The Irish Poster Collection - The Irish Pub Emporium

Elvis Presley Signed Portrait

€350.00

This wonderful photo of a young Elvis made its way back to a pub in Co Kerry Ireland in the early 1960s where it received pride of place for generations .Signed by the legend himself it really is a wonderful keepsake for any Elvis fan. Dingle Co Kerry (via Mississippi) 60cm x 48cm

Add to cart Details
Rare Jameson Whiskey Print depicting Portmarnock Golf Club

€350.00

55cm x66cm Swords Co Dublin Experience the best of Ireland touring by car and golf at Portmarnock.Beautiful 1930s advertising print extolling the delights of visiting Ireland,drinking Jameson Whiskey and playing golf at the many wonderful courses in the country especially the famous links featured here,Portmarnock in North Co Dublin,presumably not all at the same time !The famous Jameson distillery in Bow Street in the heart of the city is also featured in this fine portrayal of that era in Dublin which is beautifully showcased in an ornate gold frame. The Jameson House, (‘St Marnock’s’) In the 1840s, the distiller, John Jameson acquired nearly 600 acres of land at Burrow, Portmarnock, buying out most of the small-holders there. He built a residence, which overlooked the ruins of the ancient church of St Marnock, after whom he named his house. Keenly interested in golf, he laid out a rudimentary course near the house. Following a fire in 1894, considerable renovation and extension was carried out. An inscription in stone over the original front-door of the house commemorates that work. Nearby was stabling for horses, coach-houses and farm buildings (in the area of the modern office park, ‘The Stables’). An avenue enclosed by iron railings, which survived until the late twentieth century, led from an entrance at South Lodge to the main house. Both gate lodges (‘North’ and ‘South’) have survived, with their distinctive design and (probably) local Plunkett brickwork. The amenities enjoyed by the Jamesons from their country mansion included sailing, shooting and horse-riding. The family’s considerable influence on Portmarnock included the establishment of the first local National School on Jameson land. The last of the family here, William George Jameson, was best known for his race-horses, his yachting prowess, and his association with high-society and royalty, including the future King Edward V11. After his death in1939, the house was sold and it has since been used as a hotel. Jameson and the fledging Irish Tourism Board partnered up in terms of selling both the country and a rising brand of Irish Whiskey from the 1930s onwards and a series of adverts ensued.This is a quaint and delightful reminder of times gone by. John Jameson was originally a lawyer from Alloa in Scotland before he founded his eponymous distillery in Dublin in 1780.Prevoius to this he had made the wise move of marrying Margaret Haig (1753–1815) in 1768,one of the simple reasons being Margaret was the eldest daughter of John Haig, the famous whisky distiller in Scotland. John and Margaret had eight sons and eight daughters, a family of 16 children. Portraits of the couple by Sir Henry Raeburn are on display in the National Gallery of Ireland. John Jameson joined the Convivial Lodge No. 202, of the Dublin Freemasons on the 24^th June 1774 and in 1780, Irish whiskey distillation began at Bow Street. In 1805, he was joined by his son John Jameson II who took over the family business that year and for the next 41 years, John Jameson II built up the business before handing over to his son John Jameson the 3^rd in 1851. In 1901, the Company was formally incorporated as John Jameson and Son Ltd. Four of John Jameson’s sons followed his footsteps in distilling in Ireland, John Jameson II (1773 – 1851) at Bow Street, William and James Jameson at Marrowbone Lane in Dublin (where they partnered their Stein relations, calling their business Jameson and Stein, before settling on William Jameson & Co.). The fourth of Jameson's sons, Andrew, who had a small distillery at Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, was the grandfather of Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of wireless telegraphy. Marconi’s mother was Annie Jameson, Andrew’s daughter. John Jameson’s eldest son, Robert took over his father’s legal business in Alloa. The Jamesons became the most important distilling family in Ireland, despite rivalry between the Bow Street and Marrowbone Lane distilleries. By the turn of the 19th century, it was the second largest producer in Ireland and one of the largest in the world, producing 1,000,000 gallons annually. Dublin at the time was the centre of world whiskey production. It was the second most popular spirit in the world after rum and internationally Jameson had by 1805 become the world's number one whiskey. Today, Jameson is the world's third largest single-distillery whiskey. Historical events, for a time, set the company back. The temperance movement in Ireland had an enormous impact domestically but the two key events that affected Jameson were the Irish War of Independence and subsequent trade war with the British which denied Jameson the export markets of the Commonwealth, and shortly thereafter, the introduction of prohibition in the United States. While Scottish brands could easily slip across the Canada–US border, Jameson was excluded from its biggest market for many years.

Historical pot still at the Jameson distillery in Cork

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

Add to cart Details
Large Dublin Gold Irish Whiskey Advert

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

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

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

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

- a minimum of 40% ABV.

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

Add to cart Details
Original 1887 United Ireland Political Cartoon-The Coercion Quagmire or All in a Bog.

€300.00

39cm x 50cm. Dublin Very interesting political cartoon from the United Ireland Publication in 1887 titled - "The Coercion Quagmire or All in a Bog" According to the Republican historian Dorothy MacArdle, in the 19^th century Ireland was governed, ‘almost continuously since the Act of Union’ by Coercion Acts, which ‘made every expression of national feeling a crime’. She quoted the Liberal politician Joseph Chamberlain, ‘it is a system founded on the bayonets of thirty thousand soldiers encamped permanently, as in a hostile country’. By contrast, American journalist, William Hurlbert, visiting in 1888 thought that the Irish nationalist complaints of ‘English tyranny’ were histrionic. He characterised the Chief Secretary, Arthur Balfour, nicknamed ‘Bloody Balfour’, as the ‘mildest mannered and most sensible despot who ever trampled the liberties of a free people’ and that ‘the rule of the [nationalist] Land League is the only coercion to which Ireland is subjected’
Normal civil liberties were suspended in nineteenth century Ireland far more often than in the rest of the United Kingdom.
However, it is a fact that for much of the 19^th century, Ireland in theory now an integral part of the United Kingdom, saw basic civil liberties; the right not to be arrested without charge and the right to trial by jury, suspended for a prolonged period, in a way that they were not in England, Scotland or Wales.
The Insurrection Acts

Repression of United Irish suspects, in this case a ‘half hanging’.
In fact the use of emergency legislation dated back further than the Act of Union in 1800 to the Parliament of Ireland, which was dealing in the 1790s with United Irish insurrection. The Insurrection Act of 1796, imposed the death penalty (replaced in 1807 by transportation for life) on persons administering illegal oaths – that is member of the United Irishmen or other secret societies such as the Defenders. Around 800 such prisoners were sent to the penal colonies in Australia, alongside many more ‘ordinary criminals’. The Insurrection Act also allowed government to proclaim specific districts as ‘disturbed’, instituting a curfew, suspending trial by jury, and giving magistrates the authority to search houses without warrants and to arrest without charge. The act was in force throughout the revolutionary period of 1796-1802, and was reintroduced, in 1807-10, 1814-18, and 1822-5. According to James S. Donnelly’s figures, over 100 men were hanged and about 600 were transported to Australia under the Insurrection Act during the ‘Captain Rock’ agrarian rebellion of the early 1820s.
Coercion Act 1833
The Coercion Act of 1833, formally Suppression of Disturbances Act (1833), the first under the Union, was mainly a response to the Tithe War disturbances of the 1830s – in which Catholic tenant farmers resisted paying compulsory tithes to the Protestant Church of Ireland. Essentially, it empowered the Lord Lieutenant to proclaim a district ‘disturbed’ and then to try suspects by military court martial, with penalties including death, whipping and transportation for life It read; In case the Lord-lieutenant should direct that any person charged with any offence contrary to any of the Acts aforesaid, which by law now is or may be punishable with death, shall be tried before any Court-martial appointed under this Act, such Court, in case of conviction, shall, instead of the punishment of death, sentence such convict to transportation for life, or for any period not less than seven years: and provided also, that such Courts shall in no case impose the penalty of whipping on any person convicted by or before such Courts: provided always, that it shall not be lawful for any such Court-martial to convict or try any person for any offence whatsoever committed at any time before the passing of this Act. The Coercion Act was enacted again the era of the Young Ireland rebellion in 1848-1849, and again in 1856
The Fenian era

An image of the ‘battle of Tallaght’, the Fenian rising in 1867.
From 1866 to 1869, habeas corpus, that is the right not to be arrested without charge, was suspended almost continuously in the face of the Fenian, or Irish Republican Brotherhood’s attempts at insurrection. The Fenians attempted to organise a nationwide military uprising in March 1867, with the aid of Irish veterans of the American Civil War. In 1865, the British government suppressed the Fenian paper, The Irish People and arrested their leader James Stephens, and several hundred other activists (Stephens later escaped however). In 1866, habeus corpus, or normal, peacetime law, was suspended in Ireland under the Coercion Act.
Under the Coercion Acts, persons suspected of crime could be arrested and imprisoned without charge and sentenced to death or transportation or military courts.
According to an MP, Mr Labouchere; It was well-known that in 1866–7 Ireland was in a state of almost open rebellion, there being then a strong case for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. In February of that year, a Bill was brought in to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, which was to continue to the 1st of September; and on the 10th of August it was extended until the expiration of 21 days after the commencement of the next Session of Parliament. The Conservative Spectator magazine approving wrote that, ‘the suspension of the Habeas Corpus was effectual, because it frightened the American Fenians out of the country. Lord Naas (afterwards Lord Mayo) himself gave this explanation of the operation of the measure,—” Numerous arrests were made, and persons who were known to be leaders of the movement were consigned to prison.” Many local Fenian groups were involved in agrarian agitation and attacks on landlords and agents as well as strictly nationalist activity. The suspension of Habeas Corpus acts was aimed at both nationalist and agrarian crime. The Quarterly review listed 17 murders of landlords, related to ‘Fenianism’ in 1869 alone. For this reason, the Fenian movement remained a threat to the political and social order long after its attempts at open rebellion in 1867 had failed. Prime Minister Disraeli recorded of the last continuance act (extending the duration of the Coercion Act) in 1868, 14 February 1868, Lord Mayo tabled Habeus Corpus Suspension (Ireland) Continuance Bill, which he proposed should remain in effect until March 1869 and which he emphasised was ‘absolutely essential to the government’s efforts to frustrate and destroy the Fenian conspiracy’ The Spectator thought that no progress was made in eliminating what it called ‘agrarian crime’ until a new Coercion Act or ‘Peace Preservation Act’ was passed in 1870;
The Peace Preservation Act of 1870 could imprison witnesses to force them to testify.
‘This suspension [of habeas corpus], though it had its effect politically, had no effect at all on agrarian outrages. The greatest number of agrarian outrages was reported when the Suspension Act had already been in operation for eighteen months. The effect of the Suspension was political, and was nil in relation to agrarian crime. In 1869, the Suspension Act was allowed to expire ; but agrarian crime increased so much towards the end of 1869, that in 1870 the Peace Preservation Act was passed, which no doubt immediately reduced the number of outrages, and had; indeed, far more effect than any previous Act of this kind. The Peace Preservation Act allowed magistrates not only to detain suspects without trial, but also to detain suspected witnesses, to force them to give evidence against others and to hold them in prison until they testified. However, if British, and particularly Conservative, observers, saw in the Coercion Acts merely a necessary response to crime, Irish nationalists even if they did not support the Fenians, saw it differently. An Irish MP Arthur O’Connor in 1881 recalled that in the 1860s normal civil liberties in Ireland had appeared to be suspended arbitrarily and without explanation. The right hon. Gentleman also said that the Bill was to protect life and property in Ireland; but he forgot altogether the manner of that protection. It really was a Bill to suspend all law in Ireland. There would be no law in that country except the arbitrary will of the Lord Lieutenant. There would be no liberty of the person. Men and women at any time might be arrested on suspicion of having committed crime, or of having aroused the suspicion of the authorities at Dublin Castle and their spies. There would be no liberty of speech, for no speaker could tell what interpretation would be placed upon his words by some irresponsible person. No Fenians were executed under the Coercion Act (three were however hanged for murder in Manchester) but several thousand were imprisoned and others were transported to penal servitude in Australia.
The Land War

An eviction during the ‘Land War’ of the 1880s.
Two more Coercion Acts followed in the era of the Land War (in 1881 and again in 1887). This was a period in which the Land League, led by Irish nationalists Michael Davitt and Charles Stuart Parnell, among others, attempted first to halt evictions and to lower rents at a time of world economic recession. The main weapons of the Land League were the ‘boycott’ or social ostracism, as well as rent strikes, and other methods of passive resistance. However, as in the past, agrarian strife was also punctuated by assassination of landlords and agents. Violence peaked in 1880-1882 as landlords attempted to recover the rent arrears of the previous year and to evict those who would not or could not pay rent. In 1880, 2,585 ‘outrages’ were reported, in 1881, 4439 and in 1882, 3433. These included an average of 17 murders per year of landlords and their associates, though much more common were acts such as intimidation and cattle maiming.
There were two Coercion Acts during the years of land agitation in 1881 and 1887, during which leaders such as Davitt and Parnell were imprisoned
Evictions, which were enforced by bailiffs under the protection of the police and military, also spiralled. There were in total 11,215 evictions during the Land War The government on 1 January 1881 introduced a Coercion Act, becoming law in March of that year. It was essentially in line with the earlier Coercion Acts , suspending habeas corpus, trial by jury and facilitating the proclamation of entire districts as ‘disturbed’. Irish nationalists were dismayed that it had been enacted by their hitherto allies, the Liberals, rather than their customary opponents, the Conservatives. Over 950 people were imprisoned under the Act, including Land League leader Michael Davitt in February 1881. Parnell and his party were ejected from House of Commons in February 1881 for protesting Davitt’s arrest. The Prime Minister Gladstone tried to pacify Ireland by introducing a Land Act that would set up arbitration boards which would determine a ‘fair rent’. In September 1881 Parnell urged his followers to ‘test’ the Land Act by trying arbitration boards, convincing Gladstone that he was trying to undermine the Land Act. He was arrested on 20 October 1881, for ‘inciting tenants not to pay rent’ and imprisoned in Kilmainham Goal, in Dublin. From prison, Parnell issued a ‘no-rent manifesto’, urging no tenants to pay rent, for which the Land League as a whole was declared illegal under the Coercion Act The arrest of Parnell and his associates and the banning of the League did little to reduce disturbances however. Much of the organising was taken up the Ladies’ Land League, led by Parnell’s sister Anna, who sustained the land agitation over the following six months. Parnell was finally released in April 1882 after a deal termed ‘the Kilmainham Treaty’ in which he agreed to revoke the no-rent manifesto. In return Gladstone promised to wipe out arrears in rent owed by many of Parnell’s followers and to gradually drop coercion. The hard-line Chief Secretary for Ireland William Forster had resigned in protest at Parnell’s release. This compromise was not helped by the subsequent assassination of the two highest ranking British officials in Ireland in the Phoenix Park murders of May 1882, in which Forster’s replacement, Frederick Cavendish and the Under Secretary, Henry Burke were stabbed to death by a Fenian splinter group named the Invincibles. Nevertheless, the Kilmainham deal gradually defused the conflict on the land. Agrarian ‘outrages’ largely ceased by the end of 1882 and the Coercion Act was allowed to lapse
Arthur ‘Bloody’ Balfour.
However, it was revived after another burst of land agitation; the ‘Plan of Campaign’ led by nationalist activists William O’Brien and Michael Davitt in 1886. This again was mainly a campaign of ‘moral force’ involving rent strikes and boycotts, but also, again, considerable violence against landlords, agents and ‘land grabbers’. The British government, now under the Conservative Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, in 1887 passed another Coercion Act under which suspects could be imprisoned by a magistrate without a trial by jury and ‘dangerous’ associations, such as the National League (as the Land League was renamed in late 1882), could be prohibited. The legislation was prompted, in part, after The Timesof London published its sensational “Parnellism and Crime” series, which sought to link to the Irish Parliamentary Party leader to the 1882 Phoenix Park murders. The 1887 Coercion Act was particularly associated with the Chief Secretary Arthur Balfour, Police opened fire on a crowd of protesters at Mitchelstown County Cork, at a prohibited meeting, in 1887, killing three, in an event known as the ‘Mitchelstown massacre’ among Irish nationalists and earning Balfour the title ‘Bloody Balfour’.
The Coercion Acts were never repealed.
Balfour had come into office promising ‘repression as stern as Cromwell’s.’ And though, among contemporary Irish nationalists at least, he became an equivalent hate figure to the 17^th century Lord Protector, historian Joe Lee remarks that, ‘his “repression” resulted in little more than William O’Brien losing his pants in jail and three people losing their lives in Mitchelstown…a derisory haul that would have left Cromwell turning in his desecrated grave’. Though Balfour was a staunch opponent of Irish self-government, he was not wholly unsympathetic to Irish grievances. Indeed British rule in Ireland from the 1880s onwards was characterised by concession as well as repression, a policy that included extending the powers of local government, land reform and encouraging economic development, known colloquially as ‘killing Home Rule with kindness’.
Restoration of Order

British troops in Dublin in 1920.
And yet, in no other part of the United Kingdom was normal peacetime law so regularly suspended as it was in Ireland. The Coercion Acts were never repealed, despite regular nationalist attempts to bring up the matter in Parliament. In 1908, one such attempt made it to the Committee stage at Westminster but went no further. When in 1920, Britain was again facing a significant challenge to its rule in Ireland it again resorted to military courts, internment without trial and official reprisals in the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act. One senior British politician, Lord Riddell, noted after meeting the Prime Minister Lloyd George in October 1920 that, ‘I came away with the conclusion that this was an organised movement [of reprisals] to which the Government are more or less assenting parties.’ Lloyd George, apparently would have preferred if troops and police had confined themselves to shooting ‘Sinn Feiners’ rather than burning property, but felt that reprisals ‘ had, from time immemorial, been resorted to in difficult times in Ireland… where they had been effective in checking crime’. It was perhaps ultimately as one British politician Lord Morley stated, Coercion was ‘the best machine ever devised for governing a country against its will’

Add to cart Details
1889 Home Rule Caricature -“The Cabinet Question” Original Print

€300.00

Original,multi faceted,interesting historical caricature by the artist Tom Merry,surrounding the complex Home Rule Question which dominated political discourse both in Ireland and in London for much of the late 19th Century and early 20th Century,right up to the outbreak of WW1.This supplement came with the United Irishman publication and is a fascinating insight into the politics of the period, in particular emphasising Parnells obstructionist tactics in Westminster. Abbeyleix Co Laois 54cm x 74cm hat was Home Rule? Home Rule was the demand that the governance of Ireland be returned from Westminster to a domestic parliament in Ireland. Ireland had had its own parliament up to 1800 when the Act of Union ended Irish representation at the parliament sitting at College Green in Dublin. Under the Union, MPs elected for Irish constituencies went over to Westminster and sat alongside English, Scottish, and Welsh MPs in a legislature that had jurisdiction over the whole of both islands as well as the colonies of the British Empire. When was the Home Rule movement established? The idea of Home Rule dates from 1870 but it should be viewed as part of a longer tradition which aimed at revising the Anglo-Irish relationship by constitutional methods. The first attempt to repeal the Act of Union was made by Daniel O’Connell in the 1840s. This was ultimately a failure and Irish politics in the mid-nineteenth century was dominated by MPs acting as Irish representatives of the Liberal and Tory parties. In 1870, Isaac Butt, a barrister and former Tory MP, founded the Irish Home Government Association. The movement combined a powerful cross section of progressive landowners, tenant rights activists, and supporters and sympathisers of the failed Fenian uprising of 1867 to create a third way in Irish politics. By 1874, styled as the Home Rule League, Butt’s nascent party succeeded in gaining the loose allegiance of 59 out of 103 Irish MPs. What about Parnell? The most significant event to occur in the emergence of a more powerful Home Rule movement was in 1880 when Charles Stewart Parnell was elected chairman of the party. Parnell was a master organiser. He ran the party like a machine from parish level to parliament and by coupling the demand for Home Rule with the intensifying agitation for tenant rights in Ireland, Home Rule became an extremely powerful force in politics. Between the land question and the demand for Home Rule, Irish issues consumed a large proportion of parliamentary time at Westminster during the 1880s and intermittently thereafter. Did the Home Rule movement achieve anything? On three occasions, a Home Rule bill was introduced to the House of Commons. In 1886, Prime Minister William E. Gladstone introduced the first Home Rule bill. However, this move split his governing Liberal Party and the bill was defeated in the House of Commons. In 1893, a second Home Rule bill managed to pass through the House of Commons but it was thrown out by the House of Lords. Once more, in 1912, a Home Rule bill passed the House of Commons. The powers of the House of Lords had been curtailed in 1911 and, under the new parliamentary mechanisms, the Lords could only delay rather than reject the bill. At the beginning of 1913, the Liberal Lord Crewe, former Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, opened the debates on the bill in the Lords. The rejection of Home Rule by the Lords was a fait accompli but, with only the power of delay remaining to them, the real danger to the passage of the bill came from outside of Parliament, where Unionist Ulster was organising in earnest its resistance to the imposition of the bill on the North East. Why did British governments agree to introduce Home Rule bills to parliament? On all three of the occasions when Home Rule bills were introduced to the House of Commons, Home Rulers held the balance of power between the Liberal and Conservative parties which were roughly evenly split. Finding themselves in this position, Home Rulers were able to negotiate for the introduction of a Home Rule bill in exchange for supporting the Liberal Party, traditionally a sympathetic ally on the Irish question. This support gave the Liberals the required majority to form a government. The exact same situation exists in Westminster today where Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats hold the balance between the Labour and Conservative parties, and David Cameron’s government requires the support of the Liberal Democrats to stay in power. How does Home Rule fit into the wider British context? Home Rule was an extremely important concept in the British Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To fully appreciate its significance, it must be viewed in an imperial rather than a purely Irish concept. Before the outbreak of the First World War, the nature of government in the British Empire was changing. Greater independence and forms of domestic governance were granted to Canada, Australia, and South Africa in 1867, 1900, and 1909 respectively. Thus, Britain can be seen to have been gradually liberalising its system of imperial governance, at least for ‘civilised’ components of the empire. This contrasts starkly with the disorderly and chaotic nature of de-colonisation that was experienced by Britain, France, and other European powers following the Second World War.

Add to cart Details
Beautifully framed Advertisement of the famous Donegal Railway

€300.00

Rare and beautiful original printed advert of the County Donegal Railway and the Londonderry & Lough Swilly Railway.(not to be confused with ubiquitous reproductions available on ebay etc). And magnificently presented in an offset frame which further enhances this fine piece.With a total of 225 miles of track, the railway formed the largest narrow gauge rail system in north-west Europe until it sadly closed in 1959.Can you even begin to imagine the tourism benefits if this incredible railway network was still fully operational today ??

Origins: Glenties Co Donegal. Dimensions : 90cm x 70cm

.

The County Donegal Railway was the largest narrow gauge railway system in the British Isles, although it began its existence in the form of the Irish 5’3” broad gauge. The first line to open was the Finn Valley Railway from Strabane to Stranorlar in September 1863 to 5’3” gauge. Strabane had already been reached by the Londonderry and Enniskillen Railway in1847. Proposals were then made over the next few years for an extension from Stranorlar to Donegal Town, but this time in 3-foot gauge, experience in Antrim having led promoters to feel this was a cheaper option both for construction and operation. Despite this funds were hard to obtain and the railway was opened initially to Lough Eske Station, in the Townland of Druminnin, in1882, and extended in to Donegal Town in 1889. The next twenty years saw the peak of construction of the narrow gauge lines, from Donegal Town to Killybegs in 1893, and from Stranorlar to Glenties in 1895. Increasing problems with transshipment at the mixed gauge station in Stranorlar plus difficult relations over sharing the last part of the Enniskillen line into Strabane led to the decision to convert the Finn Valley line to narrow gauge. This regauging took place, almost miraculously, over a weekend in July 1894. It is hard to believe such a smooth operation could take place today. Although it resulted in duplication of rail routes from Strabane to Derry, a narrow gauge line was opened from Strabane to Derry on the east side of the River Foyle in 1900, a branch from Donegal town to Ballyshannon was opened in 1905, and finally the last of the Irish narrow gauge lines, the branch from Strabane to Letterkenny was opened in 1909. This brought the total mileage to 125 miles. While other lines were proposed, no more were built in Donegal. Already there had been some financial difficulties, particularly in supporting the new extensions, and this led to the railway being operated from 1906 by a joint committee, with some support from the Great Northern Railway (Ireland) and the Midland Railway of Britain. The heyday of narrow gauge railway opening was now over and while many of the other Irish lines lived out a fairly short and somewhat impoverished existence, The County Donegal survived until 1947 without any closures. This was in good part due to the General Manager from 1910 to 1943, Henry Forbes, who introduced many economies, not least of which was diesel railcar operation for most passenger trains. The first closure was to passenger services on the Glenties branch in 1947, followed by complete closure in 1952. The County Donegal Railway’s line to Derry closed at the end of 1954, bar one school special in June 1955. The other lines survived until the end of 1959. Despite closure over 55 years ago, a good deal of the railway’s locomotives, railcars and rolling stock has survived in various museums,

(From the Irishmans Diary- October 2016 Irish Times)

Co Donegal once had marvellously intricate narrow-gauge railways. At 225 miles long, it was the longest narrow-gauge system in these islands, a true marvel of railway engineering. By the end of 1959, the last sections of the system had closed.The first lines in the county opened in 1863 and 1864, including Strabane to Stranorlar.Other lines followed, so that by the start of the 20th century, major towns in the county could be reached by rail, including Letterkenny, Burtonport and Glenties in the west of the county, and Killybegs and Ballyshannon in south Donegal. On the Inishowen peninsula, a line went as far as Carndonagh.

A small section of the network was originally broad gauge, but soon narrow gauge became the working norm across the county. The Donegal railways also ran to Derry city, which at one stage, had four railway stations. One in the docks area linked Derry with Letterkenny, Buncrana and the Inishowen peninsula, while the Victoria Road station on the east bank of the Foyle provided a connection to Killybegs.

But consolidation came quickly to the network. In 1906, the County Donegal Railway Joint Committee was set up, with help from the Great Northern Railway (Ireland) and the Midland Railway in England. In the north of the county, services were run by the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway company, usually called simply “The Swilly” .

The railways were useful in helping Donegal people reach emigrant ships, sailing from Derry and elsewhere. They also played a vital and integral role in the everyday commerce of the county, and during the second World War, they were well-used by the people of the twin towns, Ballybofey and Stranorlar, and many others in the county, travelling in their vital quest to win turf.

They were also widely used for excursions, such as those by pilgrims to the Holy Well at Doon, near Letterkenny, as well as by Orangemen going to Rossnowlagh for the Twelfth, and the Ancient Order of Hibernians on August 15th.

The Donegal railways were also very innovative; diesel railcars were introduced around 80 years ago and proved economical and reliable. They helped the railways keep going for far longer than if they had been steam-worked. Thrift was everything, and in many cases carriages were kept in service for decades.

The railways also induced a sense of friendly competition, like the race between a diesel railcar and a motor car, driven by Maj Henry White of Lough Eske Castle, along the Barnesmore Gap.

One lethal crash happened in January 1925, when a train on the Letterkenny to Burtonport line was blown off the viaduct at Owencarrow. Four people were killed. In 1949, a railcar driver and two passengers were killed when two trains collided head-on near Donegal town.

But as happened everywhere else with the railways, motor cars and lorries provided unbeatable competition. The station at Carndonagh shut in 1935 after a mere 34 years in service. The line to Burtonport clung on, as far as Gweedore, until 1947, while the lines to Buncrana and Letterkenny closed down in 1953. By 1960, the last of the Donegal system had been obliterated. The Swilly company, which became bus-only for passengers, managed to last until two years ago.

Such was the attachment to the Donegal railways that after the line from Donegal town to Ballyshannon closed down in 1959, two of the railway workers continued to operate a freight service between the two towns for a month before the bosses in Dublin realised what was happening.

With so many railway memories still so vivid in Co Donegal, it’s hardly surprising that the county has two excellent heritage sites. The old station in Donegal town has been converted into the Donegal Railway Heritage Centre, packed with artefacts of all kinds, and even an old railway carriage that can be hired out for functions.

At Fintown, you can take a trip in an old railcar along five kilometres of track, the last remaining segment of the Co Donegal railways, on the old Stranorlar to Glenties line. It opened in 1995 and now there are plans to restore the old station. Its lakeside setting is so spectacular that the late Brian Friel said that it was as scenic a stretch of railway as anything to be found in Switzerland or Minnesota.Derry had the Foyle Valley railway museum dedicated to the Co Donegal railways, including old locos and carriages and a working track, but sadly, it has been long closed.

Origins : Co Donegal

Dimensions :90cm x 70cm 5kg

Add to cart Details
Satirical Beef Tribunal Cartoon from 1994

€300.00

70cm x 50cm Nassau St Dublin 2 One of the most inglorious,farcical and drawn out sagas in Irish Political History was commonly known as the Beef Tribunal as this witty cartoon depicts.Corruption was endemic at all levels of Irish society at the time and the Beef Tribunal itself illustrated that with a rather anaemic conclusion offered after a marathon report and hundreds of hours of cross examinations. Albert Reynolds,Taoiseach at the time was triumphant when the Beef Tribunal presented its final report in 1994, its 580 pages containing bizarrely benign conclusions about the key players under its scrutiny.“I have been fully and totally vindicated, both personally and as a minister,” he told the Dáil.“My decisions at the time, the report confirms, were taken in the national interest.”However, it was a hollow victory for the then taoiseach as the tribunal had already cost him one government and was about to play a part in the collapse of another.

Add to cart Details
Classic John Jameson Three Star Advert

€300.00

Large John Jameson Whiskey Advert. Dublin. 65cm x 80cm John Jameson was originally a lawyer from Alloa in Scotland before he founded his eponymous distillery in Dublin in 1780.Prevoius to this he had made the wise move of marrying Margaret Haig (1753–1815) in 1768,one of the simple reasons being Margaret was the eldest daughter of John Haig, the famous whisky distiller in Scotland. John and Margaret had eight sons and eight daughters, a family of 16 children. Portraits of the couple by Sir Henry Raeburn are on display in the National Gallery of Ireland. John Jameson joined the Convivial Lodge No. 202, of the Dublin Freemasons on the 24^th June 1774 and in 1780, Irish whiskey distillation began at Bow Street. In 1805, he was joined by his son John Jameson II who took over the family business that year and for the next 41 years, John Jameson II built up the business before handing over to his son John Jameson the 3^rd in 1851. In 1901, the Company was formally incorporated as John Jameson and Son Ltd. Four of John Jameson’s sons followed his footsteps in distilling in Ireland, John Jameson II (1773 – 1851) at Bow Street, William and James Jameson at Marrowbone Lane in Dublin (where they partnered their Stein relations, calling their business Jameson and Stein, before settling on William Jameson & Co.). The fourth of Jameson's sons, Andrew, who had a small distillery at Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, was the grandfather of Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of wireless telegraphy. Marconi’s mother was Annie Jameson, Andrew’s daughter. John Jameson’s eldest son, Robert took over his father’s legal business in Alloa. The Jamesons became the most important distilling family in Ireland, despite rivalry between the Bow Street and Marrowbone Lane distilleries. By the turn of the 19th century, it was the second largest producer in Ireland and one of the largest in the world, producing 1,000,000 gallons annually. Dublin at the time was the centre of world whiskey production. It was the second most popular spirit in the world after rum and internationally Jameson had by 1805 become the world's number one whiskey. Today, Jameson is the world's third largest single-distillery whiskey. Historical events, for a time, set the company back. The temperance movement in Ireland had an enormous impact domestically but the two key events that affected Jameson were the Irish War of Independence and subsequent trade war with the British which denied Jameson the export markets of the Commonwealth, and shortly thereafter, the introduction of prohibition in the United States. While Scottish brands could easily slip across the Canada–US border, Jameson was excluded from its biggest market for many years.

Historical pot still at the Jameson distillery in Cork

The introduction of column stills by the Scottish blenders in the mid-19th-century enabled increased production that the Irish, still making labour-intensive single pot still whiskey, could not compete with. There was a legal enquiry somewhere in 1908 to deal with the trade definition of whiskey. The Scottish producers won within some jurisdictions, and blends became recognised in the law of that jurisdiction as whiskey. The Irish in general, and Jameson in particular, continued with the traditional pot still production process for many years.In 1966 John Jameson merged with Cork Distillers and John Powers to form the Irish Distillers Group. In 1976, the Dublin whiskey distilleries of Jameson in Bow Street and in John's Lane were closed following the opening of a New Midleton Distillery by Irish Distillers outside Cork. The Midleton Distillery now produces much of the Irish whiskey sold in Ireland under the Jameson, Midleton, Powers, Redbreast, Spot and Paddy labels. The new facility adjoins the Old Midleton Distillery, the original home of the Paddy label, which is now home to the Jameson Experience Visitor Centre and the Irish Whiskey Academy. The Jameson brand was acquired by the French drinks conglomerate Pernod Ricard in 1988, when it bought Irish Distillers. The old Jameson Distillery in Bow Street near Smithfield in Dublin now serves as a museum which offers tours and tastings. The distillery, which is historical in nature and no longer produces whiskey on site, went through a $12.6 million renovation that was concluded in March 2016, and is now a focal part of Ireland's strategy to raise the number of whiskey tourists, which stood at 600,000 in 2017.Bow Street also now has a fully functioning Maturation Warehouse within its walls since the 2016 renovation. It is here that Jameson 18 Bow Street is finished before being bottled at Cask Strength. In 2008, The Local, an Irish pub in Minneapolis, sold 671 cases of Jameson (22 bottles a day),making it the largest server of Jameson's in the world – a title it maintained for four consecutive years. Origins : Co Sligo Dimensions : 85cm x 60cm 8kg

Add to cart Details
Rare Tullamore Dew Advert featuring legendary Greyhound Mick the Miller

€300.00

Very rare and much sought after Tullamore Dew advert featuring the greatest greyhound in racing history,Mick the Miller.Mick the Miller was bred in Co Offaly,the same county as the location of the Tullamore Dew distillery, hence the pride on the connection. 45cm x 90cm Banagher Co Offaly Tullamore D.E.W. is a brand of Irish whiskey produced by William Grant & Sons. It is the second largest selling brand of Irish whiskey globally, with sales of over 950,000 cases per annum as of 2015.The whiskey was originally produced in the Tullamore, County Offaly, Ireland, at the old Tullamore Distillery which was established in 1829. Its name is derived from the initials of Daniel E. Williams (D.E.W.), a general manager and later owner of the original distillery. In 1954, the original distillery closed down, and with stocks of whiskey running low, the brand was sold to John Powers & Son, another Irish distiller in the 1960s, with production transferred to the Midleton Distillery, County Cork in the 1970s following a merger of three major Irish distillers.In 2010, the brand was purchased by William Grant & Sons, who constructed a new distillery on the outskirts of Tullamore. The new distillery opened in 2014, bringing production of the whiskey back to the town after a break of sixty years.
Mick The Miller,as featured in this iconic advert, was the most famous greyhound of all time. He was born in 1926 in the village of Killeigh, County Offaly, Ireland at Millbrook House(only 5 miles from Tullamore), the home of parish curate, Fr Martin Brophy. When he was born Mick was the runt of the litter but Michael Greene, who worked for Fr Brophy, singled the little pup out as a future champion and insisted that he be allowed to rear him. With constant attention and regular exercise Mick The Miller developed into a racing machine. His first forays were on local coursing fields where he had some success but he showed his real talent on the track where he won 15 of his first 20 races.

In 1929 Fr Brophy decided to try Mick in English Greyhound Derby at White City, London. On his first trial-run, Mick equalled the track record. Then, in his first heat, he broke the world record, becoming the first greyhound ever to run 525 yards in under 30 seconds. Fr Brophy was inundated with offers and sold him to Albert Williams. Mick went on to win the 1929 Derby. Within a year he had changed hands again to Arundel H Kempton and won the Derby for a second time.

Over the course of his English career he won 36 of his 48 races, including the Derby (twice), the St Leger, the Cesarewitch, and the Welsh Derby. He set six new world records and two new track records. He was the first greyhound to win 19 races in a row. Several of his records went unbroken for over 40 years. He won, in total, almost £10,000 in prizemoney. But he also became the poster-dog for greyhound racing. He was a celebrity on a par with any sports person, muscisian or moviestar. The more famous he became, the more he attracted people to greyhound racing. Thousands thronged to watch him, providing a huge boost to the sport. It is said that he actually saved the sport of greyhound racing.

After retirement to stud his popularity continued. He starred in the film Wild Boy (based on his life-story) in 1934 which was shown in cinemas all across the UK. He was in huge demand on the celebrity circuit, opening shops, attending big races and even rubbing shoulder with royalty (such as the King and Queen) at charity events. When he died in 1939 aged 12, his owner donated his body to the British Natural History Museum in London. And Mick`s fame has continued ever since. In 1981 he was inducted into the American Hall of Fame (International Section). In 1990 English author Michael Tanner published a book, Mick The Miller - Sporting Icon Of the Depression. And in 2011 the people of Killeigh erected a monument on the village green to honour their most famous son. Mick The Miller is not just the most famous greyhound of all time but one of the most loved dogs that has ever lived.

Add to cart Details
1938 Croke Park Panoramic Photographic & Match Report Display

€300.00
38cm x 115cm A wonderful b&w photograph of the old Croke Park and of both teams standing to attention for the customary recital of the National Anthem, when Kerry and Galway met in the All Ireland Football Final Replay.The first game ended in a draw before Galway went on to win the replay a few weeks later.The attendance was officially 68,950 with little or no need for crowd control.This magnificent panoramic view is a poignant sporting snapshot of former times and again makes a beautiful addition to the collection of anyone interested in bygone times.

1938 ALL-IRELAND FINAL REPLAY – KERRY USE 24 PLAYERS – GALWAY STILL WIN

The 1938 All-Ireland Football Final Replay on October 23rd, 1938 ended in the most bizarre fashion imaginable when with 2 minutes left to play, Galway supporters, mistakenly believing the referee had blown for full-time, invaded the pitch, causing a 20 minute delay before the final minutes could be played out. Even more dramatic was the fact that by the time the pitch was cleared, most of the Kerry players seemed to have disappeared. The confusion all began with a free awarded to Kerry by referee Peter Waters of Kildare with Galway leading the defending champions, by 2-4 to 0-6. The referee placed the ball and blew his whistle for the kick to be taken while running towards the Galway goals. He looked round just as Sean Brosnan was taking the kick and seeing a Galway player too close he blew for the kick to be retaken. Thinking that he had blown for full-time the jubilant Galway supporters invaded the pitch. It took all of twenty minutes to clear the pitch but only then did the real problems come to light. Jerry O’Leary Chairman of the Kerry Selection Committee outlined their dilemma. Somehow or other Kerry managed to re-field even if the team which played out the remaining minutes bore little resemblance to the starting fifteen. More remarkable again was the fact that Kerry went on to add another point to their total before the referee finally blew for full-time with Galway winners by 2-4 to 0-7. It was generally agreed that the confusion was of the crowd’s and not the referee’s making but questions remained about the total number of players Kerry had been permitted to use in those final few minutes. The National and Provincial papers and indeed all available Records to this day list only those 16 Kerry players who were involved prior to the 20 minute interruption but now (80 years on) for the first time all the players who played for Kerry in that October 23rd, 1938 All-Ireland Final Replay can be given their rightful place in the Record Books. KERRY’s 24:

Dan O’Keeffe (Tralee O’Rahilly’s)

Bill Kinnerk (Tralee, Boherbee John Mitchel’s)(Captain)

Paddy ‘Bawn’ Brosnan (Dingle)

Bill Myers (Killarney)

Bill Dillon Dingle)

Bill Casey (Dingle)

Tom ‘Gega’ O’Connor (Dingle)

Sean Brosnan (Dingle)

Johnny Walsh (Ballylongford, North Kerry)

Paddy Kennedy (Tralee O’Rahilly’s)(Annascaul native)

Charlie O’Sullivan (Tralee O’Rahilly’s)(Camp native)

Tony McAuliffe (Listowel, North Kerry)

Martin Regan (Tralee Rock Street Austin Stacks)

Michael ‘Miko’ Doyle ((Tralee Rock Street Austin Stacks)

Timmy O’Leary (Killarney).

J.J. ‘Purty’ Landers (Tralee Rock Street Austin Stacks)(brother of Tim and Bill)(replaced Johnny Walsh – injured hip and dislocated collarbone)

Joe Keohane (Geraldines, Dublin)(former Tralee Boherbee John Mitchel’s player)

Michael ‘Murt’ Kelly (Geraldine’s, Dublin)(formerly Tralee O’Rahilly’s)

J.Sheehy (Tralee Boherbee John Mitchel’s)

Eddie Walsh (Knocknagoshel, North Kerry)

Ger Teahan (Laune Rangers, Killorglin)

Bob Murphy (Newtown, North Kerry)

Con Gainey (Tralee Boherbee John Mitchel’s)(Castleisland native)

M. Raymond (Tralee O’Rahilly’s)

So in total and in contravention of the Rules Kerry used 24 players including 9 substitutes. Galway in contrast used a mere 17 players including 2 substitutes. GALWAY’S 17:

Jimmy McGauran (University College Galway)(Roscommon native)

Mick Raftery (University College Galway)(Mayo native)

Mick Connaire (Beann Éadair, Dublin)(Ballinasloe native)

Dinny Sullivan (Oughterard)

Frank Cunniffe (Beann Éadair, Dublin)(Ballinasloe native)

Bobby Beggs (Wolfe Tones, Galway City)(Dublin native)(former Skerries Harps player)

Charlie Connolly (Ballinasloe Mental Hospital)

John ‘Tull’ Dunne (Ballinasloe St. Grellan’s)(Captain)

John Burke (Remore)(Clare native)

Jackie Flavin (Wolfe Tones, Galway City)(Kerry native – Newtownsandes)(won 1937 All-Ireland with Kerry)

Ralph Griffin (Ballinasloe St. Grellan’s)

Mick Higgins (Wolfe Tones, Galway City)

Ned Mulholland (Wolfe Tones, Galway City)(Westmeath native)

Martin Kelly (Ardagh, Limerick)(Ahascragh native)

Brendan Nestor (Geraldines, Dublin)(Dunmore native)

Mick Ryder (Tuam Stars)

Pat McDonagh

It was almost as if Galway had won the All-Ireland twice in one day beating two different Kerry teams in the process. That night, in front of a 1,500 crowd, at a Gaelic League organised Siamsa Mór in the Mansion House in Dawson Street, Art McCann presented the Galway team with their winners’ medals. The Kerry players meanwhile joined 300 of their suppoeters at a Ceilidhe hosted by the Kerrymen’s Social Club in Rathmines Town Hall. The National Newspapers may not always have reported the facts to Galway’s satisfaction but there can be no questioning the support of Galway County Council. Needless to say the Galway players received an unprecedented welcome on their return to Galway having first been feted along the way in Mullingar, Streamstown, Moate and Athlone. GALWAY – 1938 ALL-IRELAND SENIOR FOOTBALL CHAMPIONS Back (L-R) Bobby Beggs, Ralph Griffin, John Burke, Jimmy McGauran, Charlie Connolly, Brendan Nestor, Dinny Sullivan, Mick Connaire, Martin Kelly. Front (L-R) Frank Cunniffe, Jackie Flavin, Mick Higgins, John ‘Tull’ Dunne (Capt), Ned Mulholland, Mick Raftery. Substitutes: (not in photograph) Mick Ryder and Pat McDonagh. TIME ADDED ON: Not far behind the controversy surrounding the last few minutes of 1938 All-Ireland Football Final Replay was the controversy surrounding the last few seconds of the drawn match played a month earlier. The sides were level, Kerry 2-06 Galway 3-03, when Kerry’s J.J. Landers sent the ball between the Galway uprights for what looked like the winning point. However the thousands of celebrating Kerry supporters making for the Croke Park exits were soon stopped in their tracks. It was cruel luck on Kerry and while there were many who criticised the referee, Tom Culhane from Glin, County Limerick, for blowing the final whistle while John Joe Landers was it the act of shooting, Kerry’s County Board Chairman Denis J. Bailey wasn’t among them. At the next Central Council meeting, in a remarkably generous response to the Referee’s Report being read he stated that ‘they in Kerry were quite satisfied with the result’ and ‘They wished to pay a tribute to Galway for their sporting spirit and also to the referee who, in their opinion, carried out his duties very well.’ The Central Council then awarded the two counties £300 each towards the costs of the two-week Collective Training Camps both counties had planned in the lead up to the Replay on October 23rd. Munster Council granted Kerry (pictured here in Collective Training) an additional £100. Prior to that Central Council meeting, General Secretary, Pádraig Ó’Caoimh, received a telephone call from the New York GAA suggesting the replay take place in New York but the request (which was successfully repeated nine years later in 1947) was on this occasion turned down. However doubts about the Replay even going ahead were immediately raised. Satisfactory transport arrangements were eventually agreed and the match went ahead although the Kerry supporters who left Tralee on the so-called ‘ghost’ train at 1am on the morning of the October 23rd may still have felt hard done by. In the lead-up to the game the Galway selectors expressed their delight at the success of their forwards short hand-passing game against the Kerry backs in the drawn match although there were some worries that not all their players had been able to attend the first week of Collective Training and of course there was Kerry’s Replay record to be considered. Kerry had previously played in 4 All-Ireland Replays and won them all, a great source of encouragement to the Kerry supporters. However amid some reports of disharmony within the Kerry camp, following a ‘trial match’ on the Sunday before the Replay, the Kerry selection Committee dropped a real bombshell. Joe Keohane (Dublin Geraldines) who had been Kerry’s regular full-back for the previous two years and was one of the stars of their 1937 All-Ireland win over Cavan was replaced by young Paddy ‘Bawn’ Brosnan a member of the 1938 Kerry Junior team. A back injury to Kerry’s best forward, J.J. Landers made him an extreme doubt for the Replay with Martin Regan on stand-by to take his place if required which is exactly what happened before that fateful free-kick, that infamous 20 minute delay and Kerry’s unprecedented use of 24 players. Most definitely an All-Ireland Final and Final Replay never to be forgotten. The Galway and Kerry players parade in front of the newly opened (1938) Cusack Stand

Croke Park (Irish: Páirc an Chrócaigh) is a Gaelic games stadium located in Dublin, Ireland. Named after Archbishop Thomas Croke, it is sometimes called Croker by GAA fans and locals. It serves as both the principal stadium and headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). Since 1891 the site has been used by the GAA to host Gaelic sports, including the annual All-Ireland in Gaelic football and hurling. A major expansion and redevelopment of the stadium ran from 1991–2005, raising capacity to its current 82,300 spectators. This makes Croke Park the third-largest stadium in Europe, and the largest not usually used for association football. Other events held at the stadium include the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2003 Special Olympics, and numerous musical concerts. In 2012, Irish pop group Westlife sold out the stadium in record-breaking time: less than 5 minutes. From 2007–10, Croke Park hosted home matches of the Ireland national rugby union team and the Republic of Ireland national football team, while their new Aviva Stadium was constructed. This use of Croke Park for non-Gaelic sports was controversial and required temporary changes to GAA rules. In June 2012, the stadium hosted the closing ceremony of the 50th International Eucharistic Congress during which Pope Benedict XVI gave an address over video link.
City and Suburban Racecourse

A fireworks and light display was held in Croke Park in front of 79,161 fans on Saturday 31 January 2009 to mark the GAA's 125th anniversary

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

Bloody Sunday remembrance plaque

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.

The outside of the Cusack Stand

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
Add to cart Details
Vintage John Power & Son Irish Whiskey 1893 Chicago World Fair Advert

€300.00

90cm x 65cm Dublin A beautiful original souvenir Powers Whiskey poster advertising the company's participation at the 1893 World Fair held in Chicago to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492.The fair was an influential social and cultural event and had a profound effect on architecture,sanitation,the Arts,Chicago's self image and American Industrial optimism .Powers Whiskey itself was established in 1792 before moving to Johns Lane in 1822 and then expanding its ranks and production levels rapidly to become one of the most impressive architectural sights in Victorian Dublin-an overhead view of which is depicted in this beautiful print. In 1791 James Power, an innkeeper from Dublin, established a small distillery at his public house at 109 Thomas St., Dublin. The distillery, which had an output of about 6,000 gallons in its first year of operation, initially traded as James Power and Son, but by 1822 had become John Power & Son,and had moved to a new premises at John’s Lane, a side street off Thomas Street. At the time the distillery had three pot stills, though only one, a 500-gallon still is thought to have been in use. Following reform of the distilling laws in 1823, the distillery expanded rapidly. In 1827, production was reported at 160,270 gallons,and by 1833 had grown to 300,000 gallons per annum. As the distillery grew, so too did the stature of the family. In 1841, John Power, grandson of the founder was awarded a baronet, a hereditary title. In 1855, his son Sir James Power, laid the foundation stone for the O’Connell Monument, and in 1859 became High Sheriff of Dublin. In 1871, the distillery was expanded and rebuilt in the Victorian style, becoming one of the most impressive sights in Dublin.After expansion, output at the distillery rose to 700,000 gallons per annum, and by the 1880s, had reached about 900,000 gallons per annum, at which point the distillery covered over six acres of central Dublin, and had a staff of about 300 people.

The Still House at John’s Lane Distillery, as it looked when Alfred Barnard visited in the 1800s.

During this period, when the Dublin whiskey distilleries were amongst the largest in the world, the family run firms of John Powers, along with John Jameson, William Jameson, and George Roe, (collectively known as the “Big Four”) came to dominate the Irish distilling landscape, introducing several innovations. In 1886, John Power & Son began bottling their own whiskey, rather than following the practice customary at the time, of selling whiskey directly to merchants and bonders who would bottle it themselves. They were the first Dublin distillery to do so, and one of the first in the world.A gold label adorned each bottle and it was from these that the whiskey got the name Powers Gold Label. When Alfred Barnard, the British historian visited John’s Lane in the late 1880s, he noted the elegance and cleanliness of the buildings, and the modernity of the distillery, describing it as “about as complete a work as it is possible to find anywhere”. At the time of his visit, the distillery was home to five pot stills, two of which with capacities of 25,000 gallons, were amongst the largest ever built.In addition, Barnard was high in his praise for Powers whiskey, noting:”The old make, which we drank with our luncheon was delicious and finer than anything we had hitherto tasted.It was as perfect in flavour, and as pronounced in the ancient aroma of Irish Whiskey so dear to to the hearts of connoisseurs,as one could possibly desire and we found a small flask of it very useful afterwards on our travels.” The last member of the family to sit on the board was Sir Thomas Talbot Power,who died in 1930,and with him the Power’s Baronetcy. However, ownership remained in the family until 1966, and several descendants of his sisters remained at work with the company until recent times. In 1961, a Coffey still was installed in John’s Lane Distillery, allowing the production of vodka and gin, in addition to the testing of grain whiskey for use in blended whiskey. This was a notable departure for the firm, as for many years the big Dublin distilling dynasties had shunned the use of Coffey stills, questioning if their output, grain whiskey could even be termed whiskey. However, with many of the Irish distilleries having closed in the early 20th century in part due to their failure to embrace a change in consumer preference towards blended whiskey, Powers were instrumental in convincing the remaining Irish distilleries to reconsider their stance on blended whiskey. In 1966, with the Irish whiskey industry still struggling following Prohibition in the United States, the Anglo-Irish Trade War and the rise of competition from Scotch whiskey, John Powers & Son joined forces with the only other remaining distillers in the Irish Republic, the Cork Distilleries Company and their Dublin rivals John Jameson & Son, to form Irish Distillers. Soon after, in a bold move, Irish Distillers decided to close all of their existing distilleries, and to consolidate production at a new purpose-built facility in Midleton (the New Midleton Distillery) alongside their existing Old Midleton Distillery. The new distillery opened in 1975, and a year later, production ceased at John’s Lane Distillery and began anew in Cork, with Powers Gold Label and many other Irish whiskeys reformulated from single pot stills whiskeys to blends. In 1989, Irish Distillers itself became a subsidiary of Pernod-Ricard following a friendly takeover.Since the closure of the John’s Lane distillery, many of the distillery buildings were demolished. However, some of the buildings have been incorporated into the National College of Art and Design, and are now protected structures. In addition, three of the distillery’s pot stills were saved and now located in the college’s Red Square.

Add to cart Details
Vintage Archibald Walker Limerick Whisky Advertisement

€250.00

46cm x 59cm This advertising print is also as rare as a white rhino.Namely because one of Limerick City's only ever distillery's was Archibald Walkers located at Thomondgate on the banks of the River Shannon and it sadly closed in 1905.Originally owned by the Steins,who was we know were related to the Jamesons of Bow Street through marriage ,they sold the business to a Archibald Walker in 1879.Walker already owned the Vauxhall distillery in Liverpool and the Adelphi in Glasgow,making him the only distiller to ever simultaneously own a distillery in Scotland,England and Ireland.Walkers employed 70 men and produced 300,000 gallons of whiskey, which was much smaller than most of its competitors .The distillery did have a small local trade but most of the whiskey appears to have been exported to England.Business was badly affected by the economic downturn in 1900-1902 and was sold to Scottish Distillers Co,who within three years had closed down all of Archibalds Walkers three distilleries.Little or nothing of the distillery building remains today and bottles bearing the Limerick Whiskey label seem to have totally disappeared save a few mirrors and prints in a few old Limerick pubs - hence the absolute rarity value of this beautiful piece as it is well in excess of 115 years old.Please email us directly about this rare gem.

Add to cart Details
The Last Absolution of the Munster Fusiliers at Rue de Bois 1915-Fortunino Matania

€250.00

57cm x 70cm Co Tipperary
The most haunting and poignant image of Irish involvement in the first World War is at the centre of an unsolved art mystery.

The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue du Bois – a painting long presumed lost – depicts soldiers of the Royal Munster Fusiliers regiment receiving “general absolution” from their chaplain on the eve of battle in May 1915. Most of them died within 24 hours.

The painting, by Italian-born war artist Fortunino Matania, became one of the most famous images of the war when prints of it were published in illustrated weekly newspapers.

Copies hung in houses & pubs throughout Ireland, and especially Munster, but, as Irish public opinion towards the war changed, the picture gradually disappeared from view.A copy still hangs in the famous pub Larkins of Garrykennedy Co Tipperary to this day.

Centenary commemorations of the first World War have prompted renewed interest in the whereabouts of the original painting among art and military historians.

A widely held theory that the painting was lost when archives were destroyed in a fire during the blitz of London in 1940 is “very much” doubted by English historian Lucinda Gosling, who is writing a book about the artist.

She told The Irish Times there was no definitive proof to confirm this theory and it was possible the original painting was still “out there”.

The painting could, conceivably, be in private hands or, more improbably, be lying forgotten or miscatalogued in a museum’s storage area. Matania’s work occasionally turns up at art auctions, but there has been no known or publicly-documented sighting of the original Munsters painting.

Ms Gosling described Matania as an artist “able to work at great speed, producing pictures that were unnervingly photographic in their realism”.

His pictures, she said, had “reached and influenced millions” and “he combined skill and artistry with a strong streak of journalistic tenacity”.

Wayside shrine
The painting is based on an event that took place on Saturday evening, May 8th, 1915.

Soldiers from the Second Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers, commanded by Lieut-Col Victor Rickard, paused beside a wayside shrine near the village of Rue du Bois in northwest France. The following day, they were due to go into battle, in what became known as the Battle of Aubers Ridge.

The painting is imbued with a sense of impending doom.

In Catholic canon law, a priest may grant general absolution of sin to a gathering of the faithful where there is imminent danger of death and no time for individual confessions.

The ritual was used on September 11th, 2001, in New York to grant general absolution to police officers and firefighters about to enter the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre.

In the painting, the Irish chaplain Fr Francis Gleeson is shown blessing the men: “Misereatur vestri omnipotens Deus; et dimissis omnibus peccatis vestris, perducat vos Iesus Christus ad vitam aeternam” (May Almighty God have mercy on you, and having forgiven all your sins, may Jesus Christ bring you to life everlasting).

The men then sang the hymns Te Deum and Hail Glorious St Patrick.

The artist was not present at the scene but based his painting on a written account by Lieut- Col Rickard’s widow, Jessie, who is believed to have commissioned the painting in memory of her husband.

She had gathered eye-witness accounts from survivors and wrote: “There are many journeys and many stopping- places in the strange pilgrimage we call life, but there is no other such journey in the world as the journey up a road on the eve of battle, and no stopping- place more holy than a wayside shrine.”

She noted among the troops were “lads from Kerry and Cork, who, a year before, had never dreamed of marching in the ranks of the British army”.

After Fr Gleeson’s blessing, she wrote: “The regiment moved on, and darkness fell as the skirl of the Irish pipes broke out, playing a marching tune.

“The Munsters were wild with enthusiasm; they were strong with the invincible strength of faith and high hope, for they had with them the vital conviction of success, the inspiration that scorns danger – which is the lasting heritage of the Irish; theirs still and theirs to remain when great armaments and armies and empires shall be swept away, because it is immovable as the eternal stars.”

Mown down

The following morning, Sunday May 9th, most of the Irish soldiers were mown down by German gunfire and shelling.

On a catastrophic day for the British army – over 11,000 casualties – the Royal Munster Fusiliers suffered dreadful losses. Exact estimates vary, but one account records 800 Munsters went into battle and only 200 assembled that evening.

Mrs Rickard concluded : “So the Munsters came back after their day’s work; they formed up again in the Rue du Bois, numbering 200 men and three officers. It seems almost superfluous to make any further comment.”

The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue du Bois

The Painting

The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue du Bois shows some of the hundreds of soldiers from the second battalion of the Royal Munster Fusiliers who gathered at a shrine near the village of Rue du Bois on the western front on Saturday, May 8th, 1915.

The image was published in the London illustrated weekly newspaper The Sphere in November 1916, and in 1917 in the Weekly Freeman’s, an Irish publication. There are copies of the print in various museums and in private ownership in Ireland and Britain.

The Artist

Fortunino Matania, (1881- 1963) was born in Naples and was a well-known artist and illustrator in Italy before moving to London in 1902. He worked for The Sphere – an illustrated weekly newspaper – and became famous for depicting the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.

He was an official war artist in the first World War and his graphic illustrations of trench warfare were highly renowned.

The Location

Rue du Bois is located near the village of Neuve Chapelle in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France close to the border with Belgium. According to the Royal Munster Fusiliers Association, the original shrine has long gone.

The Chaplain

Depicted on horseback, with hand raised granting general absolution, is Fr Francis Gleeson, a native of Templemore, Co Tipperary. He was ordained a priest in Maynooth in 1910 and volunteered to serve as a chaplain in the army at the outbreak of the war. He was assigned to the Royal Munster Fusiliers and served with distinction. He survived the war and returned to Ireland where he worked as priest in Dublin and died in 1959.

The Commanding Officer

Lieut-Col Victor Rickard, the other man on horseback, was born in Englandto an Irish father and English mother.

He was the commander of the battalion. He died in action the next day, aged 40.

The Patron

Lieut-Col Rickard’s widow Jessie, who is believed to have commissioned the painting, was the daughter of a Church of Ireland clergyman who spent her youth in Mitchelstown, Co Cork. She became a well-known novelist and published some 40 books.

After the war she converted to Catholicism under the guidance of another former chaplain in the British army in the first World War – Fr Joseph Leonard, who later befriended Jackie Kennedy.

Mrs Rickard died at Montenotte, Cork, in 1963, aged 86.

Add to cart Details
Michael Egan Limerick Finest Irish Whiskey Print

€250.00

Very rare Limerick print depicting the well known Establishment of Michael Egans,9 ,10 & 11 Patrick Street - a well known business which existed from 1860 to 1960.The going concern import teas, wines and brandies and also held Whiskies in bond from John Jameson's,George Roe's and other distillers.Egans was replaced by J Ormstons General Grocery afterwards .Now the building is simply known as Ormston House,a cultural resource centre in the heart of Limerick City. An example of this print previously realised £700 at public auction in 2018. 50cm x 60cm. Limerick City

Add to cart Details
Classic Limerick Print -King Johns Castle & Thomondgate Bridge

€250.00

Stunning medieval era print depicting there majesty of King Johns Castle & St Marys Cathedral from the upriver aspect of the Thomondgate Bridge with the Shannon River flowing past all the famous landmarks. King John's Castle is a 13th-century castle located on King's Island in Limerick, Ireland, next to the River Shannon.Although the site dates back to 922 when the Vikings lived on the Island, the castle itself was built on the orders of King John in 1200. One of the best preserved Norman castles in Europe, the walls, towers and fortifications remain today and are visitor attractions. The remains of a Viking settlement were uncovered during archaeological excavations at the site in 1900. Thomondgate was part of the “Northern” Liberties granted to Limerick in 1216. This area was the border between Munster and Connacht until County Clare, which was created in 1565, was annexed by Munster in 1602. TheThomondgate bridge was originally built in 1185 on the orders of King John and is said to have cost the hefty sum of £30. As a result of poor workmanship the bridge collapsed in 1292 causing the deaths of 80 people. Soon after, the bridge was rebuilt with the addition of two gate towers, one at each end. It partially collapsed in 1833 as a result of bad weather and was replaced with a bridge designed by brothers James and George Pain at a cost of £10,000. 52cm x 60cm Coonagh Co Limerick

Add to cart Details
Locke’s Old Irish Whiskey Ephemera & Memorabilia Print (Now Kilbeggan Whiskey)

€250.00
Fantastic display of Locke's Old Irish Whiskey Ephemera & Memorabilia including whiskey bottle labels, cheques,history of the distillery ,etc. Origins: Kilbeggan Co Westmeath Dimensions:70cm x 60cm Unglazed The Kilbeggan Distillery (formerly Brusna Distillery and Locke's Distillery) is an Irish whiskey distillery situated on the River Brosna in Kilbeggan, County Westmeath, Ireland. It is owned by Beam Suntory. A small pot still distillery, the licence to distil dates to 1757, a copy of which can be seen in the distillery. Similar to many Irish distilleries, Kilbeggan endured financial difficulties during the early 20th century, and ceased operations in 1957. However, the distillery was later refurbished, with distilling recommencing on-site in 2007. Noted devotees of the distillery's whiskeys include British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, and Myles na gCopaleen, the Irish playwright.
Early years
The distillery was founded in 1757 by Matthew MacManus, who may have distilled elsewhere before founding Kilbeggan.Although information about the early years of the distillery is scarce, documentation suggests that in its early years the distillery operated with a 232 gallon still, and an annual output of 1,500 gallons. By the early 19th century, the distillery was being run by a John and William Codd. In 1841, the distillery was put up for sale following the dissolution of the partnership between its then owners, William Codd and William Cuffee.The distillery at the time consisted of a brew house, still house with three pot stills (wash still: 8,000 gallons; low wine still, no. 1; 2,000 gallons; low wine still, no. 2: 1,500 gallons), run-room with five receivers, malt house, corn stores capable of storing 5,000 barrels, and oat-meal mills. Also listed in the sale were 400 tonnes of coal, and 10,000 boxes of turf - the latter reflecting the immense quantities of turf consumed at the distillery, so much so, that it was reported to have kept hundreds of poor people profitably employed in cutting, rearing, and drawing it to the town throughout the year.
Locke's Distillery
In 1843, the distillery was taken over by John Locke, under whose stewardship the distillery flourished. Locke treated his staff well, and was held in high regard by both his workers and the people of the town. Informal records show that under Locke the distillery provided cottages for its employees, either for rent or purchase through a form of in-house mortgage scheme. In addition, all staff received a wagon load of coal at the start of each winter, the cost of which was deducted from salaries retrospectively on a weekly basis. Testimony of the respect with which he was held is offered by an incident in 1866. Following an accident on-site which had rendered a critical piece of equipment, the steam boiler, inoperable, the distillery had come to a standstill. With Locke unable to afford or obtain a loan to fund a replacement, the future of distillery lay in doubt.However, in a gesture of solidarity, the people of Kilbeggan came together and purchased a replacement boiler, which they presented to John Locke, along with the following public letter of appreciation, which was printed in several local newspapers at the time:
An Address from the People of Kilbeggan to John Locke, Esq. Dear Sir - Permit us, your fellow townsmen, to assure of our deep and cordial sympathy in your loss and disappointment from the accident which occurred recently in your Distillery. Sincerely as we regret the accident, happily unattended with loss of life, we cannot but rejoice at the long-wished-for opportunity it affords us of testifying to you the high appreciation in which we hold you for your public and private worth. We are well aware that the restrictions imposed by recent legislation on that particular branch of Irish industry, with which you have been so long identified, have been attended with disastrous results to the trade, as is manifest in the long list of Distilleries now almost in ruins, and which were a few years ago centres of busy industry, affording remunerative employment to thousands of hands; and we are convinced the Kilbeggan Distillery would have long since swelled the dismal catalogue had it fallen into less energetic and enterprising hands. In such an event we would be compelled to witness the disheartening scene of a large number of our working population without employment during that period of the year when employment Is scarcest, and at the same time most essential to the poor. Independent then of what we owe you, on purely personal grounds, we feel we owe you a deep debt of gratitude for maintaining in our midst a manufacture which affords such extensive employment to our poor, and exercises so favourable an influence on the prosperity of the town. In conclusion, dear Sir, we beg your acceptance of a new steam boiler to replace the injured one, as testimony, inadequate though it is, of our unfeigned respect and esteems for you ; and we beg to present it with the ardent wish and earnest hope that, for many long years to come, it may contribute to enhance still more the deservedly high and increasing reputation of the Kilbeggan Distillery.
In a public response to mark the gift, also published in several newspapers, Locke thanked the people of Kilbeggan for their generosity, stating "...I feel this to be the proudest day of my life...". A plaque commemorating the event hangs in the distillery's restaurant today. In 1878, a fire broke out in the "can dip" (sampling) room of the distillery, and spread rapidly. Although, the fire was extinguished within an hour, it destroying a considerable portion of the front of the distillery and caused £400 worth of damage. Hundreds of gallons of new whiskey were also consumed in the blaze - however, the distillery is said to have been saved from further physical and financial ruin through the quick reaction of townsfolk who broke down the doors of the warehouses, and helped roll thousands of casks of ageing spirit down the street to safety. In 1887, the distillery was visited by Alfred Barnard, a British writer, as research for his book, "the Whiskey Distilleries of the United Kingdom". By then, the much enlarged distillery was being managed by John's sons, John Edward and James Harvey, who told Barnard that the distillery's output had more than doubled during the preceding ten years, and that they intended to install electric lighting.Barnard noted that the distillery, which he referred to as the "Brusna Distillery", named for the nearby river, was said to be the oldest in Ireland. According to Barnard, the distillery covered 5 acres, and employed a staff of about 70 men, with the aged and sick pensioned-off or assisted. At the time of his visit, the distillery was producing 157,200 proof gallons per annum, though it had the capacity to produce 200,000. The whiskey, which was sold primarily in Dublin, England, and "the Colonies", was "old pot still", produced using four pot stills (two wash stills: 10,320 / 8,436 gallons; and two spirit stills: 6,170 / 6,080 gallons), which had been installed by Millar and Company, Dublin. Barnard remarked that at the time of his visit over 2,000 casks of spirit were ageing in the distillery's bonded warehouses. In 1893, the distillery ceased to be privately held, and was converted a limited stock company, trading as John Locke & Co., Ltd., with nominal capital of £40,000.
Decline and Closure
In the early part of the 20th century, Kilbeggan, like many Irish whiskey distilleries at the time, entered a period of decline. This was due to the combined effects of loss and hampering of market access - due to prohibition in the United States, the trade war with the British Empire, shipping difficulties during the world wars, and Irish Government export quotas; as well as competition from blended Scotch, and disruption to production during the Irish war of Independence. As a result, Kilbeggan was forced to cease production of new spirit for 7 years between 1924 and 1931, decimating the company's cash flow and finances.Most of the staff at the distillery were let go, and the distillery slowly sold off its stocks of aged whiskey. Distilling resumed in 1931, following the end of prohibition in the United States, and for a time the distillery's finances improved - with a loss of £83 in 1931, converted to a modest profit of £6,700 in 1939. In the 1920s, both of John sons passed away, John in 1920, and James in 1927, and ownership of the distillery passed to Locke's granddaughters, Mary Evelyn and Florence Emily.However, by then the distillery was in need to repair, with the turbulent economic conditions of the early 20th century having meant that no investment had been made in new plant since the 1890s. In 1947, the Lockes decided to put the distillery was put up for sale as a going concern. Although run down, the distillery had valuable stocks of mature whiskey, a valuable commodity in post-war Europe.An offer of £305,000 was received from a Swiss investor fronted by an Englishman, going by the name of Horace Smith.Their unstated interest, was not the business itself, but the 60,000 gallons of whiskey stocks, which they hoped to sell on the black market in England at £11 a gallon - thus, more than doubling their investment overnight. However, when they failed to come up with the deposit, the duo were arrested and promptly interrogated by Irish police. The Englishman, it turned out, was an impostor named Maximoe, who was wanted by Scotland Yard.^]The Irish authorities placed Maximoe on a ferry back to England for extradition, but he jumped overboard and escaped with the help of unknown accomplices. An Irish opposition politician, Oliver J. Flanagan, subsequently alleged under parliamentary privilege that members of the governing Fianna Fáil political party were linked to the deal, accusing then Irish Taoiseach Éamon de Valera and his son of having accepted gold watches from the Swiss businessman. A tribunal of inquiry discounted the allegations but the damage contributed to Fianna Fáil's defeat in the 1948 election. In addition, as the scandal remained headline news in Ireland for several months, it discouraged interest from other investors in the distillery. Thus with no buyer found, operations continued at the distillery, with production averaging between 120,000 - 150,000 proof gallons per annum, and consumption running at between 15,000 - 20,000 barrels of barrel.In addition, although heavily indebted, investments were made in new plant and equipment. However, the death knell for the distillery came in April 1952, when the Irish Government introduced a 28% hike in the excise duties on spirits, causing a drastic decline in domestic whiskey sales. By November 1953, the distillery could not afford to pay the duty to release whiskey ordered for Christmas from bond, and production was forced to come to a halt. Although distilling had stopped, the firm struggled on until 27 November 1958, when a debenture issued in 1953 fell due, which the distillery could not afford to pay, forcing the bank to call in the receivers. Thus, bringing to an end 201 years of distilling in the town. In 1962, the distillery was purchased for £10,000 by Karl Heinz Moller, a German businessman, who owned a motor distribution company in Hamburg.Moller made a substantial profit on the deal, by selling off the whiskey stocks (about 100,000 gallons - worth tens of thousands of pounds alone) and a rare Mercedes Benz owned by the distillery. Much to the dismay of locals, Moller proceeded to convert the distillery into a pigsty, smashing thousands of Locke earthenware crocks (which would be worth a substantial amount at auction today) to create a hard-core base for the concrete floor. In 1969, the distillery was sold to Powerscreen, a firm which sold Volvo loading shovels, and in the early 1970s, the stills and worms were removed and sold for scrap.
Distillery reopens
In 1982, almost thirty years after the distillery ceased operations, the Kilbeggan Preservation and Development Association was formed by locals in the town. Using funds raised locally, the Association restored the Distillery, and reopened it to the public as a whiskey distillery museum. Then, in 1987, the newly opened Cooley Distillery acquired the assets of Kilbeggan distillery, allowing Cooley to relaunch whiskeys under the Kilbeggan and Locke's Whiskey brands. Cooley later also took over the running of the museum, and began the process of re-establishing a working distillery on-site. Cooley were aided in the process by the fact that since the distillery's closure, each subsequent owner had faithfully paid the £5 annual fee to maintain the distilling licence. In 2007, the 250th anniversary of the distillery's founding, distillation recommenced at Kilbeggan. The official firing of the pot stills was witnessed by direct descendants of the three families, the McManuses, the Codds, and the Lockes, who had run the distillery during its 200 year distilling history. In a fitting nod to the long history of distilling at Kilbeggan, one of the two pot stills installed in the refurbished distillery was a 180-year old pot still, which had originally been installed at the Old Tullamore Distillery in the early 1800s.^] It is the oldest working pot still producing whiskey in the world today. In 2010, with the installation of a mash tun and fermentation vats, Kilbeggan became a fully operational distillery once again.
Present day

Bottle of "Kilbeggan Finest Irish whiskey"

Today the distillery is known as Kilbeggan Distillery, and includes a restaurant, The Pantry Restaurant, and a 19th-century waterwheel that has been restored to working condition. The distillery can also be powered by a steam engine, which is in working condition but rarely used. It was installed to allow the distillery to continue operating in times of low water on the river. Prior to the recommencement of operations of Kilbeggan, the three brands associated with the distillery—Kilbeggan, Locke's Blend and Locke's Malt were produced at the Cooley Distillery in County Louth, before being transported to Kilbeggan, where they were to stored in a 200 year old granite warehouse. However, following recommencement of operations at Kilbeggan, new whiskey produced on-site has been sufficiently mature for market since around 2014. Since reopening, the distillery has launched a Kilbeggan Small Batch Rye, the first whiskey to be 100% distilled and matured on-site since the restoration was completed. Double-distilled, the whiskey is produced from a mash of malt, barley, and about 30% rye, said to reflect the traditional practice of using rye, which was common at 19th century Irish distilleries, but has since virtually died out. In late 2009, the distillery released small '3-pack' samples of its still-developing "new make spirit" at 1 month, 1 year, and 2 years of age (in Ireland, the spirit must be aged a minimum of three years before it can legally be called "whiskey"). The distillery's visitor centre was among the nominations in Whisky Magazine's Icons of Whisky visitor attraction category in 2008.
Gallery

Machinery at the distillery

Historic view distillery buildings

Distillery buildings with roof sign

View of the distillery from the 1900s
Add to cart Details
1978 Munster v All Blacks Special Edition 40th Anniversary Commemorative Print

€250.00

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.”

Many years on, Stuart Wilson vividly recalled the Dennison tackles and spoke about them in remarkable detail and with commendable honesty: “The move involved me coming in from the blind side wing and it had been working very well on tour. It was a workable move and it was paying off so we just kept rolling it out. Against Munster, the gap opened up brilliantly as it was supposed to except that there was this little guy called Seamus Dennison sitting there in front of me. “He just basically smacked the living daylights out of me. I dusted myself off and thought, I don’t want to have to do that again. Ten minutes later, we called the same move again thinking we’d change it slightly but, no, it didn’t work and I got hammered again.” The game was 11 minutes old when the most famous try in the history of Munster rugby was scored. Tom Kiernan recalled: “It came from a great piece of anticipation by Bowen who in the first place had to run around his man to get to Ward’s kick ahead. He then beat two men and when finally tackled, managed to keep his balance and deliver the ball to Cantillon who went on to score. All of this was evidence of sharpness on Bowen’s part.” Very soon it would be 9-0. In the first five minutes, a towering garryowen by skipper Canniffe had exposed the vulnerability of the New Zealand rearguard under the high ball. They were to be examined once or twice more but it was from a long range but badly struck penalty attempt by Ward that full-back Brian McKechnie knocked on some 15 yards from his line and close to where Cantillon had touched down a few minutes earlier. You could sense White, Whelan, McLoughlin and co in the front five of the Munster scrum smacking their lips as they settled for the scrum. A quick, straight put-in by Canniffe, a well controlled heel, a smart pass by the scrum-half to Ward and the inevitability of a drop goal. And that’s exactly what happened. The All Blacks enjoyed the majority of forward possession but the harder they tried, the more they fell into the trap set by the wily Kiernan and so brilliantly carried out by every member of the Munster team. The tourists might have edged the line-out contest through Andy Haden and Frank Oliver but scrum-half Mark Donaldson endured a miserable afternoon as the Munster forwards poured through and buried him in the Thomond Park turf. As the minutes passed and the All Blacks became more and more unsure as to what to try next, the Thomond Park hordes chanted “Munster-Munster–Munster” to an ever increasing crescendo until with 12 minutes to go, the noise levels reached deafening proportions. And then ... a deep, probing kick by Ward put Wilson under further pressure. Eventually, he stumbled over the ball as it crossed the line and nervously conceded a five-metre scrum. The Munster heel was disrupted but the ruck was won, Tucker gained possession and slipped a lovely little pass to Ward whose gifted feet and speed of thought enabled him in a twinkle to drop a goal although surrounded by a swarm of black jerseys. So the game entered its final 10 minutes with the All Blacks needing three scores to win and, of course, that was never going to happen. Munster knew this, so, too, did the All Blacks. Stu Wilson admitted as much as he explained his part in Wardy’s second drop goal: “Tony Ward banged it down, it bounced a little bit, jigged here, jigged there, and I stumbled, fell over, and all of a sudden the heat was on me. They were good chasers. A kick is a kick — but if you have lots of good chasers on it, they make bad kicks look good. I looked up and realised — I’m not going to run out of here so I just dotted it down. I wasn’t going to run that ball back out at them because five of those mad guys were coming down the track at me and I’m thinking, I’m being hit by these guys all day and I’m looking after my body, thank you. Of course it was a five-yard scrum and Ward banged over another drop goal. That was it, there was the game”. The final whistle duly sounded with Munster 12 points ahead but the heroes of the hour still had to get off the field and reach the safety of the dressing room. Bodies were embraced, faces were kissed, backs were pummelled, you name it, the gauntlet had to be walked. Even the All Blacks seemed impressed with the sense of joy being released all about them. Andy Haden recalled “the sea of red supporters all over the pitch after the game, you could hardly get off for the wave of celebration that was going on. The whole of Thomond Park glowed in the warmth that someone had put one over on the Blacks.” Controversially, the All Blacks coach, Jack Gleeson (usually a man capable of accepting the good with the bad and who passed away of cancer within 12 months of the tour), in an unguarded (although possibly misunderstood) moment on the following day, let slip his innermost thoughts on the game. “We were up against a team of kamikaze tacklers,” he lamented. “We set out on this tour to play 15-man rugby but if teams were to adopt the Munster approach and do all they could to stop the All Blacks from playing an attacking game, then the tour and the game would suffer.” It was interpreted by the majority of observers as a rare piece of sour grapes from a group who had accepted the defeat in good spirit and it certainly did nothing to diminish Munster respect for the All Blacks and their proud rugby tradition.

And Tom Kiernan and Andy Haden, rugby standard bearers of which their respective countries were justifiably proud, saw things in a similar light.

“Jack’s comment was made in the context of the game and meant as a compliment,” Haden maintained. “Indeed, it was probably a little suggestion to his own side that perhaps we should imitate their efforts and emulate them in that department.” Tom Kiernan went along with this line of thought: “I thought he was actually paying a compliment to the Munster spirit. Kamikaze pilots were very brave men. That’s what I took out of that. I didn’t think it was a criticism of Munster.” And Stuart Wilson? “It was meant purely as a compliment. We had been travelling through the UK and winning all our games. We were playing a nice, open style. But we had never met a team that could get up in our faces and tackle us off the field. Every time you got the ball, you didn’t get one player tackling you, you got four. Kamikaze means people are willing to die for the cause and that was the way with every Munster man that day. Their strengths were that they were playing for Munster, that they had a home Thomond Park crowd and they took strength from the fact they were playing one of the best teams in the world.” You could rely on Terry McLean (famed New Zealand journalist) to be fair and sporting in his reaction to the Thomond Park defeat. Unlike Kiernan and Haden, he scorned Jack Gleeson’s “kamikaze” comment, stating that “it was a stern, severe criticism which wanted in fairness on two grounds. It did not sufficiently praise the spirit of Munster or the presence within the one team of 15 men who each emerged from the match much larger than life-size. Secondly, it was disingenuous or, more accurately, naive.” “Gleeson thought it sinful that Ward had not once passed the ball. It was worse, he said, that Munster had made aggressive defence the only arm of their attack. Now, what on earth, it could be asked, was Kiernan to do with his team? He held a fine hand with top trumps in Spring, Cantillon, Foley and Whelan in the forwards and Canniffe, Ward, Dennison, Bowen and Moloney in the backs. Tommy Kiernan wasn’t born yesterday. He played to the strength of his team and upon the suspected weaknesses of the All Blacks.” You could hardly be fairer than that – even if Graham Mourie himself in his 1983 autobiography wasn’t far behind when observing: “Munster were just too good. From the first time Stu Wilson was crashed to the ground as he entered the back line to the last time Mark Donaldson was thrown backwards as he ducked around the side of a maul. They were too good.” One of the nicest tributes of all came from a famous New Zealand photographer, Peter Bush. He covered numerous All Black tours, was close friends with most of their players and a canny one when it came to finding the ideal position from which to snap his pictures. He was the guy perched precariously on the pillars at the entrance to the pitch as the celebrations went on and which he described 20 years later in his book ‘Who Said It’s Only a Game?’

“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’.

“With that, he flung his arms around me and dragged me with him into the shower. I finally managed to disentangle myself and killed the tape. I didn’t mind really because it had been a wonderful day.” Dimensions :50cm x 55cm

Add to cart Details

Original (10th) 1980 GAA Allstars Poster

€250.00

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

F00tball : Charlie Nelligan (Kerry), Harry Keegan (Roscommon), Kevin Kehilly (Cork), Gerry Connellan (Roscommon), Kevin McCabe (Tyrone), Tim Kennelly (Kerry), Danny Murray (Roscommon), Jack O'Shea (Kerry), Colm McKinstry (Armagh), Ger Power (Kerry), Dinny Allen (Cork), Pat Spillane (Kerry), Matt Connor (Offaly), Eoin Liston (Kerry), John Egan (Kerry

Add to cart Details

Original (11th)1981 GAA Allstars Poster

€250.00

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

Martin Furlong (Offaly), Jimmy Deenihan (Kerry), Paddy Kennedy (Down), Paudie Lynch (Kerry), Páidí Ó Sé (Kerry), Richie Connor (Offaly), Seamus McHugh (Galway), Jack O'Shea (Kerry), Seán Walsh (Kerry), Barry Brennan (Galway), Ogie Moran (Kerry), Pat Spillane (Kerry), Mikey Sheehy (Kerry), Eoin Liston (Kerry), Brendan Lowry (Offaly)

Add to cart Details

Original (9th)1979 GAA Allstars Poster

€250.00

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

John O Leary (Dublin), Eugene Hughes (Monaghan), John O'Keeffe (Kerry), Tom Heneghan (Roscommon), Tommy Drumm (Dublin), Tim Kennelly (Kerry), Danny Murray (Roscommon), Dermot Earley (Roscommon), Bernard Brogan (Dublin), Ger Power (Kerry), Seán Walsh (Kerry), Pat Spillane (Kerry), Mikey Sheehy (Kerry), Seán Lowry (Offaly), Joe McGrath (Mayo)

Add to cart Details

Original (14th)1984 GAA Allstars Poster

€250.00

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

Add to cart Details

Mitchell’s & Co of Belfast Old Irish Whiskey Advert

€250.00

44cm x 54cm Belfast Rare Mitchell's of Belfast Old Irish Whiskey Print .Once a giant of the distilling business along with Dunvilles,Mitchell's fall from grace, like so many other superb Irish distilleries was symptomatic of the economic climate and circumstances of the time. Charles William Mitchell originated from Scotland and took over his fathers distillery in the Campletown area .In the 1860s he moved to Belfast and became manager of Dunvilles Whiskey before establishing his own brand Mitchell & Co tomb St in the late 1860s.A newspaper report in 1895 hailed the virtues of Mitchells Cruiskeen Lawn Whisky,which secured prizes around the world including first place at the New Orleans Exposition.It was a rare Mitchells Cruiskeen Lawn Whiskey mirror that recently commanded £11500 at auction in 2018 following the sale of the contents of an old Donegal public house.

Indeed Mitchell's were renowned for advertising their products on mirrors, trade cards, minature atlas books and pottery to name just a few. Below is the original mirror that was commissioned for their Tomb Street premises on the launch of their Cruiskeen Lawn Old Irish Whisky, late 1800’s. Two were made for the entrance of their Tomb Street premises. Inscribed is the Cruiskeen Lawn poem, with gold leaf barley with green and red in the Mitchell Crest. Definately the holy grail of all mirrors, a true treasure and still survives today in the heart of Belfast and worth the above mentioned princely sum and now probably more ! Some original and rare Mitchell mirrors are still surviving today and can be found in some pubs in and around Belfast today Some other examples of Mitchell Mirrors which were mass produced for advertising their products

Add to cart Details
1916 Proclamation of Independence.

€250.00
This hard to find 1916 proclamation of Independence as signed by the 12 is an authentic example of the ones that used to hang in every national or primary school in Ireland and would date to the 1950s.There is some age related wear to one side of the board but it still will make an outstanding display piece due to its obvious authenticity and recognisability. Cloverfield Co Limerick 80cm x 60cm The Proclamation of the Republic (Irish: Forógra na Poblachta), also known as the 1916 Proclamation or the Easter Proclamation, was a document issued by the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army during the Easter Rising in Ireland, which began on 24 April 1916. In it, the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, styling itself the "Provisional Government of the Irish Republic", proclaimed Ireland's independence from the United Kingdom. The reading of the proclamation by Patrick Pearse outside the General Post Office (GPO) on Sackville Street (now called O'Connell Street), Dublin's main thoroughfare, marked the beginning of the Rising. The proclamation was modelled on a similar independence proclamation issued during the 1803 rebellion by Robert Emmet.
Though the Rising failed in military terms, the principles of the Proclamation to varying degrees influenced the thinking of later generations of Irish politicians. The document consisted of a number of assertions:

that the Rising's leaders spoke for Ireland (a claim historically made by Irish insurrectionary movements);

that the Rising marked another wave of attempts to achieve independence through force of arms;

that the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army were central to the Rising;

"the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland"

that the form of government was to be a republic;

a guarantee of "religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens", the first mention of gender equality, given that Irish women under British law were not allowed to vote;

a commitment to universal suffrage, a phenomenon limited at the time to only a handful of countries, not including the UK;

a promise of "cherishing all the children of the nation equally". Although these words have been quoted since the 1990s by children's rights advocates, "children of the nation" refers to all Irish people;

disputes between nationalists and unionists are attributed to "differences carefully fostered by an alien government", a rejection of what was later dubbed two-nations theory.

The proclamation had been printed secretly prior to the Rising on a Summit Wharfedale Stop Cylinder Press, located in Liberty Hall, Eden Quay (HQ of the Irish Citizen Army). Because of its secret printing, problems arose which affected the layout and design. In particular, because of a shortage of type, the document was printed in two halves, printing first the top then the bottom on the same pieces of paper. The typesetters were Willie O'Brien, Michael Molloy and Christopher Brady.They lacked a sufficient supply of type in the same size and font, and as a result the some parts of the document use es from a different font, which are smaller and do not quite match. The language suggested that the original copy of the proclamation had actually been signed by the Rising's leaders. However no evidence has ever been found, nor do any contemporary records mention, the existence of an actually signed copy, though had such a copy existed, it could easily have been destroyed in the aftermath of the Rising by someone (in the British military, a member of the public or a Rising participant trying to destroy potentially incriminating evidence) who did not appreciate its historic importance. Molloy claimed in later life to have set the document from a handwritten copy, with signatures on a separate piece of paper which he destroyed by chewing while in prison, but this was disputed by other participants. Molloy also recalled that Connolly had asked for the document to resemble an auctioneer's notice in general design. There are about 30 original copies still remaining, one of which can be viewed in the National Print Museum. Reproductions were later made, which have sometimes been misattributed as originals. When the British soldiers recaptured Liberty Hall, they found the press with the type of the bottom of the proclamation still fully set up, and reportedly ran off some copies as souvenirs, leading to a proliferation of these 'half-copies'.James Mosley notes that complete originals rapidly became rare in the chaos, and that over a month later the Dublin police had failed to find one for their files. The signatories (as their names appeared on the Proclamation):

Thomas J. Clarke

Seán Mac Diarmada

Thomas MacDonagh

P. H. Pearse

Éamonn Ceannt

James Connolly

Joseph Plunkett

One question sometimes raised is why the first name among the 'signatories' was not Pearse but Tom Clarke, a veteran republican. Had the arrangement of names been alphabetical, Éamonn Ceannt would have appeared on top. Clarke's widow maintained that it was because the plan had been for Clarke, as a famed veteran, to become the President of the Provisional Republic. Such an explanation would certainly explain his premier position. However others associated with the Rising dismissed her claims, which she made in her memoirs. Later documents issued by the rebels gave Pearse pride of place, though as 'Commanding in Chief the Forces of the Irish Republic, and President of the Provisional Government,^[7] not 'President of the Republic'. Whether the plan had ever been to have Clarke as a symbolic head of state and Pearse as head of government, or was simply that Pearse was always to be central but with statements ambiguously describing his title, remains a mystery about which historians still speculate. All seven signatories of the proclamation were executed by the British military (James Connolly who had been wounded in the fighting was executed sitting down in a chair) in the aftermath of the Rising, being viewed as having committed treason in wartime (i.e. the First World War).British political leaders regarded the executions initially as unwise, later as a catastrophe, with the British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and later prime minister David Lloyd George stating that they regretted allowing the British military to treat the matter as a matter of military law in wartime, rather than insisting that the leaders were treated under civilian criminal law. Though initially deeply unsympathetic to the Rising (the leading Irish nationalist newspaper, the Irish Independent called for their execution), Irish public opinion switched and became more sympathetic due to manner of their treatment and executions. Eventually Asquith's government ordered a halt to the executions and insisted that those not already executed be dealt with through civilian, not military, law. By that stage all the signatories and a number of others had been executed. Full copies of the Easter Proclamation are now treated as a revered Irish national icon, and a copy was sold at auction for €390,000 in December, 2004. A copy owned (and later signed as a memento) by Rising participant Seán T. O'Kelly was presented by him to the Irish parliament buildings, Leinster House, during his tenure as President of Ireland. It is currently on permanent display in the main foyer. Other copies are on display in the GPO (headquarters of the Rising and the place where the Proclamation was first read), the National Museum of Ireland, the Trinity College Library's Long Room and other museums worldwide. Facsimile copies are sold as souvenirs in Ireland, and copies of the text are often displayed in Irish schools and in Irish pubs throughout the world. The proclamation is read aloud by an Officer of the Irish Defence Forces outside the GPO during the Easter Rising commemorations on Easter Sunday of each year.
POBLACHT NA hÉIREANN THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom. Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory. We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades in arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations. The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien Government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past. Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people. We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.

Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government:

THOMAS J. CLARKE

SEAN Mac DIARMADA

P. H. PEARSE

JAMES CONNOLLY

THOMAS MacDONAGH

EAMONN CEANNT

JOSEPH PLUNKETT
Add to cart Details
1985 Wooden Smithwicks Ale 275th Anniversary Commemoration Display

€250.00

This beautiful and colourful display constructed from wood was commissioned in 1985 to celebrate the 275th anniversary of the founding of the brewery by John Smithwick in 1710. The brewery is on the site of a Franciscan abbey, where monks had brewed ale since the 14th century, and ruins of the original abbey still remain on its grounds. The old brewery has since been renovated and now hosts "The Smithwick's Experience Kilkenny" visitor attraction and centre.At the time of its closure, it was Ireland's oldest operating brewery. 60cm x 85cm Kilkenny City John Smithwick was an orphan who had settled in Kilkenny. Shortly after his arrival, Smithwick went into the brewing business with Richard Cole on a piece of land that Cole had leased from the Duke of Ormond in 1705. Five years later, John Smithwick became the owner of the land. The brewery stayed small, servicing a loyal local following while John Smithwick diversified. Following John Smithwick's death, the brewery temporarily fell out of family hands. John Smithwick's great grandson, Edmond bought the brewery land back freehold and worked to reshape its future. Edmond concentrated on discovering new markets and successfully building export trade. Drinkers in England, Scotland and Wales developed a taste for Smithwick's brews and output increased fivefold. As a result of substantial contributions made to St Mary's Cathedral, Edmond became great friends with Irish liberal Daniel O'Connell, who later became godfather to one of his sons. Edmond Smithwick became well known and respected by the people of Kilkenny who elected him town mayor four times. In 1800, export sales began to fall and the brewing industry encountered difficulty. To combat this, the Smithwick family increased production in their maltings, began selling mineral water and delivered butter with the ale from the back of their drays.By 1900, output was at an all-time low and the then owner James Smithwick was advised by auditors to shut the doors of the brewery. Instead, James reduced the range of beers they produced and set out to find new markets. He secured military contracts and soon after saw output increase again. James' son, Walter, took control in 1930 and steered the brewery to success through the hardships of both World War II and increasingly challenging weather conditions.By January 1950, Smithwick's was exporting ale to Boston.Smithwick's was purchased from Walter Smithwick in 1965 by Guinness and is now, along with Guinness, part of Diageo. Together, Guinness & Co. and Smithwick's developed and launched Smithwick's Draught Ale in 1966. By 1979, half a million barrels were sold each year.In 1980, Smithwick's began exporting to France. In 1993, Smithwick's Draught became Canada's leading imported ale.By 2010, Smithwick's continued to be brewed in Dundalk and Kilkenny with tankers sent to Dublin to be kegged for the on trade market. Cans and bottles were packaged by IBC in Belfast.Production in the Kilkenny brewery finished on 31 December 2013 and Smithwicks brands are now produced in the Diageo St.James' Gate brewery in Dublin.The original Kilkenny site was sold to Kilkenny County Council, with a small portion of the site dedicated to the opening of a visitor's centre, the "Smithwick's Experience Kilkenny".

Add to cart Details
Classy Retro 1950s Hennessy Cognac Advertising Print

€250.00

We at the Irish Pub Emporium are very fond of a drop of Brandy (especially combined with Baileys Irish Cream Liquor!) so it would be remiss of us not to include this classy retro Hennessy Cognac Advertising print which is set off in a beautiful pastel coloured frame.Also remembering Hennessy was founded by the Irishman Richard Hennessy in 1765. 70cm x 57cm Abbeyleix Co Laois Hennessy was born in 1724 to James Hennessy and Catherine Barrett at Ballymacmoy House, Killavullen, a small village in County Cork, Ireland. His paternal family were of Gaelic Irish stock; the Hennessys were anciently of the Laighin and claimed descent from a junior branch of the O'Dempsey family. Specifically with Richard's family, his family were able to restore themselves to a level of prominence through his grandfather's marriage to a daughter of the Norman descended Sir Richard Nagle. Growing up an Irish Catholic to a family of some ambition, in the aftermath of the Revolution of 1688, whereby Anglo-Protestant hegemony was operative in Ireland, the young Richard Hennessy at the age of 19 elected to leave the country for Bourbon France. Here he joined the Clare Regiment of the Irish Brigade in the French Army, serving as an officer. This was in the service of king Louis XV of France. Shortly after the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745 he became familiar with the Charente region, famous for its cognac production. Using money he had earned in his military career, he decided to become involved in cognac investment from afar, without much success initially.
Richard Hennessy and his cousin James Hennessy went to Ostend in Flanders in 1757 to learn how to trade. Upon returning to France in 1765 he decided to settle in the Charente area permanently with his wife Ellen Barrett (an aunt of the political philosopher Edmund Burke) and their son Jacques Hennessy (11 October 1765 – 22 April 1843). With the assistance of some of the banking houses in Paris, he and two business partners by the name of Connelly and Arthur began trading in cognac from his house. During this time the trade in alcoholic spirits were booming, popular not only with French customers, but also with foreigners, especially people from the British Empireshowing interest, leading to a massive boom in cognac in the 1760s. Indeed, in Hennessy's homeland, the Kingdom of Ireland, spirits from the European Continent were popular, because customs duties were much lower than those imposed in the Kingdom of Great Britain. As well as this there was a shortage of rum due to the Seven Years' War and "implied that the growing taste for alcohol could only be satisfied by increased imports." Hennessy expanded his customer base by shipping the product from Cognac to London, Dublin and Flanders. He also had clients at the Court of the King of France, such as the Prince of Soubise, familiar with the Charente. However, the Hennessy House was still of negligible importance in the 1770s, and Richard Hennessy left the city in 1776 to settle in Bordeaux, where he had associates, as a distiller, in association with alderman George Boyd. It was only in the context of the revolutionary decade that "the Hennessy, until then a minor house, reached the rank of great." Two marriage covenants with an older and firmly established house, the Martells, allowed and endorsed both this promotion in the last decade of the century.

Add to cart Details
Extremely Rare Walkers Limerick Whiskey Advertisement

€250.00

52cm x 65cm Thomondgate Limerick This advertising print is as rare as a white rhino.Namely because one of Limerick City's only ever distillery's was Archibald Walkers located at Thomondgate on the banks of the River Shannon and it sadly closed in 1905.Originally owned by the Steins,who was we know were related to the Jamesons of Bow Street through marriage ,they sold the business to a Archibald Walker in 1879.Walker already owned the Vauxhall distillery in Liverpool and the Adelphi in Glasgow,making him the only distiller to ever simultaneously own a distillery in Scotland,England and Ireland.Walkers employed 70 men and produced 300,000 gallons of whiskey, which was much smaller than most of its competitors .The distillery did have a small local trade but most of the whiskey appears to have been exported to England.Business was badly affected by the economic downturn in 1900-1902 and was sold to Scottish Distillers Co,who within three years had closed down all of Archibalds Walkers three distilleries.Little or nothing of the distillery building remains today and bottles bearing the Limerick Whiskey label seem to have totally disappeared save a few mirrors and prints in a few old Limerick pubs - hence the absolute rarity value of this beautiful piece as it is well in excess of 115 years old.Please email us directly about this rare gem.

Add to cart Details
1950s John Jameson Three Star Advert

€250.00

Fantastic John Jameson advertising print from the 1950s.Will provide a stunning feature above a doorway in any Irish pub or home bar with an affinity for all things Jameson. Tullamore Co Offaly 61cm x 86cm John Jameson was originally a lawyer from Alloa in Scotland before he founded his eponymous distillery in Dublin in 1780.Prevoius to this he had made the wise move of marrying Margaret Haig (1753–1815) in 1768,one of the simple reasons being Margaret was the eldest daughter of John Haig, the famous whisky distiller in Scotland. John and Margaret had eight sons and eight daughters, a family of 16 children. Portraits of the couple by Sir Henry Raeburn are on display in the National Gallery of Ireland. John Jameson joined the Convivial Lodge No. 202, of the Dublin Freemasons on the 24^th June 1774 and in 1780, Irish whiskey distillation began at Bow Street. In 1805, he was joined by his son John Jameson II who took over the family business that year and for the next 41 years, John Jameson II built up the business before handing over to his son John Jameson the 3^rd in 1851. In 1901, the Company was formally incorporated as John Jameson and Son Ltd. Four of John Jameson’s sons followed his footsteps in distilling in Ireland, John Jameson II (1773 – 1851) at Bow Street, William and James Jameson at Marrowbone Lane in Dublin (where they partnered their Stein relations, calling their business Jameson and Stein, before settling on William Jameson & Co.). The fourth of Jameson's sons, Andrew, who had a small distillery at Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, was the grandfather of Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of wireless telegraphy. Marconi’s mother was Annie Jameson, Andrew’s daughter. John Jameson’s eldest son, Robert took over his father’s legal business in Alloa. The Jamesons became the most important distilling family in Ireland, despite rivalry between the Bow Street and Marrowbone Lane distilleries. By the turn of the 19th century, it was the second largest producer in Ireland and one of the largest in the world, producing 1,000,000 gallons annually. Dublin at the time was the centre of world whiskey production. It was the second most popular spirit in the world after rum and internationally Jameson had by 1805 become the world's number one whiskey. Today, Jameson is the world's third largest single-distillery whiskey. Historical events, for a time, set the company back. The temperance movement in Ireland had an enormous impact domestically but the two key events that affected Jameson were the Irish War of Independence and subsequent trade war with the British which denied Jameson the export markets of the Commonwealth, and shortly thereafter, the introduction of prohibition in the United States. While Scottish brands could easily slip across the Canada–US border, Jameson was excluded from its biggest market for many years.

Historical pot still at the Jameson distillery in Cork

The introduction of column stills by the Scottish blenders in the mid-19th-century enabled increased production that the Irish, still making labour-intensive single pot still whiskey, could not compete with. There was a legal enquiry somewhere in 1908 to deal with the trade definition of whiskey. The Scottish producers won within some jurisdictions, and blends became recognised in the law of that jurisdiction as whiskey. The Irish in general, and Jameson in particular, continued with the traditional pot still production process for many years.In 1966 John Jameson merged with Cork Distillers and John Powers to form the Irish Distillers Group. In 1976, the Dublin whiskey distilleries of Jameson in Bow Street and in John's Lane were closed following the opening of a New Midleton Distillery by Irish Distillers outside Cork. The Midleton Distillery now produces much of the Irish whiskey sold in Ireland under the Jameson, Midleton, Powers, Redbreast, Spot and Paddy labels. The new facility adjoins the Old Midleton Distillery, the original home of the Paddy label, which is now home to the Jameson Experience Visitor Centre and the Irish Whiskey Academy. The Jameson brand was acquired by the French drinks conglomerate Pernod Ricard in 1988, when it bought Irish Distillers. The old Jameson Distillery in Bow Street near Smithfield in Dublin now serves as a museum which offers tours and tastings. The distillery, which is historical in nature and no longer produces whiskey on site, went through a $12.6 million renovation that was concluded in March 2016, and is now a focal part of Ireland's strategy to raise the number of whiskey tourists, which stood at 600,000 in 2017.Bow Street also now has a fully functioning Maturation Warehouse within its walls since the 2016 renovation. It is here that Jameson 18 Bow Street is finished before being bottled at Cask Strength. In 2008, The Local, an Irish pub in Minneapolis, sold 671 cases of Jameson (22 bottles a day),making it the largest server of Jameson's in the world – a title it maintained for four consecutive years. Origins :Co Clare Dimensions:20cm x 65cm 3kg

Add to cart Details
1884 Charles Stuart Parnell Portrait

€250.00

85cm x 72cm Rathdrum Co Wicklow Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891) will be remembered as one of the most iconic and indeed controversial politicians in Irish history.MP and Leader of the Irish Parliamentary or Home Rule Party from1882 to 1891 until revelations of his adulterous love affair with Kitty O'Shea forced his resignation.He died shortly afterwards from pneumonia in the arms of his newly divorced and remarried wife Katherine.His death was considered to be a direct result of the stresses he endured because of the Victorian era scandal and his subsequent funeral at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin was attended by more than 200000 people.His notability was such that his gravestone of unhewn Wicklow granite, erected in 1940,reads only Parnell. This faithful portrayal of Parnell,well over 130 years old, by the artist JG Wills dates to 1884 and is a beautiful homage to the "uncrowned king of Ireland".

Add to cart Details
Original Dunville & Co Whisky Print

€250.00

Dunville & Co Whisky Distillery was founded in Belfast Co Antrim in the 1820s,after initially gaining success as a whisky blender before constructing its own distillery.In 1837 Dunville began producing its most popular whiskey,Dunvilles VR.Athough Dunvilles was established and based in Ireland before partition and Irish Whiskey is normally spellt with an 'e',Dunvilles Whisky was always spelt without the vowel.This beautiful original print,originating from the Glens of Co Antrim,shows off the extent of the size of its Belfast distillery operation back in the day. Belfast 63cm x 80cm

Add to cart Details
Cork Distilleries Ltd Old Irish Whisky “Paddy” Advert

€200.00

Extremely rare Cork Distilleries Ltd Old Irish Whisky Advertising Print.We estimate this beautifully and originally framed advert to be well in excess of 120 years old, which we can tell by the Cork telephone exchange numbers 151 and 850.How Paddy whiskey became to be known synonymously is a fascinating story.Reprographics and original available in aged frames-please email us at irishpubemporium@gmail.com for price. 57cm x 48cm Cork The Cork Distilleries Company was founded in 1867 to merge four existing distilleries in Cork city (the North Mall, the Green, Watercourse Road, and Daly's) under the control of one group.A fifth distillery, the Midleton distillery, joined the group soon after in 1868. In 1882, the company hired a young Corkman called Paddy Flaherty as a salesman. Flaherty travelled the pubs of Cork marketing the company's unwieldy named "Cork Distilleries Company Old Irish Whiskey". His sales techniques (which including free rounds of drinks for customers) were so good, that when publicans ran low on stock they would write the distillery to reorder cases of "Paddy Flaherty's whiskey". In 1912, with his name having become synonymous with the whiskey, the distillery officially renamed the whiskey Paddy Irish Whiskey in his honour. In 1920s and 1930s in Ireland, whiskey was sold in casks from the distillery to wholesalers, who would in turn sell it on to publicans. To prevent fluctuations in quality due to middlemen diluting their casks, Cork Distilleries Company decided to bottle their own whiskey known as Paddy, becoming one of the first to do so. Origins :Co Cork Dimensions :60cm x 48cm 7kg

Add to cart Details
The Old Bog Road Connemara Irish Whiskey Advert

€200.00

Highly unusual Connemara The Old Bog Road Homemade Pot Still Whiskey Advert. 60cm x 47cm Clifden Co Galway Because of the dearth of information surrounding this advert, we suspect that this advert may have been a cover for a poitín distilling operation perhaps, whose spiritual home and epicentre would have been in Connemara and the West of Ireland. Poitín is actually our national drink - not the black stuff of corporations or the mass-produced whiskey of the clubhouse elite. It came before them, it came from us. A magical white spirit, it belonged to every man and woman. Before whiskey there was poitín. Poitín is Ireland’s original spirit and the precursor to modern-day whiskey, with a rich history and an irreverent past. Banned for over 200 years by a foreign parliament, poitín was considered by most to be a vastly superior product to the mass-produced legal whiskeys, or ‘parliament whiskeys’, made by the large manufacturers. To quote the Irish writer and clergyman Caesar Otway – “To every Irishman poitín is superior in sweetness, salubriety and gusto, to all that machinery, science and capital can produce in the legalised way”. The word ‘poitín’ comes from the Irish word for a pot, ‘pota’. This refers to the small pot-still commonly used by poitín distillers. Being caught with a poitín still by the excise men, sometimes accompanied by the British army, would mean a hefty fine or time spent in jail. Traditionally poitín was distilled from malted grains such as barley, oats, wheat and occasionally rye. Only relatively recently was poitín made from alternative ingredients such as potatoes, whey, beets or sugar. The highest quality poitín is still that made from grain alone. The traditional drink at Irish wakes, funerals, weddings and fairs, poitín is also renowned for its medicinal properties. A hot poitín is still considered by many to be the best way to get rid of a cold or flu. Poitín is also rumoured to be a remedy for impotence, as well as a powerful aphrodisiac. Thankfully, poitín is now legal again (since 1997), after a 200 year ‘hiatus’. It enjoys Geographical Indicative Protection from the European Union, and may only be produced on the island of Ireland.

Add to cart Details
Large Irish Writers Charcoal Sketch

€200.00

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

Add to cart Details
Sweet Afton GAA Hurling & Football All Ireland Records Advert

€200.00

Fantastic original Sweet Afton Virginia Cigarettes Advertising print with beautiful images of the two holy grails in Irish Sport-The Sam Maguire Cup for the All Ireland Gaelic football Champions and the Liam McCarthy Cup for the All Ireland Hurling Champions.A footballer from Cork and a hurler from Kilkenny are featured in this charming print. Also the winners and shorelines from All Irelands from 1887 to 1963 are included underneath.Acharming addition to any wall space Dimensions: 75cm x 55cm Origins;Aughrim Co Galway Unglazed

A 20-pack of Sweet Afton cigarettes with a text warning in both Irish and English stating "Smoking kills".

Product type Cigarette

Old Afton advertisement on a pub in Wexford

Sweet Afton was an Irish brand of short, unfiltered cigarettes made with Virginia tobacco and produced by P.J. Carroll & Co., Dundalk, Ireland, now a subsidiary of British American Tobacco. The Sweet Afton brand was launched by Carroll's in 1919 to celebrate the link between Dundalk and the national poet of Scotland, Robert Burns. Burns' eldest sister, Agnes, lived in Dundalk from 1817 until her death in 1834 and was buried in the cemetery of St. Nicholas's Church in the town. Carroll's thought that the brand would only be successful in Scotland if the carton simply had an image of Burns, or Scottish name on the packet, so the people of Dundalk were canvassed and the name Sweet Afton was chosen. The name is taken from Burns' poem "Sweet Afton", which itself takes its title from the poem's first stanza: Flow gently, sweet Afton, amang thy green braes Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise My Mary’s asleep by they murmuring stream Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream. A larger version of the cigarette was also marketed under the brand name Afton Major. This name served as inspiration for Carroll's later Majorbrand of tipped cigarettes. As of Autumn 2011, British American Tobacco no longer manufactures Sweet Afton cigarettes. The text "Thank you for your loyalty, unfortunately Sweet Afton will not be available in the future. However Major, our other Irish brand with similar tobacco will still be widely available for purchase." was written on a sticker that was put on the last line of packs, before it went out of production. The brand proved particularly popular with post World War II Rive Gauche Paris. It was reputed to be Jean-Paul Sartre's preferred cigarette, and also featured prominently in Louis Malle's film Le Feu Follet, as well as a number of other Nouvelle Vague films.Margot Tenenbaum (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) from Wes Anderson's 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums also smokes Sweet Aftons. Thomas Shelby, in Peaky Blinders, smokes Sweet Aftons. They are also the favoured brand of Gerhard Selb, the eponymous private investigator in the trilogy by Bernhard Schlink

Origins : Co Kilkenny Dimensions : 48cm x 62cm

Add to cart Details
1953 RDS Dublin Horse Show Advertising Poster

€200.00
65cm x 52cm Naas Co Kildare RDS (Royal Dublin Society) Dublin Horse Show advertising print from August 1953 featuring a beautiful painting depicting horses at pasture by the artist Olive Whitmore.The advert was printed by Alex Thom & Co Ltd Dublin and also describes the various modes of transport available to prospective horseshow goers, namely the GNR or Great Northern Railway. This print is available as a high quality reproduction with an antique frame.For price details on the original ,please email us directly at irishpubemporium@gmail.com Founded in 1876,the GNR was a merger between the Irish North Western Railway,Northern Railway of Ireland and Ulster Railway.The company was nationalised later in 1953 before being finally liquidated 5 years later with its assets divided upon national lines between the Ulster Transport Authority & Ćoras Iompair Éireann (CIE). The first Dublin Horse Show took place in 1864 and was operated in conjunction with the Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland. The first solely Society-run Horse Show was held in 1868 and was one of the earliest "leaping" competitions ever held.Over time it has become a high-profile International show jumping competition, national showing competition and major entertainment event in Ireland. In 1982 the RDS hosted the Show Jumping World Championshipsand incorporated it into the Dublin Horse Show of that year. The Dublin Horse Show has an array of national & international show jumping competitions and world class equestrian entertainment, great shopping, delicious food, music & fantastic daily entertainment. There are over 130 classes at the Show and they can be generally categorised into the following types of equestrian competitions: showing classes, performance classes and showjumping classes.

The first show was held in 1864 under the auspices of the Society, but organised by the Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland.

There were 366 entries in the first Show with a total prize fund of £520.

On the 28, 29 and 30 July 1868 the first show was held and organised by the Royal Dublin Society on the lawns of Leinster House. The Council granted £100 out of the Society's funds to be awarded in prizes. It started as a show of led-horses and featured ‘leaping' demonstrations.

The first prize for the Stone Wall competition (6ft) in 1868 was won by Richard Flynn on hunter, Shane Rhue (who sold for £1,000 later that day).

Ass and mule classes were listed at the first show!

In 1869 the first Challenge Cup was presented for the best exhibit in the classes for hunters and young horses likely to make hunters.

In 1870 the Show was named ‘The National Horse Show', taking place on the 16-19 August. It was combined with the Annual Sheep Show organised by the Society.

1869 was the year ‘horse leaping' came to prominence. There was the high leap over hurdles trimmed with gorse; the wall jump over a loose stone wall of progressive height not exceeding 6 feet; and the wide leap over 2 ½ ft gorse-filled hurdle with 12 ft of water on the far side.

The original rules for the leaping competitions were simply ‘the obstacles had to be cleared to the satisfaction of the judges'.

The prizes for the high and wide leaps were £5 for first and £2 for second with £10 and a cup to the winner of the championship and a riding crop and a fiver to the runner up.

In 1881 the Show moved to ‘Ball's Bridge', a greenfield site. The first continuous ‘leaping' course was introduced at the Show.

In 1881 the first viewing stand was erected on the site of the present Grand Stand. It held 800 people.

With over 800 entries in the Show in 1895, it was necessary to run the jumping competitors off in pairs - causing difficulties for the judges at the time!

Women first took part in jumping competitions from 1919.

A class for women was introduced that year on the second day of the Show (Wednesday was the second day of the Show in 1919. Ladies' Day moved to Thursday, the second day, when the Show went from six to five days). Quickly after that, from the 1920s onwards, women were able to compete freely in many competitions at the Show.

Women competed in international competitions representing their country shortly after WWII.

As the first "Ladies' Jumping Competition" was held on the second day of the Show this day become known as Ladies' Day. A name that has stuck ever since.

In 1925 Colonel Zeigler of the Swiss Army first suggested holding an international jumping event. The Aga Khan of the time heard of this proposal and offered a challenge trophy to the winner of the competition.

In 1926 International Competitions were introduced to the show and was the first time the Nations' Cup for the Aga Khan Challenge trophy was held.

Six countries competed in the first international teams competition for the Aga Khan Challenge trophy - Great Britain, Holland, Belgium, France, Switzerland and Ireland. The Swiss team won the title on Irish bred horses.

The Swiss team won out the original trophy in 1930. Ireland won the first replacement in 1937 and another in 1979, Britain in 1953 and 1975. The present trophy is the sixth in the series and was presented by His Highness the Aga Khan in 1980.

Up until 1949 the Nations' Cup teams had to consist of military officers.

The first Grand Prix (Irish Trophy) held in 1934 was won by Comdt.J.D.(Jed) O'Dwyer, of the Army Equitation school. The Irish Trophy becomes the possession of the rider if it is won three times in succession or four times in all.

The first timed jumping competition was held in 1938. In 1951 an electric clock was installed and the time factor entered most competitions.

In 1976, after 50 years of international competition, the two grass banks in the Arena were removed so the Arena could be used for other events. The continental band at the western end of the Main Arena was added later.

Shows have been held annually except from 1914-1919 due to WW1 and from 1940-1946 due to WW2.

In 2003 the Nations Cup Competition for the Aga Khan Trophy became part of the Samsung Super League under the auspices of the Federation Equestre Internationale.

The Nations Cup Competition for the Aga Khan Trophy is part of the Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup™ Series.

The Dublin Horse Show is Ireland's largest equestrian event, and one of the largest events held on the island.

The Show has one of the largest annual prize pools for international show jumping in the world.
Add to cart Details

Kerry Footballers 3 in a row Team Photo 1986

€200.00

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

Event

1986 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship

Kerry	Tyrone

2-15	1-10

Date

21 September 1986

Venue

Attendance

68,628

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

Add to cart Details

Lets go to Ireland Home of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey Advert

€200.00

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

Historical pot still at the Jameson distillery in Cork

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

Add to cart Details
Ah…thats Bass Dubliners Advert

€200.00

57cm x 75cm Dublin The Dubliners were quite simply one of the most famous Irish folk bands of all time.Founded in 1962,they enjoyed a 50 year career with the success of the band centred on their two lead singers,Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew.They garnered massive international acclaim with their lively Irish folk songs,traditional street ballads and instrumentals eventually crossing over to mainstream culture by appearing on Top of the Pops in 1967 with "Seven Drunken Nights" which sold over 250000 singles in the UK alone.Later a number of collaborations with the Pogues saw them enter the UK singles charts again on another 2 occasions.Instrumental in popularising Irish folk music abroad ,they influenced many generations of Irish bands and covers of Irish ballads such as Raglan Road and the Auld Triangle by Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew tend to be regarded as definitive versions.They also enjoyed a hard drinking and partying image and this advertising collaboration with Bass Ales must be seen as the perfect fit in terms of a target audience !

Add to cart Details
1903 All Ireland Hurling Final Cork v Kilkenny B&W Framed Photo

€200.00

58cm x 67cm Urlingford Co Kilkenny Unique,large photograph taken of a goalmouth scene during the 1903 hurling final between Cork(represented by Blackrock) and Kilkenny (Three Castles) at Dungarvan Co Waterford.The final result was an emphatic win for the Corkmen 8-9 to 0-8.The game was played with 17 players aside and it was not until 1913 that teams were reduced to the present day 15 a side.The goalposts which can be clearly seen in the photo were changed to the uprights format with crossbar in 1910 which are in use up to the present time.

Add to cart Details
Out of stock

1936 All Ireland Hurling Champions Limerick En route to America

€200.00

Extremely rare photograph of the 1936 Limerick Hurlers as they embarked on a tour of the USA after winning the All Ireland. This photo was taken on board a transatlantic liner shows a very happy group setting sail for America where they would be feted as was customary for reigning All Ireland champions. 53cm x 65cm Castleconnell Co Limerick

In 1936, the Limerick GAA hurlers took on a New York team at Yankee Stadium.

British Pathe has shared this amazing footage of the Limerick GAA hurling team taking on the New York-based hurling team on the hallowed grounds of Yankee Stadium in 1936. The historic footage, which unfortunately does not include sound, features the Limerick hurling team posing as a group on the pitch, as well as longshots of the match and the crowds in the grandstands.British Pathe noted that M. Mackey and T. Ryan scored for Limerick, and the final score was 16 points to 9 points, with Limerick as the victors.

Details

1973 GAA Allstars Framed Poster(Original Version)

€200.00

Rare GAA Allstars Poster.In 1973 Cork were victorious in Football and Limerick won the Hurling . 90cm x 60cm Limerick City

1973 Hurling Allstars

Pos.	Player	Team	Appearances	Rationale
GK	Noel Skehan	Kilkenny	2	"For his courageous defiance, his agility and trustworthiness making him the kind of goalkeeper that any player would be happy to have behind him."
RCB	Phil "Fan" Larkin	Kilkenny	1	"For his dependability in defence, which combines with his natural hurling skill to establish him as one of the great corner backs of today."
FB	Pat Hartigan	Limerick	3	"For his undiminished skill and dependability in a very demanding position where quite often brawn is substituted for hurling artistry."
LCB	Jim O'Brien	Limerick	1	"For his rare bravery and mobility: for the all-round splender of his contribution to Limerick's much-delayed return to championship honours."
RWB	Colm Doran	Wexford	1	"For his alertness and sense of judgement, for the crispness of his stroke which played such a sizeable part in regaining the National League title for his county."
CB	Pat Henderson	Kilkenny	1	"For his sheer skill and obstinacy in defence, his tenacious approach and the devotion he continues to give to the game."
LWB	Seán Foley	Limerick	1	"For the fervour he brings to all facets of hurling, and particularly for his dedicated half-back play which contributed so much to Limerick's 1973 successes."
MD	Liam O'Brien	Kilkenny	1	"For his artistic stick-work which he has demonstrated with increasing regularity, and for establishing himself as one of the most elegant and energetic midfielders of recent times."
MD	Richie Bennis	Limerick	1	"For the level-headedness he has so frequently shown in the tightest of situations and for his exceptionally high rate of scoring."
RWF	Francis Loughnane	Tipperary	3	"For his incisive intelligent running which so often splits opposing defences: for the remarkable consistency and accuracy of his marksmanship."
CF	Pat Delaney	Kilkenny	2	"For highlighting just how vigorous play can be totally fair, particularly during his famous attacks towards the opposing goal."
LWF	Éamonn Grimes	Limerick	1	"For his seemingly limitless energy and his desire to work all over the field: qualities which have made him a natural leader and a high scorer."
RCF	Martin Quigley	Wexford	1	"For the wide range of his playing skills, his constancy of purpose and his obvious versatility."
FF	Kieran Purcell	Kilkenny	1	"For the out-and-out hard work he puts into the game. For his power of striking and his adaptability in attack."
LCF	Eddie Keher	Kilkenny	3	"For his enormously successful scoring record, his fluency of stroke and his accurate passing which create so many chances for his team mates."

Pos.	Player	Team	Appearances
GK	Billy Morgan	Cork	1
RCB	Frank Cogan	Cork	1
FB	Mick Ryan	Offaly	2
LCB	Brian Murphy	Cork	1
RWB	Liam O'Neill	Galway	1
CB	Tommy Joe Gilmore	Galway	2
LWB	Kevin Jer O'Sullivan	Cork	2
MD	John O'Keeffe	Kerry	1
MD	Dinny Long	Cork	1
RWF	Johnny Cooney	Offaly	2
CF	Kevin Kilmurray	Offaly	2
LWF	Liam Sammon	Galway	2
RCF	Jimmy Barry-Murphy	Cork	1
FF	Ray Cummins	Cork	2
LCF	Anthony McGurk	Derry	1

Add to cart Details

Panoramic Modern Croke Park Framed Photograph

€200.00

Fantastic panoramic photo of the modern Croke Park,one of the most iconic sporting venues in the World. Dimensions: 36cm x110cm Croke Park (Irish: Páirc an Chrócaigh) is a Gaelic games stadium located in Dublin, Ireland. Named after Archbishop Thomas Croke, it is sometimes called Croker by GAA fans and locals. It serves as both the principal stadium and headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). Since 1891 the site has been used by the GAA to host Gaelic sports, including the annual All-Ireland in Gaelic football and hurling. A major expansion and redevelopment of the stadium ran from 1991–2005, raising capacity to its current 82,300 spectators. This makes Croke Park the third-largest stadium in Europe, and the largest not usually used for association football. Other events held at the stadium include the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2003 Special Olympics, and numerous musical concerts. In 2012, Irish pop group Westlife sold out the stadium in record-breaking time: less than 5 minutes. From 2007–10, Croke Park hosted home matches of the Ireland national rugby union team and the Republic of Ireland national football team, while their new Aviva Stadium was constructed. This use of Croke Park for non-Gaelic sports was controversial and required temporary changes to GAA rules. In June 2012, the stadium hosted the closing ceremony of the 50th International Eucharistic Congress during which Pope Benedict XVI gave an address over video link.

City and Suburban Racecourse

A fireworks and light display was held in Croke Park in front of 79,161 fans on Saturday 31 January 2009 to mark the GAA's 125th anniversary

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

Bloody Sunday remembrance plaque

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.

The outside of the Cusack Stand

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

Croke Park floodlights in use during Six Nations Championship match

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

U2's Vertigo Tour at Croke Park in 2005

U2's 360° Tour at Croke Park in 2009

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	U2	Christy Moore, The Pretenders, Lou Reed, Hothouse Flowers	The Joshua Tree Tour	114,000
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	Garth Brooks		World Tour II
29 May 1998	Elton John & Billy Joel		Face to Face 1998
30 May 1998	Elton John & Billy Joel		Face to Face 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	Take That	Pet Shop Boys	Progress Live	154,828
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	Westlife	Jedward, The Wanted, Lawson	Greatest Hits Tour	187,808^[24]
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	Ed Sheeran		x Tour	162,308
27 May 2016	Bruce Springsteen		The River Tour 2016	160,188
29 May 2016	Bruce Springsteen		The River Tour 2016	160,188
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	Taylor Swift	Camila Cabello, Charli XCX	Taylor Swift's Reputation Stadium Tour	136.000
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	Westlife	James Arthur Wild Youth	The 20 Touror The Twenty Tour

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 99,124

Skyline 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

Statue of Michael Cusack outside the Croke Park GAA Museum

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.

Add to cart Details

Original John Players Navy Cut Print

€200.00

Very old & original Players Navy Cut Cigarettes Showcard 47cm x 60cm Virginia Co Cavan Navy Cut were a brand of cigarettes manufactured by Imperial Brands –formerly John Player & Sons– in Nottingham, England.The brand became "Player's Navy Cut". They were particularly popular in Britain,Ireland and Germany in the late 19th century and early part of the 20th century, but were later produced in the United States. The packet has the distinctive logo of a smoking sailor in a 'Navy Cut' cap. The phrase "Navy Cut" is according to Player's adverts to originate from the habit of sailors taking a mixture of tobacco leaves and binding them with string or twine. The tobacco would then mature under pressure and the sailor could then dispense the tobacco by slicing off a "cut".The product is also available in pipe tobacco form. The cigarettes were available in tins and the original cardboard container was a four sided tray of cigarettes that slid out from a covering like a classic matchbox. The next design had fold in ends so that the cigarettes could be seen or dispensed without sliding out the tray. In the 1950s the packaging moved to the flip top design like most brands.

Enamelled metal box for 1 ounce of tobacco

The image of the sailor was known as "Hero" because of the name on his hat band. It was first used in 1883 and the lifebuoy was added five years later. The sailor images were an 1891 artists concept registered for Chester-based William Parkins and Co for their "Jack Glory" brand.Behind the sailor are two ships. The one on the left is thought to be HMS Britannia and the one on the right HMS Dreadnought or HMS Hero. As time went by the image of the sailor changed as it sometimes had a beard and other times he was clean shaven. In 1927 "Hero" was standardised on a 1905 version. As part of the 1927 marketing campaign John Player and Sons commissioned an oil painting Head of a Sailor by Arthur David McCormick.The Player's Hero logo was thought to contribute to the cigarettes popularity in the 20s and 30s when competitor W.D. & H.O. Wills tried to create a similar image. Unlike Craven A, Navy Cut was intended to have a unisex appeal. Advertisements referred to "the appeal to Eve's fair daughters" and lines like "Men may come and Men may go".

WWII cigarette packets exhibited at Monmouth Regimental Museumin 2012

Hero is thought to have originally meant to indicate traditional British values, but his masculinity appealed directly to men and as a potential uncle figure for younger women. One slogan written inside the packet was "It's the tobacco that counts" and another was "Player's Please" which was said to appeal to the perceived desire of the population to be included in the mass market. The slogan was so well known that it was sufficient in a shop to get a packet of this brand. Player's Medium Navy Cut was the most popular by far of the three Navy Cut brands (there was also Mild and Gold Leaf). Two thirds of all the cigarettes sold in Britain were Players and two thirds of these was branded as Players Medium Navy Cut. In January 1937, Players sold nearly 3.5 million cigarettes (which included 1.34 million in London. The popularity of the brand was mostly amongst the middle class and in the South of England. While it was smoked in the north, other brands were locally more popular. The brand was discontinued in the UK in 2016.

Add to cart Details
Classic Tyrconnell Old Irish Whisky Print

€200.00

Classic Tyrconnell Whiskey Advert depicting the racehorse Tyrconnell (Gaelic for Co Donegal) who was owned by Andrew Watt. 54cm x 75cm. Belfast This historic brand of whiskey has now been revived by the Cooley Distillery (which is now part of Beam Suntory).The brand was previously owned by the Watt Distillery, which (according to the company) dates back to 1762. The Tyrconnell was their flagship brand, and was named after a racehorse owned by Andrew Alexander Watt. The horse was a chestnut colt that won at 100 to 1 odds in 1876 in the Irish horse race called The National Produce Stakes.The actual horse race is depicted on the label. Tír Chonaill in the Irish Language comes from Tír meaning “Land of” and Chonaill which was the name of an ancient 5th Century High King of the North West of Ireland in the 5th century who was a son of the famous Niall of the Nine Hostages. Tyrconnell was therefore the name of this ancient North West Irish Kingdom and is still to this day used as the Irish language name of Donegal in the North West of Ireland. Tír Chonaill would have encompassed the modern county of Donegal and much of her neighbouring counties of Sligo, Leitrim, Fermanagh and Tyrone. The Kingdom survived until 1601. In 1876, the Donegal – Derry based Watt family who owned one of the largest whiskey distilleries in Ireland entered a racehorse called “Tyrconnell” (after the local ancient kingdom) in the Irish Classic “National Produce Stakes” where it won against all the odds at an incredible 100 to 1. This spectacular achievement inspired the Watt whiskey distillery in Derry to celebrate the occasion with a special commemorative Tyrconnell Irish whiskey label. The Tyrconnell was, before American prohibition, one of the biggest selling whiskey brands in the United States. Pre-prohibition photos taken in Yankee Stadium in New York show Tyrconnell Irish Whiskey billboards in positions of prominence at the venue. All three of the company’s whiskey brands enjoyed great success in the export sector. Sales in England, Canada, Australia, Nigeria and the West Indies and the U.S. put Derry on the commercial map as never before. Unfortunately, with the decline of Irish Whiskey after prohibition, Watts distillery and Tyrconnell whiskey faded and died like the majority of Irish whiskey distilleries and brands of the time. When the Cooley Irish Whiskey Distillery was recommissioned by Dr. John Teeling a few years ago, Tyrconnell was one of the old iconic Irish whiskey brands that Cooley brought back to life. Cooley Distillery and the Cooley Irish Whiskey brands are now owned by the Japanese – American whiskey giant Beam Suntory. Today, Tyrconnell whiskey is available as a standard 10 Year Old Cooley Single Malt and is also available through the Tyrconnell Irish Whiskey Finishes Collection in Port Pipe, Madeira Cask and Sherry Butt finishes at 46% abv as well as a 15 Year Old Single Cask expression. Andrew Watt (4 November 1853 – 11 October 1928) was an Anglo-Irish businessman with a net worth of over £900,000 at his death in 1928, worth £51.8 million in 2016.He was born in 1853 to Samuel Watt of Thornhill and his wife Jane Newman, daughter of Captain Robert Newman, R.N.. He was educated at Foyle College and then at home by tutors. His family were gentry who had arrived at Claragh in County Donegal during one of the Ulster Plantations.He was the owner of Watt’s Distillery, one of the largest distilleries in Ireland, and the creator of many whiskies including the famous Tyrconnell,which he named after his racehorse that won the National Produce Stakes against the odds of 100 to 1. During industrial unrest of 1921, brought about by prohibition in the United States and the First World War, Watt’s workers at the distillery were made redundant after challenging his authority. Watt is said to have stood on a barrel outside the gates to his distillery in Bogside, whilst the workers were on strike, and shouted, ‘Well men, I shall put it to you like this …what is it to be? Will you open the gates?’ To which the workers retorted, ‘The gates stay shut!’ This prompted Watt to reply, ‘Shut they are, and shut they shall remain!’ Watt subsequently closed down the distillery at great economic expense. On 7 October 1895, he married Violet Flora de Burgh, daughter of George de Burgh and Constance Matthews, with whom he had 4 sons and 2 daughters.He served as High Sheriff of County Londonderry from 1886 to 1887.He was a member of Boodle’s. He died at Easton Hall, where he lived in England after he left Ireland. Below is an additional and very interesting article from the Derry Historical Journal chronicling the rise and fall, like so many other Irish Whiskey distilleries, of the once all conquering Watts “Tyrconnell” brand.

When Bogside whiskey was the toast of the world

By 1887 Watts Distillery at Abbey Street was the largest in Ireland and had become a world leader in whiskey production. The massive city centre plant covered eight acres, which included Abbey Street, Fahan Street and adjoining thoroughfares.

At that time the company’s director, David Watt, installed a second Coffey still – an invention by Aeneas Coffey which revolutionised the whiskey industry – to boost output to an incredible two million gallons a year.

The firm developed three major brands, Tyrconnell, Favourite and Innishowen. In 1876, Andrew Alexander Watt entered a racehorse called “Tyrconnell” in the Irish Classic ‘National Produce Stakes’ and it won against all the odds at an incredible 100 to 1. This spectacular achievement inspired the Watt distillery to celebrate the occasion with a special commemorative Tyrconnell label. The Tyrconnell was, before prohibition, one of the biggest selling whiskey brands in the United States. Pre-prohibition photos of Yankee Stadium in New York show Tyrconnell billboards in positions of prominence at the venue. All three of the company’s brand names enjoyed great success in the export sector. Sales in England, Canada, Australia, Nigeria and the West Indies and the US put Derry on the commercial map as never before.
Water used in the distillery came from the surrounding Derry hills and was stored in reservoirs on site. The wheat and maize stores were immense. At any one time, the warehouses, ranging in size from two to four storeys in height, contained 2,000 tons of wheat and barley; 1,000 tons of maize; 1,600 tons of barley, oats and maize. Attached to these buildings were two large “Malakoff’ dry-corn kilns, capable of drying 30 tons of corn every 24 hours, while in each of the two malting houses, 16 tons of grain were malted in a steep (50 ft in length by 9 ft wide) four times a week. The Coffey stills – the revolutionary inventions designed by Aeneas Coffey – were located in a still house which was seven storeys high, the tallest building in the city apart from the Cathedral. After dilution and casking, the barrels were taken to one of the five warehouses by an overhead railway pulled by a small steam engine. An advantage by-product from the Coffey stills was fusel oil which was used to light the distillery. It had a distinctive all pervading spirituous smell that the men carried home with them in their clothes. The Abbey Street site had many distinctive features notably two massive chimneys, one 160 feet and the other 130 feet high.

Around 1820, James Robinson started distilling in the Waterside with a simple 76-gallon still. The operation was later acquired by the Meehan family who built a street in the Waterside called Meehan’s Row to accommodate the distillery workers. By the early 1830’s, the Watt family purchased the business and set out on a planned, systematic expansion of the site. Despite being successful, the Waterside operation always laboured in the shadow of the Abbey street distillery. In the 1880s, Abbey Street had the capacity to produce two million gallons of whiskey a year; the Waterside’s maximum output was 200,000 gallons. It is possible that the geographical location inhibited major expansion as the premises were situated on a steep hill and were flanked by two major thoroughfares. The decision was taken in 1902-03 by the Watt family to merge with two Belfast distilleries, the small Avoniel, owned by William Higgins and the Irish Distillery Ltd., Connswater, to form the United Distilleries Company Limited (UDC). Andrew Watt would chair the new consortium that had the capability to produce the six million gallons of grain whiskey per year. The operation would have several Coffey stills and would exert great influence within the industry becoming a major supplier of grain whiskey to blenders in both Scotland and England. Things worked perfectly at first but around 1908 and 1910, conflict arose between the UDC group and Scottish giants DCL based in Edinburgh. A series of further complicated deals between them served only to undermine confidence in both organisations. This was to be the beginning of the end for the huge Derry operation and company head, Andrew Alexander Watt closed the business after the strike of 1921. Watt himself died at his English estate in Easton Hall near Grantham in October 1928 at the age of 75. Derry Auther Ken McCormick describes the last encounter of AA Watt with his employees in a wonderful account ‘The Folly of Andrew Watt’ in his book ‘Ken McCormick’s Derry – Heroes, Villains and Ghosts’.

“A gleaming yellow Rolls Royce slowly making its way through the gloom of a cold foggy morning in the Bogside in the year 1921. The air is tense and there are huddles of men everywhere – unbelievably, the workers of Watt’s Distillery are on strike. The eight-acre site, normally humming with activity round the clock, is as silent as the grave. But in the approaching vehicle is 68 year – old Andrew Alexander Watt, and he’s intent on a showdown . . . “Andrew Watt asked to be helped up on to one of his own whiskey barrels and from there he addressed the crowd with the menacing words – ‘Well men, I shall put it to you like this . . . what is it to be? Will you open the gates?’ The workers retorted angrily- ‘The gates stay shut!’ ‘Very well!’ exclaimed Watt bluntly. ‘Shut they are, and shut they shall remain!’ “In that bleak instant the Watt’s whiskey enterprise disappeared from Derry forever. Over 300 jobs were lost, including the talents of some of Ireland’s finest whiskey blenders. Also left jobless were coopers, carpenters and a host of other tradesfolk and office staff, many of whose parents and grandparents had worked for Watts for generations.

“As for A A Watt, he left the city never to return. In doing so he turned his back on what would be a multi-million pound business in today’s world. Looking back, the outcome can only be viewed as a total disaster.” It ranks as one of the bleakest days in Derry’s industrial history and marked the end the city’s reputation as a world leader in whiskey production. Mr McCormick adds: “The loss was staggering.” The tensions created by the War of Independents and the Civil War and the introduction of new laws demanding that grain whiskey be laid down for three years before it could be sold may have had a bearing on Watt’s decision to shut up shop, although many agree that it was his expansionist tendency’s which were as Mr McCormick put it “his folly”. “Quite simply he bit off more than he could chew and left his whole operation vulnerable to a take-over,” he adds. Meanwhile some people maintained that a fire – in which several employees died – at the Abbey St distillery in 1915 was the beginning of the end for the Watts. According to Mr McCormick: “The vats had to be opened and it seems whiskey flowed along the gutters – much to the delight of the locals, it must be said, for they were able to collect bucketfuls of the precious spirit!”

Add to cart Details
Out of stock

Duncan Alderdice & Co of Newry Old Irish Whiskey Print

€200.00

80cm x 63cm. Newry Co Down Newry Co Down was synonymous with distilling until the business sadly and steadily died a commercial death.Now a local businessman Michael McKeown has acquired the old distillery site on Monaghan Street in February this year, the original location of D’Arcy’s Old Irish Whiskey since 1817 as well as many other brands over the centuries, including Duncan Alderdice & C0. Speaking at a press conference last week, McKeown said he had resurrected the title of Matthew D’Arcy & Company to honour the last distiller who occupied the site.The history of the site dates back to 1575 with research claiming that the tradition of distilling was said to have begun in the Cistercian Monastery which preceded the town of Newry. The distillery is thought to be a contender for the oldest distillery in Ireland.The distilling businesses operating in Newry before 1800 were Chapman, D’arcy, Caulfield and Thompson as well as Duncan Alderdice & Co as featured in the charming print here from the early 1890s.Chapman put his working distillery up for sale in 1802 and it is known that in 1817 all of these other parties were acting in partnership on two sites in Newry with the premises on Monaghan Street being one of those original sites. Plans for the site include the restoration of the 19th century buildings with the addition of a working distillery, a visitor’s centre, restaurant, theatre and a Victorian pub.The company aim to produce around 9000 cases per year of Old Newry single malt whiskey and to retain stocks for at least 10 years.McKeown has also registered the brand names from previous occupants of the site, such as Duncan, Alderdice & Company. The brands include The Blackthorn, The Native, Hand-in-Hand and Killeavy Cream.The distillery plans to be an “important” stop on the Irish Whiskey Trail currently being developed by Tourism Ireland, due to its location half-way between Belfast and Dublin.The distillery, which will provide a number of new jobs, is also looking to recruit a master distiller.

Details
‘Military Manoeuvres’ By Richard Moynan

€200.00

Enniscrone Co Sligo 45.5cm x 68.5cm Famous print of painting by Richard Moynan titled "Military Manoeuvres" which now resides in the National Gallery in Dublin.
The Dublin-born painter Richard Moynan was 24 years old at the commencement of his artistic training. He was educated with a view to entering the medical profession and proceeded so far on the course to need only his final examination to qualify, but his artistic instincts proved to be too strong to be resisted, and he abandoned the profession of medicine for that of art, and made it his life long study. (The Irish Times, 11 April 1906, p. 5.) Moynan entered the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (DMSA) in January 1880, having initially studied there on a part-time basis. Due to an Act of Parliament passed in 1877 the school came under the control of the Department of Science and Art of South Kensington, which aligned it with the British art education system. The headmaster, Robert Edwin Lyne, was a product of this education as he had received his instruction in the (British) National Training School prior to taking up his appointment in Dublin in 1863. In the DMSA, Moynan gained the requisite qualifications in 'Freehand, Geometry, Perspective and Object Drawing, 2nd grade' (Thoms, 1891, p. 833), which allowed him entry to the Royal Hibernian Academy Schools in 1882. The following July he was awarded the 'Albert Scholarship for the best picture shown in the Academy by a student' (Strickland, Vol II, 1913, p. 144). This enabled the artist to continue his studies in Académie Royale des Beaux Arts in Antwerp, moving on to Paris in 1885, where he honed his skills in portraiture at Académie Julian. Moynan returned to his native Dublin in December 1886 to establish a practice as a portrait painter, but he also pursued his craft in terms of genre scenes, history painting and literary subjects. The painting, Military Manoeuvres (1891), marks a watershed in the artist's development. It demonstrates his art-making process and provides an insight into his political beliefs.

Military Manoeuvres was exhibited when Moynan was at the height of his powers. In July of the previous year he was elected to full membership of the Royal Hibernian Academy, which earned him the honour of being one of 30 constituent members of the most important professional Irish artistic institution. This radically changed the painter's studio practice. It allowed him to modify both the size and pricing structure of his paintings, as he was no longer obliged to submit his work for selection to the RHA jury. Therefore, from 1891 onward Moynan tended to focus on one expensively-priced, large-scale painting per year, as well as smaller auxiliary pieces to help sustain his income. The asking price of Military Manoeuvres was £210, an amount that far exceeded the price requested by his fellow exhibitors. However, it appears that the practice of RHA members seeking inflated prices for their work was not unknown: It has often been observed by the public, though seldom ventured into print, that the resident artists of capacity demand exorbitant prices for their work and the fact is advanced as a reason why so few pictures are sold. (The Freeman's Journal, 24 March 1891, p. 5). Military Manoeuvres illustrates a crowded street-scene depicting a group of children amusing themselves by pretending to be a regimental band. The title of the work is humorous and although Moynan shows the children's ragged dress, he focuses mainly on the boys’ ability to have fun. Their toys include saucepan lids as cymbals, an upturned bucket serving as a drum, a biscuit tin, a coffee pot, a paper trumpet, a penny whistle and a wooden sword. Their leader carries a broom and wears a splendid brass helmet, which contrasts with his general apparel. This helmet was obviously purloined nefariously from some source. This attracts the attention of a passing soldier who happens to recognize the elaborate headgear as being a black-plumed band helmet from his own regiment, the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards. The trooper makes eye contact with the bandleader and steps threateningly towards him. The soldier’s lady-friend encourages him to see the funny side of the incident, while passers-by stop and stare. The success of this piece lies primarily in two areas, the skill of the artist in challenging the viewer to interpret the story, and the excellent execution of the figure work. There are 15 children in the band, all individual in facial type and dress. Moynan’s sketchbooks in the National Gallery of Ireland demonstrate his commitment to grouping and regrouping his subjects as he explored different dynamics in an effort to achieve the most effective composition. He was an acute observer of human nature and although this picture contains over 30 figures, the scene appears to be naturalistic and spacious. The viewer’s eye-movement is guided by the interaction between the young 'drum-major' and the soldier, and is, in turn, reinforced by the anxious glances of the flower seller in the foreground. This finely-painted genre scene reflects the artist's academic training. The detailed execution of the figures demonstrates the influence of the painter's RHA professor, Augustus Burke, while also showing a connection with French art practice as the cloudy sky exhibits a dull, even light made popular by the plein air painter Bastien Lepage. The scale of the work is significant as it measures 148 x 240 cm, a size that was considered to be more suitable for a history subject rather than a genre piece. The expansive scale was not without precedent, as two years earlier Aloysius O'Kelly exhibited The Station, Saying Mass in a Connemara Cabin in the R.H.A. exhibition. This work, measuring 152.5 x 178 cm is slightly smaller than Military Manoeuvres. O’Kelly’s quintessential Irish subject reflects the importance of Catholicism among the peasant population. Moynan was a keen observer of O'Kelly's work. He adapted the central motif for his award-winning painting The Last of the 24th at Isandula from an O'Kelly newspaper print entitled The State of Ireland, Affray at Belmullet, Co. Mayo, published in 1881 in The London Illustrated News. Moynan's Unionist politics differed radically from O'Kelly's Nationalism but, nevertheless, the size and the subject matter of The Station, Saying Mass in a Connemara Cabin must have struck a chord, as, two years after its appearance in the R.H.A exhibition, Moynan painted a large street scene which explored another important aspect of Irish life, the effect of the military in the every-day lives of the people. Moynan's sketchbooks in the National Gallery of Ireland provide an insight into the artist's working methods and contribute to our knowledge of the process involved in the construction of his paintings. This invaluable collection of 9 sketchbooks was donated by Gordon Lambert in memory of his friend, the artist's daughter, Eileen Nora (known as Biddy). One of the chief characteristics of the artist's work is mise en scene, or the ability to present a composition with dramatic force, as if the characters were actors arranged under the proscenium arch. This was not simply a serendipitous occurrence, as the artist's sketchbooks reveal no less than 8 studies for Military Manoeuvres. These illustrate the painter's careful assembly of material, taking infinite pains in constructing a suitable streetscape, while also exploring several alternative arrangements of the figures within the composition. This approach demonstrates the methodology employed by a classically-trained artist, who painstakingly built up a picture by addressing compositional issues and architectural detail along with exploring different methods of conveying the narrative. Most of the artist’s NGI sketchbooks are pocket-sized containing pencil slots suggesting their primary function was to capture ideas and poses. An analysis of the material relating specifically to Military Manoeuvres suggests that their chief thrust is generic, rather than specific. The artist employed the sketchbooks as a kind of manual camera, to record ideas as opposed to developing studies for specific figures. There are over 30 individuals depicted in Military Manoeuvres, each of whom is a distinct character. Moynan must have sketched and painted studies for all of these people, yet this type of detail is not present in the sketchbooks. Instead, they contain studies dealing mostly with compositional matters.

The artist's notebooks in the National Gallery provide two alternative compositions for Military Manoeuvres. Sketchbook no. 19.171, Folio 10 Verso shows a group of children marching in time to the beat of their instruments and sketchbook no. 19.175, Folio 9 recto, is essentially the same group of children, but, in this version, their leader holds a sword in his hand. It is interesting to note that the artist finally selected a passive, more psychological composition as opposed to the simpler, more action-packed version depicted in sketchbook no. 19.171, Folio 10 verso. This dynamic sketch exudes motion as the band members march forward four-abreast, the tilt of their bodies and the movement of their feet suggesting rhythm and pace as they advance energetically towards the viewer. The theme of motion is reinforced by the presence of a soldier and his lady-friend, as they walk in step with the children's band. This rhythm is also expressed by Moynan's quick, slashing pencil-strokes as he loosely establishes the figures in the foreground, the soldier and the lady. Standing on the right of the composition, conducting the action is the young drum major. Once again he is wearing the elaborate brass, regimental helmet of the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards, with its horsehair plume. His body is arched in counter-rhythm to the marching band and, at first glance, he appears to be halting the action. He waves both hands in the air; his left hand directing the music, while the tightly-gripped staff in his right hand confers almost regal authority. The attention of all members of the band is focused on his directions. The soldier looks directly ahead, while his companion curiously gesticulates towards the drum major. This composition differs enormously from the final painted version of Military Manoeuvres. It tells a much less complex story of the children's ability to find amusement by pretending to be an army band. Their enjoyment is infectious, as the soldier and his companion march along to the beat of the music. The children concentrate on their own pursuits and do not notice that their game has the added benefit of also entertaining the adults. There is no air of mystery about this piece. All parties in the picture are in harmony. The children do not tease the soldier, and there is no sign of the concerned-looking flower girl. In this version, the soldier is proud of his occupation and this sense of pride is endorsed by the children's games. The humour in the piece lies in the fact that, for a brief moment, it appears as if the trooper is an honorary member of the children's band, who has temporarily fallen under the command of the bandleader. There is a freshness and sense of immediacy about this sketch that begs the question, was this perhaps an actual event that Moynan witnessed? The soldier has been identified as wearing the walking-out dress of the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards, a regiment based in Newbridge between the late 1880s and 1893 under the command of General Sir Edward Cooper Hodge, K.B.E. Could the trooper have been visiting his home in Leixlip when he saw his young brother parading about the streets wearing his regimental band helmet? Moynan frequently worked in the Lucan/Leixilp area during the period when the Dragoon Guards were situated in Newbridge. The popularity of the spa at Lucan made it much favoured by 'visitors and invalids' (Thoms, 1891 p. 1310) as it was accessible by steam tramway which ran from Conyngham Road. The artist was a member of the Dublin Sketching Club who ventured on a field trip to the village of Lucan in the spring of 1889. His 1892 painting entitled, Old Mill - Leixlip, also suggests familiarity with the Leixlip area. Moynan's knowledge of Aloysius O'Kelly's Mass in a Connemara Cabin may have prompted him to consider the possibility of producing a large genre piece, reflecting Unionist rather than Nationalist values. The sketch he made in Leixlip village provided an excellent opportunity to explore the importance of the military within an Irish rural environment. But the artist was dissatisfied with such a simplistic arrangement as found in sketchbook no. 19.171, Folio 10 Verso, as he wished to challenge the viewer to interpret the scene. In the final version of Military Manoeuvres, the children's band is far more intent on baiting the soldier than pursuing their games. The inclusion of the flower girl enables the artist to construct a moment of tension as she observes the expression of the soldier and awaits the interaction between the trooper and the bandleader. Moynan rejected the forward march of the musical band in favour of a more diffuse arrangement, as the triangular relationship between the flower girl, the Drum-Major and the soldier prompts inquiry into the reactions of the various groups within the canvas. Indeed, the painted version of Military Manoeuvres could in fact be the sequel to the sketchbook version. This shows the artist's ability to develop, not just the compositional elements within the painting, but to modify the idea behind the narrative to produce a more engaging story line. Opinion has long been divided on the setting for Military Manoeuvres. At first glance, the streetscape mirrors that of Main Street in the village of Leixlip, Co. Kildare but certain details do not support this theory. Dr. Brian P. Kennedy's careful comparison with the near-contemporary Lawrence photograph establishes broad parallels between the photographic and the painted version, but it is difficult to reconcile certain details. This is precisely because of Moynan's approach to formulating a composition was creative rather than topographical. He had no difficulty in relocating solid architectural features in an effort to gain balance and symmetry. Kennedy remarks that the church spire is the result of 'artistic license' (Kennedy, 1993, p. 28). This is true on two counts. The church of St. Mary's is situated on the left side of the road as one proceeds up Main Street, Leixlip, in the direction of Pound Street. Furthermore, St. Mary's does not have a conventional spire but terminates in a castellated Norman-style tower. Reference to the artist’s sketchbooks reveals that the spire featured in Military Manoeuvres was 'borrowed' from the church of St. Andrew in the nearby village of Lucan. This distinctive architectural gem obviously attracted the artist, as he sketched it from no less than three different angles. Therefore, Moynan sacrificed architectural accuracy in his quest for a perfectly balanced composition. It is also possible that the presence of the spire in Military Manoeuvres had another, more personal significance for the artist, as a spire, or an obelisk, is emblematic of the craft of Freemasonry. By including the spire in Military Manoeuvres the artist may have been acknowledging the importance of ‘the craft’ and paying tribute to his fellow Masons. He had been a member of the Dublin Lodge of St. Cecilia (No. 250), since January 1887. He had special links with the Masonic Orphan Schools as its headmaster, J. Holbrook, was a fellow member of the Lodge of St. Cecilia. In 1888 the Masonic Boys School moved premises from Adelaide Hall in Merrion to Richview in Clonskeagh, to allow an increase in the student body. The artist's involvement with this charity was held in such high regard that his fellow lodge members held a special dinner in his honour. Pictorial comparisons between the school’s sports day activities, such as the tug-of-war featured in the Masonic magazine, and a 1891 painting of the same title by the artist suggest that Moynan may have sourced many of the young models for his genre scenes, including Military Manoeuvres, from the Masonic Boys School. Military Manoeuvres marks a turning point in the artist's oeuvre as it demonstrates a move away from his usual studio-based painting and shows a tendency to work out of doors. This street scene was one of six paintings exhibited by the artist in the 1891 RHA exhibition, and three other titles, Tug-of-War, ‘Wady-Buckety’, and View on the Dodder, (near Templeogue) also suggest outdoor scenes. This trend to work en plein air was a practice developed by the artist over the next ten years. It led to a group of distinctly ‘Irish Impressionist’ style paintings and canvases such as Killiney Sands painted in 1894 (currently in the Allied Irish Bank Collection), demonstrate this trend as it expresses Impressionist influences in terms of subject matter, application of paint and use of colour. Moynan was a passionate Unionist who used his art as a platform for his political beliefs. He was the chief illustrator with the leading Unionist newspaper of the day, The Union. He painted a number of highly political works, such as Home Again (1883). But the main thrust of the narrative in Military Manoeuvres is observational and humourist rather than political. Yet the artist does not shy away from showing the children's shabby surroundings. He frankly portrays the neglected state of the roads. This was probably a popular topic of discussion within the Moynan family circle as his brother, John Ouseley Bonsell Moynan, was the principal engineer for county Tipperary where he introduced an innovative system of road building and maintenance. Contrasting reviews of the 1891 RHA exhibition provide an insight into contemporary attitudes to Irish art. The critic writing for The Freeman's Journal initially addressed controversial issues such as the high prices of the exhibits and then proceeded to embark on a major diatribe regarding the lack of support for the exhibition by the government, the aristocracy and the so-called patrons of the RHA. He questioned the quality of some of the work: 'Allusion has been made to the fact that many very inferior productions are allowed a place on the walls of the exhibition' (The Freeman's Journal, 24 March 1891, p. 7) and even condemned a painting by the President of the RHA, Sir Thomas Alfred Jones (Jones was an associate of Moynan's in the Masonic Lodge): 'The President's picture Paddy's Proposal is anything but a success. Subjects of this kind are quite outside his range. He should stick to portrait painting' (The Freeman's Journal, 24 March 1891, p. 7). Yet, consistently through out three reviews the same critic extols Moynan's virtues: There is one fact undoubted that will be gratifying to the members of the Academy and the public - namely, that in one or two special instances the younger members unquestionably have shown a desire and a capacity to prove worthy of their name. Mr. Moynan's large picture has already been spoken of as an example of this. (The Freeman's Journal, 5 March 1891, p. 5) He also mentioned Military Manoeuvres in an earlier review: There is a lot of exceedingly good work in this picture. The subject is good and it has been treated with great humour and skill and with genuine artistic instinct. (The Freeman's Journal, 2 March 1891, p. 5) The reviewer in The Irish Times was also fulsome in his praise of both the artist and the painting in question: Mr. Moynan is another artist who has this year come to the front. His big picture Military Manoeuvres (No. 26) at once challenges attention on account of its size and the novelty of its caption, and the abundant labour that has been expended upon its detail. For an Irish artist the work is a most ambitious one, and we cordially recognise the success of the artist. The group of boys passing through the village streets playing at soldiers equipped in mock panoply is full of life and movement, and the introduction of a real red coat is a happy stroke. (The Irish Times, 2 March 1891, p. 3) But it is equally important to note that Moynan's reaction to the critics was bi-directional. It appears that Military Manoeuvres in its original format had a dog in the centre of the composition and in response to a newspaper notice the painter altered the composition. The instigator of the change was the reviewer form The Freeman's Journal: '... the picture (Military Manoeuvres) is really interesting and very clever of its kind. There is a very eccentric looking dog in the centre of the picture - very eccentric' (The Freeman's Journal, 2 March 1891, p. 5). Yet, on publication of the Second RHA Notice, just three days later, the artist has taken this criticism on board and reacted by removing the dog from the composition: 'and bye-the-bye, he has quite rightly painted out that very eccentric dog alluded to in our last notice' (The Freeman's Journal, 5 March 1891, p. 6). This shows the artist's willingness to accept informed criticism and to act accordingly. But despite all the praise heaped on Military Manoeuvres, this work, like many other paintings exhibited in the 1890s Dublin market, remained unsold at the close of the exhibition. Two years later it was shown in America: Military Manoeuvres, exhibited at the RHA, at the Chicago exhibition and at the San Francisco exhibition. In the following year it was purchased in the latter place for a large sum. (The Irish Times, 11 April 1906, p.5.) Military Manoeuvres is the product of the confluence of the artist's academic training and experience. This mid-term painting offers an insight into various elements, which helped forge Moynan’s professional identity and provides a glimpse of some of the educational, social and political issues that affected the art-making practice of his day.

Add to cart Details