island. “Well, I remember I was 11 or 12, my father bought them (boots) in the shop in Cahirsiveen. I remember playing beside the house at home and I remember the first day I got those from the shop I was delighted. But after that there wasn’t a lot of people with football boots. “We would play barefoot often during the summer — and we were happy to play barefoot — that’s the way it was back then. “My father bought us a ball, a size 4. It wasn’t too big but it was fine. We would play at home and coming home from school a lot of people would come in playing with us, schoolboys, and often, very often, the Spanish would come in taking shelter from the weather, they would come in and play soccer with us. “If there was bad weather, they’d take shelter here in the harbour. They wouldn’t have a penny but a drop of wine in bags but they had no money and they’d come in and play. It was nice to watch them. I was practicing left and right but we had no trainers or coaches at the time. It was just a case of practicing between ourselves, nice and gently. There were no matches but games between ourselves and that’s all we had at the time.” It was O’Connell’s father Jeremiah who helped begin his son’s love of Gaelic football although he himself had no background in the game. “My own mother (Mary), she was never at a match and my uncle who was born in 1880 or that, he was living with us on Valentia Island, he was never at a match.

“My father had an interest every now and again going to the matches. I remember them coming from Portmagee, Derrynane and Cahirciveen to play. That’s when I remember feeling that was something special about playing sport. “I remember going to a game on a boat with my father. The Islanders were playing, that was in 1945, and those memories from long ago come back to me every so often. And a lot of those players and a lot of the inter-county players are dead now. But I remember the first time I played in a Munster final in Killarney, in 1956, and only two of those players are still alive (Tom Long and Seán Ó Murchú).” But for a job in which he worked at for most of his Kerry playing days, O’Connell said he would never have worn the green and gold. “Between 1956 and ‘66, I worked for the Western Union company on Valentia Island, five full days and a half day on Saturday. It was a very useful job; it facilitated me in a great way. Otherwise, it was a job that would be too demanding and it also meant I was free at the weekends. “Any person playing amateur sport without an appropriate job would find it very hard to find perfection in it. Otherwise, I would never have played for Kerry.” O’Connell has questioned the Government’s grants scheme for inter-county Gaelic players. The Valentia Island man believes the funding mechanism, which will rise to €3 million per annum by 2018, has been signed off without the authority of the Irish tax-payers.Interviewed by Raidió na Gaeltachta on his 80th birthday yesterday, O’Connell criticised the Government for what he determines as directing remuneration towards county footballers and hurlers. “I have no involvement in the games today, except for watching it, but something I don’t agree with... it’s okay for the GAA to generate money in Croke Park and to spend it on the players if they want to, but I don’t agree at all that Government money, money of the Government of Ireland collected through taxes from the ordinary person, is being paid to the players. “I don’t think they have any permission to do that. That money should be spent on health and education rather than what’s being done now that I read in the paper, which is the way it is now.” In a wide-ranging interview with Helen Ní Shé on the An Saol ó Dheas programme, O’Connell also took a dim view of outgoing Kerry minor footballer Mark O’Connor’s switch to AFL club Geelong on a two-year rookie contract. “I’m not too impressed with that game in Australia at all. If Gaelic football was played properly, without pulling and dragging out of each other, and things like that, it would be a much better game than the game in Australia. “But again, in this country, the money isn’t in this country to give money to the players professionally at all and people have jobs now. If they had a good job and time to train, it’s a pastime. It’s a pastime. “Sport is a pastime. And people are saying there is pressure on them because they have to train... it’s a pastime for the trainer too, meeting and in contact with people the same age as them and things like that. That’s a great thing.” O’Connell doesn’t buy the idea more Gaelic players want to be involved in a full-time sport“Ah, that’s the kind of talk the media presents before them, that there is pressure on them. Give it up if you’re not happy, that’s the way it should be. To be good at anything, you enjoy anything that you’re good at, and practice that, you understand.” He marvels at what modern day players are provided with. “They have the facilities now. The facilities weren’t there long ago. But they have a lot of facilities now. Look at Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney, there wasn’t a stand, there wasn’t a dressing room or anything when I started playing. As far as I remember, I don’t know what you called it, the mental hospital, we had a room in that place where we togged out. Every place throughout Kerry and throughout Ireland, the facilities are at a very high standard now in comparison to years ago.” Speaking to Jerry O’Sullivan on Radio Kerry’s Kerry Today programme, O’Connell bemoaned where Gaelic football was going and the negativity attached to it.“The (current) game doesn’t appeal to me. For me anyway it was always ball first, man second. To try and negate the other player it wasn’t my style.” O’Connell insisted he wasn’t criticising current players but the game itself and how it was taken too much from other codes. Although the mark has been championed as a means of safeguarding the high-fielding O’Connell was renowned for, he sees it as another example of a foreign rule. Even in my own time, there was no clear-cut set of rules stated in print for a referee. “I always thought as a player that a referee’s job should be almost to mark the scores and players playing the game should know what the game was and play accordingly.

“The purpose of the game was to deliver it (the ball) as distinct from now when carrying the ball, running with it and passing with it. That’s the big change. I don’t blame the players at present. It’s very confusing. Even in my time, the elders never clearly stated a rule about obstruction or anything like that. It’s very hard in Ireland to get a discussion on the game.”

O’Connell continued: “Gaelic football has been played for about 120 years or whatever so and there is no bit of original wisdom within it to have your own game and to be powerful of your own game and not to be borrowing from other (sports), mark or no mark, red card, yellow card. It’s borrowing from other codes and that’s the negativity. It’s been always there, especially so now.” In an at times awkward conversation on Newstalk’s Off The Ball last night, O’Connell played down the significance of his sporting accomplishments. “Winning the game was not triumph and losing the game was not disaster. It was winning and losing games and that was all part of sport.” He remarked he had no passion in life. “Passion in life? None. None whatsoever. Playing football afforded me the chance to do exercise and play games locally and sometimes in Dublin. It was a nice way of associating with other people and so on. “It wasn’t a passion as such. Some people might think because living on an island (that it was) but it just happened that I occurred to be very good at it and got my place on the county team and got some games in Dublin.” He admitted his reluctance with the adulation he has received over the years. “That’s only comment. There’s no such thing as one player being better than the next because football is about a style of play. Some people have different styles and if one style satisfies some people other people might like the do-or-die effort. “Beloved? I don’t know what that means. If your style of play satisfies, all well and good but maybe I wasn’t ruthless enough. I wouldn’t do anything to win. The end to me wasn’t as important as the means. The means in which I played was a justification and if it won all well and good. “When I see people talking about Kerry beaten and a disastrous result, there is no such thing in the game of sport. Win or lose, you take your win or your beating in your stride, that’s it. “Another thing, coming from Valentia Island, I was kind of unique. Being an islander, it was unusual and that was why a lot of attention was put on me. It was difficult because you had difficult, bad weather sometimes here and you could never really practice to your extent. “That was often attributed to me, being in a kind of an unique and odd situation, that there must be something strange about a person to play from an island. It wasn’t. It was the game, the code of the area, and I played from an early age. “It wasn’t the be-all and end-all because in my household there was no discussion on football.” ‘Any day if I caught a few good balls and kicked a few good balls, that was success’ Mick O’Connell says the simple satisfaction of having “caught a few good balls and kicked a few good balls” is what remains with him most from his playing time with Kerry. Looking back, he doesn’t like to use the word “career” and when asked if the battles with the famed Galway of the 1960s were what come back to him most he replied: “I enjoyed all games whether it was here in Cahirsiveen, Tralee, Fitzgerald Stadium or New Ross, Tuam or any other place I was. “Any day if I caught a few good balls and kicked a few good balls that was success. “I played in 10 All-Irelands and lost a bigger percentage than I won (four victories). So be it, I had involvement. Success is a bit sweeter when you taste a bit of defeat as well. “That was my view. Looking back on it, it gave me a great association with people from different parts of Kerry and different parts of Ireland and abroad as well. Sport was a great dimension to my life but not everything.” O’Connell also returned to 1959 when he captained Kerry to an All-Ireland crown and left the Sam Maguire Cup in the dressing room. “I got the cup from Dr (Joseph) Stuart who was the president of the GAA at the time and my knee was injured the same day. I left the cup in the dressing room and I came home on the train and people asked me the reason I didn’t take the Sam Maguire with me. It was the team’s cup, I was no bigger than any other member of the team. The people who were in charge should have taken it home. It came home to the island a few weeks or so afterwards.”He doesn’t know the location of his four Celtic Crosses. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t know. I gave one of them to somebody. There was a raffle or something on years ago.”

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Kerry Football Legend Mick O’Connell Framed Print

€100.00

35cm x 45cm Caherciveen Co Kerry Framed print of one of there greatest Gaelic Footballers of all time - the legendary Mick O'Connell. Michael "Mick" O'Connell (born 4 January 1937) is an Irish retired Gaelic footballer. His league and championship career with the Kerry senior team spanned nineteen seasons from 1956 to 1974. O'Connell is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the game. Born on Valentia Island, County Kerry, O'Connell was raised in a family that had no real link to Gaelic football. In spite of this he excelled at the game in his youth and also at Cahersiveen CBS. By his late teens O'Connell had joined the Young Islanders, and won seven South Kerry divisional championship medals in a club career that spanned four decades. He also lined out with South Kerry, winning three county senior championshipmedals between 1955 and 1958. O'Connell made his debut on the inter-county scene at the age of eighteen when he was selected for the Kerry minor team. He enjoyed one championship season with the minors, however, he was a Munster runner-up on that occasion. O'Connell subsequently joined the Kerry senior team, making his debut during the 1956 championship. Over the course of the next nineteen seasons, he won eight All-Ireland medals, beginning with lone triumphs in 1959 and 1962, and culminating in back-to-back championships in 1969 and 1970. O'Connell also won twelve Munster medals, six National Football League medals and was named Footballer of the Year in 1962. He played his last game for Kerry in July 1974. Recollecting his early years on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta and Radio Kerry, O’Connell spoke of how he was introduced to Gaelic football.He also revealed he had regularly played soccer with Spanish fishermen on his native Valentia Island. “Well, I remember I was 11 or 12, my father bought them (boots) in the shop in Cahirsiveen. I remember playing beside the house at home and I remember the first day I got those from the shop I was delighted. But after that there wasn’t a lot of people with football boots. “We would play barefoot often during the summer — and we were happy to play barefoot — that’s the way it was back then. “My father bought us a ball, a size 4. It wasn’t too big but it was fine. We would play at home and coming home from school a lot of people would come in playing with us, schoolboys, and often, very often, the Spanish would come in taking shelter from the weather, they would come in and play soccer with us. “If there was bad weather, they’d take shelter here in the harbour. They wouldn’t have a penny but a drop of wine in bags but they had no money and they’d come in and play. It was nice to watch them. I was practicing left and right but we had no trainers or coaches at the time. It was just a case of practicing between ourselves, nice and gently. There were no matches but games between ourselves and that’s all we had at the time.” It was O’Connell’s father Jeremiah who helped begin his son’s love of Gaelic football although he himself had no background in the game. “My own mother (Mary), she was never at a match and my uncle who was born in 1880 or that, he was living with us on Valentia Island, he was never at a match.

“My father had an interest every now and again going to the matches. I remember them coming from Portmagee, Derrynane and Cahirciveen to play. That’s when I remember feeling that was something special about playing sport. “I remember going to a game on a boat with my father. The Islanders were playing, that was in 1945, and those memories from long ago come back to me every so often. And a lot of those players and a lot of the inter-county players are dead now. But I remember the first time I played in a Munster final in Killarney, in 1956, and only two of those players are still alive (Tom Long and Seán Ó Murchú).” But for a job in which he worked at for most of his Kerry playing days, O’Connell said he would never have worn the green and gold. “Between 1956 and ‘66, I worked for the Western Union company on Valentia Island, five full days and a half day on Saturday. It was a very useful job; it facilitated me in a great way. Otherwise, it was a job that would be too demanding and it also meant I was free at the weekends. “Any person playing amateur sport without an appropriate job would find it very hard to find perfection in it. Otherwise, I would never have played for Kerry.” O’Connell has questioned the Government’s grants scheme for inter-county Gaelic players. The Valentia Island man believes the funding mechanism, which will rise to €3 million per annum by 2018, has been signed off without the authority of the Irish tax-payers.Interviewed by Raidió na Gaeltachta on his 80th birthday yesterday, O’Connell criticised the Government for what he determines as directing remuneration towards county footballers and hurlers. “I have no involvement in the games today, except for watching it, but something I don’t agree with... it’s okay for the GAA to generate money in Croke Park and to spend it on the players if they want to, but I don’t agree at all that Government money, money of the Government of Ireland collected through taxes from the ordinary person, is being paid to the players. “I don’t think they have any permission to do that. That money should be spent on health and education rather than what’s being done now that I read in the paper, which is the way it is now.” In a wide-ranging interview with Helen Ní Shé on the An Saol ó Dheas programme, O’Connell also took a dim view of outgoing Kerry minor footballer Mark O’Connor’s switch to AFL club Geelong on a two-year rookie contract. “I’m not too impressed with that game in Australia at all. If Gaelic football was played properly, without pulling and dragging out of each other, and things like that, it would be a much better game than the game in Australia. “But again, in this country, the money isn’t in this country to give money to the players professionally at all and people have jobs now. If they had a good job and time to train, it’s a pastime. It’s a pastime. “Sport is a pastime. And people are saying there is pressure on them because they have to train... it’s a pastime for the trainer too, meeting and in contact with people the same age as them and things like that. That’s a great thing.” O’Connell doesn’t buy the idea more Gaelic players want to be involved in a full-time sport“Ah, that’s the kind of talk the media presents before them, that there is pressure on them. Give it up if you’re not happy, that’s the way it should be. To be good at anything, you enjoy anything that you’re good at, and practice that, you understand.” He marvels at what modern day players are provided with. “They have the facilities now. The facilities weren’t there long ago. But they have a lot of facilities now. Look at Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney, there wasn’t a stand, there wasn’t a dressing room or anything when I started playing. As far as I remember, I don’t know what you called it, the mental hospital, we had a room in that place where we togged out. Every place throughout Kerry and throughout Ireland, the facilities are at a very high standard now in comparison to years ago.” Speaking to Jerry O’Sullivan on Radio Kerry’s Kerry Today programme, O’Connell bemoaned where Gaelic football was going and the negativity attached to it.“The (current) game doesn’t appeal to me. For me anyway it was always ball first, man second. To try and negate the other player it wasn’t my style.” O’Connell insisted he wasn’t criticising current players but the game itself and how it was taken too much from other codes. Although the mark has been championed as a means of safeguarding the high-fielding O’Connell was renowned for, he sees it as another example of a foreign rule. Even in my own time, there was no clear-cut set of rules stated in print for a referee. “I always thought as a player that a referee’s job should be almost to mark the scores and players playing the game should know what the game was and play accordingly.

“The purpose of the game was to deliver it (the ball) as distinct from now when carrying the ball, running with it and passing with it. That’s the big change. I don’t blame the players at present. It’s very confusing. Even in my time, the elders never clearly stated a rule about obstruction or anything like that. It’s very hard in Ireland to get a discussion on the game.”

O’Connell continued: “Gaelic football has been played for about 120 years or whatever so and there is no bit of original wisdom within it to have your own game and to be powerful of your own game and not to be borrowing from other (sports), mark or no mark, red card, yellow card. It’s borrowing from other codes and that’s the negativity. It’s been always there, especially so now.” In an at times awkward conversation on Newstalk’s Off The Ball last night, O’Connell played down the significance of his sporting accomplishments. “Winning the game was not triumph and losing the game was not disaster. It was winning and losing games and that was all part of sport.” He remarked he had no passion in life. “Passion in life? None. None whatsoever. Playing football afforded me the chance to do exercise and play games locally and sometimes in Dublin. It was a nice way of associating with other people and so on. “It wasn’t a passion as such. Some people might think because living on an island (that it was) but it just happened that I occurred to be very good at it and got my place on the county team and got some games in Dublin.” He admitted his reluctance with the adulation he has received over the years. “That’s only comment. There’s no such thing as one player being better than the next because football is about a style of play. Some people have different styles and if one style satisfies some people other people might like the do-or-die effort. “Beloved? I don’t know what that means. If your style of play satisfies, all well and good but maybe I wasn’t ruthless enough. I wouldn’t do anything to win. The end to me wasn’t as important as the means. The means in which I played was a justification and if it won all well and good. “When I see people talking about Kerry beaten and a disastrous result, there is no such thing in the game of sport. Win or lose, you take your win or your beating in your stride, that’s it. “Another thing, coming from Valentia Island, I was kind of unique. Being an islander, it was unusual and that was why a lot of attention was put on me. It was difficult because you had difficult, bad weather sometimes here and you could never really practice to your extent. “That was often attributed to me, being in a kind of an unique and odd situation, that there must be something strange about a person to play from an island. It wasn’t. It was the game, the code of the area, and I played from an early age. “It wasn’t the be-all and end-all because in my household there was no discussion on football.” ‘Any day if I caught a few good balls and kicked a few good balls, that was success’ Mick O’Connell says the simple satisfaction of having “caught a few good balls and kicked a few good balls” is what remains with him most from his playing time with Kerry. Looking back, he doesn’t like to use the word “career” and when asked if the battles with the famed Galway of the 1960s were what come back to him most he replied: “I enjoyed all games whether it was here in Cahirsiveen, Tralee, Fitzgerald Stadium or New Ross, Tuam or any other place I was. “Any day if I caught a few good balls and kicked a few good balls that was success. “I played in 10 All-Irelands and lost a bigger percentage than I won (four victories). So be it, I had involvement. Success is a bit sweeter when you taste a bit of defeat as well. “That was my view. Looking back on it, it gave me a great association with people from different parts of Kerry and different parts of Ireland and abroad as well. Sport was a great dimension to my life but not everything.” O’Connell also returned to 1959 when he captained Kerry to an All-Ireland crown and left the Sam Maguire Cup in the dressing room. “I got the cup from Dr (Joseph) Stuart who was the president of the GAA at the time and my knee was injured the same day. I left the cup in the dressing room and I came home on the train and people asked me the reason I didn’t take the Sam Maguire with me. It was the team’s cup, I was no bigger than any other member of the team. The people who were in charge should have taken it home. It came home to the island a few weeks or so afterwards.”He doesn’t know the location of his four Celtic Crosses. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t know. I gave one of them to somebody. There was a raffle or something on years ago.”

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Kerry 1986 All Ireland Football Champions (3 in a Row)

€150.00

Original,commemorative team photo of the 3 in a row winning Kerry Footballers as sponsored by the Kerry Eye Newspaper.As can be seen, some Kerry children had a bit of fun with it one the years in their classroom near Sneem Co Kerry Origins ; Sneem Co Kerry Dimensions :52cm x 65cm. Glazed
The 80s was a time when Ulster football was considered a distant cousin to the majesty of Kerry, even when the Kingdom's golden age was ending.

But such was Tyrone's initial dominance of the 1986 All-Ireland final against Kerry by half-time their fans began to panic about not having accommodation in Dublin that night. They needn't have worried as a seven-point lead turned into an eight-point pounding in the final 20 minutes.

The crucial moment was a Tyrone penalty, which was sent over the bar by Kevin McCabe. From the kick-out, Kerry whizzed downfield and Pat Spillane finished the move with a goal that reduced the arrears to four points. A Mikey Sheehy goal completed a nightmarish capitulation.

It was the last hurrah from a great Kerry team who had taken Sam Maguire home eight times in 12 years. An 11-year drought followed.

Moy's Plunkett Donaghy was Tyrone's class act back then but the loss of Eugene McKenna and John Lynch through injury coincided with the late collapse.

Moy send another marauding midfielder out against Kerry on Sunday in Seán Cavanagh along with clubmates Philip Jordan and Ryan Mellon.

KERRY: C Nelligan; P Ó Sé, S Walsh, M Spillane; T Doyle (captain), T Spillane, G Lynch; J O'Shea, A O'Donovan; W Maher, D Moran (0-2), P Spillane (1-4); M Sheehy (1-4, three points from frees), E Liston (0-2), G Power (0-1). Sub: T O'Dowd (0-2) for O'Donovan.

TYRONE: A Skelton; J Mallon, K McGarvey, J Lynch; K McCabe (0-1, from a penalty), N McGinn, P Ball; P Donaghy, H McClure; M McClure (0-1), E McKenna, S McNally (0-2); M Mallon (0-4, three frees), D O'Hagan (0-1), P Quinn (1-1). Subs: S Conway for Lynch, S Rice for McKenna, A O'Hagan for M Mallon.

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Kerry 1980 All Ireland Football Champions (3 in a Row)

€120.00

Commemorative team photo of the 3 in a row winning Kerry Footballers 1978,1979 & 1§980 Sneem Co Kerry Dimensions :63cm x 45cm
T

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MATTERSON’S

SHAW’S

O’MARA’S

DENNY’S

Discovery Expedition, 1901–1904

Between expeditions, 1904–1910

Terra Nova Expedition, 1910–1913

Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Endurance Expedition), 1914–1917

Later life

Legacy

Discovery Expedition, 1901–1904

Between expeditions, 1904–1910

Terra Nova Expedition, 1910–1913

Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Endurance Expedition), 1914–1917

Later life

Legacy

This painting of Clare piper Pádraig Ó Briain by the artist Joseph Haverty was hugely popular in 19th-century Ireland.

Foundation

1779

Leading The Whiskey Evolution

1780

Growing Popularity & The "LL" Mark

1807

The Carlisle Building

1819

London's Gateway to Global Trade

1841

The Royal Warrants

1845

The Preferred Whiskey Of Jerry Thomas

1862

Protected Trademark

1863

A Household Name

1881

Decline Of The Irish Whiskey Industry

1902-1911

Transfer Of The Brand

1912-1920

A Long Break

1920

The Renaissance Of The Original Pioneers

2014