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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)
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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. A 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
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Atmospheric photo from 1946 of two of the greatest hurlers in the history of the GAA in its original vintage frame -a veteran Mick Mackey of Limerick and a fresh faced Christy Ring of Cork.The only shame was they never met on the playing field while at the peak of their powers,Mackey being older and in decline when Ring was lording it on the pitch.Although they had their controversial moments together ,there was a massive mutual respect between the two men.this photo was taken after a challenge match between their respective clubs,Mackey's Ahane of Limerick and Ring's Glen Rovers of Cork - it proved to be the last time the two legends met on the field of play. Origins : Co Limerick Dimensions : 31cm x 25cm 1kg
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25cm x 20cm Abbeyfeale Co Limerick Nice souvenir of the iconic photograph taken by Justin Nelson.The following explanation of the actual verbal exchange between the two legends comes from Michael Moynihan of the Examiner newspaper. "When Christy Ring left the field of play injured in the 1957 Munster championship game between Cork and Waterford at Limerick, he strolled behind the goal, where he passed Mick Mackey, who was acting as umpire for the game. The two exchanged a few words as Ring made his way to the dressing-room.It was an encounter that would have been long forgotten if not for the photograph snapped at precisely the moment the two men met. The picture freezes the moment forever: Mackey, though long retired, still vigorous, still dark haired, somehow incongruous in his umpire’s white coat, clearly hopping a ball; Ring at his fighting weight, his right wrist strapped, caught in the typical pose of a man fielding a remark coming over his shoulder and returning it with interest. Two hurling eras intersect in the two men’s encounter: Limerick’s glory of the 30s, and Ring’s dominance of two subsequent decades.But nobody recorded what was said, and the mystery has echoed down the decades.But Dan Barrett has the answer.He forged a friendship with Ring from the usual raw materials. They had girls the same age, they both worked for oil companies, they didn’t live that far away from each other. And they had hurling in common.We often chatted away at home about hurling,” says Barrett. “In general he wouldn’t criticise players, although he did say about one player for Cork, ‘if you put a whistle on the ball he might hear it’.” Barrett saw Ring’s awareness of his whereabouts at first hand; even in the heat of a game he was conscious of every factor in his surroundings. “We went up to see him one time in Thurles,” says Barrett. “Don’t forget, people would come from all over the country to see a game just for Ring, and the place was packed to the rafters – all along the sideline people were spilling in on the field. “He came out to take a sideline cut at one stage and we were all roaring at him – ‘Go on Ring’, the usual – and he looked up into the crowd, the blue eyes, and he looked right at me. “The following day in work he called in and we were having a chat, and I said ‘if you caught that sideline yesterday, you’d have driven it up to the Devil’s Bit.’ “There was another chap there who said about me, ‘With all his talk he probably wasn’t there at all’. ‘He was there alright,’ said Ring. ‘He was over in the corner of the stand’. He picked me out in the crowd.” “He told me there was no way he’d come on the team as a sub. I remember then when Cork beat Tipperary in the Munster championship for the first time in a long time, there was a helicopter landed near the ground, the Cork crowd were saying ‘here’s Ring’ to rise the Tipp crowd. “I saw his last goal, for the Glen against Blackrock. He collided with a Blackrock man and he took his shot, it wasn’t a hard one, but the keeper put his hurley down and it hopped over his stick.” There were tough days against Tipperary – Ring took off his shirt one Monday to show his friends the bruising across his back from one Tipp defender who had a special knack of letting the Corkman out ahead in order to punish him with his stick. But Ring added that when a disagreement at a Railway Cup game with Leinster became physical, all of Tipperary piled in to back him up. One evening the talk turned to the photograph. Barrett packed the audience – “I had my wife there as a witness,” – and asked Ring the burning question: what had Mackey said to him? “’You didn’t get half enough of it’, said Mackey. ‘I’d expect nothing different from you,’ said Ring. “That was what was said.” You might argue – with some credibility – that learning what was said by the two men removes some of the force of the photograph; that if you remained in ignorance you’d be free to project your own hypothetical dialogue on the freeze-frame meeting of the two men. But nothing trumps actuality. The exchange carries a double authenticity: the pungency of slagging from one corner and the weariness of riposte from the other. Dan Barrett just wanted to set the record straight. “I’d heard people say ‘it will never be known’ and so on,” he says.“I thought it was no harm to let people know.” No harm at all" Origins ; Co Limerick Dimensions : 31cm x 25cm 1kg
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Beautifully atmospheric lithograph of the pre match parade by the Cork and Dublin Hurlers in 1952.This lithograph was sponsored by the National Flour Mills Co.Ltd. 42cm x 46cm Douglas Cork
The 1952 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship Final was the 65th All-Ireland Final and the culmination of the 1952 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship, an inter-county hurling tournament for the top teams in Ireland. The match was held at Croke Park, Dublin, on 7 September 1952, between Cork and Dublin. The Leinster champions lost to their Munster opponents on a score line of 2-14 to 0-7.1952 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Final Event 1952 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship Cork Dublin 2-14 0-7 Date 7 September 1952 Venue Croke Park, Dublin Referee W. O'Donoghue (Limerick) Attendance 71,195 Origins : Co CorkDimensions : 31cm x 36cm 1.5kg -
Beautifully reproduced Woodford,Bourne & Co.Ltd Whiskey mirror. 50cm x 60cm Limerick Woodford Whiskies traded in Cork city for over 250 years. The warehouse was the hub of the companies bottling, storage and distribution operations supplying four shops in Cork and one in Limerick. The building was constructed between 1873 and 1875 at a cost of £4,500. When completed in 1875 the building was considered one of the finest in the city and today continues to be a listed building. The building with its cut limestone frontage has thick floor and roof beams made from imported Canadian white pine to support the weight of the full casks of wine and spirits stored in the warehouse. On the ground floor, you can still see the vaulted ceilings of the original cellars and throughout the building the thick stone walls built with master craftsmanship are on view everywhere. Over 10 years supply of whiskey, casks containing over a million bottles of wine, sherries and ports and more than 50,000 gallons of choice Cork and Dublin whiskies, Scotch whiskies and fine French brandies were all stored from seven to 10 years in wet and dry cellars.
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88cm x 52cm In olden times the traditional Irish country pub also often functioned as a grocery,sweetshop,veterinary chemist,hardware store and haberdashery where patrons could partake in a soothing drink after shopping alongside displays of chocolate bars, tins of canned fruit, reels of hay bailer twine, and tubs of sheep dip.Sadly grocery bars are now few and far between but the ones that survive are a throwback to an old and innocent way of life.Dingle in Co Kerry is home to many of the best surviving examples of the pub-grocer.In the famous Currans on Main Street ,the pub always doubled as a general merchant.They sold everything and supplied the townspeople and farmers who would pile into the town on Fairday.The old ledgers still in existence are stuffed with billheads from all types of suppliers- everything was sold -ropes.twines,seeds,ales,buckets,hams,jams,fishing nets,flowers,ladies rubber heels and tights, cloth caps, shirts,boots- the list is endless.
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Superb vintage "Ask your Grocer for Shaws Limerick Bacon & Hams -A Breakfast Luxury as supplied to Royalty". 47cm x 37cm Limerick Limerick is well-known and famed for its bacon production, “everything but the squeak was used”. Many of the households in areas such as the Abbey kept pigs along with the more traditional chickens usually fed on domestic scraps as well as on root crops. Although the majority of the pigs were imported from the local environs. Thousands of pigs were slaughtered and processed weekly in the Limerick Bacon factories, who in the height of their production were the most consumed pork products in the British Isles. In the 19th century Limerick Hams became renowned throughout the British Empire with Queen Victoria insisting on Limerick hams at her Christmas dinner. Limerick pork through the O’Mara’s was even exporting as far away as Russia and Romania in 1891 and 1902 respectively. The four great bacon factories in Limerick were Matterson’s, Shaw’s, O’Mara’s and Denny’s each competing for local, national and international trade out of Limerick city during the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Other Bacon Merchants in Limerick City during this period were Hogan, Longbottom, Looney, Lynch & Spain, Neazor, O’Brien, O’Connor, O’Halloran, Prendergast, Rea, Sullivan, Thompson though this article concentrates on the four major players. The bacon industry was wrought with tragedy and some of the stories can be read on the Factory Fatalities page. Further reading on the bacon factories can be found in this issue of The Old Limerick Journal.
MATTERSON’S
J Matterson & Sons operated out of Roches Street, while their rival company O’Mara’s operated across the road on the same street from 1839. Mattersons was established in 1816 by John Russell and J Matterson, who were brother-in-laws of a kind. Both men married a Mossop sister, Mary and Eleanor. After the death of Joseph Matterson Snr in 1854, Joseph Matterson Jnr took over the Limerick aspect of the company. While Joseph Matterson Snr’s other son William Matterson, oversaw the London branch of the business. William Matterson died aged 71 in London in January 1903. Not only was Joseph Matterson Jnr. a business owner in the city but he was also a key player in the community. He was vice president of the Protestant Young Mens Association which stained-glass window still remains in-situ in O’Connell Street. Below are the funeral notices from the Limerick Chronicle, from the Limerick City Library Local Studies, for members of the Matterson Family.- Matterson, Alfred, Castletroy, Limerick Chronicle 12 August 1848, son of Joseph Matterson Snr
- Matterson, Mary, Castletroy, Limerick Chronicle 25 June 1853, aged 16, daughter of Joseph Matterson Snr
- Matterson, Anne, Castletroy, Limerick Chronicle 26 July 1854, aged 20, daughter of Joseph Matterson Snr
- Matterson, Joseph Snr, Castletroy, Limerick Chronicle 08 July 1854, provision merchant, manufacturer of Limerick Hams; int at Kilmurry church
- Matterson, Henry, Castletroy, Limerick Chronicle 23 January 1858, aged 32, son of late Joseph Matterson Snr
- Matterson, Elizabeth , Castletroy, Limerick Chronicle 24 February 1858, aged 23, daughter of late Joseph Matterson Snr
- Matterson, Henry Sutherland, 81 George Street, Limerick Chronicle 12 September 1876, aged 13 months; son of Joseph Matterson Jnr.
- Matterson, Mary, Castletroy House, Limerick Chronicle 1st June 1886 aged 82, widow of late Joseph Matterson Snr, death notice.
- Matterson, Evely Gordon, 81 George Street, 4 January 1890, death notice, aged 4 months, daughter of J. Matterson Jnr
- Matterson, Mary Gordon (Molly), Castletroy House, Limerick Chronicle 05 May 1896, aged 17, daughter of Joseph Jnr and Agnes Matterson (funeral report) (reply to condolences).
- Matterson, Joseph, Castletroy House, Limerick Chronicle 3 April 1906, (further report 1) (further report 2) (funeral report) – buried in Kilmurry Graveyard.
SHAW’S
Shaw & Sons operated out of Mulgrave Street. It was founded in 1831 by William John Shaw, whose family originated in Co. Down. In 1892 Shaw’s factory was using electric lights, lifts, a mini-railway and even telephonic communications, the Shaw’s factory was well ahead of it’s time. It is now owned by the Kerry Group. Below are the funeral notices from the Limerick Chronicle, from the Limerick City Library Local Studies, for members of the Shaw Family.- Shaw, Martha, Rose Cottage, Limerick Chronicle 14 April 1868, wife of William John Shaw – buried in St. Munchin’s Graveyard.
- Shaw, William John, Rose Cottage, Limerick Chronicle 02 December 1869 – buried in St. Munchin’s Graveyard
- Shaw, Harriett E., Willowbank, Limerick Chronicle 30 August 1879, second daughter of William John Shaw, Esq.
- Shaw, James Thompson, South Kensington, London, Limerick Chronicle 18th October 1892, senior partner of W. J. Shaw & Sons (further death report) (sympathy vote) (acknowledgement) – Eldest son of William John Shaw.
- Shaw, Anna Gertrude Thompson, Cheltenham 13 June 1918, daughter of late William John Shaw, Limerick.
O’MARA’S
J. O’Mara & Sons was founded by James O’Mara who was born in Toomevara, Co. Tipperary. James O’Mara’s originally began curing bacon in the basement of his house on Mungert Street. In 1839 he moved his business to a purpose built factory on 30 Roches Street at the junction of Anne Street, across from their rival Matterson Bacon Factory. He also moved his family during this time to Hartstonge Street. The O’Mara’s factory was demolished in the late 1980s to make way for the multi-story which stands in the spot today. O’Mara’s 100 year lease on the site on Roches Street ended on 18 June 1979. Below are the funeral notices from the Limerick Chronicle, from the Limerick City Library Local Studies, for members of the O’Mara Family.- O’Mara, James, jun., Limerick Chronicle 8th July 1893, son of James O’Mara, J.P. (funeral report 10/7/1893) (2,420 Kb) – buried Mount Saint Lawrence Cemetery.
- O’Mara, Mysie, London, England, Limerick Chronicle 05/07/1898, dau of Thomas McKenna, late of Waterford; widow of late James O’Mara of Limerick
- O’Mara, James, Thomas Street, Limnerick Chronicle 20th April 1899, MD of J O’Mara & Sons bacon curers and local politician; obituary (funeral report 25/4/1899)
- O’Mara, Nannie, Alexander Terrace, L. Chronicle 28th January 1905, address that of her sister; daughter of late James O’Mara; obituary and death notice, (funeral report 31/1/1905)
DENNY’S
Denny’s and Sons operated out of 27 Upper William Street in in 1891 as well as Mulgrave Street. It was founded by Henry Denny in the 1870s and first operated as a Provision Merchants out of Newtown Mahon, Upper William Street. Denny operated out of Limerick, Cork and Waterford. Denny’s sausages make an appearance in James Joyce’s Ulysses, where Leopold Bloom watches a young girl in Dlugacz’s butcher’s shop buy a pound and a half of Denny’s sausages, as he waits to buy a pork kidney for his and wife Molly’s breakfast. Denny’s is now owned by the Kerry Food group, after they acquired it in 1982. Below are the funeral notices from the Limerick Chronicle, from the Limerick City Library Local Studies, for members of the Denny Family.- Denny, Abraham, Cahir, L.Chronicle 8/3/1892, death notice, involved in the bacon business in Limerick, (further death notice 8/3/1892), (funeral report 10/3/1892)
- Denny, E. M. , Kent, L. Chronicle 21/1/1905, head of Messrs Denny & Co.
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45cm x 34cm. Killarney Co Kerry
Theatrical advertising poster for "The way to Kenmare".Andrew Mack, born William Andrew McAloon, (July 25, 1863 – May 21, 1931) was an American vaudevillian, actor, singer and songwriter of Irish descent.A native of Boston, Massachusetts, he began his career at an early age in 1876 using the stage name Andrew Williams. He began in minstrel shows, and was especially associated with the song "A Violet From Mother's Grave".In 1892, he debuted in vaudeville. He composed songs for himself to sing. In 1899, he composed the popular song "The Story of the Rose (Heart of My Heart)" which became a standard of barbershop quartets.- Bluebeard's Seven Wives (1926)
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45cm x 52cm Broadford Co Clare
The 1951 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final was the 64th All-Ireland Final and the deciding match of the 1951 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship, an inter-county Gaelic football tournament for the top teams in Ireland. Mayo and Meath met to decide the destination of the Sam Maguire Cup. Mayo won their second title in a row with goals by Tom Langan and Joe Gilvarry. This was Mayo's second consecutive All-Ireland football title. They have not won an All-Ireland football title since. It is said that a legendary curse overshadows Mayo football since 1951 Mayo players Willie Casey, Paddy Jordan and former GAA President Dr Mick Loftus belatedly received their All-Ireland senior football medals 55 years later. Though squad members, they had not appeared as substitutes in the final and had initially been denied their medals.1951 All-Ireland Senior Football Final Event 1951 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Mayo Meath 2-8 0-9 Date 23 September 1951 Venue Croke Park, Dublin Attendance 78,201 City and Suburban Racecourse
The area now known as Croke Park was owned in the 1880s by Maurice Butterly and known as the City and Suburban Racecourse, or Jones' Road sports ground. From 1890 it was also used by the Bohemian Football Club. In 1901 Jones' Road hosted the IFA Cup football final when Cliftonville defeated Freebooters.History
Recognising the potential of the Jones' Road sports ground a journalist and GAA member, Frank Dineen, borrowed much of the £3,250 asking price and bought the ground in 1908. In 1913 the GAA came into exclusive ownership of the plot when they purchased it from Dineen for £3,500. The ground was then renamed Croke Park in honour of Archbishop Thomas Croke, one of the GAA's first patrons. In 1913, Croke Park had only two stands on what is now known as the Hogan stand side and grassy banks all round. In 1917, a grassy hill was constructed on the railway end of Croke Park to afford patrons a better view of the pitch. This terrace was known originally as Hill 60, later renamed Hill 16 in memory of the 1916 Easter Rising. It is erroneously believed to have been built from the ruins of the GPO, when it was constructed the previous year in 1915. In the 1920s, the GAA set out to create a high capacity stadium at Croke Park. Following the Hogan Stand, the Cusack Stand, named after Michael Cusack from Clare (who founded the GAA and served as its first secretary), was built in 1927. 1936 saw the first double-deck Cusack Stand open with 5,000 seats, and concrete terracing being constructed on Hill 16. In 1952 the Nally Stand was built in memorial of Pat Nally, another of the GAA founders. Seven years later, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the GAA, the first cantilevered "New Hogan Stand" was opened. The highest attendance ever recorded at an All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final was 90,556 for Offaly v Down in 1961. Since the introduction of seating to the Cusack stand in 1966, the largest crowd recorded has been 84,516.Bloody Sunday
During the Irish War of Independence on 21 November 1920 Croke Park was the scene of a massacre by the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). The Police, supported by the British Auxiliary Division, entered the ground and began shooting into the crowd, killing or fatally wounding 14 civilians during a Dublin-Tipperary Gaelic football match. The dead included 13 spectators and Tipperary player Michael Hogan. Posthumously, the Hogan stand built in 1924 was named in his honour. These shootings, on the day which became known as Bloody Sunday, were a reprisal for the killing of 15 people associated with the Cairo Gang, a group of British Intelligence officers, by Michael Collins' 'squad' earlier that day.Dublin Rodeo
In 1924, American rodeo promoter, Tex Austin, staged the Dublin Rodeo, Ireland's first professional rodeo at Croke Park Stadium. For seven days, with two shows each day from August 18 to August 24, sell out crowds saw cowboys and cowgirls from Canada, the United States, Mexico, Argentina and Australia compete for rodeo championship titles.Canadian bronc riders such as Andy Lund and his brother Art Lund, trick riders such as Ted Elder and Vera McGinnis were among the contestants. British Pathe filmed some of the rodeo events.Stadium design
In 1984 the organisation decided to investigate ways to increase the capacity of the old stadium. The design for an 80,000 capacity stadium was completed in 1991. Gaelic sports have special requirements as they take place on a large field. A specific requirement was to ensure the spectators were not too far from the field of play. This resulted in the three-tier design from which viewing games is possible: the main concourse, a premium level incorporating hospitality facilities and an upper concourse. The premium level contains restaurants, bars and conference areas. The project was split into four phases over a 14-year period. Such was the importance of Croke Park to the GAA for hosting big games, the stadium did not close during redevelopment. During each phase different parts of the ground were redeveloped, while leaving the rest of the stadium open. Big games, including the annual All-Ireland Hurling and Football finals, were played in the stadium throughout the development.Phase one – New Cusack Stand
The first phase of construction was to build a replacement for Croke Park's Cusack Stand. A lower deck opened for use in 1994. The upper deck opened in 1995. Completed at a cost of £35 million, the new stand is 180 metres long, 35 metres high, has a capacity for 27,000 people and contains 46 hospitality suites. The new Cusack Stand contains three tiers from which viewing games is possible: the main concourse, a premium level incorporating hospitality facilities and finally an upper concourse. One end of the pitch was closer to the stand after this phase, as the process of slightly re-aligning the pitch during the redevelopment of the stadium began. The works were carried out by Sisk Group.Phase two – Davin Stand
Phase Two of the development started in late 1998 and involved extending the new Cusack Stand to replace the existing Canal End terrace. It involved reacquiring a rugby pitch that had been sold to Belvedere College in 1910 by Frank Dineen. In payment and part exchange, the college was given the nearby Distillery Road sportsgrounds.[19] It is now known as The Davin Stand (Irish: Ardán Dáimhím), after Maurice Davin, the first president of the GAA. This phase also saw the creation of a tunnel which was later named the Ali tunnel in honour of Muhammad Ali and his fight against Al Lewis in July 1972 in Croke Park.Phase three – Hogan Stand
Phase Three saw the building of the new Hogan Stand. This required a greater variety of spectator categories to be accommodated including general spectators, corporate patrons, VIPs, broadcast and media services and operation staff. Extras included a fitted-out mezzanine level for VIP and Ard Comhairle (Where the dignitaries sit) along with a top-level press media facility. The end of Phase Three took the total spectator capacity of Croke Park to 82,000.Phase four – Nally Stand & Nally End/Dineen Hill 16 terrace
After the 2003 Special Olympics, construction began in September 2003 on the final phase, Phase Four. This involved the redevelopment of the Nally Stand, named after the athlete Pat Nally, and Hill 16 into a new Nally End/Dineen Hill 16 terrace. While the name Nally had been used for the stand it replaced, the use of the name Dineen was new, and was in honour of Frank Dineen, who bought the original stadium for the GAA in 1908, giving it to them in 1913. The old Nally Stand was taken away and reassembled in Pairc Colmcille, home of Carrickmore GAA in County Tyrone. The phase four development was officially opened by the then GAA President Seán Kelly on 14 March 2005. For logistical reasons (and, to a degree, historical reasons), and also to provide cheaper high-capacity space, the area is a terrace rather than a seated stand, the only remaining standing-room in Croke Park. Unlike the previous Hill, the new terrace was divided into separate sections – Hill A (Cusack stand side), Hill B (behind the goals) and the Nally terrace (on the site of the old Nally Stand). The fully redeveloped Hill has a capacity of around 13,200, bringing the overall capacity of the stadium to 82,300. This made the stadium the second biggest in the EU after the Camp Nou, Barcelona. However, London's new Wembley stadium has since overtaken Croke Park in second place. The presence of terracing meant that for the brief period when Croke Park hosted international association football during 2007–2009, the capacity was reduced to approximately 73,500, due to FIFA's statutes stating that competitive games must be played in all-seater stadiums.Pitch
The pitch in Croke Park is a soil pitch that replaced the Desso GrassMaster pitch laid in 2002. This replacement was made after several complaints by players and managers that the pitch was excessively hard and far too slippery. Since January 2006, a special growth and lighting system called the SGL Concept has been used to assist grass growing conditions, even in the winter months. The system, created by Dutch company SGL (Stadium Grow Lighting), helps in controlling and managing all pitch growth factors, such as light, temperature, CO2, water, air and nutrients.Floodlighting
With the 2007 Six Nations clash with France and possibly other matches in subsequent years requiring lighting the GAA installed floodlights in the stadium (after planning permission was granted). Indeed, many other GAA grounds around the country have started to erect floodlights as the organisation starts to hold games in the evenings, whereas traditionally major matches were played almost exclusively on Sunday afternoons. The first game to be played under these lights at Croke Park was a National Football League Division One match between Dublin and Tyrone on 3 February 2007 with Tyrone winning in front of a capacity crowd of over 81,000 – which remains a record attendance for a National League game, with Ireland's Six Nations match with France following on 11 February. Temporary floodlights were installed for the American Bowl game between Chicago Bears and Pittsburgh Steelers on the pitch in 1997, and again for the 2003 Special Olympics.Concert
Date Performer(s) Opening act(s) Tour/Event Attendance Notes 29 June 1985 U2 In Tua Nua, R.E.M., The Alarm, Squeeze The Unforgettable Fire Tour 57,000 First Irish act to have a headline concert. Part of the concert was filmed for the group's documentary Wide Awake in Dublin. 28 June 1986 Simple Minds Once Upon A Time Tour Guest appearance by Bono 27 June 1987 U2 Light A Big Fire, The Dubliners, The Pogues, Lou Reed The Joshua Tree Tour 114,000 28 June 1987 Christy Moore, The Pretenders, Lou Reed, Hothouse Flowers 28 June 1996 Tina Turner Brian Kennedy Wildest Dreams Tour 40,000/40,000 16 May 1997 Garth Brooks World Tour II 18 May 1997 29 May 1998 Elton John & Billy Joel Face to Face 1998 30 May 1998 24 June 2005 U2 The Radiators from Space, The Thrills, The Bravery, Snow Patrol, Paddy Casey, Ash Vertigo Tour 246,743 25 June 2005 27 June 2005 20 May 2006 Bon Jovi Nickelback Have a Nice Day Tour 81,327 9 June 2006 Robbie Williams Basement Jaxx Close Encounters Tour 6 October 2007 The Police Fiction Plane The Police Reunion Tour 81,640 Largest attendance of the tour. 31 May 2008 Celine Dion Il Divo Taking Chances World Tour 69,725 Largest attendance for a solo female act 1 June 2008 Westlife Shayne Ward Back Home Tour 85,000 Second Irish act to have a headline concert. Largest attendance of the tour. Part of the concert was filmed for the group's documentary and concert DVD 10 Years of Westlife - Live at Croke Park Stadium. 14 June 2008 Neil Diamond 13 June 2009 Take That The Script Take That Present: The Circus Live 24 July 2009 U2 Glasvegas, Damien Dempsey U2 360° Tour 243,198 25 July 2009 Kaiser Chiefs, Republic of Loose 27 July 2009 Bell X1, The Script The performances of "New Year's Day" and "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" were recorded for the group's live album U22 and for the band's remix album Artificial Horizon and the live EP Wide Awake in Europe, respectively. 5 June 2010 Westlife Wonderland, WOW, JLS, Jedward Where We Are Tour 86,500 Largest attendance of the tour. 18 June 2011 Take That Pet Shop Boys Progress Live 154,828 19 June 2011 22 June 2012 Westlife Jedward, The Wanted, Lawson Greatest Hits Tour 187,808[24] The 23 June 2012 date broke the stadium record for selling out its tickets in four minutes. Eleventh largest attendance at an outdoor stadium worldwide. Largest attendance of the tour and the band's music career history. Part of the concert was filmed for the group's documentary and concert DVD The Farewell Tour - Live in Croke Park. 23 June 2012 26 June 2012 Red Hot Chili Peppers Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, The Vaccines I'm with You World Tour 23 May 2014 One Direction 5 Seconds of Summer Where We Are Tour 235,008 24 May 2014 25 May 2014 20 June 2015 The Script & Pharrell Williams No Sound Without Silence Tour 74,635 24 July 2015 Ed Sheeran x Tour 162,308 25 July 2015 27 May 2016 Bruce Springsteen The River Tour 2016 160,188 29 May 2016 9 July 2016 Beyoncé Chloe x Halle, Ingrid Burley The Formation World Tour 68,575 8 July 2017 Coldplay AlunaGeorge, Tove Lo A Head Full of Dreams Tour[25] 80,398 22 July 2017 U2 Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds The Joshua Tree Tour 2017 80,901 17 May 2018 The Rolling Stones The Academic No Filter Tour 64,823 15 June 2018 Taylor Swift Camila Cabello, Charli XCX Taylor Swift's Reputation Stadium Tour 136.000 Swift became the first woman headline two concerts in a row there. 16 June 2018 7 July 2018 Michael Bublé Emeli Sandé 24 May 2019 Spice Girls Jess Glynne Spice World - 2019 UK Tour 5 July 2019 Westlife James Arthur Wild Youth The 20 Touror The Twenty Tour The 5 July 2019 date sold out its tickets in six minutes. Second date released were also sold out in under forty-eight hours. 6 July 2019 Non-Gaelic games
There was great debate in Ireland regarding the use of Croke Park for sports other than those of the GAA. As the GAA was founded as a nationalist organisation to maintain and promote indigenous Irish sport, it has felt honour-bound throughout its history to oppose other, foreign (in practice, British), sports. In turn, nationalist groups supported the GAA as the prime example of purely Irish sporting culture. Until its abolition in 1971, rule 27 of the GAA constitution stated that a member of the GAA could be banned from playing its games if found to be also playing association football, rugby or cricket. That rule was abolished but rule 42 still prohibited the use of GAA property for games with interests in conflict with the interests of the GAA. The belief was that rugby and association football were in competition with Gaelic football and hurling, and that if the GAA allowed these sports to use their ground it might be harmful to Gaelic games, while other sports, not seen as direct competitors with Gaelic football and hurling, were permitted, such as the two games of American football (Croke Park Classic college football game between The University of Central Florida and Penn State, and an American Bowl NFL preseason game between the Chicago Bears and the Pittsburgh Steelers) on the Croke Park pitch during the 1990s.[27] On 16 April 2005, a motion to temporarily relax rule No. 42 was passed at the GAA Annual Congress. The motion gives the GAA Central Council the power to authorise the renting or leasing of Croke Park for events other than those controlled by the Association, during a period when Lansdowne Road – the venue for international soccer and rugby matches – was closed for redevelopment. The final result was 227 in favour of the motion to 97 against, 11 votes more than the required two-thirds majority. In January 2006, it was announced that the GAA had reached agreement with the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) and Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) to stage two Six Nations games and four soccer internationals at Croke Park in 2007 and in February 2007, use of the pitch by the FAI and the IRFU in 2008 was also agreed.These agreements were within the temporary relaxation terms, as Lansdowne Road was still under redevelopment until 2010. Although the GAA had said that hosted use of Croke Park would not extend beyond 2008, irrespective of the redevelopment progress, fixtures for the 2009 Six Nations rugby tournament saw the Irish rugby team using Croke park for a third season. 11 February 2007 saw the first rugby union international to be played there. Ireland were leading France in a Six Nations clash, but lost 17–20 after conceding a last minute (converted) try. Raphael Ibanez scored the first try in that match; Ronan O'Gara scored Ireland's first ever try in Croke Park. A second match between Ireland and England on 24 February 2007 was politically symbolic because of the events of Bloody Sunday in 1920.There was considerable concern as to what reaction there would be to the singing of the British national anthem "God Save the Queen". Ultimately the anthem was sung without interruption or incident, and applauded by both sets of supporters at the match, which Ireland won by 43–13 (their largest ever win over England in rugby). On 2 March 2010, Ireland played their final international rugby match against a Scotland team that was playing to avoid the wooden spoon and hadn't won a championship match against Ireland since 2001. Outside half, Dan Parks inspired the Scots to a 3-point victory and ended Irish Hopes of a triple crown. On 24 March 2007, the first association football match took place at Croke Park. The Republic of Ireland took on Wales in UEFA Euro 2008 qualifying Group D, with a Stephen Ireland goal securing a 1–0 victory for the Irish in front of a crowd of 72,500. Prior to this, the IFA Cup had been played at the then Jones' Road in 1901, but this was 12 years before the GAA took ownership. Negotiations took place for the NFL International Series's 2011 game to be held at Croke Park but the game was awarded to Wembley Stadium.World record attendance
On 2 May 2009, Croke Park was the venue for a Heineken Cup rugby semi-final, in which Leinster defeated Munster 25–6. The attendance of 82,208 set a new world record attendance for a club rugby union game.[35] This record stood until 31 March 2012 when it was surpassed by an English Premiership game between Harlequins and Saracens at Wembley Stadium which hosted a crowd of 83,761.This was beaten again in 2016 in the Top 14 final at the Nou Camp which hosted a crowd of 99,124Skyline tour
A walkway, known under a sponsorship deal as Etihad Skyline Croke Park, opened on 1 June 2012.From 44 metres above the ground, it offers views of Dublin city and the surrounding area.The Olympic Torch was brought to the stadium and along the walkway on 6 June 2012.GAA Hall of Fame
On 11 February 2013, the GAA opened the Hall of Fame section in the Croke Park museum. The foundation of the award scheme is the Teams of the Millennium the football team which was announced in 1999 and the hurling team in 2000 and all 30 players were inducted into the hall of fame along with Limerick hurler Eamonn Cregan and Offaly footballer Tony McTague who were chosen by a GAA sub-committee from the years 1970–74.New inductees will be chosen on an annual basis from the succeeding five-year intervals as well as from years preceding 1970. In April 2014, Kerry legend Mick O'Dwyer, Sligo footballer Micheál Kerins, along with hurlers Noel Skehan of Kilkenny and Pat McGrath of Waterford became the second group of former players to receive hall of fame awards. -
Beautiful artwork depicting the ultra talented but ill fated Derby Winner Shergar. Origins :Naas Co Kildare. Dimensions: 45cm x 55cm Glazed Shergar was an Irish-bred, British-trained Thoroughbred racehorse. After a very successful season in 1981 he was retired to the Ballymany Stud in County Kildare, Ireland. In 1983 he was stolen from the stud, and a ransom of £2 million was demanded; it was not paid, and negotiations were soon broken off by the thieves. In 1999 a supergrass, formerly in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), stated they stole the horse. The IRA has never admitted any role in the theft. The Aga Khan, Shergar's owner, sent the horse for training in Britain in 1979 and 1980. Shergar began his first season of racing in September 1980 and ran two races that year, where he won one and came second in the other. In 1981 he ran in six races, winning five of them. In June that year he won the 202nd Epsom Derby by ten lengths—the longest winning margin in the race's history. Three weeks later he won the Irish Sweeps Derby by four lengths; a month after that he won the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes by four lengths. In his final race of the year he came in fourth, and the Aga Khan took the decision to retire him to stud in Ireland. After Shergar's Epsom Derby win, the Aga Khan sold 40 shares in the horse, valuing it at £10 million. Retaining six shares, he created an owners' syndicate with the remaining 34 members. Shergar was stolen from the Aga Khan's stud farm by an armed gang on 8 February 1983. Negotiations were conducted with the thieves, but the gang broke off all communication after four days when the syndicate did not accept as true the proof provided that the horse was still alive. In 1999 Sean O'Callaghan, a former member of the IRA, published details of the theft and stated that it was an IRA operation to raise money for arms. He said that very soon after the theft, Shergar had panicked and damaged his leg, which led to him being killed by the gang. An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph concluded that the horse was shot four days after the theft. No arrests have ever been made in relation to the theft. Shergar's body has never been recovered or identified; it is likely that the body was buried near Aughnasheelin, near Ballinamore, County Leitrim. In honour of Shergar, the Shergar Cup was inaugurated in 1999. His story has been made into two screen dramatisations, several books and two documentaries.
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Very unusual Tourist advertisement for Killarney commissioned by the Great |Southern Railway company enticing well heeled holidaymakers to make their way to Killarney from Kingsbridge (now Hueston Station) 55cm x 45cm Tralee Co Kerry The Lakes of Killarney are a scenic attraction located in Killarney National Park near Killarney, County Kerry, in Ireland. They consist of three lakes - Lough Leane, Muckross Lake (also called Middle Lake) and Upper Lake. The lakes sit in a low valley some 20 m (66 ft) above sea level. They are surrounded by the rugged slopes of MacGillycuddy's Reeks. Notable mountains in the range include Carrauntoohil, which, at 1,038 metres (3,406 ft) is Ireland's highest mountain, Purple Mountain, at 832 metres (2,730 ft), Mangerton Mountain, at 843 metres (2,766 ft), and Torc Mountain, at 535 metres (1,755 ft). The N71 road from Killarney to Kenmare passes a viewpoint called Ladies View which offers a view of the lakes and valleys. On the occasion of Queen Victoria's visit in 1861, the point was apparently chosen by the queen's ladies-in-waiting as the finest in the land; hence the name.
Lough Leane
Lough Leane (from Irish Loch Léin, meaning 'lake of learning') is the largest and northernmost of the three lakes, approximately 19 square kilometres (4,700 acres) in size. It is also the largest body of fresh water in the region. The River Laune drains Lough Leane to the north-west towards Killorglinand into Dingle Bay. Leane is dotted with small forested islands, including Innisfallen Island, which holds the remains of the ruined Innisfallen Abbey.On the eastern edge of the lake, Ross Island, more properly a peninsula, was the site of some of the earliest Copper Age metalwork in prehistoric Ireland.Ross Castle, a 15th-century keep, sits on the eastern shore of the lake, north of the Ross Island peninsula.Muckross Lake
Also known as Middle Lake or Torc Lake, Muckross is just south of Lough Leane. The two are separated by a small peninsula, crossed by a stone arched bridge called Brickeen Bridge. It is Ireland's deepest lake, reaching to 75 metres (246 ft) in parts.A paved hiking trail of approximately 10 km (6.2 mi) circles the lake.Upper Lake
The Upper Lake is the smallest of the three lakes, and the southernmost. It is separated from the others by a winding channel some 4 km (2.5 mi) long.Gallery
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Hand-drawn map of the Lakes by French artist Alphonse Dousseau, between 1830-1869
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Photograph of Upper Lake by Fergus O’Connor circa 1920 with commotion in bottom right
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Nice print of the very well known and celebrated Ross Castle,Killarney,Co Kerry. Killarney Co Kerry 22cm x 29cm Ross Castle ( is a 15th-century tower house and keep on the edge of Lough Leane, in Killarney National Park, County Kerry, Ireland. It is the ancestral home of the Chiefs of the Clan O'Donoghue, later associated with the Brownes of Killarney. The castle is operated by the Office of Public Works, and is open to the public seasonally with guided tours.
History
Ross Castle was built in the late 15th century by local ruling clan the O'Donoghues Mór (Ross), though ownership changed hands during the Second Desmond Rebellion of the 1580s to the MacCarthy Mór. He then leased the castle and the lands to Sir Valentine Browne, ancestor of the Earls of Kenmare. The castle was amongst the last to surrender to Oliver Cromwell's Roundheads during the Irish Confederate Wars, and was only taken when artillery was brought by boat via the River Laune. Lord Muskerry (MacCarthy) held the castle against Edmund Ludlow who marched to Ross with 4,000 foot soldiers and 200 horse; however, it was by water that he attacked the stronghold. The Irish had a prophecy that Ross could never be taken until a warship could swim on the lake, an unbelievable prospect.-
- Ross may all assault disdain
- Till on Lough Lein strange ship shall sail.
Governors
Governors of the garrison at Ross Castle included:- -1652: Pierce Ferriter
- Sir John Peyton, Bt (died 1675)
- 1679-1701: Colonel Sir John Edgeworth
- c.1705-1714: Colonel Richard Hedges
- 1715: John Sterling
- 1721: William FitzMaurice, 2nd Earl of Kerry (died 1747)
- 1753-1762: Lieut-General John Folliot
- 1762: Sir Francis Lumm, Bt (died 1797) (High Sheriff of King's County, 1755)
- -1801: Lieut-General Charles Eustace(1736-1801) (MP for Fethard, Wexford)
- 1801–1835: Lieut-General Sir Henry Johnson
Defensive features
Basic structure
The castle is typical of strongholds of Irish chieftains built during the Middle Ages. The tower house had square bartizans on diagonally opposite corners and a thick end wall. The tower was originally surrounded by a square bawn defended by round corner towers on each end. The structure is stacked and mortared stone with thick walls and providing five inner stories plus the roof.Front entrance
The front entrance was a small anteroom secured by an iron grill or 'yett' at the outer wall. The yett could be closed from inside via a chain that could then be secured even if the front door was closed. This room provided small side access holes and a "murder-hole" above which allowed the defenders to attack anybody in the room. The front door, on the inside of the anteroom, was constructed of two layers of thick Irish oak, one layer 90 degrees to the other with the boards riveted together. If the door was a single layer with the wood fibres going in a single direction, it would have been possible to split the door. The second cross layer prevented that. The door opened inward and was backed by two heavy beams fitted into the stone structure.Windows
Windows at the lower levels were vertical thin slits preventing entrance into the structure but allowing persons inside to aim and fire arrows or guns at attackers. The windows on the top levels were larger to allow in light. It was felt that attackers would not be able to scale to those heights so larger windows were safe.Machicolation
Machicolations were stone structures at the top of the castle protruding out from the wall with a hole in the floor. There are two on Ross Castle, one over the front door and another on the back wall. The one at the front would allow defenders to drop stones or boiling oil on attackers at the front door, the only entrance to the castle.Parapet
The parapet at roof level is 'crenellated' providing ups, 'merlons' and downs, 'crenels', to allow defenders to hide behind the merlons while firing arrows or guns through the crenels.Inner rooms
The first floor was used for storage. The second floor was a living space for the house attendants and guards. Straw was spread on the floor to sleep on. There was typically no furniture. The third floor was for food preparation and living and eating space for the house attendants and guards. The fourth floor was the sleeping and living space for the chieftain and his family. The fourth floor had an arched stone roof supporting a stone floor of the fifth story as compared to the wood beam floors of the lower stories. The fifth floor was the great room where the chieftain ate and entertained. This room was also the last sanctuary as it had a stone floor as a fire break from fire in the lower floors.Gallery
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Interesting Shannon Airport Irish Air Lines retro advert. Origins : Bunratty Co Clare. Dimensions : 70cm x 50cm
Worldwide Duty Free selling is a $70 billion business, but it has its origins in the mind of one Clare man. And like many innovations, the concept of duty free, which first came to Shannon Airport in 1952, was born of necessity.Today the global travel retail business is a firm fixture at airports across the world, and the concept has made a lot of money for a lot of people.But not for Brendan O’Regan, the man with the idea.
He was born into “the first generation of free Irish men” in relatively well-off surroundings in Sixmilebridge, Co Clare in 1917. His father, James, was chairman of Clare County Council and a successful businessman. The family was in the hotel business, and for a time leased the renowned Falls Hotel in Ennistymon and the Old Ground in Ennis. Sent as a boarder to Blackrock College in Dublin in 1931, O’Regan enjoyed early renown when he requested that the college, which by then had given up on the camán, field a hurling team in the Leinster Colleges cup.
His next step after school was training in hotel management, an interest that brought him to Germany, France and the UK, before coming home to run The Falls. He then moved to the ailing St Stephen’s Green club in Dublin, before being appointed catering comptroller at Foynes flying boat base in Co Limerick, then a refuelling point for transatlantic seaplanes.
It was here his passion for travel took off, but it was his next move that sealed his legacy.
Shannon Airport
Rineanna on the Shannon estuary in Co Clare, chosen by then taoiseach Seán Lemass as the site for a new airport for both sea and land planes, opened in October 1945, when the first transatlantic commercial air service from Boston landed there. It soon became Europe’s most important transatlantic airport, handling more than 100,000 passengers in 1946, its first full year of operation.
When O’Regan joined the nascent airport, its future was by no means secure. The imminent arrival of jet planes, which meant US planes would no longer have to stop in Shannon to refuel, was of concern, while the political apparatus of the day favoured focusing efforts on one airport in Dublin.
Fearing “economic annihilation” for the new airport, O’Regan sought a new venture that would help secure its future. Inspiration struck when he was returning home by sea from a visit to the United States, arranged under the Marshall Plan to allow the Irish government to study US tourism.
As told in the recently published book Brendan O’Regan: Irish Innovator, Visionary and Peacemaker by Brian O’Connell and Cian O’Carroll, O’Regan had a “eureka” moment on board.
“I saw the shop that was selling duty-free goods and my brain said to me: “If they can do it when you are crossing the sea in a boat, you can surely be able to do [it] when you land for the first time.”
He had to convince the Department of Industry and Commerce and the Revenue Commissioners of the merits of forgoing tax on the sale of goods, while local traders also opposed the move.
Nonetheless, O’Regan got the go-ahead and by July 1950 he had set up an operation in a timber hut outside the terminal, selling whiskey for $1.50 a bottle. The following year, the first duty-free shop in the world opened, with a bottle of whiskey on sale for just 30s, compared with 10s 6d in a regular shop, while in 1954 a mail order service was included. It went on to become a vast operation, mailing to locations all around the world, quality items such as crystal, china, fashionable clothing and jewellery.
Contagious idea
The concept soon caught on. In 1957 Amsterdam became the next airport to open a duty free, with the concept making its way across the Atlantic in 1962. Prince Philip was an early admirer of the concept, and he wanted it extended to all the UK’s international airports.
O’Regan also inspired philanthropist Chuck Feeney, who took the idea of duty free and galloped ahead with it, founding Duty Free Shoppers Group (DFS) in Hawaii in 1962, which later became the largest duty-free retailer in the world.
These years also saw the invention of Irish coffee, after O’Regan asked chef Joe Sheridan to “come up with something special” to warm up transatlantic passengers tired and cold after their trip.
But duty free was only part of the equation. O’Regan’s big dream was to position Shannon as the European manufacturing basis for US companies, and to bring employment and prosperity to the region.
Shaped by the devastating impact poverty and emigration had on the county of his birth, O’Regan often repeated his father’s maxim, that “the most important thing about life is to create work for others, if you can”.
In the 1950s, the post-war boom that lifted the US, Europe and the UK had missed Ireland, and emigration was running at the highest level since independence.
So O’Regan didn’t stop at the duty free.
In 1951, he established the Shannon College of Hotel Management, which is still operating today and the graduates of which have managed the world’s top hotels, while he also leveraged the area’s potential as a tourist hub. He identified the potential of Bunratty Castle as a tourist attraction and, with the co-operation of its owner, Lord Gort, it was renovated and opened to the public in 1960, with the first medieval banquet held shortly thereafter. O’Regan later chaired Bord Fáilte.
Great times
“He was very much a leader and innovative in the sense that he thought up ideas himself,” recalls O’Carroll, who worked alongside O’Regan as estates manager in the Shannon Free Airport Development Company Limited (SFADCO). “He would work very intensively until the project was launched, and then he would go on to the next project”.
It was a time of “brainstorming picnics”, and consultancy reports, to try and hit on a new idea.
“They were great times,” says O’Carroll. “If an idea came up, and it was any way worthwhile, it would stand a very good chance of implementation.”
The big move came in the establishment of the Shannon Free Zone, the world’s first free trade zone, in 1959, overseen by SFADCO. It operated a licensing system, offering qualifying companies a corporation tax rate of just 10 per cent; a model that would later be taken up by the IFSC.
O’Regan’s idea, inspired by the Free Zone in Colon, Panama, was greeted with much scepticism initially, but his ability to build good relationships, particularly with those in government, helped secure the initiative.
“He had the ability to short-circuit a lot of things in terms of procedures in getting approval,” says O’Carroll, adding that “this clearly annoyed civil servants at the time.”
Indeed his initials, BOR, in Shannon came to mean “Bash on regardless”.
So, on an “if you build it they will come” ambition, SFADCO set about building factories – without any tenants. A Dutch piano manufacturer owned by Johan J Rippen was the first real enterprise to come to Shannon, followed by Sony, and diamond company De Beers in 1960.
Tourism smarts
O’Regan also ramped up the region’s renown as a tourist destination, using his tools of persuasion to garner investment.
When Bernard McDonough, a wealthy Irish-American industrialist pulled out of a planned ball-bearing factory in the Shannon Free Zone, O’Regan told him about a nearby castle that was for sale. He took the bait and bought it; in 1963 Dromoland Castle opened as a five-star hotel. McDonough would later open a further three hotels in the area.
When he heard of a plan by German investors to acquire the land leading to the Cliffs of Moher, he rang then Clare county manager Joe Boland, who subsequently got the county council to buy it.
During the 1970s he moved away from his formal roles in Shannon, and turned his attention to the peace process, founding Co-operation North (now Co-operation Ireland) in 1979. He died in 2008, and a bronze bust sculpture was unveiled at Shannon Airport in May 2017 to mark the centenary of his birth.
A man of his time – as O’Carroll recalls, an “infinitely simpler” time – he nonetheless left a significant legacy.
As described when receiving an honorary degree from the National University of Ireland in 1978: “Rare is the man of whom it can be justly said that he transformed the social, economic and industrial life of a whole region”
The Shannon project was not just about creating jobs; it was also about providing homes for the workers who flocked there.
By the late 1950s the housing issue, which had plagued the development of the hub since the early days, was becoming a crisis. So, in 1960, a proposal was tabled for the creation of a new town; an innovation without precedent in post-war Ireland.
Inspired by the British new towns that arose after the war, including Crawleyin Sussex and Stevenage in Hertfordshire, Brendan O’Regan and his team sought to build a new hub for workers of the airport and the industrial zone.
The creation of the first new town in the history of the State was not without challenges; there were political ructions as to who would oversee the project – the government or SFADCO – while residents of nearby Limerick city accused Brendan O’Regan of “empire building”, as they rued the fact that the development did not happen in Limerick instead.
Nonetheless, by 1962 the first residents were moving in, all of whom were tenants of SFADCO and who had to work either in the airport or industrial area to qualify for affordable housing.
As SFADCO estates manager Cian O’Carroll recalls, building the houses so close to a place of huge employment was key, as was the fact that units were small – but even larger families were catered for.
“We often let them two houses and knocked them together,” he says.
Also key to its success was the fact that housing was affordable, and graded and related to people’s incomes. After some time a tenant purchase scheme was introduced, allowing people to buy their homes outright.
Today the town is home to some 10,000 residents, and remains one of the few examples of a new planned town in Ireland.
“It hasn’t grown as much as people might have expected, but it has its own social and economic viability,” says O’Carroll.
As to why subsequent governments haven’t looked to emulate the success of Shannon – particularly given our housing shortages – O’Carroll suggests it’s due to an ideological shift away from the State doing things directly themselves, instead encouraging the private sector to do the same through tax incentives and other methods.
“It’s a shame,” he says.
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A very interesting Royal Munster Fusiliers Regiment WW1 Recruitment Poster exhorting the young men of Kerry,Cork,Clare & Limerick to enlist and join the War effort. Origins:Glin Co Limerick. Dimensions : 40cm x 35cm Glazed The Royal Munster Fusiliers was a line infantry regiment of the British Army from 1881 to 1922. It traced its origins to the East India Company's Bengal European Regiment raised in 1652, which later became the 101st Regiment of Foot (Royal Bengal Fusiliers). The Royal Munster Fusiliers were formed in 1881 by the merger of the 101st Regiment of Foot and the 104th Regiment of Foot (Bengal Fusiliers). One of eight Irish regiments raised largely in Ireland, it had its home depot in Tralee and served as the county regiment for Cork, Clare, Limerick and Kerry. At its formation the regiment comprised two regular and two militia battalions. The Royal Munster Fusiliers served in India before the regiment fought in the Second Boer War. Prior to the First World War, the regiment's three militia battalions were converted into reserve battalions, and a further six battalions were added to the regiment's establishment during the war. The regiment fought with distinction throughout the Great War and won three Victoria Crosses by the conflict's conclusion in 1918.Following establishment of the independent Irish Free State in 1922, the five regiments that had their traditional recruiting grounds in the counties of the new state were disbanded and the Royal Munster Fusiliers ceased to be as a regiment on 31 July 1922.
History
Origins
Before the regiment was reformed as part of a reorganization of the British Army in 1881, the Royal Munster Fusilier's historic background went back as far as 1652 with the formation of the Bengal European Regiment by the Honourable East India Company.This regiment would eventually become the 101st Regiment of Foot (Royal Bengal Fusiliers), or the 1st Bengal European Fusiliers. The East India Company formed the 104th Regiment of Foot (Bengal Fusiliers), or 2nd Bengal European Fusiliers, from this regiment in 1765. Both regiments, which were composed exclusively of white soldiers, not Indian sepoys, played pivotal roles in the British conquest of India throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. As well as the Royal Munster Fusilier's origins as part of the East India Company, the regiment's reserve battalions also traced their lineage to the Militia of Munster (namely the South Cork Light Infantry Militia, the Kerry Militia and the Royal Limerick County Militia, which became the 3rd, 4th and 5th Battalions, respectively). While both the fusilier regiments had originated and served as "European" regiments of the East India Company, they were transferred to the British Army in 1861 when the British Crown took control of the company's private army after the Indian Mutiny of 1857.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.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.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 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. While 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.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".1917: The Battle of Messines and Passchendaele
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.New Army
With the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 the immediate need for a considerable expansion of the British Army resulted in the formation of the New Army under Lord Kitchener. The war target was seventy divisions in all, the New Army to have thirty volunteer divisions separate and under Army Order 324, as additional from the Regular Army, with a planned period of service of at least three years. On 7 August a general United Kingdom-wide call for 100,000 volunteers aged 19–30 was issued. The battalions were to be distinguished by the word 'Service' after their number. The first new battalions were raised as units of Kitchener's new K1 Army Group, which led to the formation of the 6th and 7th (Service) Battalions, Royal Munster Fusiliers which were a part of the 30th Brigade of the 10th (Irish) Division, under the command of General Bryan Mahon. The 8th and 9th (Service) Battalions, Royal Munster Fusiliers followed as units of the 16th (Irish) Division's 47th and 48th Brigades, part of Kitchener's second new K2 Army Group. The 16th Division was placed under the command of Major General William Hickie.In the course of the war heavy losses suffered by the two Regular Royal Munster Fusilier Battalions caused the new service battalions to be disbanded and absorbed in turn by the regular battalions, the last on 2 June 1918 when the 8th (Service) Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers was amalgamated with the 1st Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers. -
Unusual advertising print -History of Irish Whiskey -featuring a cartoon type character and a bottle of Jameson Whiskey(Cooper's Croze). 48cm x 60cm Kilmallock Co Limerick Named in honour of Jameson's Master Cooper, Ger Buckley. The aim of this whiskey is to showcase the diversity of the barrels used at Jameson and the influence of the oak on the whiskey. Fittingly this is aged in a variety of barrels including ex-Bourbon, ex-Sherry and some virgin oak barrels. According to Irish Distillers: 'The Cooper’s Croze is a carefully crafted whiskey that effortlessly carries vanilla sweetness, rich fruit flavours, floral and spice notes and the undeniable influence of oak. You can take whiskey out of wood but you can never take the wood out of whiskey.' Origins:Kilmaley Co Clare Dimensions : Glazed
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85cm x 45cm. Dingle Co Kerry The Gaelic Athletic Association-Gaelic Players' Association All Stars Awards (often known simply as the All Stars) are awarded annually to the best player in each of the 15 playing positions in Gaelic football and hurling. Additionally, one player in each code is selected as Player of the Year. The awards have since 2011 been presented jointly by the Gaelic Athletic Association and the representative body for inter-county players, the Gaelic Players Association. Each player who receives a nomination is given a medallion marking the milestone.These are considered to be "the most coveted sporting award scheme in the country".Since the 1960s there had been a tradition of annually selecting the best player in each position, in football and hurling, to create a special team of the year. Between 1963 and 1967 these players received what was known as the Cú Chulainn award. In 1971 these awards were formalised into the annual GAA All Star Awards. In 2006 the Gaelic Players Association launched a parallel award scheme entitled the GPA Gaelic Team of the Year (often referred to as the GPA Awards). An annual award was also given by the GPA to the Footballer of the Year and the Hurler of the Year. In 2011 it was announced that the GAA All Stars Awards, which had been sponsored in recent years by Vodafone, and the GPA Awards would merge under the sponsorship of car manufacturer Opel. The move announced by Christy Cooney saw the achievements of players recognised jointly for the first time in October 2011. The All Stars team comprises the best player in each position, regardless of club or county affiliation. The composition of the All Star teams are decided on the basis of a shortlist compiled by a selection committee of sports journalists from the national media, while the overall winners are chosen by inter-county players themselves. The award is regarded by players as the highest accolade available to them, due to it being picked by their peers. The awards are presented at a gala banquet in November following the end of the Championship season. Both men's teams are honoured with a special holiday where they play an exhibition game. Since 1971 over 1,000 players have been honoured with All Stars Awards. Damien Martin of Offaly was the first ever recipient of the award, while in 2004 Paul Galvin of Kerry became the 1,000th winner of the award. Carlow and Longford are the only county in Ireland not to receive an award in either sport. In September 2017 PwC became the new sponsors of the All Star Awards on a four year deal, with the awards being re-named The PwC All-Stars.
Player Team Appearances GK Ger Cunningham Cork 1 RCB Paudie Fitzmaurice Limerick 1 FB Eugene Coughlan Offaly 1 LCB Pat Fleury Offaly 2 RWB Joe Hennessy Kilkenny 3 CB Johnny Crowley Cork 1 LWB Dermot McCurtain Cork 3 MD John Fenton Cork 2 MD Joachim Kelly Offaly 2 RWF Nicky English Tipperary 2 CF Kieran Brennan Kilkenny 1 LWF Paddy Kelly Limerick 1 RCF Tomás Mulcahy Cork 1 FF Noel Lane Galway 2 LCF Seánie O'Leary Cork 3 Team Appearances GK John O'Leary Dublin 1 RCB Páidí Ó Sé Kerry 4 FB Mick Lyons Meath 1 LCB Séamus McHugh Galway 1 RWB Tommy Doyle Kerry 1 CB Tom Spillane Kerry 1 LWB P. J. Buckley Dublin 1 MD Jack O'Shea Kerry 5 MD Eugene McKenna Tyrone 1 RWF Barney Rock Dublin 2 CF Eoin Liston Kerry 4 LWF Pat Spillane Kerry 7 RCF Mikey Sheehy Kerry 6 FF Frank McGuigan Tyrone 1 LCF Dermot McNicholl Derry 1 -
85cm x 45cm. Dingle Co Kerry The Gaelic Athletic Association-Gaelic Players' Association All Stars Awards (often known simply as the All Stars) are awarded annually to the best player in each of the 15 playing positions in Gaelic football and hurling. Additionally, one player in each code is selected as Player of the Year. The awards have since 2011 been presented jointly by the Gaelic Athletic Association and the representative body for inter-county players, the Gaelic Players Association. Each player who receives a nomination is given a medallion marking the milestone.These are considered to be "the most coveted sporting award scheme in the country".Since the 1960s there had been a tradition of annually selecting the best player in each position, in football and hurling, to create a special team of the year. Between 1963 and 1967 these players received what was known as the Cú Chulainn award. In 1971 these awards were formalised into the annual GAA All Star Awards. In 2006 the Gaelic Players Association launched a parallel award scheme entitled the GPA Gaelic Team of the Year (often referred to as the GPA Awards). An annual award was also given by the GPA to the Footballer of the Year and the Hurler of the Year. In 2011 it was announced that the GAA All Stars Awards, which had been sponsored in recent years by Vodafone, and the GPA Awards would merge under the sponsorship of car manufacturer Opel. The move announced by Christy Cooney saw the achievements of players recognised jointly for the first time in October 2011. The All Stars team comprises the best player in each position, regardless of club or county affiliation. The composition of the All Star teams are decided on the basis of a shortlist compiled by a selection committee of sports journalists from the national media, while the overall winners are chosen by inter-county players themselves. The award is regarded by players as the highest accolade available to them, due to it being picked by their peers. The awards are presented at a gala banquet in November following the end of the Championship season. Both men's teams are honoured with a special holiday where they play an exhibition game. Since 1971 over 1,000 players have been honoured with All Stars Awards. Damien Martin of Offaly was the first ever recipient of the award, while in 2004 Paul Galvin of Kerry became the 1,000th winner of the award. Carlow and Longford are the only county in Ireland not to receive an award in either sport. In September 2017 PwC became the new sponsors of the All Star Awards on a four year deal, with the awards being re-named The PwC All-Stars.
Player Team Appearances GK Pat McLoughney Tipperary 1 RCB Brian Murphy Cork 1 FB Martin O'Doherty Cork 3 LCB Tadhg O'Connor Tipperary 3 RWB Dermot McCurtain Cork 1 CB Ger Henderson Kilkenny 2 LWB Iggy Clarke Galway 3 MD John Connolly Galway 2 MD Joe Hennessey Kilkenny 1 RWF John Callinan Clare 1 CF Frank Burke Galway 2 LWF Liam 'Chunky' O'Brien Kilkenny 4 RCF Mick Brennan Kilkenny 3 FF Joe McKenna Limerick 4 LCF Ned Buggy Wexford 1 -
85cm x 45cm Dingle Co Kerry The Gaelic Athletic Association-Gaelic Players' Association All Stars Awards (often known simply as the All Stars) are awarded annually to the best player in each of the 15 playing positions in Gaelic football and hurling. Additionally, one player in each code is selected as Player of the Year. The awards have since 2011 been presented jointly by the Gaelic Athletic Association and the representative body for inter-county players, the Gaelic Players Association. Each player who receives a nomination is given a medallion marking the milestone.These are considered to be "the most coveted sporting award scheme in the country".Since the 1960s there had been a tradition of annually selecting the best player in each position, in football and hurling, to create a special team of the year. Between 1963 and 1967 these players received what was known as the Cú Chulainn award. In 1971 these awards were formalised into the annual GAA All Star Awards. In 2006 the Gaelic Players Association launched a parallel award scheme entitled the GPA Gaelic Team of the Year (often referred to as the GPA Awards). An annual award was also given by the GPA to the Footballer of the Year and the Hurler of the Year. In 2011 it was announced that the GAA All Stars Awards, which had been sponsored in recent years by Vodafone, and the GPA Awards would merge under the sponsorship of car manufacturer Opel. The move announced by Christy Cooney saw the achievements of players recognised jointly for the first time in October 2011. The All Stars team comprises the best player in each position, regardless of club or county affiliation. The composition of the All Star teams are decided on the basis of a shortlist compiled by a selection committee of sports journalists from the national media, while the overall winners are chosen by inter-county players themselves. The award is regarded by players as the highest accolade available to them, due to it being picked by their peers. The awards are presented at a gala banquet in November following the end of the Championship season. Both men's teams are honoured with a special holiday where they play an exhibition game. Since 1971 over 1,000 players have been honoured with All Stars Awards. Damien Martin of Offaly was the first ever recipient of the award, while in 2004 Paul Galvin of Kerry became the 1,000th winner of the award. Carlow and Longford are the only county in Ireland not to receive an award in either sport. In September 2017 PwC became the new sponsors of the All Star Awards on a four year deal, with the awards being re-named The PwC All-Stars.
Seamus Durack Clare 3 RCB Brian Murphy Cork 2 FB Leonard Enright Limerick 2 LCB Jimmy Cooney Galway 2 RWB Liam O'Donoghue Limerick 1 CB Seán Stack Clare 1 LWB Ger Coughlan Offaly 1 MD Steve Mahon Galway 1 MD Liam Currams Offaly 1 RWF John Callinan Clare 2 CF George O'Connor Wexford 1 LWF Mark Corrigan Offaly 1 RCF Pat Carroll Offaly 2 FF Joe McKenna Limerick 6 LCF Johnny Flaherty Offaly 1 -
85cm x 45cm Dingle Co Kerry The Gaelic Athletic Association-Gaelic Players' Association All Stars Awards (often known simply as the All Stars) are awarded annually to the best player in each of the 15 playing positions in Gaelic football and hurling. Additionally, one player in each code is selected as Player of the Year. The awards have since 2011 been presented jointly by the Gaelic Athletic Association and the representative body for inter-county players, the Gaelic Players Association. Each player who receives a nomination is given a medallion marking the milestone.These are considered to be "the most coveted sporting award scheme in the country".Since the 1960s there had been a tradition of annually selecting the best player in each position, in football and hurling, to create a special team of the year. Between 1963 and 1967 these players received what was known as the Cú Chulainn award. In 1971 these awards were formalised into the annual GAA All Star Awards. In 2006 the Gaelic Players Association launched a parallel award scheme entitled the GPA Gaelic Team of the Year (often referred to as the GPA Awards). An annual award was also given by the GPA to the Footballer of the Year and the Hurler of the Year. In 2011 it was announced that the GAA All Stars Awards, which had been sponsored in recent years by Vodafone, and the GPA Awards would merge under the sponsorship of car manufacturer Opel. The move announced by Christy Cooney saw the achievements of players recognised jointly for the first time in October 2011. The All Stars team comprises the best player in each position, regardless of club or county affiliation. The composition of the All Star teams are decided on the basis of a shortlist compiled by a selection committee of sports journalists from the national media, while the overall winners are chosen by inter-county players themselves. The award is regarded by players as the highest accolade available to them, due to it being picked by their peers. The awards are presented at a gala banquet in November following the end of the Championship season. Both men's teams are honoured with a special holiday where they play an exhibition game. Since 1971 over 1,000 players have been honoured with All Stars Awards. Damien Martin of Offaly was the first ever recipient of the award, while in 2004 Paul Galvin of Kerry became the 1,000th winner of the award. Carlow and Longford are the only county in Ireland not to receive an award in either sport. In September 2017 PwC became the new sponsors of the All Star Awards on a four year deal, with the awards being re-named The PwC All-Stars.
Pos. Player Team Appearances GK Pat McLoughney Tipperary 2 RCB Niall McInerney Galway 2 FB Leonard Enright Limerick 1 LCB Jimmy Cooney Galway 1 RWB Dermot McCurtain Cork 2 CB Sean Silke Galway 2 LWB Iggy Clarke Galway 4 MD Joachim Kelly Offaly 1 MD Mossie Walsh Waterford 1 RWF Joe Connolly Galway 1 CF Pat Horgan Cork 1 LWF Pat Carroll Offaly 1 RCF Bernie Forde Galway 1 FF Joe McKenna Limerick 5 LCF Éamonn Cregan Limerick 3 -
Nearly a Che Guevera style to this poster of the rebel hero Sean South from Garryowen in the heart of Limerick City. Origins : Limerick. Dimensions : 54cm x 42cm Glazed Sean South ( c. 1928 – 1 January 1957)was a member of an IRA military column led by Sean Garland on a raid against a Royal Ulster Constabulary barracks in Brookeborough, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, on New Year's Day 1957.South, along with Fergal O'Hanlon, died of wounds sustained during the raid.
Early life
Seán South was born in Limerick where he was educated at Sexton Street Christian Brothers School, later working as a clerk in a local wood-importing company called McMahon's. He was a member of a number of organisations, including Clann na Poblachta, Sinn Féin, the Gaelic League and the Legion of Mary. In Limerick he founded the local branch of Maria Duce, a social Roman Catholic organisation, where he also edited both An Gath and An Giolla. He had received military training as a lieutenant of the Irish army reserve, the Local Defence Force (LDF), which would later become An Fórsa Cosanta Áitiúil (the FCA), before he became a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army. Being a member of An Réalt (the Irish-speaking chapter of the Legion of Mary),South was a devout Catholic and a conservative, even by the standards of the day.It was at a meeting of An Réalt that he met his only serious girlfriend, Máire de Paor. She was a schoolteacher from Limerick, and was a great lover of the Irish language. He was also a member of the Knights of Columbanus. In 1949, South wrote a series of letters to his local newspaper, the Limerick Leader. These letters condemned Hollywood films for what South regarded as their immoral messages. South accused these films of promoting a "stream of insidious propaganda which proceeds from Judeo-Masonic controlled sources, and which warps and corrupts the minds of our youth."South also claimed that the American film industry was controlled by "Jewish and Masonic executives dictating to Communist rank and file." In his letters, South also denounced Irish trade unions, and praised the activities of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the United States.Death
On New Year's Day 1957, 14 IRA volunteers crossed the border into County Fermanaghto launch an attack on a joint RUC/B Specials barracks in Brookeborough. During the attack a number of volunteers were injured, two fatally. South and Fergal O'Hanlon died of their wounds as they were making their escape. Their bodies were brought into an old sandstone barn by their comrades. The stone from the barn was used to build a memorial at the site. A young Catholic constable, John Scalley, was killed in the ensuing gun battle between the IRA unit and the RUC.Commemoration
The attack on the barracks inspired two popular rebel songs: ‘Seán South of Garryowen' and ‘The Patriot Game '.- "Sean South", also known as "Sean South of Garryowen", written by Sean Costelloe from County Limerick, to the tune of another republican ballad "Roddy McCorley" and made famous by the Wolfe Tones.
- South is also mentioned in the Rubberbandits' song "Up Da Ra", which pokes fun at the concept of armchair republicanism using the literary device of the unreliable narrator.
- There is a plaque dedicated to him outside his birthplace on Henry Street, Limerick.
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65cm x 75cm Caherciveen Co Kerry Stunning & imposing original oil painting depicting the Wild Atlantic coastline Co Kerry.In this case the part of the coastline featured is near The Glen or St Finians Bay between Ballinskelligs and Port Magee on the Beara Peninsula where there are absolutely magnificent,uninterrupted views of the Skellig Islands . The artist is RC Duffield .The current frame is need of replacing and will be completed before sale/shipping to the purchasers satisfaction.
The Glen / St Finians Bay
St. Finan’s Bay commonly called (The Glen) stretches from Duchalla head in the south to Puffin Island in the north encompassing Skellig rocks and the lemon. The area got its name from St. Finian, a man who lived in the 10th century and travelled from Skelligs to Keel frequently to say mass. He had a monastery at Keel but the area is much older than that era. There is evidence of habitation from the bronze age and there are many soubterrains, galtans and the remains of an earthen fort at Rathkerin. The Glen is also a well known surfer’s paradise, St Finian’s Bay in The Glen has the smallest beach with the strongest rip tides, but often has the best waves. Not a place for the beginner, you need to be able to read the water well, but for the more experienced boarder it can be a thrill. HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY The area is probably best known for its christian or ecclesiastical sites. The root word keel (cill) meaning church is common. Kilaboona Oratory is an early Christian site located to the west of the settlement there is a well dedicated to St. Buaine. The medieval church at keel was built near the site of St. Finans monastery and was the parish church for the glen and portmagee for centuries. To the South of the church is a “Pagan’s Grave”, an enclosure of standing stones, 18ft x 11ft. In ballynabloun stands templecashel oratory a small church which was said to be used by nuns. Nearby is a walled kitchen garden on an acre of ground built by the o’connell landlords in 1831. Keelonecaha is another holy site and it is said there was a fight between the irish and the danes there. Evidence of habitation has been found dating from the Bronze Age and there are the remains of a fort at Rathkerin. Many of the heritage sites have spellbinding views of the Skellig Rocks. Some more Christian sites include an Aifrinn,which is a ‘Mass Rock‘ used in Penal times this can be found in the town land of Aghort , another interesting site is Dún Canuig Promontory in the town land of Cloghanecanuig. FLORA AND FAUNA There is an abundance of plant life here due to it mild climate. Flowers include buttercup, primrose, daisy, bluebell, spurge, great celadineand orchid. The fuchsia and hawthorn add colour and scent to the ditches in summer and the montbretia with its orange flowers decorate the roadsides. Birds are plentiful here too from the small, which include the wren, robin, yellowhammer, stonechat, wagtail to the large seabirds including all species of gull from, heron, curlew, cormorant, razorbill and gannet. Puffin island is a bird sanctuary which gives protection to all seabirds including the beautiful puffins. There are many varieties of fish in the bay like pollack, mackerel, wrasse, cod, haddock, lobster, cray and crab. To enjoy the beauty one needs to walk through out the glen. Parking the car at the beach one can walk south towards ducalla, north towards glenaragh or east to killabuonia. These walks are signposted. Panoramic views can be had from com an easboig in the north and from the tower in bolus in the south. To sweeten your walk there is also a chocolate factory close to the beach which provides hand made chocolate. Just don’t drive through – stop and take in the scenery and walk or cycle. -
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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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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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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65cm x 50cm Fermoy Co Cork Beamish and Crawford operated until 2009 and had a number of owners, including Carling O'Keefe, Elders IXL, Scottish & Newcastle and, most recently, Heineken International. While the Beamish and Crawford brewery closed in 2009, Beamish stout is still brewed in the city, at a nearby Heineken operated facility. The Beamish and Crawford brewery was founded in 1792, when two merchants, William Beamish and William Crawford, went into partnership with two brewers, Richard Barrett and Digby O’Brien. They purchased an existing brewery (from Edward Allen) on a site in Cramer's Lane that had been used for brewing since at least 1650 (and possibly as early as 1500). Beamish and Crawford's Cork Porter Brewery prospered, and by 1805 it had become the largest brewery in Ireland and the third largest in the then United Kingdom as a whole. In 1805, its output was 100,000 barrels per annum – up from 12,000 barrels in 1792. It remained the largest brewery in Ireland until overtaken by Guinness in 1833. In 1865, the brewery underwent a modernisation programme and was completely revamped at a cost of £100,000. Alfred Barnard, a noted brewing and distilling historian, remarked in his book Noted Breweries of Great Britain & Ireland in 1889 that:
- "The business of Beamish & Crawford in Cork is a very old one dating as far back as the seventeenth century and it is said to be the most ancient porter brewery in Ireland."
- Beamish stout, Beamish and Crawford's flagship product, now brewed by Heineken at the Murphy's brewery.
- Beamish Red, a sweetish Irish red ale, made to resemble Kilkenny or Murphy's Irish Red. Production ceased immediately following the takeover. Several Cork pubs which once stocked Beamish Red replaced it with Franciscan Well Rebel Red.
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There are many chapters in Munster’s storied rugby journey but pride of place remains the game against the otherwise unbeaten New Zealanders on October 31, 1978. Limited edition photographic montage of the great moments of the now legendary 1978 clash between Munster and the All Blacks.It was specially commissioned for the 40th anniversary of the game in 2018. 50cm x 55cm Limerick There were some mighty matches between the Kiwis and Munster, most notably at the Mardyke in 1954 when the tourists edged home by 6-3 and again by the same margin at Thomond Park in 1963 while the teams also played a 3-3 draw at Musgrave Park in 1973. During that time, they resisted the best that Ireland, Ulster and Leinster (admittedly with fewer opportunities) could throw at them so this country was still waiting for any team to put one over on the All Blacks when Graham Mourie’s men arrived in Limerick on October 31st, 1978. There is always hope but in truth Munster supporters had little else to encourage them as the fateful day dawned. Whereas the New Zealanders had disposed of Cambridge University, Cardiff, West Wales and London Counties with comparative ease, Munster’s preparations had been confined to a couple of games in London where their level of performance, to put it mildly, was a long way short of what would be required to enjoy even a degree of respectability against the All Blacks. They were hammered by Middlesex County and scraped a draw with London Irish. Ever before those two games, things hadn’t been going according to plan. Tom Kiernan had coached Munster for three seasons in the mid-70s before being appointed Branch President, a role he duly completed at the end of the 1977/78 season. However, when coach Des Barry resigned for personal reasons, Munster turned once again to Kiernan. Being the great Munster man that he was and remains, Tom was happy to oblige although as an extremely shrewd observer of the game, one also suspected that he spotted something special in this group of players that had escaped most peoples’ attention. He refused to be dismayed by what he saw in the games in London, instead regarding them as crucial in the build-up to the All Blacks encounter. He was, in fact, ahead of his time, as he laid his hands on video footage of the All Blacks games, something unheard of back in those days, nor was he averse to the idea of making changes in key positions. A major case in point was the introduction of London Irish loose-head prop Les White of whom little was known in Munster rugby circles but who convinced the coaching team he was the ideal man to fill a troublesome position. Kiernan was also being confronted by many other difficult issues. The team he envisaged taking the field against the tourists was composed of six players (Larry Moloney, Seamus Dennison, Gerry McLoughlin, Pat Whelan, Brendan Foley and Colm Tucker) based in Limerick, four (Greg Barrett, Jimmy Bowen, Moss Finn and Christy Cantillon) in Cork, four more (Donal Canniffe, Tony Ward, Moss Keane and Donal Spring) in Dublin and Les White who, according to Keane, “hailed from somewhere in England, at that time nobody knew where”. Always bearing in mind that the game then was totally amateur and these guys worked for a living, for most people it would have been impossible to bring them all together on a regular basis for six weeks before the match. But the level of respect for Kiernan was so immense that the group would have walked on the proverbial bed of nails for him if he so requested. So they turned up every Wednesday in Fermoy — a kind of halfway house for the guys travelling from three different locations and over appreciable distances. Those sessions helped to forge a wonderful team spirit. After all, guys who had been slogging away at work only a short few hours previously would hardly make that kind of sacrifice unless they meant business. October 31, 1978 dawned wet and windy, prompting hope among the faithful that the conditions would suit Munster who could indulge in their traditional approach sometimes described rather vulgarly as “boot, bite and bollock” and, who knows, with the fanatical Thomond Park crowd cheering them on, anything could happen. Ironically, though, the wind and rain had given way to a clear, blue sky and altogether perfect conditions in good time for the kick-off. Surely, now, that was Munster’s last hope gone — but that didn’t deter more than 12,000 fans from making their way to Thomond Park and somehow finding a spot to view the action. The vantage points included hundreds seated on the 20-foot high boundary wall, others perched on the towering trees immediately outside the ground and some even watched from the windows of houses at the Ballynanty end that have since been demolished. The atmosphere was absolutely electric as the teams took the field, the All Blacks performed the Haka and the Welsh referee Corris Thomas got things under way. The first few skirmishes saw the teams sizing each other up before an incident that was to be recorded in song and story occurred, described here — with just the slightest touch of hyperbole! — by Terry McLean in his book ‘Mourie’s All Blacks’. “In only the fifth minute, Seamus Dennison, him the fellow that bore the number 13 jersey in the centre, was knocked down in a tackle. He came from the Garryowen club which might explain his subsequent actions — to join that club, so it has been said, one must walk barefooted over broken glass, charge naked through searing fires, run the severest gauntlets and, as a final test of manhood, prepare with unfaltering gaze to make a catch of the highest ball ever kicked while aware that at least eight thundering members of your own team are about to knock you down, trample all over you and into the bargain hiss nasty words at you because you forgot to cry out ‘Mark’. Moss Keane recalled the incident: “It was the hardest tackle I have ever seen and lifted the whole team. That was the moment we knew we could win the game.” Kiernan also acknowledged the importance of “The Tackle”.He said: “Tackling is as integral a part of rugby as is a majestic centre three-quarter break. There were two noteworthy tackles during the match by Seamus Dennison. He was injured in the first and I thought he might have to come off. But he repeated the tackle some minutes later.”And Tom Kiernan and Andy Haden, rugby standard bearers of which their respective countries were justifiably proud, saw things in a similar light.“I climbed up on a gate at the end of the game to get this photo and in the middle of it all is Moss Keane, one of the great characters of Irish rugby, with an expression of absolute elation. The All Blacks lost 12-0 to a side that played with as much passion as I have ever seen on a rugby field. The great New Zealand prop Gary Knight said to me later: ‘We could have played them for a fortnight and we still wouldn’t have won’. I was doing a little radio piece after the game and got hold of Moss Keane and said ‘Moss, I wonder if ...’ and he said, ‘ho, ho, we beat you bastards’.
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Beautiful B&W image of legendary Tipperary captain Tony Wall lifting the Liam McCarthy after winning the 1958 All Ireland Hurling Final. Thurles Co Tipperary 45cm x 35cm Tony Wall was in charge of the last Tipperary championship team that took on Clare in Ennis. Thirty-three years later, he looks back on a famous career, considering all that could have gone wrong as well as all that went so well. A holder of five All-Ireland medals, Wall was one of the game’s finest ever centre-backs and the author of a still fresh book, Hurling (1965). If he wrote a sequel today, he’d advise a couple of small tweaks to the modern game. “We have no electricity,” Tony Wall says, greeting me at the door.This announcement makes sense of an estate filled with machines and vans and cables, men speaking urgent Polish, diggers operating as if in an underwater world. An upgrade is taking place in Raheny. The Walls are making do until six o’clock, when power is due back. Mrs Wall is in the sitting room, a gentle smiling presence. Conversation turns naturally to her experience of attending the many big occasions in which her husband hurled for Tipperary.“We didn’t meet until after the 1958 All-Ireland final,” Wall relates. “So Betty didn’t start going to any of the matches until 1959.” He expands: “She was from a totally non GAA background in Dublin. I was this savage from down the country, bringing her away from civilisation. I was even bringing her to hurling matches…” Mrs Wall beams. She found quite a first championship day out. Tipperary, the reigning All-Ireland champions, had Waterford in a Munster semi-final on July 12, 1959. A gale entered the Cork Athletic Grounds and stayed there. Strong wind means a tough decision. Tipperary won the toss and here was that decision. “I was captain, same as the year before,” Wall begins. “I decided on going against the wind. I felt I had no choice because of previous experience.” Tough decisions mean strong opinions. “I was there with Tony’s mother,” Mrs Wall remembers. “She didn’t agree with the decision to go against the wind. I said to her not to be putting the mí ádh on the team. But maybe…”Tony Wall is not a dry man. His face often flashes with merriment. Jim Stapleton often acted as West Division’s selector and became worried the night before an All-Ireland final.
“No, one day,” he replies. “Dónal got married on the day before the final.” He smiles at my amazement: “There weren’t that many of the players there. Myself and Betty did go. None of us were drinking, of course. But still… But we thought nothing of it at the time.”
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Beautiful bronze statuette of an unmuzzled coursing greyhound.The sometimes controversial pursuit of coursing is still a hugely popular one in Ireland along with greyhound racing. 30cm x 15cm x 10cm Patrickswell Co LimerickIreland has been associated with the coursing of greyhounds for generations, although the Irish Coursing Club was not formally established until 1916. Before then, the sport of coursing and its rules were already highly developed in England for several hundred years, and it was the Duke of Norfolk who fully described them as the Laws of the Leash in the late 1500s. Many standards we still see in coursing today can be found in Laws of the Leash, and this includes only two greyhounds released at a time, and allowing the hare a significant head start before the greyhounds are slipped. These practices and others were already well in use and we know this from the work of a Greek historian writing extensively about the proper raising and training of the swift Celtic sighthounds. In his work, Cynegeticus, also simply called,On Coursing, Arrian’s comment about the purpose of coursing still holds true today, almost two thousand years later: “true sportsmen do not take their dogs out for the sake of catching a hare but for the contest and sport of coursing and are glad if the hare meets with an escape” Coursing is managed and regulated by the Irish Coursing Club (ICC), and consists of 89 affiliated clubs from Ireland and Northern Ireland, all of whom must abide by the ICC’s rules and regulations. Club Representatives are nominated and voted on to the Executive Committee to manage the affairs of the club, together with the President, Treasurer and Secretary. With many thousands of active members, people from all walks of life and of all ages participate in the sport – men, women, boys and girls, and in many cases it has been enjoyed within the same family for generations. The two main highlights of the year are the National Meeting in Clonmel, held in February, and followed a few weeks later by the Irish Cup, hosted by the County Limerick Coursing Club. Coursing is all about the hare, a remarkable work of nature which has thrived for thousands of years on our island, and will continue to flourish only with the assistance of coursing clubs. It is this concern for hare conservation that makes the sport so indispensable and unique. Without the efforts of our sport, the hare population would be without the significant layer of protection it presently enjoys from the hare husbandry initiatives afforded by coursing clubs on a 12 month basis. The Irish hare is legally protected since 1930 in the Republic of Ireland, initially under the Game Preservation Act (1930), more recently by the Wildlife Act (1976) and Wildlife (Amendment) Act (2000). The hare is listed as an internationally important species in the Irish Red Data Book (Whilde, 1993). Coursing operates in a highly regulated environment coupled with comprehensive rules directly applied by the ICC. It operates under a licence from the Minister of Arts, Heritage & the Gaeltacht, issued annually with a total of 22 conditions attached. Although our sport may take place only over the winter months and is sensitive to the hare breeding season, the protection and policing of preserves is a continuous activity and conducted on a voluntary basis. Quercus, the Belfast University research body reports that “Irish hares are 18 times more abundant in areas managed by the Irish Coursing Club than at similar sites in the wider countryside”. Without regulated coursing there would be an increase of unregulated illegal hunting taking place throughout the year, with no organisation taking responsibility or interest in the overall well-being of the hare. If coursing clubs ceased to perform their functions, the hare population here would decline at a rapid rate as the proliferation of illegal hunting could easily rise to epidemic proportions as seen in the UK, where poaching and hare population decline are the order of the day. Finally, I offer a quote I recently found that seems appropriate: “The future of coursing is so dependent on hare preservation that no effort should be spared by us to put it on an assured basis.”That was from an October 1924 edition of the Irish Coursing Calendar, now known as the Sporting Press newspaper. The Irish Coursing Club has been, and will continue to be, deeply immersed in the conservation of the Irish Hare population, always seeking new ways to improve conservation in the face of loss of habitat due to the “advances” of our modern world and in spite of grossly uninformed efforts to ban it when no proven alternative conservation programmes are in place.
- Clonmel (Private)
- Cork (IGB)
- Derry (N Ireland)
- Drumbo Park (N Ireland)
- Dundalk (Private)
- Enniscorthy (Private)
- Galway (IGB)
- Kilkenny (Private)
- Lifford (Private)
- Limerick (IGB)
- Longford (Private)
- Mullingar (IGB)
- Newbridge (IGB)
- Shelbourne Park (IGB)
- Thurles (Private)
- Tralee (IGB)
- Waterford (IGB)
- Youghal (IGB)
- Trap 1 = Red with White numeral
- Trap 2 = Blue with White numeral
- Trap 3 = White with Black numeral
- Trap 4 = Black with White numeral
- Trap 5 = Orange with Black numeral
- Trap 6 = Black & White Stripes with Red numeral
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Original oil on canvas painting of Bunratty Castle by the local artist Anne Byrne. 30cm x 36cm Limerick Bunratty -Caisleán Bhun Raithe, meaning "Castle at the Mouth of the Ratty") is a large 15th-century tower house in County Clare, Ireland. It is located in the centre of Bunratty village (Irish: Bun Ráite), by the N18 road between Limerick and Ennis, near Shannon Town and its airport. The castle and the adjoining folk park are run by Shannon Heritage as a major tourist attraction The name Bunratty, Bun Raite (or possibly, Bun na Raite) in Irish, means "river basin" of the 'Ratty' river. This river, alongside the castle, flows into the nearby Shannon estuary. The first recorded settlement at the site may have been a Norsemen settlement/trading camp reported in the Annals of the Four Masters to have been destroyed by Brian Boru in 977. According to local tradition, such a camp was located on a rise south-west of the current castle. However, since no actual remains of this settlement have yet been found, its exact location is unknown and its existence is not proven. Around 1250, King Henry III of England granted the cantred or district of Tradraighe (or Tradree) to Robert De Muscegros, who in 1251 cut down around 200 trees in the King's wood at Cratloe. These may have been used to construct a motte and bailey castle, which would have been the first castle at Bunratty, but again the exact position of this is unknown. A later reference in the state papers, dating to 1253 gives de Muscegros the right to hold markets and an annual fair at Bunratty. It has thus been assumed that the site was the centre of early Norman control in south-eastern Clare. Early 19th-century scholars put the structure to the north-west of the current castle. However, when a hotel was constructed there in 1959, John Huntexcavated the area and thought the remains to be that of a gun emplacement from the Confederate Wars (see below). These lands were later handed back to (or taken back by) King Henry III and granted to Thomas De Clare, a descendant of Strongbow in 1276. De Clare built the first stone structure on the site (the second castle). This castle was occupied from 1278 to 1318 and consisted of a large single stone tower with lime white walls. It stood close to the river, on or near the site of the present Bunratty Castle. In the late 13th century, Bunratty had about 1,000 inhabitants. The castle was attacked several times by the O'Briens (or O'Brians) and their allies. In 1284, while De Clare was away in England, the site was captured and destroyed. On his return, in 1287, De Clare had the site rebuilt and a 140-yard (130 m) long fosse built around it. The castle was again attacked but it did not fall until 1318. In that year a major battle was fought at Dysert O'Dea as part of the Irish Bruce Wars, in which both Thomas De Clare and his son Richard were killed. Lady De Clare, on learning this, fled from Bunratty to Limerick after burning castle and town. The De Clare family never returned to the area and the remains of the castle eventually collapsed. As the stones were likely used for other local construction works, no traces remain of this second castle In the 14th century, Limerick was an important port for the English Crown. To guard access via the Shannon estuary against attacks from the Irish, the site was once again occupied. In 1353, Sir Thomas de Rokeby led an English army to conquer the MacNamaras and MacCarthys. A new castle (the third) was built at Bunratty, but once again, its exact location is unknown. Local tradition holds that it stood at the site where the Bunratty Castle Hotel was later constructed. However, the new structure was hardly finished before being captured by the Irish. Documents show that in 1355, King Edward III of England released Thomas Fitzjohn Fitzmaurice from prison in Limerick. He had been charged with letting the castle fall into the hands of Murtough O’Brien whilst serving as a Governor (Captain) of Bunratty. The fourth castle, the present structure, was built by the MacNamara family after around 1425. Its builder may have been one Maccon Sioda MacNamara, chieftain of Clann Cuilein (i.e. the MacNamaras). He died before the castle was completed which happened under his son Sean Finn (died in 1467). At around 1500, Bunratty Castle came into the hands of the O'Briens (or O'Brians), the most powerful clan in Munster and later Earls of Thomond. They expanded the site and eventually made it their chief seat, moving it there from Ennis. In 1558, the castle—now noted as one of the principal strongholds of Thomond—was taken by Thomas Radclyffe, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland from Donal O'Brien of Duagh, last King of Thomond (died 1579), and given to Donal's nephew, Connor O'Brien. Donogh O'Brien, Conor's son, may have been the one to move the seat of the family from Clonroad (Ennis) to Bunratty. He made various improvements to the castle including putting a new lead roof on it. During the Confederate Wars set off by the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Lord Forbes, commanding forces of the English Long Parliament, was allowed by the then Lord Barnabas O'Brien to occupy Bunratty in 1646. Barnabas did not want to commit to either side in the struggle, playing off royalists, rebels and roundheads against each other. He left for England, where he joined King Charles. Defence of the castle, whose position allowed those holding it to blockade maritime access to Limerick (held by the Confederates) and the river Shannon, was in the hands of Rear-Admiral Penn, the father of William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania. After a long siege, the Confederates took the castle. Penn surrendered but was allowed to sail away to Kinsale. Barnabas O'Brien died in 1657, but had apparently leased out the castle to one "John Cooper", possibly the same person married to Máire ní Mahon of Leamaneh Castle, widow of another O'Brien, Conor (died 1651). Bunratty Castle remained property of the O'Briens and in the 1680s the castle was still the principal seat of the Earls of Thomond. In 1712, Henry, the 8th and last Earl of Thomond (1688–1741) sold Bunratty Castle and 472 acres (191 ha) of land to Thomas Amory for £225 and an annual rent of £120. Amory in turn sold the castle to Thomas Studdert who moved in ca. 1720. The Studdert family left the castle (allowing it to fall into disrepair), to reside in the more comfortable and modern adjacent "Bunratty House" they had built in 1804. The reasons for the move are bound up in family arguments over the eldest son marrying his first cousin. For some time in the mid-19th century, the castle was used as a barracks by the Royal Irish Constabulary. In 1894, Bunratty was once again used by the Studdert family, as the seat of Captain Richard Studdert. In the late 19th century, the roof of the Great Hall collapsed. In 1956, the castle was purchased and restored by the 7th Viscount Gort, with assistance from the Office of Public Works.He reroofed the castle and saved it from ruin. The castle was opened to the public in 1960, sporting furniture, tapestries and works of art dating to around 1600. Today, the castle is a major tourist attraction, along with "Bunratty Folk Park". Both the castle and Bunratty House are open to the public. The castle is famous for its medieval banquets, offered since 1963, at which the "Bunratty Castle Entertainers" perform today. "Bunratty Folk Park" is an open-air museum featuring around 30 buildings, including the Ardcroney Church Of Ireland church, which moved here and reopened in 1998. Recently and controversially the Armada table of the O’Briens, princes of Thomond, was sold at auction for the princely sum of €360,000. Made from the timbers of a ship from the Spanish Armada which was wrecked off the coast of Co Clare in 1588 it had been placed for sale with Adam’s auction house yesterday, guiding between €100,000 and €200,000. In the end it sold to an undisclosed Irish buyer for €360,000.
“The good news is, it will be staying in Ireland, ” says the managing director of Adam’s auction house, James O’Halloran. “That’s all we’ve been allowed to say for the moment, but we’re hoping that more information will be released fairly soon.” It’s understood that the State was outbid for the table and that the new owner is a private buyer.
Bidding on the table started at €70,000 but with one online bidder, three on the phone and one person in the room, it didn’t take long to sail past its lowest guide of €100,000, followed quickly by its top estimate of €200,000. “It got to €360,000 quite quickly,” O’Halloran says. “We thought it would do reasonably well, but because there was nothing to compare it to, we didn’t really know what to expect.”
The three-metre-long table was the property of Lord Inchiquin. Its rectangular top sits on a frieze of a dozen carved heads, with four carved heraldic lion corner supports and two figures of Hope and Charity, which would originally have been found on the stern of a galleon. It spent 300 years at Dromoland Castle before moving to Bunratty, where its elaborate series of carved masks became a key attraction.
When it was announced that the table – described by the Knight of Glin, Desmond FitzGerald, as “one of the most important and earliest pieces of Irish furniture” – was to be sold at Adam’s Country House Collections sale at Townley Hall, near Drogheda, Co Louth, there were calls for it to be kept in Ireland as it represents part of our cultural heritage. The only question now is, where will the table find its new home?
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Fantastic offset framed Bulmers Irish Cider advertising showcard of the cider company's current sponsorship of the blue riband of National Hunt Steeplechasing,the Cheltenham Gold Cup .The showcard features 3 of the main protagonists of the 2020 event, with the famous green and gold silks of JP McManus to the forefront.While the brand of cider produced locally in County Tipperarymay be known as Bulmers to the people of the Irish republic, it is referred to as Magners everywhere in the world. Established in 1935 by a local from the town of Clonmel named William Magner, the cider factory there was later bought out by cider-makers H. P. Bulmer in 1946.After buying an orchard in County Tipperary, William Magner began to produce his own Irish cider in the mid-1930s. In 1937, he teamed up with the well-established H.P. Bulmer company from England, acquiring the right to produce under the Bulmers name in Ireland, and the brand became more widespread. Following almost ten successful years in partnership, Magner decided to sell his remaining fifty percent stake to his colleagues, seeing the factory become known as Bulmers Ltd Clonmel.
Unfortunately for H.P. Bulmer, it wasn’t long before the company again changed hands. Coming out on the losing end of a legal dispute with the creators of Babycham sparkling perry over a competing product, they were forced to sell Bulmers Clonmel during the 1960s. Having become part of the C&C Group – a soft drinks and cider company then jointly owned by Guinness and Allied Breweries – production of Irish Bulmers was moved five years later to a modern complex at Annerville, outside Clonmel.
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Quaint castiron miniature pig advertising Limerick Ham from 1949 onone side and exhibiting the different parts of the pig carcase on the other. Limerick is well-known and famed for its bacon production, “everything but the squeak was used”. And was often referred to as 'Pigtown".Many of the households in areas such as the Abbey kept pigs along with the more traditional chickens usually fed on domestic scraps as well as on root crops. Although the majority of the pigs were imported from the local environs. Thousands of pigs were slaughtered and processed weekly in the Limerick Bacon factories, who in the height of their production were the most consumed pork products in the British Isles. In the 19th century Limerick Hams became renowned throughout the British Empire with Queen Victoria insisting on Limerick hams at her Christmas dinner. Limerick pork through the O’Mara’s was even exporting as far away as Russia and Romania in 1891 and 1902 respectively. The four great bacon factories in Limerick were Matterson’s, Shaw’s, O’Mara’s and Denny’s each competing for local, national and international trade out of Limerick city during the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Other Bacon Merchants in Limerick City during this period were Hogan, Longbottom, Looney, Lynch & Spain, Neazor, O’Brien, O’Connor, O’Halloran, Prendergast, Rea, Sullivan, Thompson though this article concentrates on the four major players. The bacon industry was wrought with tragedy and some of the stories can be read on the Factory Fatalities page. Further reading on the bacon factories can be found in this issue of The Old Limerick Journal.
MATTERSON’S
J Matterson & Sons operated out of Roches Street, while their rival company O’Mara’s operated across the road on the same street from 1839. Mattersons was established in 1816 by John Russell and J Matterson, who were brother-in-laws of a kind. Both men married a Mossop sister, Mary and Eleanor. After the death of Joseph Matterson Snr in 1854, Joseph Matterson Jnr took over the Limerick aspect of the company. While Joseph Matterson Snr’s other son William Matterson, oversaw the London branch of the business. William Matterson died aged 71 in London in January 1903. Not only was Joseph Matterson Jnr. a business owner in the city but he was also a key player in the community. He was vice president of the Protestant Young Mens Association which stained-glass window still remains in-situ in O’Connell Street. Below are the funeral notices from the Limerick Chronicle, from the Limerick City Library Local Studies, for members of the Matterson Family.- Matterson, Alfred, Castletroy, Limerick Chronicle 12 August 1848, son of Joseph Matterson Snr
- Matterson, Mary, Castletroy, Limerick Chronicle 25 June 1853, aged 16, daughter of Joseph Matterson Snr
- Matterson, Anne, Castletroy, Limerick Chronicle 26 July 1854, aged 20, daughter of Joseph Matterson Snr
- Matterson, Joseph Snr, Castletroy, Limerick Chronicle 08 July 1854, provision merchant, manufacturer of Limerick Hams; int at Kilmurry church
- Matterson, Henry, Castletroy, Limerick Chronicle 23 January 1858, aged 32, son of late Joseph Matterson Snr
- Matterson, Elizabeth , Castletroy, Limerick Chronicle 24 February 1858, aged 23, daughter of late Joseph Matterson Snr
- Matterson, Henry Sutherland, 81 George Street, Limerick Chronicle 12 September 1876, aged 13 months; son of Joseph Matterson Jnr.
- Matterson, Mary, Castletroy House, Limerick Chronicle 1st June 1886 aged 82, widow of late Joseph Matterson Snr, death notice.
- Matterson, Evely Gordon, 81 George Street, 4 January 1890, death notice, aged 4 months, daughter of J. Matterson Jnr
- Matterson, Mary Gordon (Molly), Castletroy House, Limerick Chronicle 05 May 1896, aged 17, daughter of Joseph Jnr and Agnes Matterson (funeral report) (reply to condolences).
- Matterson, Joseph, Castletroy House, Limerick Chronicle 3 April 1906, (further report 1) (further report 2) (funeral report) – buried in Kilmurry Graveyard.
SHAW’S
Shaw & Sons operated out of Mulgrave Street. It was founded in 1831 by William John Shaw, whose family originated in Co. Down. In 1892 Shaw’s factory was using electric lights, lifts, a mini-railway and even telephonic communications, the Shaw’s factory was well ahead of it’s time. It is now owned by the Kerry Group. Below are the funeral notices from the Limerick Chronicle, from the Limerick City Library Local Studies, for members of the Shaw Family.- Shaw, Martha, Rose Cottage, Limerick Chronicle 14 April 1868, wife of William John Shaw – buried in St. Munchin’s Graveyard.
- Shaw, William John, Rose Cottage, Limerick Chronicle 02 December 1869 – buried in St. Munchin’s Graveyard
- Shaw, Harriett E., Willowbank, Limerick Chronicle 30 August 1879, second daughter of William John Shaw, Esq.
- Shaw, James Thompson, South Kensington, London, Limerick Chronicle 18th October 1892, senior partner of W. J. Shaw & Sons (further death report) (sympathy vote) (acknowledgement) – Eldest son of William John Shaw.
- Shaw, Anna Gertrude Thompson, Cheltenham 13 June 1918, daughter of late William John Shaw, Limerick.
O’MARA’S
J. O’Mara & Sons was founded by James O’Mara who was born in Toomevara, Co. Tipperary. James O’Mara’s originally began curing bacon in the basement of his house on Mungert Street. In 1839 he moved his business to a purpose built factory on 30 Roches Street at the junction of Anne Street, across from their rival Matterson Bacon Factory. He also moved his family during this time to Hartstonge Street. The O’Mara’s factory was demolished in the late 1980s to make way for the multi-story which stands in the spot today. O’Mara’s 100 year lease on the site on Roches Street ended on 18 June 1979. Below are the funeral notices from the Limerick Chronicle, from the Limerick City Library Local Studies, for members of the O’Mara Family.- O’Mara, James, jun., Limerick Chronicle 8th July 1893, son of James O’Mara, J.P. (funeral report 10/7/1893) (2,420 Kb) – buried Mount Saint Lawrence Cemetery.
- O’Mara, Mysie, London, England, Limerick Chronicle 05/07/1898, dau of Thomas McKenna, late of Waterford; widow of late James O’Mara of Limerick
- O’Mara, James, Thomas Street, Limnerick Chronicle 20th April 1899, MD of J O’Mara & Sons bacon curers and local politician; obituary (funeral report 25/4/1899)
- O’Mara, Nannie, Alexander Terrace, L. Chronicle 28th January 1905, address that of her sister; daughter of late James O’Mara; obituary and death notice, (funeral report 31/1/1905)
DENNY’S
Denny’s and Sons operated out of 27 Upper William Street in in 1891 as well as Mulgrave Street. It was founded by Henry Denny in the 1870s and first operated as a Provision Merchants out of Newtown Mahon, Upper William Street. Denny operated out of Limerick, Cork and Waterford. Denny’s sausages make an appearance in James Joyce’s Ulysses, where Leopold Bloom watches a young girl in Dlugacz’s butcher’s shop buy a pound and a half of Denny’s sausages, as he waits to buy a pork kidney for his and wife Molly’s breakfast. Denny’s is now owned by the Kerry Food group, after they acquired it in 1982. Dimensions :230cm x 10cm x 8cm -
Superb old Beamish tin advertising sign of manageable dimensions !Its distinctive patina effect and time honoured rusting really adds to this signs character and charm. Origins : Cobh Co Cork Dimensions : 38cm x 44cm Beamish and Crawford operated until 2009 and had a number of owners, including Carling O'Keefe, Elders IXL, Scottish & Newcastle and, most recently, Heineken International. While the Beamish and Crawford brewery closed in 2009, Beamish stout is still brewed in the city, at a nearby Heineken operated facility. The Beamish and Crawford brewery was founded in 1792, when two merchants, William Beamish and William Crawford, went into partnership with two brewers, Richard Barrett and Digby O’Brien. They purchased an existing brewery (from Edward Allen) on a site in Cramer's Lane that had been used for brewing since at least 1650 (and possibly as early as 1500). Beamish and Crawford's Cork Porter Brewery prospered, and by 1805 it had become the largest brewery in Ireland and the third largest in the then United Kingdom as a whole. In 1805, its output was 100,000 barrels per annum – up from 12,000 barrels in 1792. It remained the largest brewery in Ireland until overtaken by Guinness in 1833. In 1865, the brewery underwent a modernisation programme and was completely revamped at a cost of £100,000. Alfred Barnard, a noted brewing and distilling historian, remarked in his book Noted Breweries of Great Britain & Ireland in 1889 that:
- "The business of Beamish & Crawford in Cork is a very old one dating as far back as the seventeenth century and it is said to be the most ancient porter brewery in Ireland."
- Beamish stout, Beamish and Crawford's flagship product, now brewed by Heineken at the Murphy's brewery.
- Beamish Red, a sweetish Irish red ale, made to resemble Kilkenny or Murphy's Irish Red. Production ceased immediately following the takeover. Several Cork pubs which once stocked Beamish Red replaced it with Franciscan Well Rebel Red.
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Rian na gCos (Gaelic for in the footsteps of a giant)Dingle legend Paddy Bán Brosnan,who captained Kerry in 1944 gives the 1985 Kerry captain Paidí O'Sé from Ventry some priceless advice on the beach at Dún Chaoin Iconic B&W photo taken by Colman Doyle of 2 of the all time Kerry football greats - Paidí O'Sé & Paddy Bawn Brosnan.This atmospheric image was captured as the 2 men walked along a stormy Atlantic shoreline on the beautiful Dingle Peninsula,.where both of these legends hailed from.Although from different eras both players encapsulated the essence of the Kerry Footballer-teak tough,ferocious,skillful and also well able to enjoy themselves when the opportunity presented itself ! Indeed Paddy Bawn had a very interesting family background as we discovered while researching his bio for this product description as you can now read.
Paddy Bawn Brosnan & the American Civil War: The Famed Gaelic Footballer’s Links to Kerry’s Greatest Conflict
September 1947, New York witnessed a unique sporting occasion. In front of more than 30,000 people at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan, the Gaelic footballers of Kerry and Cavan did battle in what remains the only All-Ireland Football Championship Final ever to be held outside of Ireland. Among the men who donned the green and gold of Kerry that day was Paddy Bawn Brosnan of Dingle. Even in the annals of Ireland’s most famed footballing county, Paddy Bawn Brosnan remains special. Paddy had captained Kerry in 1944 when they lost the All-Ireland to Roscommon, and had taken home winner’s medals in 1940, 1941 and 1946. The New York match of 1947 was aimed at bringing this major event to the huge Irish-American community in the United States, 100 years after the Famine which had led so many to emigrate. But Paddy Bawn Brosnan had a special connection to New York and America. Indeed, had it not been for events that had taken place in a Prisoner of War camp in Georgia more than 80 years previously, it is unlikely that he would have ever had an opportunity to pull on the Kingdom’s colours. Footage of Cavan v Kerry from the Polo Grounds, Manhattan in 1947. You can access an RTE Radio 1 documentary on the background to the historic game by clicking here. Over recent years I have given many lectures around the country highlighting the extent of Irish involvement in the American Civil War. Many take the form of county-focused talks, using specific local individuals to illustrate just how major an event this was in Irish history. Interestingly, it is common for at least one attendee to have a known link to an ancestor who served in the Civil War– indicative both of the impact this conflict had on Irish people, and of the fact that not all 19th century emigration was permanent. Last July I gave just such a talk to Dingle Historical Society in Co. Kerry, and was fortunate to be contacted by local man Mossy Donegan. Mossy not only knew his own connections to the conflict, but through extensive research by both he and his sister Maeve had obtained copies of many of the historical files associated with those links. It is a familial story they share with Paddy Bawn Brosnan, and it is as a result of Mossy and Maeve’s endeavours that it can be related here. What then was Paddy Bawn Brosnan’s connection to the American Civil War? It is a narrative that directly involves his Grandmother, but can be traced back even further, to the marriage of Paddy Bawn’s Great-Grandparents (Mossy and Maeve’s Great-Great-Grandparents) Daniel Dowd and Mary Murphy. A few years shy of a century before Paddy Bawn took the field at the Polo Grounds, Father Eugene O’Sullivan married Daniel and Mary in Dingle Roman Catholic Church on 29th October 1853, A year later, on 8th October 1854, they celebrated the birth of their first child, Edward. At some point shortly after that, the Dowds decided their future lay across the Atlantic, and became just three of the more than 54,000 people who emigrated from Kerry between 1851 and 1860. (1) Denny Lyne, Paddy Bawn Brosnan, J J Nerney and Eddie Boland in action during the 1946 All Ireland Final between Kerry and Roscommon (The Kerryman) The favoured destination for Irish emigrants was New York, and that is where the young Dowd family arrived in the mid-1850s. A second child– a daughter Bridget– was born there about 1856. Bridget, or Biddy as she became known, came into the world on Long Island, and was Paddy Bawn Brosnan’s grandmother. If the Dowd family story had followed that of the majority of Irish immigrants to the United States in this period, Biddy Dowd would never have seen Ireland again, and Paddy Bawn Brosnan would never have been born. But seismic events intervened. By the 1860s the family had settled in Buffalo, where Daniel made the decision that changed all their lives forever, when on 6th September 1862 he enlisted in the Union army. (2) In 1862 Daniel Dowd became one of the c. 200,000 Irish-born men who would serve during the American Civil War. He was joined in the ranks by thousands of Kerrymen; there is little doubt that it was this conflict that saw more Kerrymen fight, and more Kerrymen die, than any other war in history. The Dingle native had decided not to join just any unit. Instead he enlisted in the 155th New York Infantry, one of the regiments that would form part of Corcoran’s Irish Legion. Its leader Brigadier-General Michael Corcoran from Carrowkeel, Co. Sligo was a noted Fenian, and many supporters of the cause of Ireland specifically chose to join his brigade. Whether Daniel was one of them, or simply wanted to serve close to his fellow Irishmen, remains unknown. (3) Daniel was mustered in as a private in Company I of the 155th New York at Newport News, Virginia on 19th November 1862. He was recorded as a 29 year old laborer who was 5 feet 5 inches in height, with a fair complexion, gray eyes and light hair. His surname was one that caused considerable confusion for recorders at the time. Sometimes recorded as Doud or Doody, Daniel was placed on the regimental roster as ‘Daniel Dout.’ It wasn’t long before he got his first taste of action in the Civil War, as in January his regiment was engaged the Battle of Deserted House, Virginia. Though only a mere skirmish in comparison to what the Legion would endure in 1864, it nonetheless must have had quite an impact on Daniel and the men of the 155th. (4) Private Daniel Dowd spent the next year in Virginia with his unit. On 17th December 1863 he found himself guarding a railroad bridge, part of a detachment of some 50 men of the Legion that were protecting the Orange & Alexandria line at Sangster’s Station. At a little after 6pm that evening they were set upon by a body of Confederate cavalry, who threatened to overrun them as they sought to burn the bridge. The Rebels attacked on a number of occasions, eventually getting around the flanks and rear of the Irishmen, succeeding in setting fire to their tents and forcing them into a retreat. Cut off, the detachment would normally have looked to their telegraph operator to call for reinforcements, but he was apparently so drunk he was unable to use his equipment. General Corcoran and the remainder of the Legion only learned of the attack around 8.30pm, when a local Unionist came to inform them of events. The relief force eventually re-established a connection with the detachment, but although the bridge was saved, a number of men had been captured. Among them was Dingle-native Daniel Dowd. (5) We have scant details of Daniel’s life as a prisoner-of-war, but initially he was likely held near Richmond. At some point in the spring or early summer of 1864 he was moved to the recently opened– and soon to be notorious– Camp Sumter, Georgia. Better known as Andersonville, between February 1864 and the close of the war almost 13,000 prisoners lost their lives in the unsheltered compound. Disease, much of it caused by malnutrition, was rife. On 3rd July 1864 Daniel was admitted to the camp hospital suffering from Chronic Diarrhoea. He must have been in an extremely severe state at the time, as he did not live through the day. Following the conflict his grave was identified, and today forms part of Andersonville National Cemetery, where he rests in Grave 2809. (6) Shorn of her main support, the now widowed Mary decided to leave America behind and retrace her steps to Dingle, presumably to be close to family who could provide assistance. She returned to her home town with Edward and Biddy in tow; Edward must have had little or no-memory of Kerry, while Biddy was experiencing Ireland for the very first time. In 1869 Mary, now 45-years-old, went in search of a U.S. widow’s pension based on Daniel’s service to help support the children. Now living on the Strand, Dingle, she compiled information about her marriage and her children’s birth to send to Washington D.C. as part of her application. Unfortunately, the variant spellings of her husband’s name came back to haunt her. In the marriage record, Daniel’s surname had been written as ‘Doody’, sufficiently different from the ‘Dout’ recorded on the regimental roster to raise suspicions that this was not the same man. To compound matters there was also no available documentation relating to Biddy’s birth. Although the Commissioner of Emigration had written to every Catholic parish in Long Island in order to locate it, he met with no success. The combination of these two issues, together with the difficulty in dealing with the Washington authorities at such a remove, meant that Mary’s pension wasn’t granted. Her failure to provide the additional evidence requested meant that her claim was classified as ‘abandoned.’ Mary never fully gave up fully on the process; the last entry in her file is a letter she had written in the 1890s. Addressed from Waterside, Dingle on 4th July 1892, it was sent to the Secretary of the Claim Agent Office at the White House in Washington D.C.:Sir, I beg to state that I Mary Dowd now living here and aged about 65 am the widow of Daniel Dowd who served as a soldier in the late American war of 1863, and died a Prisoner of War in Richmond Prison Virginia [actually in Andersonville, Georgia]. Said Daniel Dowd served in the Army of the North. After his death, I deposited the necessary documents to prove my title to pension, in the hands of a Mr. Daniel McGillycuddy Solicitor Tralee, with the view to place them before the authorities in Washington , and he on 27th December 1873, forwarded the same to a Mr. Walsh a Claim Agent, for the purpose of lodging same. Since, I have not received a reply to my solicitor’s letters or received any pay nor pension or acknowledgement of claim. I also learn that my husband at his death had in his possession £100, which he left to Father Mc Coiney who prepared him for death, in trust for me, and which sum never reached me. I know no other course better, than apply to you, resting assured that you will cause my just claim to be sifted out, when justice will be measured to a poor Irish widow who is now working hard to maintain a long family. (7)
As was common at the time, Mary was illiterate– the letter was written for her by her solicitor McGillycuddy, and she made her mark with an ‘X’. It seems unlikely she ever received any monies as a result of it. Her American-born daughter Biddy grew to adulthood in Ireland. Her home had become Dingle, Co. Kerry rather than Buffalo, New York entirely as a result of her father’s death in a Prisoner of War camp more than 6,000 km from Ireland. Daniel’s fateful Civil War service also meant his daughter married and started a family in Ireland rather than America. Biddy’s husband was a fisherman, Patrick Johnson, and together the couple had seven children. One of them, Ellie, was Paddy Bawn Brosnan’s mother. Biddy died in 1945 and is buried in St. James’s Church in Dingle. Unlike her father’s resting place in Andersonville, it is not marked with a headstone. (8) The American Civil War had a long-lasting, inter-generational impact on tens of thousands of Irish people, both in Ireland and the United States. Had it not been for the Confederate decision to launch an attack at Sangster’s Station in Virginia in 1863, or Daniel’s incarceration in Georgia in 1864, it is unlikely that Paddy Bawn Brosnan would ever have been born. The story of the footballing legend’s family is evidence of the often unrecognised impact of what was the largest conflict in Kerry people’s history. One wonders did Paddy Bawn reflect on his own grandmother’s New York story as he made his own journey across the Atlantic to take part in that historic sporting occasion only two years after her death in 1947. *This post would not have been possible without the extensive research of Mossy and Maeve Donegan. They not only ordered his Great-Great-Grandmother’s unsuccessful pension application from Washington D.C. but also obtained Daniel’s service record. All the family history relating to the Brosnans in Dingle and Paddy Bawn’s connection to Biddy was provided by them, and I am grateful they shared their story with us. **Thanks to Donal Nolan and The Kerryman for permission to use the image of the 1946 Final, which originally appeared on the Terrace Talk website here. Also thanks to Kay Caball for Donal’s contact details. ***Thanks to Conn Crowley for a clarification with respect to the attendance at the Polo Grounds Final. (1) Daniel Dowd Widow’s Pension Application, Miller 1988: 570; (2) Daniel Dowd Service Record; (3) Daniel Dowd Service Record, 155th New York Roster; (4) Ibid., New York Civil War Muster Roll; (5) Official Records: 982-984, Daniel Dowd Widow’s Pension Application, Daniel Dowd Service Record, U.S. Register of Deaths of Volunteers, Records of Federal POWs Confined at Andersonville; (7) Daniel Dowd Widow’s Pension Application; (8) Daniel Dowd Widow’s Pension Application; References & Further Reading Daniel Dowd Widow’s Pension Application 180,808. Daniel Dowd Service Record. Roster of the 155th New York Infantry. Daniel Dowd Find A Grave Entry. New York State Archives, Cultural Education Center, Albany, New York; New York Civil War Muster Roll Abstracts, 1861-1900; Archive Collection #: 13775-83; Box #: 607; Roll #: 263 [Original scan, accessed via ancestry.com]. Selected Records of the War Department Commissary General of Prisoners Relating to Federal Prisoners of War Confined at Andersonville, GA, 1864-65; (National Archives Microfilm Publication M1303, 6 rolls); Records of the Commissary General of Prisoners, Record Group 249; National Archives, Washington, D.C. [Original scan, accessed via ancestry.com]. Registers of Deaths of Volunteers, compiled 1861–1865. ARC ID: 656639. Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1780’s–1917. Record Group 94. National Archives at Washington, D.C. [Original scan, accessed via ancestry.com]. Official Records of the War of the Rebellion Series 1, Volume 29, Part 1. December 17, 183 – Skirmish at Sangster’s Station, Va. Reports. Miller, Kerby A. 1988. Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America -
A lovely little Bulmers moment here with its brightly coloured,ubiquitous Woodpecker ornament ( made from ceramic) Origins :Co Tipperary Dimensions: 20cm x 10cm x 10cmWhile the brand of cider produced locally in County Tipperary may be known as Bulmers to the people of the Irish republic, it is referred to as Magners everywhere in the world. Established in 1935 by a local from the town of Clonmel named William Magner, the cider factory there was later bought out by cider-makers H. P. Bulmer in 1946 After buying an orchard in County Tipperary, William Magner began to produce his own Irish cider in the mid-1930s. In 1937, he teamed up with the well-established H.P. Bulmer company from England, acquiring the right to produce under the Bulmers name in Ireland, and the brand became more widespread. Following almost ten successful years in partnership, Magner decided to sell his remaining fifty percent stake to his colleagues, seeing the factory become known as Bulmers Ltd Clonmel.
Unfortunately for H.P. Bulmer, it wasn’t long before the company again changed hands. Coming out on the losing end of a legal dispute with the creators of Babycham sparkling perry over a competing product, they were forced to sell Bulmers Clonmel during the 1960s. Having become part of the C&C Group – a soft drinks and cider company then jointly owned by Guinness and Allied Breweries – production of Irish Bulmers was moved five years later to a modern complex at Annerville, outside Clonmel.