Aran Islands: on the road to Synge’s Chair, on Inishmaan. Photograph: Andy Haslam/New York Times
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30cm x 35cm These atmospheric prints dating from the early 20th century are from the Aran collection,a series of superbly photographed images depicting life on the Aran Islands at the turn of the last century. "The early part of the 20th century saw little change come to the Aran Islands so far removed from outside influences off the west coast of Ireland.As if time had stood still ,these unique photographs depict the islanders going about their daily lives as they had done for centuries in almost complete self sufficiency from the outside world and as a result form an integral part of our national heritage.
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Superb 1940s era vintage original map showing the dioceses(!) and provinces of Ireland published by J.Duffy & Co.Ltd Westmoreland St Dublin. James Duffy (1809 – 4 July 1871) was a prominent Irish author and publisher. Duffy's business would become one of the major publishers of Irish nationalist books, bibles, magazines, Missals and religious texts throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. He was also a major publisher of Irish fiction.[1] He was described as having "invented a new kind of cosy family Catholicism. Duffy was born in Monaghan. He was educated at a hedge school and began his business as a bookseller through purchasing Protestant bibles given to Catholics. He then traveled to Liverpoolwhere he traded them for more valuable books. In 1830 he founded his own company, James Duffy and Sons and issued Boney's Oraculum, or Napoleon's Book of Fate, which experienced huge sales. Boney's Oraculum would later be the object of an allusion in a speech of Capt. Boyle in Seán O'Casey's 1924 play Juno and the Paycock. Another great editorial success was achieved when he collaborated with Charles Gavan Duffy (no relation) from 1843 to 1846 to publish poetry from the writers of The Nation. By the 1860s he was employing 120 staff members at his various enterprises in Dublin.[4] In 1860 he started Duffy's Hibernian Magazine, edited by Martin Haverty. It was a monthly, price eight pence, and ran for two years. The contributors included Charles Patrick Meehan, Julia Kavanagh, Denis Florence MacCarthy, John O'Donovan, William Carleton, Thomas D'Arcy McGee, and William John Fitzpatrick, and the articles were all signed. A second series began in 1862, renamed Duffy's Hibernian Sixpence Magazine, with Meehan as editor, which extended to six volumes and ended in June 1865. These and other relatively cheap magazines took advantage of the new-found confidence in home-grown literature and also offered an outlet for Irish authors. Among the magazines he published were:- Duffy's Irish Catholic Magazine (1847)
- Catholic Guardian
- Christian Family Library
- Duffy's Hibernian Magazine
- Illustrated Dublin Journal
- Duffy's Fireside Magazine: A Monthly Miscellany (November 1850 – October 1852) (price: 4d)
- Duffy's Hibernian Sixpence Magazine (ceased publication in 1864)
- The Spirit of the Nation. Ballads and Songs by the Writers of The Nation, with Original and Ancient Music (1845)
- The Poetry of Ireland. Further collections from the writers of The Nation (1845-1846)
- The Ballad Poetry of Ireland
- The Book of Irish Ballads
- an 1861 edition of the Douay Bible, a copy of which is owned by the Central Catholic Library in Dublin
- John O'Hart, Irish landed gentry: when Cromwell came to Ireland (Dublin: James Duffy & Sons, 1887)
- John O’Hanlon, Lives of the Irish Saints, Vol 6 (James Duffy and Sons, 1891)
- Gerald Griffin The Invasion (Dublin, James Duffy & Sons)
Rival surveyors Ornamentation and embellishment of estates, especially from the middle of the eighteenth century, employed an expanding army of architects, landscape gardeners, painters, stuccadores, agriculturists, as well as lawyers and agents. Included with these personnel were surveyors and cartographers commissioned by landowners to produce maps both functional and ornamental for the estate office or the drawing room. Indeed later in the century, in the demographic scramble for land, surveyors were frequently also engaged by both owners and tenants to ‘squeeze’ a few more acres out of estate or farm. So active was the market that surveyors vied with each other in producing the most accurate maps. Many of their disputes were personal and public. In the middle of the century, Joshua Wight was called a dunce by a rival. As early as 1716, William Starrat knew that his calculation of forty acres for Inishmakill townland in Fermanagh would ‘be disputed, because Mr Moore’s survey made it only eighteen acres; and besides it is the opinion of a great many that knows the island that it contains about twenty acres. As for Mr Moore’s account, there is no ground for depending on it, because he only viewed it from the mainland and no man can measure an irregular plain at a distance.’ The number of surveys increased as the eighteenth century progressed reflecting expanding estate income and rural economic activity. As with architects and landscape designers, there was a community of surveyors distinguished from each other by their talents, reflected in turn by their fees. Their work ranged from modest, even mediocre and poor surveys, which were poorly realised and often inaccurate, to superlative and innovative productions of great beauty and accuracy. Presumably smaller, less well-off proprietors could only afford the more mediocre efforts. ‘Country surveyors’ worked at local level producing surveys for tenant farmers, assisting with bog divisions, laying out the lines for new roads. The best cartographers like John Rocque and Bernard Scalé were engaged by great landowners like the Duke of Leinster or the Marquis of Downshire. Chain and circumferentor Surveying throughout the eighteenth century occurred against a background of practice inherited from the seventeenth where land had been let by townland. Townland boundary delineation and calculation of townland acreage thus became the main preoccupations of surveyors. The internal geography of townlands was of limited interest to landowners and thus to surveyors, much to the frustration of later historians. Surveyors were seldom innovative; Petty’s style of mapping overshadowed eighteenth-century surveys. Indeed he remained dominant in most theoretical and practical aspects of surveying and little changed in its understanding for a century after him—the chain and circumferentor were still the main tools of the trade in the 1750s (Fig.2). The chain was used for horizontal measurements. The circumferentor was a somewhat obsolete instrument used for plotting angles. Apart from a frequent lack of standardisation in instruments, there was also a regional variation in units of measurement: Irish, plantation and English acres (and perches) were in use, though by the end of the century surveyors increasingly provided measurements in both Irish and statute acres. One of the earliest innovators was Thomas Raven, who had worked with the Ulster plantation producing some fine maps to accompany surveys of the new settlements. Later on he produced estate maps for a number of landowners in Munster and Connacht. The Earl of Essex engaged him to produce a survey of his lands in Farney in south Monaghan which provide a unique glimpse of this Gaelic and slightly planted landscape in 1634 (Fig.3). His maps, in atlas format, show tates (modern townlands) together with more than 400 hundred cabins and houses, wells, mills, churches, as well as indications of land quality within the townland units. Unforunately this amount of detailing of local landscapes did not continue as standard practice with Irish surveyors in the eighteenth century . Boundaries Surveys were undertaken for many reasons—to accompany the sale of property, the settlement of disputes, succession to the estate, leasing of holdings or the introduction of new management. The principal objective of the surveys was to determine the extent of the property in terms of boundaries or areal extent, with a sometimes secondary purpose of measuring land quality. In the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, disputes about land boundaries frequently occurred between landowners—a throwback to the hastily completed surveys of the plantation periods. Raven’s map of Farney, for instance, contains a number of boundaries on the northern limits of the estate marked ‘in controversie’. These disputes were generally settled by survey and agreement. Interestingly later in the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth, the focus of disagreement on boundaries moved from estate to farm level, with frequent disputes arising between tenants and their neighbours or landlords. The burning of land after cropping was an opportune time for measurement. Landowners were frequently called in to adjudicate between disputing tenants who often employed local surveyors to advance their case. Before the establishment of fixed hedges, there were many opportunities for disputes. Starrat’s surveys in the 1730s in the Fermanagh and Leitrim refer to the difficulites of selecting definitive bearings. In the rapid population expansion of the late eighteenth century, landlords often employed surveyors to lay out enclosures. For example, in the 1820s Shirley in Monaghan was engaged in laying out new field boundaries and in persuading his tenantry to plant quicksets. More often than not the lines of main hedges were laid down by the estate surveyor, with the tenant given freedom to subdivide their farms themselves. Frequently tenants employed local surveyors to help with this.
Fig.2 The chain and circumferentor were still the main tools of the trade in the 1750s. (Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland)
Rents and leases The falling in of leases in many parts of the country throughout the eighteenth century often revealed to the landowner extensive layers of subtenants who had fractured the land into smaller farms and enclosures. These were frequently taken on as tenants under the head landlord and their farms surveyed and mapped. Maps by Bernard Scalé of the Bath estate in Monaghan and the Devonshire estate in Waterford (Fig.4) were commissioned in the 1770s to assess the nature of change in settlement. In many cases, leases were granted at irregular intervals and landowners had to wait the falling-in of each lease. Great estate owners like Bath, Devonshire or Downshire would, however, undertake a complete survey of their estate and subsequently try to lease out most of their property in one letting. The more common practice, however, was to have individual farm surveys or portions of estates mapped. Also, agricultural development meant re-valuation of land: typically, drainage and wasteland reclamation in the later eighteenth century called for map and rent revisions. In these instances surveyers with their chains and painted pegs were unpopular with tenants who saw them as precursors of rent increases. In prefamine decades, their every move in the countryside was closely watched as the overcrowded acres, roods and perches, were meticulously measured out. John Rocque From the middle of the eighteenth century especially, estate improvements frequently involved extravagant investment in the landowner’s private gardens and demesnes. Elaborate maps of these were often produced to match the picturesque views frequently commissioned from fashionable painters. The maps of John Rocque probably represent the most artistic achievement of a cartographer in eighteenth-century Ireland. Rocque (c.1705-1762) was a member of the French Huguenot community in England who established a reputation as a superlative cartographer, with highly-regarded surveys of London, Paris and Rome to his credit. He was invited to Ireland by a number of Irish noblemen in 1754, mainly with the objective of undertaking a survey of Dublin. This he accomplished in 1756 and his map remains an unsurpassed record of Georgian Dublin (a fragment of which was reproduced on the old £10 note). Rocque was to revolutionise cartography and surveying in Ireland in the space of six years in the 1750s, so much so that in the 1820s, surveyors in Ireland were still being described as belonging to ‘the French school of Rocque’. The hallmark of his cartography was an unprecedented amount of fine detail on the cities and landscapes he mapped. His surveys were carried out by a small team of apprentices who helped to transmit Rocque’s ideas and techniques to the following generations of Irish surveyors. His most notable pupil and successor was Bernard Scalé, who established himself as a well known surveyor in the later eighteenth century (Fig.4). While Rocque was producing the printed surveys of Dublin and other Irish towns, he was also engaged by a number of Irish landlords to map their estates. His most important patron was the twentieth Earl of Kildare (later first Duke of Leinster) who lived at Carton outside Maynooth, and who owned 67,000 acres in a number of manors scattered throughout County Kildare. At the time of the survey (1757), Lord and Lady Kildare were in the process of radically transforming their house and environs in Maynooth. The architect Richard Castle (responsible for designing numerous great houses throughout Ireland) was involved in the remodelling of Carton. The Francini brothers were engaged to decorate the ceilings. So it is a tribute to Rocque’s exceptional reputation that he was involved with some of the most famous and fashionable artists and craftsmen in the transformation of Carton into one of the foremost palladian mansions in the country.
Fig.3 Carrickmacross, from Thomas Raven’s survey of Essex estate, County Monaghan 1634-5. Note the cluster of cabins, center right. (Courtesy of Marquis of Bath)
Kildare estates The survey of the Kildare estates was produced in eight atlas volumes, each page containing individual maps of the townlands. This set of maps was subsequently dispersed and the maps of Maynooth Manor are currently held in the University Library, Cambridge. A recently-discovered wall map of Maynooth Manor now hangs in Maynooth College. Apart from minor details, it is essentially a replica, drawn on a large sheet, of the album format and may have been produced by Rocque as a working map for the estate office or as a decoration for the house at Carton. The Maynooth map is very characteristic of Rocque—showing the landscape almost as it might have looked from the air. It contains typical detail such as the cartouche with a view of Maynooth Castle. There is wide-ranging detail provided in each townland. Relief is shown by hachures in grey, water (including ditches) by a blue wash. Buildings are shown in block plan—a Rocque innovation—contrasting with earlier, more impressionistic pictorial conventions for buildings. In some of these, the farmyards containing hay or straw stacks are shown. Arable land is usually brown with stippling to represent ridges or furrows, though the full meaning of his code of symbols is still a mystery. Meadow and pasture are shown in light green. Tree symbols show orchards and woodlands; hedges are depicted by lines of bushes. In some areas, fences without hedging are shown by means of a grey herring-bone device. There are also springs, mills, quarries, forges, pigeon houses, prehistoric forts and field names. Each field is numbered in sequence within each townland, and details of the area, and sometimes the content of the field, are given in the reference panel.
Fig.4 The manor of Tallow 1774 – part of Bernard Scale’s survey of County Waterford’s Devonshire estates. (Courtesy of the Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement)
Landscape embellishment The Carton section of the map shows clearly the demesne landscape as it was emerging from its reorganisation by Lady Kildare. As daughter of the Duke of Richmond she was well connected in England. ‘Capability’ Brown, the great English landscape gardener of the eighteenth century was unable to come to Carton, but she engaged other important designers, including a disciple of Brown’s, to create a park landscape which is still of international significance. Rocque has the distinction, therefore, of recording the embryonic parkland on a map which complements a 1753 painting by Arthur Devis depicting Lord and Lady Kildare overseeing their plans for Carton, and other landscape views by Thomas Roberts—
Fig.5 The town of Maynooth, County Kildare, from John Roque’s 1757 survey. (Courtesy of Patrick’s College, Maynooth)
all elements of ostentatious showing-off of house and demesne in the highly status-sensitive society of the eighteenth century. The map shows the house and yards much as they are today. The walled garden is depicted with its interior detail. The lake had not yet been made—it had to await the damming of the Rye Water stream in the 1760s. Maynooth town (Fig.5) is shown at one of the major turning points in its history. What Rocque recorded was the almost medieval huddle of houses around the castle, with the main Galway road still in evidence passing through the toll gatehouse at the castle. However, at the east of the town, symbolically joining the avenue which led to Carton, is evidence of the beginning of the new town plan of Maynooth, with the newly laid-out main street as we have inherited it today. In what are now the grounds of Maynooth College, there are some curious ornamental (vegetable?) gardens reminiscent of earlier classical designs. Rocque’s legacy to Irish surveying and cartography is affirmed in a succession of later maps of Carton, which was possibly his first and certainly his most important private surveying undertaking. In 1769 his distinguished successor, Bernard Scalé, produced a superb map of the demesne at ten perches to the inch. In 1821, a volume of maps of the ‘Mannor of Maynooth’ (including Carton Park) was produced by Sherrard, Brassington and Greene (Fig.6). This was a leading firm of surveyors in early nineteenth-century Ireland and Thomas Sherrard had been a pupil of Scalé. Conclusion Although the eighteenth century is regarded as poorly supplied with primary sources, the growing accessibility of private estate papers is helping to expand the coverage and knowledge of this period. Estate surveys are an especially important components in these private collections. The changing landscape which they record is one of the most notable characteristics of the eighteenth-century ‘age of improvement’, because all the radical social and economic transformations of the age were inscribed indelibly on the Irish landcape of town and country. The later comprehensive maps of the Ordnance Survey recorded the landscape at the end of this cycle of change, though fortunately before the traumatic changes which accompanied the Famine. Although questions on the representativeness of extant estate maps are valid, those that have survived may provide valuable information on the extent and nature of enclosures, on changes in settlement patterns, on the evolution of placenames, on the development of road networks. Many of the surveys show house locations and although it is possible that many cabins were omitted or mapped inconsistently more systematic analysis of estate maps might throw light on the process of demographic expansion in the century before the Famine. Origins : Co Clare Dimensions :65cm x 55cm
Fig.6 Graigsallagh, from a volume of maps of the ‘Manor of Maynooth'(1821) by Sherrard, Brassington and Green. (Courtesy of carton Desmesne)
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30cm x 35cm These atmospheric prints dating from the early 20th century are from the Aran collection,a series of superbly photographed images depicting life on the Aran Islands at the turn of the last century. "The early part of the 20th century saw little change come to the Aran Islands so far removed from outside influences off the west coast of Ireland.As if time had stood still ,these unique photographs depict the islanders going about their daily lives as they had done for centuries in almost complete self sufficiency from the outside world and as a result form an integral part of our national heritage.
Aran Islands: on the road to Synge’s Chair, on Inishmaan. Photograph: Andy Haslam/New York Times
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Very unusual framed Che Guevera style iconic image of Bobby Sands. 48cm x 38cm Belfast Bobby Sands or Riobard Gearóid Ó Seachnasaigh; 9 March 1954 – 5 May 1981) was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who died on hunger strike while imprisoned at HM Prison Maze in Northern Ireland after being sentenced for firearms possession. He was the leader of the 1981 hunger strike in which Irish republican prisoners protested against the removal of Special Category Status. During Sands's strike, he was elected to the British Parliament as an Anti H-Block candidate.His death and those of nine other hunger strikers was followed by a new surge of Provisional IRA recruitment and activity. International media coverage brought attention to the hunger strikers, and the Republican movement in general, attracting both praise and criticism. Sands was born in 1954 to John and Rosaleen Sands.After marrying, they relocated to the new development of Abbots Cross, Newtownabbey, County Antrim, outside North Belfast.Sands was the eldest of four children. His younger sisters, Marcella and Bernadette, were born in 1955 and 1958, respectively. He also had a younger brother, John, born 1962. After experiencing harassment and intimidation from their neighbours, the family abandoned the development and moved in with friends for six months before being granted housing in the nearby Rathcoole development. Rathcoole was 30% Catholic and featured Catholic schools as well as a nominally Catholic but religiously mixed, youth football club, an unusual circumstance in Northern Ireland, known as Stella Maris, the same as the school Sands attended and where the training was held. Sands was a member of this club and played left-back.There was another youth club in nearby Greencastle called Star of the Sea and many boys went there when the Stella Maris club closed. By 1966, sectarian violence in Rathcoole, along with the rest of Belfast, had considerably worsened, and the minority Catholic population there found itself under siege. Despite always having had Protestant friends, Sands suddenly found that none of them would even speak to him, and he quickly learned to associate only with Catholics. He left school in 1969 at age 15, and enrolled in Newtownabbey Technical College, beginning an apprenticeship as a coach builder at Alexander's Coach Works in 1970. He worked there for less than a year, enduring constant harassment from his Protestant co-workers, which according to several co-workers he ignored completely, as he wished to learn a meaningful trade. He was eventually confronted after leaving his shift in January 1971 by a number of his coworkers wearing the armbands of the local Ulster loyalist tartan gang. He was held at gunpoint and told that Alexander's was off-limits to "Fenian scum" and to never come back if he valued his life. He later said that this event was the point at which he decided that militancy was the only solution. In June 1972, Sands's parents' home was attacked and damaged by a loyalist mob and they were again forced to move, this time to the West Belfast Catholic area of Twinbrook, where Sands, now thoroughly embittered, rejoined them. He attended his first Provisional IRA meeting in Twinbrook that month and joined the IRA the same day. He was 18 years old. By 1973, almost every Catholic family had been driven out of Rathcoole by violence and intimidation, although there were some who remained. In 1972, Sands joined the Provisional IRA.He was arrested and charged in October 1972 with possession of four handguns found in the house where he was staying. Sands was convicted in April 1973, sentenced to five years imprisonment, and released in April 1976. Upon his release, he returned to his family home in West Belfast, and resumed his active role in the Provisional IRA. Sands and Joe McDonnell planned the October 1976 bombing of the Balmoral Furniture Company in Dunmurry. The showroom was destroyed but as the IRA men left the scene there was a gun battle with the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Leaving behind two wounded, Seamus Martin and Gabriel Corbett, the remaining four (Sands, McDonnell, Seamus Finucane, and Sean Lavery) tried to escape by car, but were arrested. One of the revolvers used in the attack was found in the car. In 1977, the four men were sentenced to 14 years for possession of the revolver. They were not charged with explosive offences. Immediately after his sentencing, Sands was implicated in a fight and spent the first 22 days with all furniture removed from his cell in Crumlin Road Prison, 15 days naked, and a diet of bread and water every three days. In late 1980, Sands was chosen Officer Commanding of the Provisional IRA prisoners in the Maze Prison, succeeding Brendan Hughes who was participating in the first hunger strike. Republican prisoners organised a series of protests seeking to regain their previous Special Category Status, which would free them from some ordinary prison regulations. This began with the "blanket protest" in 1976, in which the prisoners refused to wear prison uniforms and wore blankets instead. In 1978, after a number of attacks on prisoners leaving their cells to "slop out" (i.e., empty their chamber pots), this escalated into the "dirty protest", wherein prisoners refused to wash and smeared the walls of their cells with excrement. While in prison, Sands had several letters and articles published in the Republican paper An Phoblacht under the pseudonym "Marcella" (his sister's name). Other writings attributed to him are: Skylark Sing Your Lonely Song and One Day in My Life. Sands also wrote the lyrics of "Back Home in Derry" and "McIlhatton", which were both later recorded by Christy Moore, and "Sad Song For Susan", which was also later recorded. The melody of "Back Home in Derry" was borrowed from Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". The song itself is about the penal transportation of Irishmen in the 19th century to Van Diemen's Land (modern day Tasmania, Australia). Shortly after the beginning of the strike, Frank Maguire, the Independent Republican MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, died suddenly of a heart attack, precipitating the April 1981 by-election. The sudden vacancy in a seat with a nationalist majority of about 5,000 was a valuable opportunity for Sands's supporters "to raise public consciousness". Pressure not to split the vote led other nationalist parties, notably the Social Democratic and Labour Party, to withdraw, and Sands was nominated on the label "Anti H-Block/Armagh Political Prisoner". After a highly polarised campaign, Sands narrowly won the seat on 9 April 1981, with 30,493 votes to 29,046 for the Ulster Unionist Party candidate Harry West. Sands became the youngest MP at the time. Sands died in prison less than a month later, without ever having taken his seat in the Commons. Following Sands's election win, the British government introduced the Representation of the People Act 1981 which prevents prisoners serving jail terms of more than one year in either the UK or the Republic of Ireland from being nominated as candidates in British elections. The enactment of the law, as a response to the election of Sands, consequently prevented other hunger strikers from being elected to the House of Commons. The 1981 Irish hunger strike started with Sands refusing food on 1 March 1981. Sands decided that other prisoners should join the strike at staggered intervals to maximise publicity, with prisoners steadily deteriorating successively over several months. The hunger strike centred on five demands:- the right not to wear a prison uniform;
- the right not to do prison work;
- the right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits;
- the right to one visit, one letter, and one parcel per week;
- full restoration of remission lost through the protest.
Sands died on 5 May 1981 in the Maze's prison hospital after 66 days on hunger strike, aged 27.The original pathologist's report recorded the hunger strikers' causes of death as "self-imposed starvation", later amended to simply "starvation" after protests from the dead strikers' families.The coronerrecorded verdicts of "starvation, self-imposed". Sands became a martyr to Irish republicans, and the announcement his death prompted several days of rioting in nationalist areas of Northern Ireland. A milkman, Eric Guiney, and his son, Desmond, died as a result of injuries sustained when their milk float crashed after being stoned by rioters in a predominantly nationalist area of North Belfast.Over 100,000 people lined the route of Sands's funeral, and he was buried in the 'New Republican Plot' alongside 76 others. Their graves are maintained by the National Graves Association, Belfast.
Bobby Sands's grave in Milltown CemeteryBritain
In response to a question in the House of Commons on 5 May 1981, the United Kingdom Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher said, "Mr Sands was a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life. It was a choice that his organisation did not allow to many of its victims". Cardinal Basil Hume, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, condemned Sands, describing the hunger strike as a form of violence. However, he noted that this was his personal view. The Roman Catholic Church's official stance was that ministrations should be provided to the hunger strikers who, believing their sacrifice to be for a higher good, were acting in good conscience. At Old Firm football matches in Glasgow, Scotland, some Rangers fans have been known to sing songs mocking Sands to taunt fans of Celtic. Rangers fans are mainly Protestant, and predominantly sympathetic to unionists; Celtic fans are traditionally more likely to support nationalists.Celtic fans regularly sing the republican song The Roll of Honour, which commemorates the ten men who died in the 1981 hunger strike, amongst other songs in support of the IRA. Sands is honoured in the line "They stood beside their leader – the gallant Bobby Sands." Rangers' taunts have since been adopted by the travelling support of other UK clubs, particularly those with strong British nationalist ties, as a form of anti-Irish sentiment. The 1981 British Home Championship football tournament was cancelled following the refusal of teams from England and Wales to travel to Northern Ireland in the aftermath of his death, due to security concerns.Europe
In Europe, there were widespread protests after Sands's death. 5,000 Milanese students burned the Union Flag and chanted "Freedom for Ulster" during a march. The British Consulate at Ghent was raided.Thousands marched in Paris behind huge portraits of Sands, to chants of "the IRA will conquer". In the Portuguese Parliament, the opposition stood for Sands. In Oslo, demonstrators threw a tomato at Elizabeth II, the Queen of the United Kingdom, but missed. (One 28-year-old assailant said he had actually aimed for what he claimed was a smirking British soldier.)In the Soviet Union, Pravdadescribed it as "another tragic page in the grim chronicle of oppression, discrimination, terror, and violence" in Ireland. Russian fans of Bobby Sands published a translation of the "Back Home in Derry" song ("На Родину в Дерри" in Russian).Many French towns and cities have streets named after Sands, including Nantes, Saint-Étienne, Le Mans, Vierzon, and Saint-Denis.The conservative-aligned West German newspaper Die Welt took a negative view towards Sands.
A memorial mural to Sands along Falls Road, BelfastAmericas
A number of political, religious, union and fund-raising institutions chose to honour Sands in the United States. The International Longshoremen's Association in New York announced a 24-hour boycott of British ships.Over 1,000 people gathered in New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral to hear Cardinal Terence Cooke offer a reconciliation Mass for Northern Ireland. Irish bars in the city were closed for two hours in mourning. The New Jersey General Assembly, the lower house of the New Jersey Legislature, voted 34–29 for a resolution honouring his "courage and commitment." The American media expressed a range of opinions on Sands's death. The Boston Globe commented, a few days before Sands's death, that "[t]he slow suicide attempt of Bobby Sands has cast his land and his cause into another downward spiral of death and despair. There are no heroes in the saga of Bobby Sands".The Chicago Tribune wrote that "Mahatma Gandhi used the hunger strike to move his countrymen to abstain from fratricide. Bobby Sands's deliberate slow suicide is intended to precipitate civil war. The former deserved veneration and influence. The latter would be viewed, in a reasonable world, not as a charismatic martyr but as a fanatical suicide, whose regrettable death provides no sufficient occasion for killing others". The New York Times wrote that "Britain's prime minister Thatcher is right in refusing to yield political status to Bobby Sands, the Irish Republican Army hunger striker", but added that by appearing "unfeeling and unresponsive" the British Government was giving Sands "the crown of martyrdom".The San Francisco Chronicle argued that political belief should not exempt activists from criminal law:Terrorism goes far beyond the expression of political belief. And dealing with it does not allow for compromise as many countries of Western Europe and United States have learned. The bombing of bars, hotels, restaurants, robbing of banks, abductions, and killings of prominent figures are all criminal acts and must be dealt with by criminal law.
Some American critics and journalists suggested that American press coverage was a "melodrama". Edward Langley of The Pittsburgh Press criticised the large pro-IRA Irish-American contingent which "swallow IRA propaganda as if it were taffy", and concluded that IRA "terrorist propaganda triumphs." Archbishop John R. Roach, president of the US Catholic bishops, called Sands's death "a useless sacrifice".The Ledger of 5 May 1981 under the headline "To some he was a hero, to others a terrorist" claims that the hunger strike made Sands "a hero among Irish Republicans or Nationalists seeking the reunion of Protestant-dominated and British-ruled Northern Ireland with the predominantly Catholic Irish Republic to the south". The Ledger cited Sands as telling his friends: "If I die, God will understand" and one of his last messages was "Tell everyone I'll see them somewhere, sometime". In Hartford, Connecticut, a memorial was dedicated to Bobby Sands and the other hunger strikers in 1997, the only one of its kind in the United States. Set up by the Irish Northern Aid Committeeand local Irish-Americans, it stands in a traffic island known as Bobby Sands Circle at the bottom of Maple Avenue near Goodwin Park. In 2001, a memorial to Sands and the other hunger strikers was unveiled in Havana, Cuba.Asia
- In Tehran, Iran, President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr sent a message of condolence to the Sands family.
- Palestinian prisoners incarcerated in the Israeli desert prison of Nafha sent a letter, which was smuggled out and reached Belfast in July 1981, which read: "To the families of Bobby Sands and his martyred comrades. We, revolutionaries of the Palestinian people...extend our salutes and solidarity with you in the confrontation against the oppressive terrorist rule enforced upon the Irish people by the British ruling elite. We salute the heroic struggle of Bobby Sands and his comrades, for they have sacrificed the most valuable possession of any human being. They gave their lives for freedom."
- The Hindustan Times said Margaret Thatcher had allowed a fellow Member of Parliament to die of starvation, an incident which had never before occurred "in a civilised country".
- In the Indian Parliament, opposition members in the upper house Rajya Sabha stood for a minute's silence in tribute. The ruling Congress Party did not participate. Protest marches were organised against the British government and in tribute to Sands and his fellow hunger strikers.
- The Hong Kong Standard said it was "sad that successive British governments have failed to end the last of Europe's religious wars".
The Grateful Dead played the Nassau Coliseum the following night after Sands died and guitarist Bob Weir dedicated the song "He's Gone" to Sands.The concert was later released as Dick's Picks Volume 13, part of the Grateful Dead's programme of live concert releases. Songs written in response to the hunger strikes and Sands's death include songs by Black 47, Nicky Wire, Meic Stevens, The Undertones, Eric Bogle, Soldat Louis and Christy Moore. Moore's song, "The People's Own MP", has been described as an example of a rebel song of the "hero-martyr" genre in which Sands's "intellectual, artistic and moral qualities" are eulogised. The U.S. rock band Rage Against the Machine listed Sands as an inspiration in the sleeve notes of their self-titled debut album and as a "political hero" in media interviews. Celtic F.C., a Scottish football club, received a €50,000 fine from UEFA over banners depicting Sands with a political message, which were displayed during a game on 26 November 2013 by Green Brigade fans. Bobby Sands has been portrayed in the following films:
The Éire Nua flute band inspired by Bobby Sands, commemorate the 1916 Easter Rising on the 91st anniversary.- Sands was played by John Lynch in the 1996 film Some Mother's Son. It was directed by Terry George and written by George and Jim Sheridan.
- Sands was played by Mark O'Halloran in the 2001 film H3.
- Michael Fassbender played Sands in Hunger, a 2008 film by Steve McQueen about the last six weeks of Sands's life in the context of the 1981 Irish hunger strike. It premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and won McQueen the prestigious Caméra d'Or award for first-time filmmakers. It was broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK for the first time on 15 December 2009.
- The 2016 documentary film, Bobby Sands: 66 Days
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A very interesting Royal Munster Fusiliers Regiment WW1 Recruitment Poster exhorting the young men of Kerry,Cork,Clare & Limerick to enlist and join the War effort. Origins:Glin Co Limerick. Dimensions : 40cm x 35cm Glazed The Royal Munster Fusiliers was a line infantry regiment of the British Army from 1881 to 1922. It traced its origins to the East India Company's Bengal European Regiment raised in 1652, which later became the 101st Regiment of Foot (Royal Bengal Fusiliers). The Royal Munster Fusiliers were formed in 1881 by the merger of the 101st Regiment of Foot and the 104th Regiment of Foot (Bengal Fusiliers). One of eight Irish regiments raised largely in Ireland, it had its home depot in Tralee and served as the county regiment for Cork, Clare, Limerick and Kerry. At its formation the regiment comprised two regular and two militia battalions. The Royal Munster Fusiliers served in India before the regiment fought in the Second Boer War. Prior to the First World War, the regiment's three militia battalions were converted into reserve battalions, and a further six battalions were added to the regiment's establishment during the war. The regiment fought with distinction throughout the Great War and won three Victoria Crosses by the conflict's conclusion in 1918.Following establishment of the independent Irish Free State in 1922, the five regiments that had their traditional recruiting grounds in the counties of the new state were disbanded and the Royal Munster Fusiliers ceased to be as a regiment on 31 July 1922.History
Origins
Before the regiment was reformed as part of a reorganization of the British Army in 1881, the Royal Munster Fusilier's historic background went back as far as 1652 with the formation of the Bengal European Regiment by the Honourable East India Company.This regiment would eventually become the 101st Regiment of Foot (Royal Bengal Fusiliers), or the 1st Bengal European Fusiliers. The East India Company formed the 104th Regiment of Foot (Bengal Fusiliers), or 2nd Bengal European Fusiliers, from this regiment in 1765. Both regiments, which were composed exclusively of white soldiers, not Indian sepoys, played pivotal roles in the British conquest of India throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. As well as the Royal Munster Fusilier's origins as part of the East India Company, the regiment's reserve battalions also traced their lineage to the Militia of Munster (namely the South Cork Light Infantry Militia, the Kerry Militia and the Royal Limerick County Militia, which became the 3rd, 4th and 5th Battalions, respectively). While both the fusilier regiments had originated and served as "European" regiments of the East India Company, they were transferred to the British Army in 1861 when the British Crown took control of the company's private army after the Indian Mutiny of 1857.
A painting depicting the 101st Regiment of Foot (Royal Bengal Fusiliers), a predecessor regiment of the Royal Munster Fusiliers, marching to Delhi during the Indian Mutiny of 1857.Formation
The second half of the 19th Century saw the beginning of widespread reforms in the British Army which would eventually result in the formation of the Royal Munster Fusiliers. The first of these reforms saw the localisation of recruiting districts in Britain and Ireland between 1873 and 1874 under the Cardwell Reforms. Five of the historic East India Company's European infantry battalions were given Irish territorial titles under the Childers Reforms of 1881. The former Bengal Fusilier regiments were merged into a single regiment to become the 1st Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers and the 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers, while the 3rd, 4th and 5th Royal Munster Fusilier battalions were the militia units. The Reforms linked regiments to recruiting areas – which in case of the Royal Munster Fusiliers were the counties of Clare, Cork, Kerry, and Limerick. Militarily, the whole of Ireland was administered as a separate command with Command Headquarters at Parkgate (Phoenix Park) Dublin, directly under the War Office in London. The regimental depot was located at Ballymullen Barracks, Tralee, Co. Kerry.Second Boer War
Following the outbreak of the Second Boer War in South Africa in October 1899, a number of regiments from areas containing large centres of population formed additional regular battalions. The Royal Munster Fusiliers were announced to be among those regiments set to form 3rd and 4th regular battalions in February 1900, but they do not appear to have done so.The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers embarked for South Africa in 1899, and would serve there throughout the entire Second Boer War. Initially, the battalion took part in Lord Robert's advance into the Orange Free State. Following this, the battalion was attached to the 20th Brigade and fought at the Battle of Belmont. With the beginning of the war's guerrilla warfare phase, the battalion took part in numerous pacification campaigns against the Boers in Pretoria and Western Transvaal. The 3rd (Militia) Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers, formerly the South Cork Light Infantry, was embodied in early December 1899, and 435 officers and men embarked the SS Sumatra for South Africa on 23 February 1900. The 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers, arrived in South Africa from India in December 1901 and served during the closing stages of the campaign, garrisoning blockhouses in the northeast of the Orange River Colony. Following the end of the war in 1902 the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers were sent to India. More than 520 officers and men left Cape Town on the SS Lake Manitoba in September 1902, arriving at Bombay the following month and were then stationed at Multan in Punjab. They would later take part in actions against the tribes of the North-West Frontier in 1908. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers left South Africa soon after their sister battalion, and 450 officers and men returned to Cork Harbour on the SS Orient in early November 1902.
The 1st Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers in South Africa during the Second Boer War, 1901.First World War
Prior to the First World War, the Royal Munster Fusiliers were an established strength of two regular service and three reserve battalions. With the outbreak of war in August 1914, the need for further divisions resulted in the creation of a New Army made up of volunteers who would serve for the duration of the war. This rapid expansion of the British Army would significantly increase the size of the Royal Munster Fusiliers who between their regular, reserve and volunteer battalions would have a combined strength of 11 raised battalions throughout the war. At the outbreak of war the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was acting as a regular garrison in Rangoon, Burma, having being based in the Far East since they had left Fermoy in 1899 to fight in the Second Boer War. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers were based at Aldershot, England as part of the 1st Army Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division at the outbreak of war.At the outbreak of war the Royal Munster Fusiliers three reserve battalions were all mobilised on 4 August 1914 and the regimental colours were sent to Tralee for safekeeping there until after the ArmisticeRegular Army
1914: Arrival in France and the Great Retreat
At the outbreak of war, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers was under strength, and reservists were called up from the regimental depots at Tralee and Fermoyamid much local cheering, to join the battalion at Aldershot which brought the battalion up to a strength of 27 officers and 971 other ranks before its departure to France on 13 August 1914. As part of the British Expeditionary Force, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers took part in the Battle of Mons and on 27 August were given the arduous task of forming the rearguard to cover the retreat of the 1st Division in the face of the German advance, with instructions to retreat only if ordered. The Munster's made an epic stand in a renowned rearguard action during the defence of Etreux, losing 9 officers and 87 other ranks killed while holding out,with most of the rest of the battalion being surrounded and taken prisoner after running out of ammunition. The Munster's had stemmed the Germans, who were five or six times their strength, for over a day, allowing their division to escape. The loss on an entire battalion so early in the war was a disaster for the regiment. When the scattered battalion reassembled on 29 August it was down to a mere 5 officers and 196 other ranks. The remnants of the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers were withdrawn to be recuperated before returning to battle, seeing action most notably at Langemarck, Belgium on 22 October. By 5 November, recruits from home brought its strength up to over 800 men. The battalion next saw action near Zillebeke, Belgium on 12 November and helped to defend against the last great German effort in the First Battle of Ypres. From 15 November, as snows began, they drove off further attacks, with trench warfare now becoming dominant. In early December they aided in the evacuation of the Ypres Benedictine Convent, whose occupants subsequently established Kylemore Abbey in Connemara, Ireland. The battalion was moved south to the Festubert sector in France, after a 36-hour march were ordered on 22 December to fill a gap by taking two lines of trenches. There were 200 casualties in the first 10 minutes of heavy fire. Withdrawing in total exhaustion on the next day, many wounded drowned in water-filled shell holes. Throughout Christmas and New Year they were fully occupied maintaining the trenches. On 25 January, the Kaiser's birthday the Germans tried unsuccessfully to break through with terrific shellfire. There then followed three months of rebuilding and training the battalion when it numbered 28 officers and 700 other ranks in May. Only four of the officers were pre-war.
Men of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers in Aldershot just prior to the outbreak of the First World War, 1914.1915: Gallipoli and the Second Battle of Ypres
The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, who had been stationed in Burma, arrived back at Avonmouth, UK in January 1915, and were entrained for Coventrywhere it was assigned to the 86th Brigade of the 29th Division (United Kingdom). In March it sailed for the Dardanelles, Turkey, when it numbered 28 officers and 1,002 other ranks. Turkey had joined the Central Powers's side in November 1914, the object of the landing on the Dardanelles peninsula was to open the Dardanelles Strait in the Battle of Gallipoli to enable Allied relief convoys reach Russia. Aboard the SS River Clyde, a converted collier with a capacity for over 2,000 men, they arrived on 25 April together with the 1st Battalion The Royal Dublin Fusiliers and some companies of the Royal Hampshires. The SS River Clyde ran gently ashore, its exit bows facing the beach, for what was to be the troubled British landing at Cape Helles. Small boats first carried companies of Dubliners to the beach, however four hidden Turkish machine gun posts opened fire and decimated them. Lighters to the shore were roped together and two companies of Munsters poured out on to the bow's gangway but were also hit by machine gun fire, with one survivor saying they were 'literally slaughtered like rats in a trap'. Many of the Munsters jumped from the gangway in the face of the withering fire and some drowned under their heavy equipment. Those men who continued down the gangway were mown down until all the boats and lighters were filled with dead and wounded. The ship's commanding officer, Captain Edward Unwin, on being informed that they were not succeeding, replied "in British military tradition, offensives once begun are never called off". Unwin was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions that day. At daybreak the next day, just three companies of Munsters, two companies of Hampshires and one company of Dubliners had made it to the shelter of some dunes. On 26 April they took fort Sedd-el-Bahr overlooking the bay, charging and taking the village behind and held off several Turkish counterattacks. It was in this attack that the heroic actions of William Cosgrove won the regiment's first Victoria Cross. The 28 April saw a renewed attack in the Battle for Krithia village, but the survivors of the landing were withdrawn by 29 April due to heavy losses and amalgamated with the surviving Dublin Fusiliers, to form the "Dubsters" battalion of 8 officers and 770 men.
The SS River Clyde holds dead of the Royal Munster Fusiliers who were killed while attempting to get ashore at Sedd el Bahr during the Gallipoli Campaign.The Turks launched a renewed attack on the night of 1 May, with one Royal Munster Fusilier saying "they crept up in the dark into our trenches bayoneting our men before we knew it had begun. Bayoneting on both sides was terrible. At dawn the Turks were mowed down, and heaps of bodies and streams of blood remaining everywhere."The battalion was reduced to 4 officers and 430 men, with the Turks attempting further attacks the following days only to be driven off once again, but the combined force of Munster and Dublin Fusiliers were down to 372 men by 11 April. Both the Munsters and Dubliners received new drafts on 29 May and became separate units again. By 4 June, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers numbered 40 officers and 500 other ranks, but many the new recruits were young and inexperienced. The Munsters withheld a further Turkish attack on 17 June, killing over 300 Turks. The arrival of further new drafts replenished the battalion to 23 officers and other 588 ranks. The Munsters took part in the Division's assault on 28 June which secured five trench lines. This provoked a general attack by the Turkish side along the Cape Helles front on 5 July, but the Turks were repulsed after suffering heavy losses. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers participated in limited actions into the middle of July. A month's rest was promised on 15 July, but by 22 July the battalion were back in action, their strength around 500 of whom only 3 officers and 314 men remained from those who first landed on 25 April. The climax of the Gallipoli came with the Suvla attack on 21 August in the Battle of Scimitar Hill, the Turks inflicted severe casualties. The unsuccessful attack cost the Munsters 3 officers and 79 men that day alone. There was little further action other than holding front lines from September through to November, when the weather worsened. Late in November, gales swept over the peninsula, hundreds were drowned in the flooded trenches or from exposure and frostbite. Faced with defeat, the British decided to withdraw from the peninsula and the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was evacuated as it arrived, on the River Clyde, sailing on 2 January 1916 for Alexandria. From there it sailed with the rest of the 29th Division and arrived in France on 22 March. 3 years of warfare still remained for the battalion on the Western Front, but the battalion had already suffered 45% of its total losses for the entire war at Gallipoli, and numbered just 24 officers and 287 men when disembarking in France.
The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue du Bois administered by their chaplain Father Francis GleesonWhile their sister battalion had been fighting on the shores of Gallipoli, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers had continued to serve on the Western Front and faced their first major action of 1915 in the Second Battle of Ypres, during which they fought at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. The day before the attack was to be launched on 9 May, the battalion received Absolution from their chaplain, Father Francis Gleeson,an event which would become depicted in the famous "Rue du Bois" painting by Fortunino Matania.The British bombardment began at 5 a.m. and the Munsters then pressed forward with extraordinary bravery, with German fire sweeping no-mans-land. Some of the Munsters audaciously charging ahead through the German lines, briefly waving a green flag on its breastwork, then moved beyond until cut off by the British artillery bombardment that followed, which killed many men sheltering in shell craters. By 11 a.m. the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers was withdrawn with only 3 officers and 200 men remaining, having lost 19 officers and 370 men killed, wounded or captured. The Munsters was one of only two British battalions to reach the German lines but they had suffered the regiment's highest loss of any one day of the war, with 11 officers and 140 men killed in action. It was an unsuccessful day for the British forces overall, with casualties exceeding 11,000, the devastating losses exposing the British forces weakness in artillery. The summer was relatively quiet for the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers after the battalion moved to the Loos sector in June, with casualties in July and August occurring from shelling. With other forces being withdrawn to reinforce the Gallipoli Campaign, no reinforcements or recruits arrived during the summer, keeping the battalion weak as the Loos offensive began on 25 September 1915. The Munsters were held in reserve at first but they were soon tasked with holding the line and suffered over 200 casualties, leaving the battalion with around 350 soldiers all ranks, which further reduced to 250 by the time the battle died down on 13 October. John Redmond M.P., the Irish leader, visited the battalion a month later on 15 November and promised to fill the depleted 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers with Irish recruits. There followed three months of bitter winter weather in appalling trench conditions. New recruits began arriving over the winter, but in the relative inactivity, 65 men were hit by harassing random fire while 40 men went down with frostbite and trench fever in the Arctic weather before the winter had ended.
Certifying attendance at Father Gleeson's Mission, 1915.1916: The Battle of the Somme
The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers entered the front lines in France for the first time on 23 April 1916 at the Somme sector, where they slowly built up strength to 26 officers and 476 men. On 29 May, the battalion was assigned to the 48th Brigade of the 16th (Irish) Division at Béthune and they were reinforced by members from the disbanded 9th Royal Munster Fusiliers, bringing the Battalion up to full strength. The Munsters remained in the area of the Loos salient into August with only intermittent casualties.When the 16th Irish Division was ordered south of the Somme battlefield, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers entered the line facing the strategic town of Ginchy on 5 September, having suffered over 200 casualties by gas-shelling on the way. The Munsters took part in the ensuing attack and triumphant capture of Ginchy by the 16th Division but at a high cost for the battalion which was reduced to 5 officers and 305 other ranks. A London newspaper headlined How the Irish took Ginchy – Splendid daring of the Irish troops In May, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers received many of the personnel from the disbanded 9th Royal Munster Fusiliers, bringing it up to strength for the summer campaign. The battalions' first noteworthy operation was the carefully planned Liévin raid on 25 June. It was during this action that Lieutenant Arthur Batten-Pooll would win the regiment's second Victoria Cross, although losses were heavy for the battalion with 5 officers and 60 other ranks killed or wounded. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers were transferred with its division down to the Somme sector in July for the opening of the Battle of the Somme, entering the lines on 14 July and capturing its objectives two days later. The battalion repulsed the German counterattack on 18 July, with an officer and 26 men killed, 127 wounded and 50 gassed. The Munsters were in reserve until 20 August, when they entered the lines once again for steady fighting but ran into heavy off-target and ineffective British artillery bombardment, killing 4 officers and 29 other ranks. A continual toll of casualties made September a costly month for the battalion. After a month's break in October, the 2 Royal Munster Fusiliers returned to the Somme for maintenance duties, then went into the mud filled front-line trenches from 27 November onwards, with a steady stream of casualties from frostbite and raids continuing to the end of December. Throughout the Somme campaign the 2RMF retained its local and Irish character. Following the end of their involvement in the Battle of the Somme, 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was moved northwards to Ypres in Belgium and also absorbed the remnants of the 8th Royal Munster Fusiliers on 23 November to bring it up to a strength of 48 officers and 1,069 men by 1 December. The Munsters spent Christmas 1916 in the trenches, but as the New Year arrived, an official report relates "as if by mutual consent both sides ceased fire a minute or two before the close of the old year. On the stroke of midnight the pipers tuned up and gave us The Old Year out and the New Year in, A Nation Once Again ,God Save Ireland, and a few more songs of the old country, N.C.O.s and men joining lustily in the choruses".
An illustration depicting men of the Royal Munster Fusiliers returning victoriously from their capture of Ginchy during the Battle of the Somme.1917: The Battle of Messines and Passchendaele
Old Royal Munster Fusiliers insignia
Following a period of rest in January 1917, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers were returned the front trenches again in February at Barleux, with the thawing weather resulting in extremely muddy conditions in the trenches. In March, the first major event was the German withdrawal from the old Somme battlefield to the newly constructed Hindenburg Line. The battalion followed across the Somme, but was held up into May removing mines and booby-traps and repairing communications. The Munsters then moved to near Nieuwpoort in Flanders for an intended amphibious landing, with an impressive strength of 43 officers and 1,070 men, which was aborted following a surprise German attack on 10 July. The Munsters were then moved with their division to Dunkirk for another amphibious attempt near Zeebrugge to link with a land offensive through Passchendaele, but this was also cancelled when the land offensive did not gain enough footing. For the men of the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, rotating routine trench duties continued up to the middle of March with light casualties (2 officers and 20 men killed). The battalion rehearsed special training during April and May for the assault on the strategic Messines Ridge. The Flanders offensive began at 3.10am on 7 June 1917 with the detonation of nineteen huge mines previously burrowed under the German lines. This was followed by the advance of the 16th Irish Division opposite the village of Wytschaete, to the right the 36th (Ulster) Division opposite the village of Messines, the largest ever concentration of Irish soldiers on a battlefield. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers took all its objectives on schedule despite the loss of nearly all of its supporting tanks. The subsequent battle was a complete success militarily for the British, with the two Irish divisions showing great fortitude, advancing over two miles in a few days with minimal losses, which was exceptional by Western Front standards. The battalion was then relieved, and returned to the Ypres salient front section in August. Continuous rain turned the battlefront into a sea of mud causing a multitude of casualties and failure to take specific positions, reducing the battalion to 37 officers and 701 men. The Munsters were moved with its Division back south into France where it built up to 1,089 all ranks. The 16th (Irish) Division, and with it the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, took up positions north of the main attack during the first Battle of Cambrai which opened on 21 November with the use of over 450 British tanks. The Munsters advanced with such speed that only one enemy machine gun post was manned in time to open fire, which was taken with one loss. Considering the success of capturing a difficult objective without tank support and taking 170 prisoners, losses were light, and followed previously unsuccessful attempts by other units during the summer. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers final front tour of 1917 ended on 2 December when the Division was moved south to take over a French section. By 6 November 1917, the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers now numbered 20 officers and 630 other ranks when it arrived at "Irish Farm" in the Ypres salient. The ground was a quagmire full of water-logged shell-holes following four months of battle. It was to be the last British effort of the Passchendaele campaign. The Munsters were to be one of two battalions leading the 1st Division's attack at 6 a.m. on 10 November. Weighed down with equipment, they waded waist deep through mud and water, initially taking all objectives within 45 minutes. Seeing the progress by the Canadians on the right, the men of the Munsters pressed on. However, the South Wales Borders advance had left a gap the Germans made use of to cut off most of the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers who then had to fight their way back to the British lines. A roll call took three hours later saw only 7 officers and 240 other ranks present with 12 officers and 393 other ranks having become casualties. The battalion was moved out to Brieulles for reforming for the rest of the year.The Kaiser knows each Munster, by the Shamrock on his cap, and the famous Bengal Tiger, ever ready for a scrap. With all his big battalions, Prussian guards and grenadiers, he feared to face the bayonets of the Munster Fusiliers.— Verse from a song published during the Great War1918: The German Spring Offensive and Final Victory
From January through to March, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was involved in various engagements in snow, frost and mud. By St. Patrick's Day 1918, it became clear that the Germans were gaining the initiative and their forecast "Big Move" was awaited. By the end of January 1918 the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers numbered 44 officers and 823 other ranks, and was then transferred to the 48th Brigade of the 16th (Irish) Division on 3 February near Peronnewhere it entered the lines a week later. The division was now under the command of General Hubert Gough. The British front was at its lengthiest when the German Spring Offensive opened with a devastating bombardment early on 21 March 1918, after which a fierce attack by fresh troops was launched. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers suffered badly from the shelling but held the Germans up all night, before they broke through and overwhelmed the Munsters who dashed to retreat, with some making it to a high ridge trench where they were driven out and retired to Epehy by dark, fog having allowed the Germans to infiltrate easily. The next day the battalion was withdrawn to Tincourt where the depleted 16th (Irish) Division was concentrated, with the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers now numbering only 290 other ranks, from 629 the day before. On 22 March, the battalion crossed back over the Somme at Péronne.By 25 March, the battalion had lost 27 officers and 550 men, as the rest tried to reform, holding off several attacks and near encirclements. The Munsters formed a 400-man column and attempted a night retreat, half reaching friendly positions next morning at Hamel. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was fortunate to be in reserve as the Germans opened the offensive with a gas-bombardment. By the next day, the battalion was heavily engaged, the enemy using a new zigzag attack strategy. The battalion retaliated but was forced to withdraw and were quickly down to 7 officers and 450 men. There was then a general withdrawal across the Somme at Peronne, by which time the battalion was reduced to just 290 men. The German offensive had decimated the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers to a shadow of its previous strength. The 16th (Irish) Division was reduced to cadre, having suffered the heaviest losses of any British division during the March retreat. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was transferred to the 57th (2nd W.Lancs) Division which had not seen action since its arrival in February 1917.The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers was largely destroyed by the German offensive, losing 36 officers and 796 other ranks since 21 March. The battalion moved northwards to amalgamate with the equally hard hit 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers at Inghem on 14 April, with the resulting unit numbering 28 officers and 896 other ranks. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers was then reduced to a training cadre of 11 officers, who left the 16th (Irish) Division to provide instruction for newly arrived American Expeditionary Force. In May, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers entered the lines again at Gommecourt, a quiet sector during the summer. On 27 August, the battalion again entered the line for an attack near Croisilles, taking enemy support trenches on the Hindenburg Line in half an hour with minimal losses. This was followed by the assault of 2 September when Martin Doyle won the battalion's third Victoria Cross on the Drocourt–Queant Line south of the river Scarpe, with the battalion suffering 350 casualties. The battalion was then relieved and received replacements and trained in preparation for the assault on the Cambrai to St. Quentin line. With a 3,000-yard advance on 27 September, Graincourt was captured by the Munsters. The Germans counter-attacked, recapturing many positions. The battalion remained under shellfire even behind the lines and was reduced to 7 officers and 261 men by 3 October.The battalion supported the final attack of the Battle of Cambrai on 8 October, which was found to be evacuated the following day as the Germans were in disorganised retreat. The 57th Division was then sent north to Armentières, with the Munsters entering the line on 17 October, with no resistance. Lille was captured the following day and the battalion provided a guard of honour for the French President's visit to the city on 21 October. The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was billeted in Lille until the Armistice of 11 November 1918. The 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers began reconstruction on 7 June 1918 when most of the 6th Royal Munster Fusiliers who had returned from Palestine were transferred to the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers. The battalion made its last transfer to the 150th Brigade of the 50th Division at Arras for the beginning of the Hundred Days Offensive. On 1 October, the battalion was transported to Épehy, which had been the scene of its Spring Offensive experiences back in March, and it was again ordered into the lines on 4 October, to capture Le Catelet. The Munsters largely gaining their objective, however, they had to retire after encountering heavy counterattacks and failures elsewhere on the line, losing many 6st Royal Munster Fusiliers pre-war veterans who had survived Gallipoli. The 50th Division's advance was resumed on 10 October, and the battalion was reduced to 13 officers and 411 men by 16 October. The Battle of Épehy began on 18 October to drive the Germans behind the river, with the Munsters going in next day in fog surprising the Germans and taking many prisoner as well the objectives. The Munsters overran their objectives and were caught in another Division's barrage, with heavy losses experienced. They were then withdrawn and reorganised for what to be their final operation of the war, successfully taking a large area around Haute Noyelles on 4 November, the number of prisoners taken indicative of the low state of German morale. After a counter-bombardment on 7 November the battalion was withdrawn for the remaining days up until the Armistice.
Two officers of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers man a machine gun on the Western Front.New Army
With the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 the immediate need for a considerable expansion of the British Army resulted in the formation of the New Army under Lord Kitchener. The war target was seventy divisions in all, the New Army to have thirty volunteer divisions separate and under Army Order 324, as additional from the Regular Army, with a planned period of service of at least three years. On 7 August a general United Kingdom-wide call for 100,000 volunteers aged 19–30 was issued. The battalions were to be distinguished by the word 'Service' after their number. The first new battalions were raised as units of Kitchener's new K1 Army Group, which led to the formation of the 6th and 7th (Service) Battalions, Royal Munster Fusiliers which were a part of the 30th Brigade of the 10th (Irish) Division, under the command of General Bryan Mahon. The 8th and 9th (Service) Battalions, Royal Munster Fusiliers followed as units of the 16th (Irish) Division's 47th and 48th Brigades, part of Kitchener's second new K2 Army Group. The 16th Division was placed under the command of Major General William Hickie.In the course of the war heavy losses suffered by the two Regular Royal Munster Fusilier Battalions caused the new service battalions to be disbanded and absorbed in turn by the regular battalions, the last on 2 June 1918 when the 8th (Service) Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers was amalgamated with the 1st Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers. -
Exquisitely presented Limerick Soviet of 1919 Historical Display. Origins: Limerick City Dimensions: 72cm x 44cm Glazed The Limerick Soviet was a self-declared Irish soviet that existed from 15 to 27 April 1919 in County Limerick, Ireland. At the beginning of the Irish War of Independence, a general strike was organised by the Limerick Trades and Labour Council, as a protest against the British Army's declaration of a "Special Military Area" under the Defence of the Realm Act, which covered most of Limerick city and a part of the county. The soviet ran the city for the period, printed its own money and organised the supply of food. The Limerick Soviet was one of a number of Irish soviets declared between 1919 and 1923.From January 1919 the Irish War of Independence developed as a guerrilla conflict between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) (backed by Sinn Féin's Dáil Éireann), and the British government. On 6 April 1919 the IRA tried to liberate Robert Byrne, who was under arrest by the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) police in a hospital, being treated for the effects of a hunger strike. In the rescue attempt Constable Martin O'Brien was fatally wounded and another policeman was seriously injured. Byrne was also wounded and died later on the same day. In response, on 9 April British Army Brigadier Griffin declared the city to be a Special Military Area, with RIC permits required for all wanting to enter and leave the city as of Monday 14 April.British Army troops and armoured vehicles were deployed in the city. On Friday 11 April a meeting of the United Trades and Labour Council, to which Byrne had been a delegate, took place. At that meeting Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU) representative Sean Dowling proposed that the trade unions take over Town Hall and have meetings there, but the proposal was not voted on. On Saturday 12 April the ITGWU workers in the Cleeve's factory in Lansdowne voted to go on strike. On Sunday 13 April, after a twelve-hour discussion and lobbying of the delegates by workers, a general strike was called by the city's United Trades and Labour Council. Responsibility for the direction of the strike was devolved to a committee that described itself as a soviet as of 14 April.The committee had the example of the Dublin general strike of 1913 and "soviet" (meaning a self-governing committee) had become a popular term after 1917 from the soviets that had led to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
Money printed by the Limerick SovietA transatlantic air race was being organised from Bawnmore in County Limerick at the same time, but was cancelled. The assembled journalists from England and America took up the story of an Irish soviet and interviewed the organisers. The Trades Council chairman John Cronin was described as the "father of the baby Soviet." Ruth Russell of the Chicago Tribune remarked on the religiosity of the strike committee, observed "the bells of the nearby St. Munchin's Church tolled the Angelus and all the red-badged guards rose and blessed themselves." The Sinn Féin Mayor of Limerick, Phons O'Mara told Russell there is no prospect of socialism, as "There can't be, the people here are Catholics." The general strike was extended to a boycott of the troops. A special strike committee was set up to print their own money, control food prices and publish newspapers. The businesses of the city accepted the strike currency. Outside Limerick there was some sympathy in Dublin, but not in the main Irish industrial area around Belfast. The National Union of Railwaymen did not help. The strike committee organised food and fuel supplies, printed its own money based on the British shilling, and published its own newspaper called 'The Worker's Bulletin'Cinemas opened with the sign “Working under authority of the strike committee” posted. Local newspapers were allowed to publish once a week as long as they had the caption "Published by Permission of the Strike Committee". On 21 April 'The Worker's Bulletin' remarked that "A new and perfect system of organisation has been worked out by a clever and gifted mind, and ere long we shall show the world what Irish workers are capable of doing when left to their own resources." On Easter Monday 1919, the newspaper stated "The strike is a worker's strike and is no more Sinn Féin than any other strike." Liam Cahill argues "The soviet attitude to private property was essentially pragmatic. So long as shopkeepers were willing to act under the soviet's dictates, there was no practical reason to commandeer their premises."While the strike was described by some as a revolution, Cahill adds that: "In the end the soviet was basically an emotional and spontaneous protest on essentially nationalist and humanitarian grounds, rather than anything based on socialist or even trade union aims." After two weeks the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Limerick, Phons O'Mara, and the Catholic bishop Denis Hallinan called for the strike to end, and the Strike Committee issued a proclamation on 27 April 1919 stating that the strike was over. Origins : Limerick Dimensions : 72cm x 44cm 4kg
Members of the Limerick Soviet -
Lovely set of 4 sepia toned hand printed framed photographs of Limerick City scenes taken from the original glass plates of the well known photographer W.Lawrence.The four scenes depict the Treaty Stone,St Marys Cathedral & ,A steamboat docked at Limerick Quays and a busy O'Connell Street scene. Origins : Co Clare Dimensions :16cm x 18cm 3kg (set of 4) -
Interesting old display print on a wooden background depicting the historical,cultural and sporting highlights of the Emerald Isle.Although the frame is showing signs of age related wear,this piece will make a wonderful addition to your collection or decorative item for your wall . Kilkee Co Clare 60cm x 55cm -
Nostalgic,atmospheric photo of Pope John Paul II arriving at Dublin Airport in 1979 on board an Aer Lingus 747-it was the first time a Pope had visited Ireland . 66cm x 56cm Gort Co Galway Pope John Paul visited Ireland from Saturday 29 September to Monday, 1 October 1979, the first trip to Ireland by a pope. Over 2.5 million people attended events in Dublin, Drogheda, Clonmacnoise, Galway, Knock, Limerick, and Maynooth. It was one of John Paul's first foreign visits as Pope, who had been elected in October 1978. The visit marked the centenary of the reputed apparitions at the Shrine of Knock in August 1 1878.An Aer Lingus Boeing 747, named St Patrick, brought Pope John Paul II from Rome to Dublin Airport. The Pope kissed the ground as he disembarked. After being greeted by the President of Ireland Patrick Hillery, the Pope flew by helicopter to Phoenix Park where he celebrated Mass for 1,250,000 people, one third of the population of the Republic of Ireland. Afterwards he travelled to Killineer, near Drogheda, where he led a Liturgy of the Word for 300,000 people, many from Northern Ireland. There the Pope appealed to the men of violence: "on my knees I beg you to turn away from the path of violence and return to the ways of peace". The Pope had hoped to visit Armagh, but the security situation in Northern Ireland rendered it impossible. Drogheda was selected as an alternative venue as it is situated in the Catholic Archdiocese of Armagh. Returning to Dublin that evening, the Pope was greeted by 750,000 people as he travelled in an open top popemobile through the city centre and visited Áras an Uachtaráin, the residence of the Irish President.His final engagement was a meeting with journalists at the Dominican Convent in Cabra.The journalists from the international media broke into a spontaneous rendition of 'For he's a jolly good fellow' when the Pope arrived. Pope John Paul spent the night at the nearby Apostolic Nunciature on the Navan Road in Cabra. Pope John Paul began the second day of his tour with a short visit to the ancient monastery at Clonmacnoise in County Offaly.With 20,000 in attendance, he spoke of how the ruins were "still charged with a great mission".Later that morning he celebrated a Youth Mass for 300,000 at Ballybrit Racecourse in Galway. It was here that the Pope uttered perhaps the most memorable line of his visit: "Young people of Ireland, I love you".That afternoon, he travelled by helicopter to Knock Shrine in County Mayo which he described as "the goal of my journey to Ireland".The outdoor Mass at the shrine was attended by 450,000. The Pope met with the sick and elevated the church to the title of Basilica. He lit a candle at the Gable Wall for the families of Ireland. Monsignor James Horan, instrumental in the shrine's development, welcomed the Pope to Knock. The final day of the visit began with a brief early morning visit to St Patrick's College, Maynooth, the National Seminary, in County Kildare.Some 80,000 people joined 1,000 seminarians on the grounds of the college for the brief visit. A dense fog delayed the Pope's arrival from Dublin by helicopter. The final Mass of the Pope's visit to Ireland was celebrated at Greenpark Racecoursein Limerick before 400,000 people, many more than had been expected. The Mass was offered for the people of Munster. Pope John Paul left Ireland from nearby Shannon Airport travelling to Boston where he began a six-day tour of the United States. Pope John Paul delivered 22 homilies and addresses during the course of this visit, including a televised message for the sick broadcast on RTÉ on the evening of his arrival in Ireland. Audio files of his more significant speeches are preserved on the website of the Irish Catholic Bishops Conference.Many of the temporary fixtures and ornaments at the public masses were auctioned two months after the visit to help defray its cost. A Time Remembered - The Visit of Pope John Paul II to Ireland was produced by RTÉ in 2005. Many children were named John and Paul in the aftermath of the papal visit. There were many Johns and Pauls beforehand but there was a huge increase in the amount of children called after the Pope's taken names. Some children were also given both names as their Christian name and were known as John Paul in honour of the Pope's visit.
Papal Cross erected for the mass in Phoenix Park -
Magnificent oil painting of the great Arkle by renowned Irish artist L Fitzgerald,with regular jockey Pat Taafe on board wearing the distinctive yellow and black silks of Arkle's owner Anne,Duchess of Westminster. 50cm x 70cm Kilcock Co Kildare Arkle (19 April 1957 – 31 May 1970) was an Irish Thoroughbred racehorse. A bay gelding by Archive out of Bright Cherry, he was the grandson of the unbeaten (in 14 races) flat racehorse and prepotent sire Nearco. Arkle was born at Ballymacoll Stud, County Meath, by Mrs Mary Alison Baker of Malahow House, near Naul, County Dublin. He was named after the mountain Arkle in Sutherland, Scotland that bordered the Duchess of Westminster’s Sutherland estate. Owned by Anne Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster, he was trained by Tom Dreaper at Greenogue, Kilsallaghan in County Meath, Ireland, and ridden during his steeplechasing career by Pat Taaffe. At 212, his Timeform rating is the highest ever awarded to a steeplechaser. Only Flyingbolt, also trained by Dreaper, had a rating anywhere near his at 210. Next on their ratings are Sprinter Sacre on 192 and then Kauto Star and Mill House on 191. Despite his career being cut short by injury, Arkle won three Cheltenham Gold Cups, the Blue Riband of steeplechasing, and a host of other top prizes. On 19th April, 2014 a magnificent 1.1 scale bronze statue was unveiled in Ashbourne, County Meath in commemoration of Arkle. In the 1964 Cheltenham Gold Cup, Arkle beat Mill House (who had won the race the previous year) by five lengths to claim his first Gold Cup at odds of 7/4. It was the last time he did not start as the favourite for a race. Only two other horses entered the Gold Cup that year. The racing authorities in Ireland took the unprecedented step in the Irish Grand National of devising two weight systems — one to be used when Arkle was running and one when he was not. Arkle won the 1964 race by only one length, but he carried two and half stones more than his rivals. The following year's Gold Cup saw Arkle beat Mill House by twenty lengths at odds of 3/10. In the 1966 renewal, he was the shortest-priced favourite in history to win the Gold Cup, starting at odds of 1/10. He won the race by thirty lengths despite a mistake early in the race where he ploughed through a fence. However, it did not stop his momentum, nor did he ever look like falling. Arkle had a strange quirk in that he crossed his forelegs when jumping a fence. He went through the season 1965/66 unbeaten in five races. Arkle won 27 of his 35 starts and won at distances from 1m 6f up to 3m 5f. Legendary Racing commentator Peter O'Sullevan has called Arkle a freak of nature — something unlikely to be seen again. Besides winning three consecutive Cheltenham Gold Cups (1964, 1965, 1966) and the 1965 King George VI Chase, Arkle triumphed in a number of other important handicap chases, including the 1964 Irish Grand National (under 12-0), the 1964 and 1965 Hennessy Gold Cups (both times under 12-7), the 1965 Gallagher Gold Cup (conceding 16 lb to Mill House while breaking the course record by 17 seconds), and the 1965 Whitbread Gold Cup(under 12-7). In the 1966 Hennessy, he failed by only half a length to give Stalbridge Colonist 35 lb. The scale of the task Arkle faced is shown by the winner coming second and third in the two following Cheltenham Gold Cups, while in third place was the future 1969 Gold Cup winner, What A Myth. In December 1966, Arkle raced in the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park but struck the guard rail with a hoof when jumping the open ditch, which resulted in a fractured pedal bone; despite this injury, he completed the race and finished second. He was in plaster for four months and, though he made a good enough recovery to go back into training, he never ran again. He was retired and ridden as a hack by his owner and then succumbed to what has been variously described as advanced arthritis or possibly brucellosis and was put down at the early age of 13. Arkle became a national legend in Ireland. His strength was jokingly claimed to come from drinking 2 pints of Guinness a day. At one point, the slogan Arkle for President was written on a wall in Dublin. The horse was often referred to simply as "Himself", and he supposedly received items of fan mail addressed to 'Himself, Ireland'. The Irish government-owned Irish National Stud, at Tully, Kildare, Co. Kildare, Ireland, has the skeleton of Arkle on display in its museum. A statue in his memory was erected in Ashbourne Co. Meath in April 2014. -
50cm x 60cm Dublin This rare and historical print depicts Grattans Irish House of Parliament before it fell under the Act of Union in 1800,whereupon Ireland would be governed from London for the next 120 years.This parliament was loyal to the King and was essentially an assembly of the leading members of the landed gentry of the country,loyal to the Anglican Church of Ireland who owned most of the land.The politicians of the national party now fought for the Irish parliament, not with the intention of liberating the Catholic majority, but to set the Irish parliament free from constitutional bondage to the British Privy Council. By virtue of Poynings' Law, a statute of King Henry VII of England, all proposed Irish legislation had to be submitted to the Privy Council for its approval under the Great Seal of England before being passed by the Irish parliament. A bill so approved might be accepted or rejected, but not amended. More recent British Acts had further emphasised the complete dependence of the Irish parliament, and the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish House of Lords had also been annulled. Moreover, the British Houses claimed and exercised the power to legislate directly for Ireland without even the nominal concurrence of the parliament in Dublin. This was the constitution which William Molyneux and Swift had denounced, which Flood had attacked, and which Grattan was to destroy, becoming leaders of the Patriot movement.Calls for the legislative independence of Ireland at the Irish Volunteer Convention at Dungannon greatly influenced the decision of the government in 1782 to make concessions. It was through ranks of Volunteers drawn up outside the parliament house in Dublin that Grattan passed on 16 April 1782, amidst unparalleled popular enthusiasm, to move a declaration of the independence of the Irish parliament. "I found Ireland on her knees," Grattan exclaimed, "I watched over her with a paternal solicitude; I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift, spirit of Molyneux, your genius has prevailed! Ireland is now a nation!" After a month of negotiation the claims of Ireland were conceded. The gratitude of his countrymen to Grattan was shown by a parliamentary grant of £100,000, which had to be reduced by half before he would accept it.Grattan then asked for the British House of Commons to reconfirm the London government's decision, and on 22 January 1783 the final Act was passed by parliament in London.However by 1800 under the Act of Union Grattans Parliament would cease to exist. From the perspective of Great Britain, the union was desirable because of the uncertainty that followed the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and the French Revolution of 1789; if Ireland adopted Catholic Emancipation, willingly or not, a Roman Catholic parliament could break away from Britain and ally with the French, while the same measure within a united kingdom would exclude that possibility. Also the Irish and British parliaments, when creating a regency during King George III's "madness", gave the Prince Regent different powers. These considerations led Great Britain to decide to attempt merger of the two kingdoms and their parliaments.The final passage of the Act in the Irish Parliament was achieved with substantial majorities, in part according to contemporary documents through bribery, namely the awarding of peerages and honours to critics to get their votes.Whereas the first attempt had been defeated in the Irish House of Commons by 109 votes against to 104 for, the second vote in 1800 produced a result of 158 to 115. Yet in the heart of every Irishman,whatever his politics or religion ,there is a tender spot for Grattans Parliament and the genius, wit and oratory of its members will live long and be cherished with pride by their countrymen.The present Bank of Ireland at College Green,directly adjacent to Trinity College Dublin,was the site of the old Parliament building ,built in1729 and the worlds first purpose built bi-cameral Parliament House .Architects were Pearce and James Gandon .
The Irish House of Commons by Francis Wheatley (1780) shows Grattan (standing on right in red jacket) addressing the House. -
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 24th 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 3rd 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.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.
Historical pot still at the Jameson distillery in Cork -
Humorous and very sharp depiction of the last remaining horse Fair in the North of Ireland ,Ballyclare Co Antrim.The character depictions of this 19th century scene are very vivid and convey brilliantly the busy,raucous and exciting atmosphere of Fair Day back then when the horse was all important and the automobile had not yet been invented .A wonderful print . Ballyclare Co Antrim 50cm x 63cm -
On this day in 1963 JFK came to Ireland - What his historic trip meant to him and his ancestral home.
On this day (June 25) 1963, President John F. Kennedy arrived in Ireland on an emotional trip to his ancestral home. His speech is remembered for quoting the text of a Sinéad de Valera poem.
In June 1963, just five months before his assassination in Dallas, President John F. Kennedy made his historic trip to Ireland. On his last night in Ireland Kennedy was the guest of President de Valera and his wife Sinéad. Sinéad de Valera was an accomplished Irish writer, folklorist, and poet. During the evening she recited a poem of exile for the young president who was so impressed that he wrote it down on his place card. Over breakfast the next day, JFK memorized the poem and recited it in his last speech at Shannon as he departed.It reads: "'Tis the Shannon's brightly glancing stream, brightly gleaming, silent in the morning beam. Oh! the sight entrancing. Thus return from travels long, years of exile, years of pain to see Old Shannon's face again, O'er the waters glancing." Then he said, "Well, I am going to come back and see Old Shannon's face again, and I am taking, as I go back to America, all of you with me." Jackie Kennedy could not accompany her husband due to a difficult pregnancy with Patrick, her son who died soon after birth. Kennedy himself was suffering from physical stress and illness, a back condition and Addison's Disease to name but -two, but the vibrant face he showed to the world in Ireland would always be the lasting impression.Of course, he would never return to Ireland, struck down by an assassin's bullet 53 years ago. Yet, with each passing president, the JFK legend seems to grow larger. His popularity in America in the summer of 1963, just two and a half years into his presidency, seemed to make him a certainty for re-election. When he took his Irish trip, his approval rating was at an incredible 82 percent (Donald Trump is 45 percent at the moment; President Obama 63 percent) surpassing any president in history in a non-war situation. Kennedy was growing in stature, having faced down the Russians over Cuba, promising a man on the moon by 1970, and completing an amazing trip to Berlin where his speech “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” inspired a generation of separated Germans to come together again some 25-years later. Yet we will never know the full measure of the man. Two of his closest associates, Dave Powers and Kenneth O’Donnell, wrote a biography of Kennedy and entitled "Johnny We Hardly Knew You."President John F. Kennedy addresses a crowd at Redmond Place in Co. Wexford.
The title was taken from a sign someone held up when Kennedy was driving to Co. Wexford on his visit to his homestead. In 2013, the New Ross museum dedicated to Kennedy discovered the identity of the man holding up the sign and retrieved the sign for the museum. As sung by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, “Johnny We Hardly Knew You” is a fierce anti-war song which portrays an old lover meeting her former lover after he had fought in the Great War and was severely injured. He is now a cripple begging on the street. Here are some of the lyrics: “With your drums and guns and drums and guns, the enemy nearly slew ye, oh my darling dear, ye look so queer (strange). Johnny I hardly knew ye.” Ironically, of course, John F. Kennedy would have his own life cut short, suffering horrific injuries from an assassin's bullets just five months after the glorious Irish trip.He would never see 'Old Shannon’s' face again, but also he would never be forgotten by those who witnessed his visit.The emigrant and exile had returned home to a tiny country that revered and loved him. He was their stepping stone to the 21st century, but his own dreams died just months later. May he rest in peace. -
Very charming and interesting print of a smiling Irish soldier with a pipe in his mouth on his way to the front during WW1.Over 200,000 Irishmen served with the British Armed Forces in WW1 with more than 50,000 fatalities .The song Its a long long way to Tipperary became the song of the War with even the Germans singing a translated version in their own trenches after Count John McCormack recorded the definitive version in 1914.This print hung in a pub in Tipperary owned by an old woman whose father and two uncles were all killed during the carnage of the First World War. Cahir Co Tipperary 52cm x 42cm -
Atmospheric photograph of the Lansdowne Rugby Club's 3rd XV taken with the enormous old West Stand of Lansdowne Road in the background.It is estimated that half of this team were killed during the carnage of World War I just a few short years later-with surnames such as Gilligan,Beatty,O'Beirne,Nevin,Flavelle and Sadleir to be included on the sad Roll of Honour. 39cm x 45cm Ballsbridge Dublin -
43cm x 33cm Kilmainham Dublin A very old poster of three of the leaders of the 1916 Rebellion-John MacBride,Thomas Clarke and Thomas McDonagh with the Republican stamp underneath.On the 3rd May 1916,Thomas McDonagh and Thomas Clarke along with Padraig Pearse were the first of the leaders to be executed by firing squad at Kilmainham Jail followed by John McBride on May 5th.This piece is a poignant reminder of the sacrifice of these brave men and hung for years in a public house only a stones throw from where they died for their country. -
85cm x 72cm Rathdrum Co Wicklow Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891) will be remembered as one of the most iconic and indeed controversial politicians in Irish history.MP and Leader of the Irish Parliamentary or Home Rule Party from1882 to 1891 until revelations of his adulterous love affair with Kitty O'Shea forced his resignation.He died shortly afterwards from pneumonia in the arms of his newly divorced and remarried wife Katherine.His death was considered to be a direct result of the stresses he endured because of the Victorian era scandal and his subsequent funeral at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin was attended by more than 200000 people.His notability was such that his gravestone of unhewn Wicklow granite, erected in 1940,reads only Parnell. This faithful portrayal of Parnell,well over 130 years old, by the artist JG Wills dates to 1884 and is a beautiful homage to the "uncrowned king of Ireland". -
50cm x 35cm Birr Co Offaly "The Holland-America Line, a steamship company with passenger and freight steamers plying between Rotterdam and New York, is the only steamship line carrying emigrants from the Netherlands to the United States of America. Emigrants from the interior of the continent of Europe, who purchase their steamship tickets from the branch offices of the Holland-America Line in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy, arrive in Rotterdam on international trains, in which several cars have been set apart for their accommodation, from five to six days before the departure of the steamer on which they expect to sail; while emigrants from parts not far distant from this city, like southern Germany and the interior of the Netherlands, arrive at Rotterdam by train and river boat until the day previous to the departure of the steamer. All emigrants for the Holland-America Line are met at the railway station and boat landing at Rotterdam by runners of the line, who conduct them, immediately upon arrival, per steam tug to the NASM Hotel, the emigrant hotel owned and controlled by the Holland-America Line and situated opposite to the line's wharf. Here the emigrants remain until the departure of the steamer on which they are to sail or, in case they should be found undesirable immigrants by one of the medical inspectors, by the steamship company, or by the consul-general or vice-consul-general, until the time that they are returned again to the countries whence they came. The NASM Hotel was designed and built exclusively for the accommodation of the immigrants traveling per Holland-America Line. In the construction, besides the comfort of the emigrants, the sanitary requirements for a building of its kind have been given due consideration. The dining rooms and coffee or conversation rooms are, though necessarily somewhat sober in appearance in order to insure cleanliness, bright, spacious, and pleasant. The dormitories are spacious, clean, and airy. Sleeping apartments, open on top, each containing from four to six iron berths, similar to those used in the steerage of the company's twin-screw steamers, have been partitioned off along the walls. This gives the immigrants the desired privacy, besides the advantage of being together with the members of their family in one apartment. Between the partitions a wide space is left in the center of the dormitories for chairs, tables, etc., while windows and ventilators provide light and air on every side. There are separate dormitories for families, for men, and for women. Spacious wash and bath rooms, with modern appointments, are located on the vestibules conveniently close to each dormitory. The hotel has been constructed in such a manner that, should the need at any time arise, it would be possible to quarantine 800 passengers within its walls as effectually as though they were on shipboard. This possibility of isolation before sailing is a great sanitary advantage. With reference to this hotel, Consul Listoe wrote in his dispatch to the Department of State, under date of April 6, 1900: The company's claim that it is furnishing good lodging and board for emigrants at a low figure and at the same time protecting them against low, boardinghouse runners and sharpers, who would fleece them, is correct, and the Holland America Line is entitled to a great deal of credit for the humane manner in which it treats and cares for its emigrants. What is of more importance, though, from a United States point of view, is the facilities furnished the examining physician at the NASM Hotel for inspecting the emigrants as well as the arrangements for cleaning, bathing, and disinfecting the latter, and taking other sanitary measures in connection with those prospective citizens of the United States. At the hotel the emigrants are, at the instance of the Holland America Line, daily subjected to a medical inspection by a Dutch physician in the employ of the line. One day before sailing the emigrants are inspected at the hotel by a prominent Rotterdam oculist, engaged by the steamship company for its own protection,' to prevent emigrants suffering from infectious eye diseases sailing on its steamers. As the medical inspections referred to are not those prescribed by the United States Quarantine Regulations, they are not witnessed by a consular officer. The work of consular inspection is carried on as follows: The day previous to the departure of a passenger steamer, the baggage of all steerage passengers is inspected by the consul-general or his deputy. Among this baggage large quantities of mildewed and otherwise spoiled eatables are found. These are taken out, this having been the practice of the Marine-Hospital surgeon formerly detailed at Rotterdam. All feather pillows and beds are taken from the baggage and undergo a steam disinfection of 1000 Cel. As many as 60 beds can be disinfected at the same time by the Holland-America Line's disinfection plants, and each disinfection will require about one and one-half hours, viz, half an hour for getting up the required steam heat, half an hour for the disinfection, and half an hour for drying purposes. When there are 200 beds or more to be disinfected, which is frequently the case, supervision of the disinfection will keep a consular officer engaged for several hours. The inspection of the baggage takes from two to four hours, according to the number of packages to be inspected. The last medical and general inspection of the emigrants at which the consul-general or vice-consul-general is present is the inspection prescribed by the Quarantine Regulations, page I5, paragraph 5. It takes place in the hotel of the Holland-American Line or in the line's covered warehouse and· begins from three to six hours before the departure of the steamer. The emigrants pass in single file before the ship's surgeon, an American physician, who inspects them in the presence of the consular officer, who, for his part, looks over their inspection cards, prescribed by the Quarantine Regulations, page 19, paragraph 40, and stamps the same with a consular rubber seal, for all emigrants approved of. There are also present an officer of the State commission controlling the transit of emigrants through the Netherlands, who tallies their numbers, and a Rotterdam police officer, who watches for fugitives from justice among them reported to the Netherlands police authorities. Immediately after the inspection, the emigrants in possession of inspection cards bearing the consular stamp board the steamer and enter the steerage, which has previously been inspected by the consul. A few minutes before departure, after looking over the freight manifests of the vessel to see if all the requirements of the Quarantine Regulations and of the regulations of the Department of Agriculture have been complied with reference to disinfection certificates and certificates of healthy origin, the bill of health is issued. The emigrants are vaccinated by the ship's surgeon as soon as practicable after the departure of the vessel. Of late years no emigrants from infected districts have passed through Rotterdam on their way to the United States. Should such occur at any time, then they can be effectually quarantined in the hotel of the Holland-America Line for the periods prescribed by the Quarantine Regulations. AIRE H. VOORWINDEN, Vice and Deputy Consul- Gtneral. In a letter by Mr. Voorwinden to Mr. Peirce. CONSULATE-GENERAL, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Rotterdam, Netherlands, September 23 1903. -
Lovely Irish Mist advertising print depicting the iconic Irish soldier exiled and serving in the Irish Regiment of the Austrian Army around the mid 1750s. Nenagh Co Tipperary 50cm x 40cm Irish Mist is a brown Whiskey Liqueur produced in Dublin, Ireland, by the Irish Mist Liqueur Company Ltd. In September 2010 it was announced that the brand was being bought by Gruppo Campari from William Grant, only a few months after Grants had bought it from the C&C Group. It is made from aged Irish whiskey, heather and clover honey, aromatic herbs, and other spirits, blended to an ancient recipe claimed to be 1,000 years old.Though it was once 80 US proof (40% alcohol per volume), Irish Mist is now 35% or 70 US proof. The bottle shape has also been changed from a “decanter” style to a more traditional whiskey bottle shape. It is currently available in more than 40 countries. Irish Mist was the first liqueur to be produced in Ireland when commercial production began in 1947 at Tullamore, County Offaly. Tullamore is the hometown of the Williams family who were the original owners of Irish Mist. The company history goes back to 1829 when the Tullamore Distillery was founded to produce Irish whiskey. In the mid-1940s Desmond E. Williams began the search for an alternative yet related product, eventually deciding to produce a liqueur based on the ancient beverage known as heather wine.In 1985 the Cantrell & Cochrane Group purchased the Irish Mist Liqueur Company from the Williams family. In the summer of 2010 Irish Mist and the entire spirit division of C&C was bought by William Grant of Scotland. In September 2010 they in turn sold Irish Mist to Gruppo Campari.Irish Mist is typically served straight up or on ice, but also goes with coffee, vodka, or cranberry juice. Per the makers, Irish Mist’s most popular recipe is Irish Mist with Cola and Lime. A Rusty Mist is an ounce of Irish Mist with an ounce of Drambuie Scotch whisky liqueur.A Black Nail is made from equal parts Irish Mist and Irish whiskey. -
Enniscrone Co Sligo 45.5cm x 68.5cm Famous print of painting by Richard Moynan titled "Military Manoeuvres" which now resides in the National Gallery in Dublin.The Dublin-born painter Richard Moynan was 24 years old at the commencement of his artistic training. He was educated with a view to entering the medical profession and proceeded so far on the course to need only his final examination to qualify, but his artistic instincts proved to be too strong to be resisted, and he abandoned the profession of medicine for that of art, and made it his life long study. (The Irish Times, 11 April 1906, p. 5.) Moynan entered the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (DMSA) in January 1880, having initially studied there on a part-time basis. Due to an Act of Parliament passed in 1877 the school came under the control of the Department of Science and Art of South Kensington, which aligned it with the British art education system. The headmaster, Robert Edwin Lyne, was a product of this education as he had received his instruction in the (British) National Training School prior to taking up his appointment in Dublin in 1863. In the DMSA, Moynan gained the requisite qualifications in 'Freehand, Geometry, Perspective and Object Drawing, 2nd grade' (Thoms, 1891, p. 833), which allowed him entry to the Royal Hibernian Academy Schools in 1882. The following July he was awarded the 'Albert Scholarship for the best picture shown in the Academy by a student' (Strickland, Vol II, 1913, p. 144). This enabled the artist to continue his studies in Académie Royale des Beaux Arts in Antwerp, moving on to Paris in 1885, where he honed his skills in portraiture at Académie Julian. Moynan returned to his native Dublin in December 1886 to establish a practice as a portrait painter, but he also pursued his craft in terms of genre scenes, history painting and literary subjects. The painting, Military Manoeuvres (1891), marks a watershed in the artist's development. It demonstrates his art-making process and provides an insight into his political beliefs.
Military Manoeuvres was exhibited when Moynan was at the height of his powers. In July of the previous year he was elected to full membership of the Royal Hibernian Academy, which earned him the honour of being one of 30 constituent members of the most important professional Irish artistic institution. This radically changed the painter's studio practice. It allowed him to modify both the size and pricing structure of his paintings, as he was no longer obliged to submit his work for selection to the RHA jury. Therefore, from 1891 onward Moynan tended to focus on one expensively-priced, large-scale painting per year, as well as smaller auxiliary pieces to help sustain his income. The asking price of Military Manoeuvres was £210, an amount that far exceeded the price requested by his fellow exhibitors. However, it appears that the practice of RHA members seeking inflated prices for their work was not unknown: It has often been observed by the public, though seldom ventured into print, that the resident artists of capacity demand exorbitant prices for their work and the fact is advanced as a reason why so few pictures are sold. (The Freeman's Journal, 24 March 1891, p. 5). Military Manoeuvres illustrates a crowded street-scene depicting a group of children amusing themselves by pretending to be a regimental band. The title of the work is humorous and although Moynan shows the children's ragged dress, he focuses mainly on the boys’ ability to have fun. Their toys include saucepan lids as cymbals, an upturned bucket serving as a drum, a biscuit tin, a coffee pot, a paper trumpet, a penny whistle and a wooden sword. Their leader carries a broom and wears a splendid brass helmet, which contrasts with his general apparel. This helmet was obviously purloined nefariously from some source. This attracts the attention of a passing soldier who happens to recognize the elaborate headgear as being a black-plumed band helmet from his own regiment, the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards. The trooper makes eye contact with the bandleader and steps threateningly towards him. The soldier’s lady-friend encourages him to see the funny side of the incident, while passers-by stop and stare. The success of this piece lies primarily in two areas, the skill of the artist in challenging the viewer to interpret the story, and the excellent execution of the figure work. There are 15 children in the band, all individual in facial type and dress. Moynan’s sketchbooks in the National Gallery of Ireland demonstrate his commitment to grouping and regrouping his subjects as he explored different dynamics in an effort to achieve the most effective composition. He was an acute observer of human nature and although this picture contains over 30 figures, the scene appears to be naturalistic and spacious. The viewer’s eye-movement is guided by the interaction between the young 'drum-major' and the soldier, and is, in turn, reinforced by the anxious glances of the flower seller in the foreground. This finely-painted genre scene reflects the artist's academic training. The detailed execution of the figures demonstrates the influence of the painter's RHA professor, Augustus Burke, while also showing a connection with French art practice as the cloudy sky exhibits a dull, even light made popular by the plein air painter Bastien Lepage. The scale of the work is significant as it measures 148 x 240 cm, a size that was considered to be more suitable for a history subject rather than a genre piece. The expansive scale was not without precedent, as two years earlier Aloysius O'Kelly exhibited The Station, Saying Mass in a Connemara Cabin in the R.H.A. exhibition. This work, measuring 152.5 x 178 cm is slightly smaller than Military Manoeuvres. O’Kelly’s quintessential Irish subject reflects the importance of Catholicism among the peasant population. Moynan was a keen observer of O'Kelly's work. He adapted the central motif for his award-winning painting The Last of the 24th at Isandula from an O'Kelly newspaper print entitled The State of Ireland, Affray at Belmullet, Co. Mayo, published in 1881 in The London Illustrated News. Moynan's Unionist politics differed radically from O'Kelly's Nationalism but, nevertheless, the size and the subject matter of The Station, Saying Mass in a Connemara Cabin must have struck a chord, as, two years after its appearance in the R.H.A exhibition, Moynan painted a large street scene which explored another important aspect of Irish life, the effect of the military in the every-day lives of the people. Moynan's sketchbooks in the National Gallery of Ireland provide an insight into the artist's working methods and contribute to our knowledge of the process involved in the construction of his paintings. This invaluable collection of 9 sketchbooks was donated by Gordon Lambert in memory of his friend, the artist's daughter, Eileen Nora (known as Biddy). One of the chief characteristics of the artist's work is mise en scene, or the ability to present a composition with dramatic force, as if the characters were actors arranged under the proscenium arch. This was not simply a serendipitous occurrence, as the artist's sketchbooks reveal no less than 8 studies for Military Manoeuvres. These illustrate the painter's careful assembly of material, taking infinite pains in constructing a suitable streetscape, while also exploring several alternative arrangements of the figures within the composition. This approach demonstrates the methodology employed by a classically-trained artist, who painstakingly built up a picture by addressing compositional issues and architectural detail along with exploring different methods of conveying the narrative. Most of the artist’s NGI sketchbooks are pocket-sized containing pencil slots suggesting their primary function was to capture ideas and poses. An analysis of the material relating specifically to Military Manoeuvres suggests that their chief thrust is generic, rather than specific. The artist employed the sketchbooks as a kind of manual camera, to record ideas as opposed to developing studies for specific figures. There are over 30 individuals depicted in Military Manoeuvres, each of whom is a distinct character. Moynan must have sketched and painted studies for all of these people, yet this type of detail is not present in the sketchbooks. Instead, they contain studies dealing mostly with compositional matters.
The artist's notebooks in the National Gallery provide two alternative compositions for Military Manoeuvres. Sketchbook no. 19.171, Folio 10 Verso shows a group of children marching in time to the beat of their instruments and sketchbook no. 19.175, Folio 9 recto, is essentially the same group of children, but, in this version, their leader holds a sword in his hand. It is interesting to note that the artist finally selected a passive, more psychological composition as opposed to the simpler, more action-packed version depicted in sketchbook no. 19.171, Folio 10 verso. This dynamic sketch exudes motion as the band members march forward four-abreast, the tilt of their bodies and the movement of their feet suggesting rhythm and pace as they advance energetically towards the viewer. The theme of motion is reinforced by the presence of a soldier and his lady-friend, as they walk in step with the children's band. This rhythm is also expressed by Moynan's quick, slashing pencil-strokes as he loosely establishes the figures in the foreground, the soldier and the lady. Standing on the right of the composition, conducting the action is the young drum major. Once again he is wearing the elaborate brass, regimental helmet of the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards, with its horsehair plume. His body is arched in counter-rhythm to the marching band and, at first glance, he appears to be halting the action. He waves both hands in the air; his left hand directing the music, while the tightly-gripped staff in his right hand confers almost regal authority. The attention of all members of the band is focused on his directions. The soldier looks directly ahead, while his companion curiously gesticulates towards the drum major. This composition differs enormously from the final painted version of Military Manoeuvres. It tells a much less complex story of the children's ability to find amusement by pretending to be an army band. Their enjoyment is infectious, as the soldier and his companion march along to the beat of the music. The children concentrate on their own pursuits and do not notice that their game has the added benefit of also entertaining the adults. There is no air of mystery about this piece. All parties in the picture are in harmony. The children do not tease the soldier, and there is no sign of the concerned-looking flower girl. In this version, the soldier is proud of his occupation and this sense of pride is endorsed by the children's games. The humour in the piece lies in the fact that, for a brief moment, it appears as if the trooper is an honorary member of the children's band, who has temporarily fallen under the command of the bandleader. There is a freshness and sense of immediacy about this sketch that begs the question, was this perhaps an actual event that Moynan witnessed? The soldier has been identified as wearing the walking-out dress of the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards, a regiment based in Newbridge between the late 1880s and 1893 under the command of General Sir Edward Cooper Hodge, K.B.E. Could the trooper have been visiting his home in Leixlip when he saw his young brother parading about the streets wearing his regimental band helmet? Moynan frequently worked in the Lucan/Leixilp area during the period when the Dragoon Guards were situated in Newbridge. The popularity of the spa at Lucan made it much favoured by 'visitors and invalids' (Thoms, 1891 p. 1310) as it was accessible by steam tramway which ran from Conyngham Road. The artist was a member of the Dublin Sketching Club who ventured on a field trip to the village of Lucan in the spring of 1889. His 1892 painting entitled, Old Mill - Leixlip, also suggests familiarity with the Leixlip area. Moynan's knowledge of Aloysius O'Kelly's Mass in a Connemara Cabin may have prompted him to consider the possibility of producing a large genre piece, reflecting Unionist rather than Nationalist values. The sketch he made in Leixlip village provided an excellent opportunity to explore the importance of the military within an Irish rural environment. But the artist was dissatisfied with such a simplistic arrangement as found in sketchbook no. 19.171, Folio 10 Verso, as he wished to challenge the viewer to interpret the scene. In the final version of Military Manoeuvres, the children's band is far more intent on baiting the soldier than pursuing their games. The inclusion of the flower girl enables the artist to construct a moment of tension as she observes the expression of the soldier and awaits the interaction between the trooper and the bandleader. Moynan rejected the forward march of the musical band in favour of a more diffuse arrangement, as the triangular relationship between the flower girl, the Drum-Major and the soldier prompts inquiry into the reactions of the various groups within the canvas. Indeed, the painted version of Military Manoeuvres could in fact be the sequel to the sketchbook version. This shows the artist's ability to develop, not just the compositional elements within the painting, but to modify the idea behind the narrative to produce a more engaging story line. Opinion has long been divided on the setting for Military Manoeuvres. At first glance, the streetscape mirrors that of Main Street in the village of Leixlip, Co. Kildare but certain details do not support this theory. Dr. Brian P. Kennedy's careful comparison with the near-contemporary Lawrence photograph establishes broad parallels between the photographic and the painted version, but it is difficult to reconcile certain details. This is precisely because of Moynan's approach to formulating a composition was creative rather than topographical. He had no difficulty in relocating solid architectural features in an effort to gain balance and symmetry. Kennedy remarks that the church spire is the result of 'artistic license' (Kennedy, 1993, p. 28). This is true on two counts. The church of St. Mary's is situated on the left side of the road as one proceeds up Main Street, Leixlip, in the direction of Pound Street. Furthermore, St. Mary's does not have a conventional spire but terminates in a castellated Norman-style tower. Reference to the artist’s sketchbooks reveals that the spire featured in Military Manoeuvres was 'borrowed' from the church of St. Andrew in the nearby village of Lucan. This distinctive architectural gem obviously attracted the artist, as he sketched it from no less than three different angles. Therefore, Moynan sacrificed architectural accuracy in his quest for a perfectly balanced composition. It is also possible that the presence of the spire in Military Manoeuvres had another, more personal significance for the artist, as a spire, or an obelisk, is emblematic of the craft of Freemasonry. By including the spire in Military Manoeuvres the artist may have been acknowledging the importance of ‘the craft’ and paying tribute to his fellow Masons. He had been a member of the Dublin Lodge of St. Cecilia (No. 250), since January 1887. He had special links with the Masonic Orphan Schools as its headmaster, J. Holbrook, was a fellow member of the Lodge of St. Cecilia. In 1888 the Masonic Boys School moved premises from Adelaide Hall in Merrion to Richview in Clonskeagh, to allow an increase in the student body. The artist's involvement with this charity was held in such high regard that his fellow lodge members held a special dinner in his honour. Pictorial comparisons between the school’s sports day activities, such as the tug-of-war featured in the Masonic magazine, and a 1891 painting of the same title by the artist suggest that Moynan may have sourced many of the young models for his genre scenes, including Military Manoeuvres, from the Masonic Boys School. Military Manoeuvres marks a turning point in the artist's oeuvre as it demonstrates a move away from his usual studio-based painting and shows a tendency to work out of doors. This street scene was one of six paintings exhibited by the artist in the 1891 RHA exhibition, and three other titles, Tug-of-War, ‘Wady-Buckety’, and View on the Dodder, (near Templeogue) also suggest outdoor scenes. This trend to work en plein air was a practice developed by the artist over the next ten years. It led to a group of distinctly ‘Irish Impressionist’ style paintings and canvases such as Killiney Sands painted in 1894 (currently in the Allied Irish Bank Collection), demonstrate this trend as it expresses Impressionist influences in terms of subject matter, application of paint and use of colour. Moynan was a passionate Unionist who used his art as a platform for his political beliefs. He was the chief illustrator with the leading Unionist newspaper of the day, The Union. He painted a number of highly political works, such as Home Again (1883). But the main thrust of the narrative in Military Manoeuvres is observational and humourist rather than political. Yet the artist does not shy away from showing the children's shabby surroundings. He frankly portrays the neglected state of the roads. This was probably a popular topic of discussion within the Moynan family circle as his brother, John Ouseley Bonsell Moynan, was the principal engineer for county Tipperary where he introduced an innovative system of road building and maintenance. Contrasting reviews of the 1891 RHA exhibition provide an insight into contemporary attitudes to Irish art. The critic writing for The Freeman's Journal initially addressed controversial issues such as the high prices of the exhibits and then proceeded to embark on a major diatribe regarding the lack of support for the exhibition by the government, the aristocracy and the so-called patrons of the RHA. He questioned the quality of some of the work: 'Allusion has been made to the fact that many very inferior productions are allowed a place on the walls of the exhibition' (The Freeman's Journal, 24 March 1891, p. 7) and even condemned a painting by the President of the RHA, Sir Thomas Alfred Jones (Jones was an associate of Moynan's in the Masonic Lodge): 'The President's picture Paddy's Proposal is anything but a success. Subjects of this kind are quite outside his range. He should stick to portrait painting' (The Freeman's Journal, 24 March 1891, p. 7). Yet, consistently through out three reviews the same critic extols Moynan's virtues: There is one fact undoubted that will be gratifying to the members of the Academy and the public - namely, that in one or two special instances the younger members unquestionably have shown a desire and a capacity to prove worthy of their name. Mr. Moynan's large picture has already been spoken of as an example of this. (The Freeman's Journal, 5 March 1891, p. 5) He also mentioned Military Manoeuvres in an earlier review: There is a lot of exceedingly good work in this picture. The subject is good and it has been treated with great humour and skill and with genuine artistic instinct. (The Freeman's Journal, 2 March 1891, p. 5) The reviewer in The Irish Times was also fulsome in his praise of both the artist and the painting in question: Mr. Moynan is another artist who has this year come to the front. His big picture Military Manoeuvres (No. 26) at once challenges attention on account of its size and the novelty of its caption, and the abundant labour that has been expended upon its detail. For an Irish artist the work is a most ambitious one, and we cordially recognise the success of the artist. The group of boys passing through the village streets playing at soldiers equipped in mock panoply is full of life and movement, and the introduction of a real red coat is a happy stroke. (The Irish Times, 2 March 1891, p. 3) But it is equally important to note that Moynan's reaction to the critics was bi-directional. It appears that Military Manoeuvres in its original format had a dog in the centre of the composition and in response to a newspaper notice the painter altered the composition. The instigator of the change was the reviewer form The Freeman's Journal: '... the picture (Military Manoeuvres) is really interesting and very clever of its kind. There is a very eccentric looking dog in the centre of the picture - very eccentric' (The Freeman's Journal, 2 March 1891, p. 5). Yet, on publication of the Second RHA Notice, just three days later, the artist has taken this criticism on board and reacted by removing the dog from the composition: 'and bye-the-bye, he has quite rightly painted out that very eccentric dog alluded to in our last notice' (The Freeman's Journal, 5 March 1891, p. 6). This shows the artist's willingness to accept informed criticism and to act accordingly. But despite all the praise heaped on Military Manoeuvres, this work, like many other paintings exhibited in the 1890s Dublin market, remained unsold at the close of the exhibition. Two years later it was shown in America: Military Manoeuvres, exhibited at the RHA, at the Chicago exhibition and at the San Francisco exhibition. In the following year it was purchased in the latter place for a large sum. (The Irish Times, 11 April 1906, p.5.) Military Manoeuvres is the product of the confluence of the artist's academic training and experience. This mid-term painting offers an insight into various elements, which helped forge Moynan’s professional identity and provides a glimpse of some of the educational, social and political issues that affected the art-making practice of his day. -
Ennis Co Clare 50cm x 60cm De Valera was a near demagogue type politician who dominated Irish Political life from 1917 to 1973,whether as Prime Minister or President or as leader of the Opposition.Known as the Long Fella,Irish people either loved or hated him-there was simply no ambivalent feelings about this most polarising of politicians.This fine portrait of De Valera catches him perfectly and would make a superb addition to any Irish Pub ,both at home or abroad with a Fianna Fail or Republican bias or anyone from Clare,a county where he was always at his most popular. Eamon de Valera, first registered as George de Valero; changed some time before 1901 to Edward de Valera;14 October 1882 – 29 August 1975) was a prominent statesman and political leader in 20th-century Ireland. His political career spanned over half a century, from 1917 to 1973; he served several terms as head of government and head of state. He also led the introduction of the Constitution of Ireland. Prior to de Valera's political career, he was a Commandant at Boland's Mill during the 1916 Easter Rising, an Irish revolution that would eventually contribute to Irish independence. He was arrested, sentenced to death but released for a variety of reasons, including the public response to the British execution of Rising leaders. He returned to Ireland after being jailed in England and became one of the leading political figures of the War of Independence. After the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, de Valera served as the political leader of Anti-Treaty Sinn Fein until 1926, when he, along with many supporters, left the party to set up Fianna Fáil, a new political party which abandoned the policy of abstentionism from Dáil Éireann. From there, de Valera would go on to be at the forefront of Irish politics until the turn of the 1960s. He took over as President of the Executive Councilfrom W. T. Cosgrave and later Taoiseach, with the passing of Bunreacht Na hEireann (Irish constitution) in 1937. He would serve as Taoiseach on 3 occasions; from 1937 to 1948, from 1951 to 1954 and finally from 1957 to 1959. He remains the longest serving Taoiseach by total days served in the post. He resigned in 1959 upon his election as President of Ireland. By then, he had been Leader of Fianna Fáil for 33 years, and he, along with older founding members, began to take a less prominent role relative to newer ministers such as Jack Lynch, Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney. He would serve as President from 1959 to 1973, two full terms in office. De Valera's political beliefs evolved from militant Irish republicanism to strong social, cultural and economic conservatism.He has been characterised by a stern, unbending, devious demeanor. His roles in the Civil War have also portrayed him as a divisive figure in Irish history. Biographer Tim Pat Coogan sees his time in power as being characterised by economic and cultural stagnation, while Diarmaid Ferriter argues that the stereotype of de Valera as an austere, cold and even backward figure was largely manufactured in the 1960s and is misguided. -
Extremely unusual & culturally significant historical sign from a once famous pub in Castlebar Co Mayo, the historic and now sadly closed down Humbert Inn.Please email us directly to enquire about this most unusual item at irishpubemporium@gmail.com. "Located on the Main Street of Castlebar, The Humbert Inn excelled in its hospitality to the public for over 200 years. Its name was derived from the fact that the French General Jean Humbert with his second in command General Sarrazin located their headquarters within the building during the United Irishmen rebellion of 1798. Originally until 1912 due to rates purposes, the premises also consisted of what is known today as Paddy Fahey’s shop and over the years has been used as hotel, restaurant and public house. In 1798 the site of Paddy Fahey’s and the Humbert Inn was known as Geevy’s Hotel. A banquet was held there after the 1798 Rising and it was in The Humbert Inn premises, that John Moore was declared first President of Connaught! The public bar was unique in appearance with its interior rough cut stone walls, arches, Liscannor stone floor and a façade that has changed little over the past fifty years.
The premises has changed hands many times over the years, more recent owners including Tom Coucil, the Moran family and since 1994 John Connaughton, more popularly known as 'John Humbert'. While memories aplenty abound about The Humbert Inn with many instances of people today stating that they are the third generation of their family to call into The Humbert. Its lasting legacy will be an outstanding and legendary venue for all that is musical. The Humbert Inn was long associated with encouraging local musicians and providing the public with a steady stream of talent. Everything from traditional sessions to Industrial Rock has been catered for, everything from one guitar, 6 piece bands to many DJs have enthralled weekly audiences! In many cases their audience trying for a pint, while singing and dancing at the same time. Always a multi-talented bunch, The Humbert regulars! The most historically famous of these bands will be 'General Humbert' consisting of Steve Dunford (bodhran, bones), John Donegan (mandolin, harmonium), Ruairi Somers (uileann pipes, tin whistles, bagpipes), Shay Kavanagh (guitar, bouzouki) and one Miss Mary Black (vocals, bodhran) from approx 1972 until 1982. Mary Black’s brother Mick was working with the then P&T in Castlebar, he along with his brother Shay informed a group of Humbert musicians including, John Hoban and Frank O’Reilly, that he 'had a sister that could sing a bit (brotherly understatement) and would they be interested if she sang with them'. Mary Black may have received her first taste of success with 'General Humbert' in the ‘70s and recorded her first album in 1982. But, along with playing venues in Dublin, she started out singing in Castlebar with traditional group 'La Salle' which included John Dunford and Fintan Murphy within The Humbert a good ten years before her international success. Christmas in particular was always memorable in The Humbert, it was a major home coming venue and meeting place. If you were brought up in Castlebar, were of a certain age, then chances were there was one of two places you would have been found on Christmas Eve, The Humbert or Rays!. The Humbert Inn can also boast its very own VIP list among its regulars with two crowned Roses of Tralee Mindy O’Sullivan and Aoibhinn Ni Shulleabhain along with Fair City actress Vicky Burke. Plus any number of quality customers, musicians, fine sportsmen and women, business people and the odd politician. Fate had decided a different path for The Humbert and further to this an offer to buy the premises by a local developer was accepted. This has resulted in the developer’s decision to convert the building into retail outlets and apartments, thereby no longer retaining the premises two hundred year reign in the hospitality trade.Public opinion has stated a desire to at least retain the look of the existing bar, possibly using same as a restaurant, wine bar, part of the Linenhall for exhibitions or even as a Tourist Office However, the general consensus is an overall request that The Humbert Inn remains a public bar while recognising the logic in upper floor apartment conversion. The future of The Humbert has been proposed by the developer, but it is the present planning section of the Town Council who will ultimately decide this historic buildings fate as rumours abound of its possible demolition! What ever the future holds for The Humbert Inn, its last weekend under the command of General John Connaughton will be a musical filled celebration which John has requested to end quietly on its last closing time on Sunday 3rd September. Which is curiously the same date that Humbert and his men left The Humbert Inn premises in 1798! It will be an emotional time for both punters, staff and owner, an end of an era no matter what the future holds, so it is important that it is understood that the bar will be closing promptly on the last night" Origins : Co Mayo Dimensions : 88cm x60.5cm 5kg
