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    “Ta breis agus fiúntas in Guinness” Retro Advert

    €80.00
    Tá breis ages fiúntas in nGuinness " (Literal Irish translation- theres an advantage and merit in Guinness!!!!) Will help lend that crucial  authenticity to any pub or home bar! 32cm x  27cm    Boher Co Limerick Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain before he started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading. The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.
    The Guinness Brewery Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.
    The Guinness brewery in Park Royal, London closed in 2005. The production of all Guinness sold in the UK and Ireland was moved to St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin. Guinness has also been referred to as “that black stuff”. Guinness had a fleet of ships, barges and yachts. The Irish Sunday Independent newspaper reported on 17 June 2007 that Diageo intended to close the historic St James’s Gate plant in Dublin and move to a greenfield site on the outskirts of the city.This news caused some controversy when it was announced.The following day, the Irish Daily Mail ran a follow-up story with a double page spread complete with images and a history of the plant since 1759. Initially, Diageo said that talk of a move was pure speculation but in the face of mounting speculation in the wake of the Sunday Independent article, the company confirmed that it is undertaking a “significant review of its operations”. This review was largely due to the efforts of the company’s ongoing drive to reduce the environmental impact of brewing at the St James’s Gate plant. On 23 November 2007, an article appeared in the Evening Herald, a Dublin newspaper, stating that the Dublin City Council, in the best interests of the city of Dublin, had put forward a motion to prevent planning permission ever being granted for development of the site, thus making it very difficult for Diageo to sell off the site for residential development. On 9 May 2008, Diageo announced that the St James’s Gate brewery will remain open and undergo renovations, but that breweries in Kilkenny and Dundalk will be closed by 2013 when a new larger brewery is opened near Dublin. The result will be a loss of roughly 250 jobs across the entire Diageo/Guinness workforce in Ireland.Two days later, the Sunday Independent again reported that Diageo chiefs had met with Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, the deputy leader of the Government of Ireland, about moving operations to Ireland from the UK to benefit from its lower corporation tax rates. Several UK firms have made the move in order to pay Ireland’s 12.5 per cent rate rather than the UK’s 28 per cent rate. Diageo released a statement to the London stock exchange denying the report.Despite the merger that created Diageo plc in 1997, Guinness has retained its right to the Guinness brand and associated trademarks and thus continues to trade under the traditional Guinness name despite trading under the corporation name Diageo for a brief period in 1997. In November 2015 it was announced that Guinness are planning to make their beer suitable for consumption by vegetarians and vegans by the end of 2016 through the introduction of a new filtration process at their existing Guinness Brewery that avoids the need to use isinglass from fish bladders to filter out yeast particles.This went into effect in 2017, per the company’s FAQ webpage where they state: “Our new filtration process has removed the use of isinglass as a means of filtration and vegans can now enjoy a pint of Guinness. All Guinness Draught in keg format is brewed without using isinglass. Full distribution of bottle and can formats will be in place by the end of 2017, so until then, our advice to vegans is to consume the product from the keg format only for now. Guinness stout is made from water, barley, roast malt extract, hops, and brewer’s yeast. A portion of the barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark colour and characteristic taste. It is pasteurisedand filtered. Until the late 1950s Guinness was still racked into wooden casks. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Guinness ceased brewing cask-conditioned beers and developed a keg brewing system with aluminium kegs replacing the wooden casks; these were nicknamed “iron lungs”.Until 2016 the production of Guinness, as with many beers, involved the use of isinglass made from fish. Isinglass was used as a fining agent for settling out suspended matter in the vat. The isinglass was retained in the floor of the vat but it was possible that minute quantities might be carried over into the beer. Diageo announced in February 2018 that the use of isinglass in draught Guinness was to be discontinued and an alternative clarification agent would be used instead. This has made draught Guinness acceptable to vegans and vegetarians. Arguably its biggest change to date, in 1959 Guinness began using nitrogen, which changed the fundamental texture and flavour of the Guinness of the past as nitrogen bubbles are much smaller than CO2, giving a “creamier” and “smoother” consistency over a sharper and traditional CO2 taste. This step was taken after Michael Ash – a mathematician turned brewer – discovered the mechanism to make this possible. Nitrogen is less soluble than carbon dioxide, which allows the beer to be put under high pressure without making it fizzy. High pressure of the dissolved gas is required to enable very small bubbles to be formed by forcing the draught beer through fine holes in a plate in the tap, which causes the characteristic “surge” (the widget in cans and bottles achieves the same effect). This “widget” is a small plastic ball containing the nitrogen. The perceived smoothness of draught Guinness is due to its low level of carbon dioxide and the creaminess of the head caused by the very fine bubbles that arise from the use of nitrogen and the dispensing method described above. “Foreign Extra Stout” contains more carbon dioxide, causing a more acidic taste. Contemporary Guinness Draught and Extra Stout are weaker than they were in the 19th century, when they had an original gravity of over 1.070. Foreign Extra Stout and Special Export Stout, with abv of 7.5% and 9% respectively, are perhaps closest to the original in character.Although Guinness may appear to be black, it is officially a very dark shade of ruby. The most recent change in alcohol content from the Import Stout to the Extra Stout was due to a change in distribution through North American market. Consumer complaints have influenced recent distribution and bottle changes.
    Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers found that “‘antioxidantcompounds’ in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.”Guinness ran an advertising campaign in the 1920s which stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint, the slogan, created by Dorothy L. Sayers–”Guinness is Good for You”. Advertising for alcoholic drinks that implies improved physical performance or enhanced personal qualities is now prohibited in Ireland.Diageo, the company that now manufactures Guinness, says: “We never make any medical claims for our drinks.”  
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  • “The Save” By Wexford Goalkeeper Art Foley 1956 All Ireland Hurling Final v Cork

    €80.00
    26cm x 33cm  Ferns Co Wexford An anxious looking Wexford defence prepare as Christy Ring takes a in the 1956 All Ireland Hurling Final.The result would be forever known simply as " The Save ". Art Foley, who died on Monday last in New York, will be remembered for a save he made in the closing stages of the 1956 All-Ireland hurling final that had seismic and far-reaching consequences. It formed an instrumental part of a metamorphic sequence of play in a terrific contest with Cork, leading to one of the game's most epic finales. With three minutes left the ever-threatening Christy Ring gained possession and made for the Wexford goal. The finer points of what happened next are still in dispute. The main thread of the narrative is not. Ring let fly and the diminutive Foley in Wexford's goal was equal to it. He needed to be. His side led by two points, and a goal, especially one by Ring, would surely have inspired a Cork victory. Ring would have had his ninth medal. Wexford hurling might not be the beguiling and romanticised entity it is today.
    In the game's pivotal moment, the ball quickly travelled down the other end where Tom Ryan sent a raking handpass to Nickey Rackard. In a piece of perfect casting, the greatest name in Wexford hurling landed the deathblow, netting with a low shot to the corner. Wexford were already champions, having defeated Galway in the final a year before to end a 45-year wait. But to beat Cork gave them a status they'd never attained before and wrote them into everlasting legend. The death of Foley at 90 ended a significant chapter for that storied era, he being the last surviving member of the team that won the final in '56 and which started the '55 decider, giving hope to all counties outside the traditional fold. In a decade often depicted as repressive and severe, with heavy emigration, Wexford brought an abundance of novelty and glamour and dauntless expression which made them huge crowd-pullers and popular all over the country. A jazzy addition to the traditional acts. The previous six All-Irelands before Wexford's breakthrough in '55 were shared between Cork and Tipperary. "Why are all these massive crowds following Wexford?" asks Liam Griffin. "The Wexford support base for hurling grew with the rise of the Wexford teams of the 1950s. There was a romantic connection between them and all hurling people. Why? Because they came up to challenge the dominant counties." At the time Wexford looked more likely to prosper in football than hurling. The 1950s, led by the Rackards, changed all that. Only a few survivors remain from the '56 panel: Ted Morrissey, Oliver Gough and Pat Nolan. Morrissey played in the Leinster final before losing his place and had also been on the squad in '51 when Wexford reached the All-Ireland final. Nolan was Art Foley's goalkeeping deputy in '56, later winning All-Ireland medals over a long career in '60 and '68. Gough came on in the '55 final. In a way the loop that began the most famous end-to-end move in Wexford hurling history, starting with Foley's save and concluding with Rackard's goal, was replicated in life itself. The first of that celebrated '56 team to die was Rackard, in April, 1976, at the age of 54 after succumbing to cancer. When the team was celebrating its silver jubilee in 1981, Foley came home from the US for the occasion, having emigrated with his wife Anne and their three young children at 27 in the late 1950s. By the time of the silver jubilee of the '56 win, only Rackard was missing. Gradually over the years the numbers diminished. Ned Wheeler went this year. Billy Rackard was the last of that famous band of brothers to die ten years ago. Now, Foley, literally the last one standing, has gone too. The deeds, though, remain timeless and immortal. The save which made Foley famous followed him around all his days. "The big story of Art Foley is that save because it is the seminal moment of that time," as Liam Griffin puts it. It is also probably the most enigmatic save in the history of the game - the Mona Lisa of hurling saves, such has been the variety of interpretations. Even Ring seems to have offered contradictory accounts. Raymond Smith has an account from John Keane, the former Waterford great, who was umpiring that day. He recalled Ring shooting from 25 yards and the ball moving "so fast that the thought flashed through my mind, this must be a goal . . . and I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that he'd saved it." One newspaper referred to "a powerful close-in shot" and another to a "piledriver" which was one of "several miracle saves" made by Foley on the day. Val Dorgan, Ring's biographer, reported a "vicious strike" that was saved just under the cross bar and he also used the word "miraculous".
    It wasn't until the next decade that All-Ireland finals began to be televised, leaving iconic moments like this shrouded in some mystery. Speaking to the Irish Echo in 2011, Foley himself gave this account: "Well, he shot and I blocked it straight up in the air. This is where they always get it wrong. They always say I caught it and cleared it, straight to Nickey [Rackard] and he scored the goal. But I blocked it out and Pat Barry [Cork] doubled on it, and it hit the outside of the net. "I pucked it out to Jim English and he passed it to Tom Ryan, and he got it to Nickey and Nickey got the goal, and we went on to win." It was in keeping with Foley's personality to play down the save's merits. In an interview in 2014, Ned Wheeler referred to Foley as "a gentlemen of few words". They stayed in touch regularly on the phone up to shortly before Wheeler's death. Ted Morrissey was another in frequent contact, a player who moved to Enniscorthy to work and joined the St Aidan's club which Foley played for. "I used to ring him every couple of weeks until recently," says Morrissey, now 89. "I rang him recently and he had fallen, the wife told me he was in the nursing home. "He was very clear, he had a great memory, could tell me all the people who lived on the street where he was. He worked as a lorry driver, that's what he was doing before he left. I suppose he thought there was a better life over there." What did they talk about? "About hurling and old times and the people he knew and he'd be asking me about the people around Enniscorthy. Unfortunately, by the last few conversations there weren't many left that he knew." Foley was just 5'6" at a time when there were marauding full-forwards aplenty and the goalkeeper didn't have the protection in the rulebook he has now. He was dropped after conceding six goals in the 1951 National League final and didn't play in the All-Ireland final later that year against Tipperary when Wexford suffered a heavy loss. Wexford opted for a novice 'keeper, something Billy Rackard later said had been a mistake. When he made the save in '56 Foley was given an appreciative and sporting hand-shake from Ring. The Cloyne man was notoriously competitive but often commented on the sportsmanship of Wexford and specifically his marker Bobby Rackard. At the end of the '56 final Nick O'Donnell and Rackard chaired Ring off the field which is another lasting and remarkable feature of that final. Foley spoke of that moment to Ted Morrissey. "Nicko (O'Donnell) came to Arty and says, 'we'll shoulder him off the field'. And Arty says to him, 'how the hell will we do that, you are 6'2 and I am 5'6 . . . go and get Bobby with you'. So Nicko and Bobby shouldered him off and Arty was a back-up man, giving them a push from behind." Ring stated after the '54 final when Cork defeated Wexford that Cork had never defeated a cleaner team. Perhaps the very different experience he had against Galway in the previous year's final had something to do with that, but the relationship between the counties at the time was cordial and warm. Ring being chaired off the field was its Olympian moment. At a time when hurling was notoriously rough and macho, these displays of sportsmanship were notably different from the norm. It deepened Wexford's unique appeal. Tony Dempsey, the former Wexford county chairman, and former senior hurling manger, met Foley and his wife and some of the family over lunch in Long Island a few years ago, where they made a presentation to him for his services to the county. They spoke of that decision to carry off Ring. "He told me Bobby caught Ring like a doll and lifted him up," said Dempsey, noting the power for which he was renowned. Foley survived in spite of his height limitations, helped by having O'Donnell in front of him. He left school at 13, like many others who were obliged to at the time, and followed his father Tommy, a truck driver, into employment at Davis's Mills in Enniscorthy. He told Dempsey in New York how he routinely carried 12-stone bags of flour up and down ladders at 14. "He took out a photo album and showed a photo of himself jumping for the ball," says Dempsey, "and proportionate to his body he had massive muscles, massive quads and massive thighs." In New York he ended up in long-term employment for TWA, spending 34 years as a crew chief. He came home occasionally, sometimes for reunions. After winning the '56 final, and entering legend, Wexford's victorious players began the triumphant journey home on the Monday night, stopping off in the Market Square in Enniscorthy. A Mr Browne from the county board introduced the players individually. "The greatest ovation was reserved for the goalkeeper Arty Foley whose brilliance in the net contributed much to Wexford's victory," the Irish Independent reported. Forty three years after they laid Nickey Rackard to rest in Bunclody, the first of that special team, Art Foley has gone to his eternal resting place in New York. Their deaths took place decades and thousands of miles apart. But their spirits will remain inseparable.
     
     
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  • ‘Great Stuff This Bass ‘Miniature Mirror

    €150.00
    Gorgeous little miniature 1930s Bass mirror with a slight crack at its left hand side ,with beautiful wooden support strut. Origins : Dublin.      Dimensions :23cm x 16cm

    Bass,the former beer of choice of An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern,the Bass Ireland Brewery operated on the Glen Road  in West Belfast for 107 years until its closure in 2004.But despite its popularity, this ale would be the cause of bitter controversy in the 1930s as you can learn below.

    Founded in 1777 by William Bass in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, England.The main brand was Bass Pale Ale, once the highest-selling beer in the UK.By 1877, Bass had become the largest brewery in the world, with an annual output of one million barrels.Its pale ale was exported throughout the British Empire, and the company's distinctive red triangle became the UK's first registered trade mark. In the early  1930s republicans in Dublin and elsewhere waged a campaign of intimidation against publicans who sold Bass ale, which involved violent tactics and grabbed headlines at home and further afield. This campaign occurred within a broader movement calling for the boycott of British goods in Ireland, spearheaded by the IRA. Bass was not alone a British product, but republicans took issue with Colonel John Gretton, who was chairman of the company and a Conservative politician in his day.

    In Britain,Ireland and the Second World War, Ian Woods notes that the republican newspaper An Phoblacht set the republican boycott of Bass in a broader context , noting that there should be “No British ales. No British sweets or chocolate. Shoulder to shoulder for a nationwide boycott of British goods. Fling back the challenge of the robber empire.”

    In late 1932, Irish newspapers began to report on a sustained campaign against Bass ale, which was not strictly confined to Dublin. On December 5th 1932, The Irish Times asked:

    Will there be free beer in the Irish Free State at the end of this week? The question is prompted by the orders that are said to have been given to publicans in Dublin towards the end of last week not to sell Bass after a specified date.

    The paper went on to claim that men visited Dublin pubs and told publicans “to remove display cards advertising Bass, to dispose of their stock within a week, and not to order any more of this ale, explaining that their instructions were given in furtherance of the campaign to boycott British goods.” The paper proclaimed a ‘War on English Beer’ in its headline. The same routine, of men visiting and threatening public houses, was reported to have happened in Cork.

    It was later reported that on November 25th young men had broken into the stores owned by Bass at Moore Lane and attempted to do damage to Bass property. When put before the courts, it was reported that the republicans claimed that “Colonel Gretton, the chairman of the company, was a bitter enemy of the Irish people” and that he “availed himself of every opportunity to vent his hate, and was an ardent supporter of the campaign of murder and pillage pursued by the Black and Tans.” Remarkably, there were cheers in court as the men were found not guilty, and it was noted that they had no intention of stealing from Bass, and the damage done to the premises amounted to less than £5.

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    A campaign of intimidation carried into January 1933, when pubs who were not following the boycott had their signs tarred, and several glass signs advertising the ale were smashed across the city. ‘BOYCOTT BRITISH GOODS’ was painted across several Bass advertisements in the city.

    Throughout 1933, there were numerous examples of republicans entering pubs and smashing the supply of Bass bottles behind the counter. This activity was not confined to Dublin,as this report from late August shows. It was noted that the men publicly stated that they belonged to the IRA.

    Irish Press. 28 August 1933.

    Irish Press. 28 August 1933.

    September appears to have been a particularly active period in the boycott, with Brian Hanley identifying Dublin, Tralee, Naas, Drogheda and Waterford among the places were publicans were targetted in his study The IRA: 1926-1936. One of the most interesting incidents occurring in Dun Laoghaire. There, newspapers reported that on September 4th 1933 “more than fifty young men marched through the streets” before raiding the premises of Michael Moynihan, a local publican. Bottles of Bass were flung onto the roadway and advertisements destroyed. Five young men were apprehended for their role in the disturbances, and a series of court cases nationwide would insure that the Bass boycott was one of the big stories of September 1933.

    The young men arrested in Dun Laoghaire refused to give their name or any information to the police, and on September 8th events at the Dublin District Court led to police baton charging crowds. The Irish Times reported that about fifty supporters of the young men gathered outside the court with placards such as ‘Irish Goods for Irish People’, and inside the court a cry of ‘Up The Republic!’ led to the judge slamming the young men, who told him they did not recognise his court. The night before had seen some anti-Bass activity in the city, with the smashing of Bass signs at Burgh Quay. This came after attacks on pubs at Lincoln Place and Chancery Street. It wasn’t long before Mountjoy and other prisons began to home some of those involved in the Boycott Bass campaign, which the state was by now eager to suppress.

    Boycott protest image from Lynn Doyle’s Spirit Of Ireland (1936). (I recently found this image posted to Twitter but welcome the source)

    An undated image of a demonstration to boycott British goods. Credit: http://irishmemory.blogspot.ie/

    This dramatic court appearance was followed by similar scenes in Kilmainham, where twelve men were brought before the courts for a raid on the Dead Man’s Pub, near to Palmerstown in West Dublin. Almost all in their 20s, these men mostly gave addresses in Clondalkin. Their court case was interesting as charges of kidnapping were put forward, as Michael Murray claimed the men had driven him to the Featherbed mountain. By this stage, other Bass prisoners had begun a hungerstrike, and while a lack of evidence allowed the men to go free, heavy fines were handed out to an individual who the judge was certain had been involved.

    The decision to go on hungerstrike brought considerable attention on prisoners in Mountjoy, and Maud Gonne MacBride spoke to the media on their behalf, telling the Irish Press on September 18th that political treatment was sought by the men. This strike had begun over a week previously on the 10th, and by the 18th it was understood that nine young men were involved. Yet by late September, it was evident the campaign was slowing down, particularly in Dublin.

    The controversy around the boycott Bass campaign featured in Dáil debates on several occasions. In late September Eamonn O’Neill T.D noted that he believed such attacks were being allowed to be carried out “with a certain sort of connivance from the Government opposite”, saying:

    I suppose the Minister is aware that this campaign against Bass, the destruction of full bottles of Bass, the destruction of Bass signs and the disfigurement of premises which Messrs. Bass hold has been proclaimed by certain bodies to be a national campaign in furtherance of the “Boycott British Goods” policy. I put it to the Minister that the compensation charges in respect of such claims should be made a national charge as it is proclaimed to be a national campaign and should not be placed on the overburdened taxpayers in the towns in which these terrible outrages are allowed to take place with a certain sort of connivance from the Government opposite.

    Another contribution in the Dáil worth quoting came from Daniel Morrissey T.D, perhaps a Smithwicks man, who felt it necessary to say that we were producing “an ale that can compare favourably with any ale produced elsewhere” while condemning the actions of those targeting publicans:

    I want to say that so far as I am concerned I have no brief good, bad, or indifferent, for Bass’s ale. We are producing in this country at the moment—and I am stating this quite frankly as one who has a little experience of it—an ale that can compare favourably with any ale produced elsewhere. But let us be quite clear that if we are going to have tariffs or embargoes, no tariffs or embargoes can be issued or given effect to in this country by any person, any group of persons, or any organisation other than the Government elected by the people of the country.

    Tim Pat Coogan claims in his history of the IRA that this boycott brought the republican movement into conflict with the Army Comrades Association, later popularly known as the ‘Blueshirts’. He claims that following attacks in Dublin in December 1932, “the Dublin vitners appealed to the ACA for protection and shipments of Bass were guarded by bodyguards of ACA without further incident.” Yet it is undeniable there were many incidents of intimidation against suppliers and deliverers of the product into 1933.

    Not all republicans believed the ‘Boycott Bass’ campaign had been worthwhile. Patrick Byrne, who would later become secretary within the Republican Congress group, later wrote that this was a time when there were seemingly bigger issues, like mass unemployment and labour disputes in Belfast, yet:

    In this situation, while the revolution was being served up on a plate in Belfast, what was the IRA leadership doing? Organising a ‘Boycott Bass’ Campaign. Because of some disparaging remarks the Bass boss, Colonel Gretton, was reported to have made about the Irish, some IRA leaders took umbrage and sent units out onto the streets of Dublin and elsewhere to raid pubs, terrify the customers, and destroy perfectly good stocks of bottled Bass, an activity in which I regret to say I was engaged.

    Historian Brian Hanley has noted by late 1933 “there was little effort to boycott anything except Bass and the desperation of the IRA in hoping violence would revive the campaign was in fact an admission of its failure. At the 1934 convention the campaign was quietly abandoned.”

    Interestingly, this wasn’t the last time republicans would threaten Bass. In 1986 The Irish Times reported that Bass and Guinness were both threatened on the basis that they were supplying to British Army bases and RUC stations, on the basis of providing a service to security forces.

     
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  • ‘The Men of The West 1916-1921’-Old IRA War of Independence West Mayo Flying Column

    €80.00
    34cm x 22cm
    This Flying Column operated across the West Mayo area during the War of Independence. The photograph was taken shortly after the Carrowkennedy ambush on a RIC Barracks; the men are displaying the captured weapons. On the 2nd June 1921 the West Mayo Flying Column ambushed British soldiers on the Westport to Leenane road. After the ambush they went on the run. While near Laherdane in the vicinity of Neiphin Mountain they were visited by Jack Leonard. Leonard was a photographer and a cousin of Michael Kilroy, who was the Officer in Command of the brigade and took the only photograph of the Flying Column that exists.
     
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  • ‘This man can level county’s in one minute flat’ Guinness Hurling Advert

    €160.00
    Its been hell for leather Guinness Hurling advert from the 90s. Dromkeen Co Limerick Dimensions : 65cm x55 cm " It was not until 1994 that the GAA decided that the football championship would benefit from bringing on a title sponsor in Bank of Ireland. Although an equivalent offer had been on the table for the hurling championship, Central Council pushed the plate away.Though the name of the potential sponsor wasn’t explicitly made public, everyone knew it was Guinness. More to the point, everyone knew why Central Council wouldn’t bite. As Mulvihill himself noted in his report to Congress, the offer was declined on the basis that “Central Council did not want an alcoholic drinks company associated with a major GAA competition”. As it turned out, Central Council had been deadlocked on the issue and it was the casting vote of then president Peter Quinn that put the kibosh on a deal with Guinness. Mulvihill’s disappointment was far from hidden, since he saw the wider damage caused by turning up the GAA nose at Guinness’s advances. “The unfortunate aspect of the situation,” he wrote, “is that hurling needs support on the promotion of the game much more than football.” Though it took the point of a bayonet to make them go for it, the GAA submitted in the end and on the day after the league final in 1995 , a three-year partnership with Guinness was announced. The deal would be worth £1 million a year, with half going to the sport and half going to the competition in the shape of marketing. That last bit was key. Guinness came up with a marketing campaign that fairly scorched across the general consciousness. Billboards screeched out slogans that feel almost corny at this remove but made a huge impact at the same time . This man can level whole counties in one second flat. This man can reach speeds of 100mph. This man can break hearts at 70 yards Its been Hell for Leather. Of course, all the marketing in the world can only do so much. Without a story to go alongside, the Guinness campaign might be forgotten now – or worse, remembered as an overblown blast of hot air dreamed up in some modish ad agency above in Dublin.Until the  Clare hurlers came along and changed everything." Malachy Clerkin Irish Times GAA Correspondent Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain before he started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading. The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.
    The Guinness Brewery Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.
    The Guinness brewery in Park Royal, London closed in 2005. The production of all Guinness sold in the UK and Ireland was moved to St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin. Guinness has also been referred to as “that black stuff”. Guinness had a fleet of ships, barges and yachts. The Irish Sunday Independent newspaper reported on 17 June 2007 that Diageo intended to close the historic St James’s Gate plant in Dublin and move to a greenfield site on the outskirts of the city.This news caused some controversy when it was announced.The following day, the Irish Daily Mail ran a follow-up story with a double page spread complete with images and a history of the plant since 1759. Initially, Diageo said that talk of a move was pure speculation but in the face of mounting speculation in the wake of the Sunday Independent article, the company confirmed that it is undertaking a “significant review of its operations”. This review was largely due to the efforts of the company’s ongoing drive to reduce the environmental impact of brewing at the St James’s Gate plant. On 23 November 2007, an article appeared in the Evening Herald, a Dublin newspaper, stating that the Dublin City Council, in the best interests of the city of Dublin, had put forward a motion to prevent planning permission ever being granted for development of the site, thus making it very difficult for Diageo to sell off the site for residential development. On 9 May 2008, Diageo announced that the St James’s Gate brewery will remain open and undergo renovations, but that breweries in Kilkenny and Dundalk will be closed by 2013 when a new larger brewery is opened near Dublin. The result will be a loss of roughly 250 jobs across the entire Diageo/Guinness workforce in Ireland.Two days later, the Sunday Independent again reported that Diageo chiefs had met with Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, the deputy leader of the Government of Ireland, about moving operations to Ireland from the UK to benefit from its lower corporation tax rates. Several UK firms have made the move in order to pay Ireland’s 12.5 per cent rate rather than the UK’s 28 per cent rate. Diageo released a statement to the London stock exchange denying the report.Despite the merger that created Diageo plc in 1997, Guinness has retained its right to the Guinness brand and associated trademarks and thus continues to trade under the traditional Guinness name despite trading under the corporation name Diageo for a brief period in 1997. In November 2015 it was announced that Guinness are planning to make their beer suitable for consumption by vegetarians and vegans by the end of 2016 through the introduction of a new filtration process at their existing Guinness Brewery that avoids the need to use isinglass from fish bladders to filter out yeast particles.This went into effect in 2017, per the company’s FAQ webpage where they state: “Our new filtration process has removed the use of isinglass as a means of filtration and vegans can now enjoy a pint of Guinness. All Guinness Draught in keg format is brewed without using isinglass. Full distribution of bottle and can formats will be in place by the end of 2017, so until then, our advice to vegans is to consume the product from the keg format only for now. Guinness stout is made from water, barley, roast malt extract, hops, and brewer’s yeast. A portion of the barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark colour and characteristic taste. It is pasteurisedand filtered. Until the late 1950s Guinness was still racked into wooden casks. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Guinness ceased brewing cask-conditioned beers and developed a keg brewing system with aluminium kegs replacing the wooden casks; these were nicknamed “iron lungs”.Until 2016 the production of Guinness, as with many beers, involved the use of isinglass made from fish. Isinglass was used as a fining agent for settling out suspended matter in the vat. The isinglass was retained in the floor of the vat but it was possible that minute quantities might be carried over into the beer. Diageo announced in February 2018 that the use of isinglass in draught Guinness was to be discontinued and an alternative clarification agent would be used instead. This has made draught Guinness acceptable to vegans and vegetarians. Arguably its biggest change to date, in 1959 Guinness began using nitrogen, which changed the fundamental texture and flavour of the Guinness of the past as nitrogen bubbles are much smaller than CO2, giving a “creamier” and “smoother” consistency over a sharper and traditional CO2 taste. This step was taken after Michael Ash – a mathematician turned brewer – discovered the mechanism to make this possible. Nitrogen is less soluble than carbon dioxide, which allows the beer to be put under high pressure without making it fizzy. High pressure of the dissolved gas is required to enable very small bubbles to be formed by forcing the draught beer through fine holes in a plate in the tap, which causes the characteristic “surge” (the widget in cans and bottles achieves the same effect). This “widget” is a small plastic ball containing the nitrogen. The perceived smoothness of draught Guinness is due to its low level of carbon dioxide and the creaminess of the head caused by the very fine bubbles that arise from the use of nitrogen and the dispensing method described above. “Foreign Extra Stout” contains more carbon dioxide, causing a more acidic taste. Contemporary Guinness Draught and Extra Stout are weaker than they were in the 19th century, when they had an original gravity of over 1.070. Foreign Extra Stout and Special Export Stout, with abv of 7.5% and 9% respectively, are perhaps closest to the original in character.Although Guinness may appear to be black, it is officially a very dark shade of ruby. The most recent change in alcohol content from the Import Stout to the Extra Stout was due to a change in distribution through North American market. Consumer complaints have influenced recent distribution and bottle changes.
    Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers found that “‘antioxidantcompounds’ in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.”Guinness ran an advertising campaign in the 1920s which stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint, the slogan, created by Dorothy L. Sayers–”Guinness is Good for You”. Advertising for alcoholic drinks that implies improved physical performance or enhanced personal qualities is now prohibited in Ireland.Diageo, the company that now manufactures Guinness, says: “We never make any medical claims for our drinks.” Origins : Dublin Dimensions : 43cm x 35cm
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    ‘Train, Bus, Dinghy to Limerick’- Newspaper Bog Cuttings

    €90.00
    There’s almost a John Hughes film starting Steve Martin & John Candy to be made about this particularly protracted journey from to Limerick  ! Another in our series of humorous excerpts from Irish provincial newspapers or colloquially known as 'bog cuttings' in Phoenix Magazine. Origins :Limerick.    Dimensions : 30cm x 30cm
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  • ‘Woodford’s Whiskies are the best’ Mirror

    €250.00
    Beautifully reproduced Woodford,Bourne & Co.Ltd Whiskey mirror. 50cm x 60cm Limerick Woodford Whiskies traded in Cork city for over 250 years. The warehouse was the hub of the companies bottling, storage and distribution operations supplying four shops in Cork and one in Limerick. The building was constructed between 1873 and 1875 at a cost of £4,500. When completed in 1875 the building was considered one of the finest in the city and today continues to be a listed building. The building with its cut limestone frontage has thick floor and roof beams made from imported Canadian white pine to support the weight of the full casks of wine and spirits stored in the warehouse. On the ground floor, you can still see the vaulted ceilings of the original cellars and throughout the building the thick stone walls built with master craftsmanship are on view everywhere. Over 10 years supply of whiskey, casks containing over a million bottles of wine, sherries and ports and more than 50,000 gallons of choice Cork and Dublin whiskies, Scotch whiskies and fine French brandies were all stored from seven to 10 years in wet and dry cellars.
    Woodford Bourne
    Subsequent to a fire the building was restored and in 2001 received 1st Place in the Cork Corporation 'Better Building Award' for the restoration of a historic building. A book entitled 'The History of Woodford Bourne', written by David Nicholson a member of the family, was successfully launched in the warehouse in 2005.  
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  • ‘Woodford’s Whiskies are the best’ Vintage Advert

    €200.00
    Beautifully reproduced Woodford,Bourne & Co.Ltd Whiskey mirror. 50cm x 60cm Limerick Woodford Whiskies traded in Cork city for over 250 years. The warehouse was the hub of the companies bottling, storage and distribution operations supplying four shops in Cork and one in Limerick. The building was constructed between 1873 and 1875 at a cost of £4,500. When completed in 1875 the building was considered one of the finest in the city and today continues to be a listed building. The building with its cut limestone frontage has thick floor and roof beams made from imported Canadian white pine to support the weight of the full casks of wine and spirits stored in the warehouse. On the ground floor, you can still see the vaulted ceilings of the original cellars and throughout the building the thick stone walls built with master craftsmanship are on view everywhere. Over 10 years supply of whiskey, casks containing over a million bottles of wine, sherries and ports and more than 50,000 gallons of choice Cork and Dublin whiskies, Scotch whiskies and fine French brandies were all stored from seven to 10 years in wet and dry cellars.
    Woodford Bourne
    Subsequent to a fire the building was restored and in 2001 received 1st Place in the Cork Corporation 'Better Building Award' for the restoration of a historic building. A book entitled 'The History of Woodford Bourne', written by David Nicholson a member of the family, was successfully launched in the warehouse in 2005.  
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  • 125th Murphy’s Irish Stout Anniversary Celebration Print

    €300.00

    Brilliant Murphy's 125th Anniversary Celebration Framed Poster(1856-1981) with stickers of the day attached to the poster such as "Murphy Pints 10p off Celebration Offer",bearing in mind the price of a pint was 60p.Great souvenir or showcase item for any pub or home bar with a Cork theme.

    70cm x 60cm   Blackpool Co Cork

    JAMES J. MURPHY

    Born on November 1825, James Jeremiah Murphy was the eldest son of fifteen children born to Jeremiah James Murphy and Catherine Bullen. James J. served his time in the family business interest and was also involved in the running of a local distillery in Cork. He sold his share in this distillery to fund his share of the set up costs of the brewery in 1856. James J. was the senior partner along with his four other brothers. It was James who guided to the brewery to success in its first forty years and he saw its output grow to 100,000 barrels before his death in 1897. James J. through his life had a keen interest in sport, rowing, sailing and GAA being foremost. He was a supporter of the Cork Harbour Rowing Club and the Royal Cork Yacht Club and the Cork County Board of the GAA. James J. philanthropic efforts were also well known in the city supporting hospitals, orphanages and general relief of distress in the city so much so on his death being described as a ‘prince in the charitable world’. It is James J. that epitomises the Murphy’s brand in stature and quality of character.
    1854

    OUR LADY’S WELL BREWERY

    In 1854 James J. and his brothers purchased the buildings of the Cork foundling Hospital and on this site built the brewery. The brewery eventually became known as the Lady’s Well Brewery as it is situated adjacent to a famous ‘Holy Well’ and water source that had become a famous place of devotion during penal times.
    1856

    THE BEGINNING

    James J. Murphy and his brothers found James J. Murphy & Co. and begin brewing.
    1861

    FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH

    In 1861 the brewery produced 42,990 barrels and began to impose itself as one of the major breweries in the country.
    1885

    A FRIEND OF THE POOR, HURRAH

    James J. was a much loved figure in Cork, a noted philanthropist and indeed hero of the entire city at one point. The ‘Hurrah for the hero’ song refers to James J’s heroic efforts to save the local economy from ruin in the year of 1885. The story behind this is that when the key bank for the region the ‘Munster Bank’ was close to ruin, which could have led to an economic disaster for the entire country and bankruptcy for thousands, James J. stepped in and led the venture to establish a new bank the ‘Munster and Leinster’, saving the Munster Bank depositors and creditors from financial loss and in some cases, ruin. His exploits in saving the bank, led to the writing of many a poem and song in his honour including ‘Hurrah for the man who’s a friend of the poor’, which would have been sung in pubs for many years afterwards.
    1889

    THE MALT HOUSE

    In 1889 a Malt House for the brewery was built at a cost of 4,640 pounds and was ‘built and arranged on the newest principle and fitted throughout with the latest appliances known to modern science”. Today the Malthouse is one of the most famous Cork landmarks and continues to function as offices for Murphy’s.
    1892

    MURPHY’S GOLD

    Murphy’s Stout wins the Gold medal at the Brewers and Allied Trades Exhibition in Dublin and again wins the supreme award when the exhibition is held in Manchester in 1895. These same medals feature on our Murphy’s packaging today. Murphy’s have continued it’s tradition of excellence in brewing winning Gold again at the Brewing Industry International awards in 2002 and also gaining medals in the subsequent two competitions.
    1893

    MURPHY’S FOR STRENGTH

    Eugen Sandow the world famous ‘strongman’, endorses Murphy’s Stout: “From experience I can strongly recommend Messrs JJ Murphy’s Stout”. The famous Murphy’s image of Sandow lifting a horse was then created.
    1906

    THE JUBILEE

    The Brewery celebrates its 50th anniversary. On Whit Monday the brewery workforce and their families are treated to an excursion by train to Killarney. Paddy Barrett the youngest of the workforce that day at 13 went on to become head porter for the brewery and could recall the day vividly 50 years later.
    1913

    SWIMMING IN STOUT

    In the year of 1913 the No.5 Vat at ‘Lady’s Well’ Brewery burst and sent 23,000 galleons of porter flooding through the brewey and out on to Leitrim Street. The Cork Constitution, the local newspaper of the time wrote that “a worker had a most exciting experience and in the onrush of porter he had to swim in it for about 40 yards to save himself from asphyxiation”
    1914

    JOINING UP

    The First World War marked an era of dramatic change both in the countries fortune and on a much smaller scale that of the Brewery’s. On the 13 August James J. Murphy and Co. joined the other members of the Cork Employers Federation in promising that ‘all constant employees volunteering to join any of his Majesties forces for active service in compliance with the call for help by the Government will be facilitated and their places given back to them at the end of the war’. Eighteen of the Brewery’s workers joined up including one sixteen year old. Ten never returned.
    1915

    THE FIRST LORRY IN IRELAND

    James J. Murphy & Co. purchase the first petrol lorry in the country.
    1920

    THE BURNING OF CORK

    On the 11-12th December the centre of Cork city was extensively damaged by fire including four of the company’s tied houses (Brewery owned establishments). The company was eventually compensated for its losses by the British government.
    1921

    MURPHY’S IN A BOTTLE

    In 1921 James J. Murphy and Co. open a bottling plant and bottle their own stout. A foreman and four ‘boys’ were installed to run the operation and the product quickly won ‘good trade’.
    1924

    THE FIRST CAMPAIGNS

    In 1924 the Murphy’s Brewery began to embrace advertising. In the decades prior to this the attitude had been somewhat negative with one director stating ‘We do not hope to thrive on pushing and puffing; our sole grounds for seeking popular favour is the excellence of our product’.
    1940

    WWII

    In 1940 at the height of the London Blitz the Murphy’s auditing firm is completely destroyed. The war which had indirectly affected the firm in terms of shortages of fuel and materials now affected the brewery directly.
    1953

    LT. COL JOHN FITZJAMES

    In 1953 the last direct descendant of James J. takes over Chairmanship of the firm. Affectionately known in the Brewery as the ‘Colonel’ he ran the company until 1981.
    1961

    THE IRON LUNG

    Complete replacement of old wooden barrels to aluminium lined vessels (kegs) known as ‘Iron lungs’ draws to an end the era of ‘Coopers’ the tradesmen who built the wooden barrels on site in the Brewery for so many decades.
    1979

    MURPHY’S IN AMERICA

    Murphy’s reaches Americans shores for the first time winning back many drinkers lost to emigration and a whole new generation of stout drinkers.

    1985

    MURPHY’S GOES INTERNATIONAL

    Murphy’s Launched as a National and International Brand. Exports included UK, US and Canada. Introduction of the first 25cl long neck stout bottle.
    1994

    MURPHY’S OPEN

    Murphy’s commence sponsorship of the hugely successful Murphy’s Irish Open Golf Championship culminating in Colm Montgomery’s ‘Monty’s’ famous third win at ‘Fota Island’ in 2002.
    2005

    MURPHY’S GOLD

    Murphy’s wins Gold at the Brewing Industry International Awards a testament to it’s superior taste and quality. Indeed 2003 was the first of three successive wins in this competition.
    2006

    150 YEARS OF BREWING LEGEND

    The Murphy Brewery celebrates 150 years of brewing from 1856 to 2006 going from strength to strength; the now legendary stout is sold in over 40 countries and recognised worldwide as superior stout. We hope James J. would be proud.
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  • 1610 John Speed Map of Munster

    €160.00
    Fascinating map from 1610 as by the renowned cartographer John speed of the Province of Mounster(Munster!)-comprising the counties of Tipperary,Clare,Limerick,Cork,Kerry & Waterford.Includes miniature city layouts of both Limerick & Cork. 52cm x 65cm   Beaufort Co Kerry John Speed (1551 or 1552 – 28 July 1629) was an English cartographer and historian. He is, alongside Christopher Saxton, one of the best known English mapmakers of the early modern period.

    Life

    Speed was born in the Cheshire village of Farndon and went into his father Samuel Speed's tailoring later in life. While working in London, Speed was a tailor and member of a corresponding guild, and came to the attention of "learned" individuals. These individuals included Sir Fulke Greville, who subsequently made him an allowance to enable him to devote his whole attention to research. By 1598 he had enough patronage to leave his manual labour job and "engage in full-time scholarship". As a reward for his earlier efforts, Queen Elizabethgranted Speed the use of a room in the Custom House. Speed, was, by this point, as "tailor turned scholar" who had a highly developed "pictorial sense". In 1575, Speed married a woman named Susanna Draper in London, later having children with her. These children definitely included a son named John Speed, later a "learned" man with a doctorate, and an unknown number of others, since chroniclers and historians cannot agree on how many children they raised. Regardless, there is no doubt that the Speed family was relatively well-off. By 1595, Speed published a map of biblical Canaan, in 1598 he presented his maps to Queen Elizabeth, and in 1611–1612 he published maps of Great Britain, with his son perhaps assisting Speed in surveys of English towns. At age 77 or 78, in August 1629, Speed died. He was buried alongside his wife in London's St Giles-without-Cripplegate church on Fore Street. Later on, a memorial to John Speed was also erected behind the altar of the church.According to the church's website, "[His was] one of the few memorials [in the church] that survived the bombing" of London during The Blitz of 1940–1941 ... The website also notes that "[t]he cast for the niche in which the bust is placed was provided by the Merchant Taylors' Company, of which John Speed was a member". His memorial brass has ended up on display in the Burrell Collection near Glasgow.

    Works

    Speed drew historical maps in 1601 and 1627 depicting the invasion of England and Ireland, depictions of the English Middle Ages, along with those depicting the current time, with rough originals but appealing, colourful final versions of his maps. It was with the encouragement of William Camden that Speed began his Historie of Great Britaine, which was published in 1611. Although he probably had access to historical sources that are now lost to us (he certainly used the work of Saxton and Norden), his work as a historian is now considered secondary in importance to his map-making, of which his most important contribution is probably his town plans, many of which provide the first visual record of the British towns they depict.In the years leading up to this point, while his atlas was being compiled, he sent letters to Robert Cotton, part of the British government to ask for assistance in gathering necessary materials.
    In 1627 George Humble published the Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World, printed by John Dawson. This is the world map from this atlas with John Speed's name in the title, but not attributed to Speed's authorship.
    His atlas The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine was published in 1611 and 1612, and contained the first set of individual county maps of England and Wales besides maps of Ireland and a general map of Scotland. Tacked onto these maps was an introduction at the beginning when he addressed his "well affected and favourable reader", which had numerous Christian and religious undertones, admitting that there may be errors, but he made it the best he could, and stated his purpose for the atlas:
    my purpose...is to shew the situation of every Citie and Shire-town only [within Great Britain]...I have separated...[with] help of the tables...any Citie, Towne, Borough, Hamlet, or Place of Note...[it] may be affirmed, that there is not any one Kingdome in the world so exactly described...as is...Great Britaine...In shewing these things, I have chiefly sought to give satisfaction to all.
    With maps as "proof impressions" and printed from copper plates, detail was engraved in reverse with writing having to be put on the map the correct way, while speed "copied, adapted and compiled the work of others", not doing much of the survey work on his own, which he acknowledged.The atlas was not above projections of his political opinions" Speed represented King James I as one who unified the "Kingdoms of the British isles". In 2016, the British Library published a book, introduced by former MP Nigel Nicolson and accompanied by commentaries by late medieval and early modern historian Alasdair Hawkyard, which reprinted this collection of maps on the British Isles, showing that Speed had drawn maps of areas ranging from Bedfordshire to Norfolk and Wales. Most, but not all, of the county maps have town plans on them; those showing a Scale of Passes being the places he had mapped himself. In 1627, two years before his death, Speed published Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World which was the first world atlas produced by an Englishman, costing 40 shillings, meaning that its circulation was limited to "richer customers and libraries", where many survive to this day. There is a fascinating text describing the areas shown on the back of the maps in English, although a rare edition of 1616 of the British maps has a Latin text – this is believed to have been produced for the Continental market. Much of the engraving was done in Amsterdam at the workshop of a Flemish man named Jodocus Hondius, with whom he collaborated with from 1598 until 1612, with Hondius's sudden death, a time period of 14 years.His maps of English and Welsh counties, often bordered with costumed figures ranging from nobility to country folk, are often found framed in homes throughout the United Kingdom. In 1611, he also published The genealogies recorded in the Sacred Scriptures according to euery family and tribe with the line of Our Sauior Jesus Christ obserued from Adam to the Blessed Virgin Mary, a biblical genealogy, reprinted several times during the 17th century. He also drew maps of the Channel Islands, Poland, and the Americas, the latter published only a few years before his death. On the year of his death, yet another collection of maps of Great Britain he had drawn the year before were published. Described as a "Protestant historian", "Puritan historian" or "Protestant propagandist" by some, Speed wrote about William Shakespeare, whom he called a "Superlative Monster" because of certain plays, Roman conquest, history of Chester, and explored "early modern concepts of national identity". As these writings indicate, he possibly saw Wales as English and not an independent entity. More concretely, there is evidence that Speed, in his chronicling of history, uses "theatrical metaphors" and his developed "historiographic skill" to work while he repeats myths from medieval times as part of his story.

    Legacy

    Since his maps were used in many high circles, Speed's legacy has been long-reaching. After his death, in 1673 and 1676, some of his other maps on the British isles, the Chesapeake Bay region, specifically of Virginia and Maryland, the East Indies, the Russian Empire then ruled by Peter the Great, Jamaica, and Barbados, among other locations.With these printings and others, Speed's maps became the basis for world maps until at least the mid-eighteenth century, with his maps reprinted many times, and served as a major contribution to British topography for years to come. In later years, Speed would be called "our English Mercator", a person of "extraordinary industry and attainments in the study of antiques", an "honest and impartial historian", a "faithful Chronologer", and "our Cheshire historian...a scholar...a distinguished writer on history".He was also called a "celebrated chronologer and histographer", "cartographer", and much more. Even today, prints of his "beautiful maps" can be found in living rooms across the world, and sell for hundreds of thousands of pounds in rare art and map auctions, drawing in map collectors across the globe.Additionally, some use John Speed's maps, and connected commentary, to interpret William Shakespeare's plays; however, Speed did not like Shakespeare in the slightest, and called him a "papist".
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  • 1752 Draught of the Country around Limerick( Print by William Eyres)

    €120.00
    42cm x 48cm  Limerick Fascinating Draught plan of the country around Limerick taken in 1752 by William Eyres Map Maker - the scale is at 320 yards to one inch.
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  • 1779 Ireland Historical Map

    €120.00
    Very interesting and superbly framed Map of Ireland from 1779 from the latest surveys of the time. 62cm x 49cm Dublin  
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  • 1782 Irish House of Commons-Grattans Parliament.

    €150.00
    50cm x 60cm  Dublin This rare and historical print depicts Grattans Irish House of Parliament before it fell under the Act of Union in 1800,whereupon Ireland would be governed from London for the next 120 years.This parliament was loyal to the King and was essentially an assembly of the leading members of the landed gentry of the country,loyal to the Anglican Church of Ireland who owned most of the land.The politicians of the national party now fought for the Irish parliament, not with the intention of liberating the Catholic majority, but to set the Irish parliament free from constitutional bondage to the British Privy Council. By virtue of Poynings' Law, a statute of King Henry VII of England, all proposed Irish legislation had to be submitted to the Privy Council for its approval under the Great Seal of England before being passed by the Irish parliament. A bill so approved might be accepted or rejected, but not amended. More recent British Acts had further emphasised the complete dependence of the Irish parliament, and the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish House of Lords had also been annulled. Moreover, the British Houses claimed and exercised the power to legislate directly for Ireland without even the nominal concurrence of the parliament in Dublin. This was the constitution which William Molyneux and Swift had denounced, which Flood had attacked, and which Grattan was to destroy, becoming leaders of the Patriot movement.
    The Irish House of Commons by Francis Wheatley (1780) shows Grattan (standing on right in red jacket) addressing the House.
    Calls for the legislative independence of Ireland at the Irish Volunteer Convention at Dungannon greatly influenced the decision of the government in 1782 to make concessions. It was through ranks of Volunteers drawn up outside the parliament house in Dublin that Grattan passed on 16 April 1782, amidst unparalleled popular enthusiasm, to move a declaration of the independence of the Irish parliament. "I found Ireland on her knees," Grattan exclaimed, "I watched over her with a paternal solicitude; I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift, spirit of Molyneux, your genius has prevailed! Ireland is now a nation!" After a month of negotiation the claims of Ireland were conceded. The gratitude of his countrymen to Grattan was shown by a parliamentary grant of £100,000, which had to be reduced by half before he would accept it.Grattan then asked for the British House of Commons to reconfirm the London government's decision, and on 22 January 1783 the final Act was passed by parliament in London.However by 1800 under the Act of Union Grattans Parliament would cease to exist. From the perspective of Great Britain, the union was desirable because of the uncertainty that followed the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and the French Revolution of 1789; if Ireland adopted Catholic Emancipation, willingly or not, a Roman Catholic parliament could break away from Britain and ally with the French, while the same measure within a united kingdom would exclude that possibility. Also the Irish and British parliaments, when creating a regency during King George III's "madness", gave the Prince Regent different powers. These considerations led Great Britain to decide to attempt merger of the two kingdoms and their parliaments.The final passage of the Act in the Irish Parliament was achieved with substantial majorities, in part according to contemporary documents through bribery, namely the awarding of peerages and honours to critics to get their votes.Whereas the first attempt had been defeated in the Irish House of Commons by 109 votes against to 104 for, the second vote in 1800 produced a result of 158 to 115. Yet in the heart of every Irishman,whatever his politics or religion ,there is a tender spot for Grattans Parliament and the genius, wit and oratory of its members will live long and be cherished with pride by their countrymen.The present Bank of Ireland at College Green,directly adjacent to Trinity College Dublin,was the site of the old Parliament building ,built in1729   and the worlds first purpose built bi-cameral Parliament House .Architects were Pearce and James Gandon .  
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  • 1798 Humbert Inn Historical Sign

    Extremely unusual & culturally significant historical sign from a once famous pub in Castlebar Co Mayo, the historic and now sadly closed down Humbert Inn.Please email us directly to enquire about this most unusual item at irishpubemporium@gmail.com. "Located on the Main Street of Castlebar, The Humbert Inn  excelled in its hospitality to the public for over 200 years. Its name was derived from the fact that the French General Jean Humbert with his second in command General Sarrazin located their headquarters within the building during the United Irishmen rebellion of 1798. Originally until 1912 due to rates purposes, the premises also consisted of what is known today as Paddy Fahey’s shop and over the years has been used as hotel, restaurant and public house. In 1798 the site of Paddy Fahey’s and the Humbert Inn was known as Geevy’s Hotel. A banquet was held there after the 1798 Rising and it was in The Humbert Inn premises, that John Moore was declared first President of Connaught! The public bar was unique in appearance with its interior rough cut stone walls, arches, Liscannor stone floor and a façade that has changed little over the past fifty years.

    The premises has changed hands many times over the years, more recent owners including Tom Coucil, the Moran family and since 1994 John Connaughton, more popularly known as 'John Humbert'. While memories aplenty abound about The Humbert Inn with many instances of people today stating that they are the third generation of their family to call into The Humbert.  Its lasting legacy will be an outstanding and legendary venue for all that is musical. The Humbert Inn was long associated with encouraging local musicians and providing the public with a steady stream of talent. Everything from traditional sessions to Industrial Rock has been catered for, everything from one guitar, 6 piece bands to many DJs have enthralled weekly audiences! In many cases their audience trying for a pint, while singing and dancing at the same time. Always a multi-talented bunch, The Humbert regulars! The most historically famous of these bands will be 'General Humbert' consisting of Steve Dunford (bodhran, bones), John Donegan (mandolin, harmonium), Ruairi Somers (uileann pipes, tin whistles, bagpipes), Shay Kavanagh (guitar, bouzouki) and one Miss Mary Black (vocals, bodhran) from approx 1972 until 1982. Mary Black’s brother Mick was working with the then P&T in Castlebar, he along with his brother Shay informed a group of Humbert musicians including, John Hoban and Frank O’Reilly, that he 'had a sister that could sing a bit (brotherly understatement) and would they be interested if she sang with them'. Mary Black may have received her first taste of success with 'General Humbert' in the ‘70s and recorded her first album in 1982. But, along with playing venues in Dublin, she started out singing in Castlebar with traditional group 'La Salle' which included John Dunford and Fintan Murphy within The Humbert a good ten years before her international success. Christmas in particular was always memorable in The Humbert, it was a major home coming venue and meeting place. If you were brought up in Castlebar, were of a certain age, then chances were there was one of two places you would have been found on Christmas Eve, The Humbert or Rays!. The Humbert Inn can also boast its very own VIP list among its regulars with two crowned Roses of Tralee Mindy O’Sullivan and Aoibhinn Ni Shulleabhain along with Fair City actress Vicky Burke. Plus any number of quality customers, musicians, fine sportsmen and women, business people and the odd politician. Fate had decided a different path for The Humbert and further to this an offer to buy the premises by a local developer was accepted. This has resulted in the developer’s decision to convert the building into retail outlets and apartments, thereby no longer retaining the premises two hundred year reign in the hospitality trade.Public opinion has stated a desire to at least retain the look of the existing bar, possibly using same as a restaurant, wine bar, part of the Linenhall for exhibitions or even as a Tourist Office However, the general consensus is an overall request that The Humbert Inn remains a public bar while recognising the logic in upper floor apartment conversion. The future of The Humbert has been proposed by the developer, but it is the present planning section of the Town Council who will ultimately decide this historic buildings fate as rumours abound of its possible demolition! What ever the future holds for The Humbert Inn, its last weekend under the command of General John Connaughton will be a musical filled celebration which John has requested to end quietly on its last closing time on Sunday 3rd September. Which is curiously the same date that Humbert and his men left The Humbert Inn premises in 1798! It will be an emotional time for both punters, staff and owner, an end of an era no matter what the future holds, so it is important that it is understood that the bar will be closing promptly on the last night" Origins : Co Mayo Dimensions : 88cm x60.5cm  5kg
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    1837 Guinness Advert -Sam Weller composing his Valentine.

    €70.00
    1837 Guinness advert depicting Sam Weller composing his Valentine- a drawing by Hablot K.Browne testifying to the popularity of Guinness in 1837 !Sam Weller is a fictional character in The Pickwick Papers (1837), the first novel by Charles Dickens, and is the character that made Dickens famous. Weller first appeared in the tenth serialised episode.This cool little help lend that crucial  authenticity to any pub or home bar! 30cm x  25cm    Bruff  Co Limerick Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain before he started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading. The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.
    The Guinness Brewery Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.
    The Guinness brewery in Park Royal, London closed in 2005. The production of all Guinness sold in the UK and Ireland was moved to St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin. Guinness has also been referred to as “that black stuff”. Guinness had a fleet of ships, barges and yachts. The Irish Sunday Independent newspaper reported on 17 June 2007 that Diageo intended to close the historic St James’s Gate plant in Dublin and move to a greenfield site on the outskirts of the city.This news caused some controversy when it was announced.The following day, the Irish Daily Mail ran a follow-up story with a double page spread complete with images and a history of the plant since 1759. Initially, Diageo said that talk of a move was pure speculation but in the face of mounting speculation in the wake of the Sunday Independent article, the company confirmed that it is undertaking a “significant review of its operations”. This review was largely due to the efforts of the company’s ongoing drive to reduce the environmental impact of brewing at the St James’s Gate plant. On 23 November 2007, an article appeared in the Evening Herald, a Dublin newspaper, stating that the Dublin City Council, in the best interests of the city of Dublin, had put forward a motion to prevent planning permission ever being granted for development of the site, thus making it very difficult for Diageo to sell off the site for residential development. On 9 May 2008, Diageo announced that the St James’s Gate brewery will remain open and undergo renovations, but that breweries in Kilkenny and Dundalk will be closed by 2013 when a new larger brewery is opened near Dublin. The result will be a loss of roughly 250 jobs across the entire Diageo/Guinness workforce in Ireland.Two days later, the Sunday Independent again reported that Diageo chiefs had met with Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, the deputy leader of the Government of Ireland, about moving operations to Ireland from the UK to benefit from its lower corporation tax rates. Several UK firms have made the move in order to pay Ireland’s 12.5 per cent rate rather than the UK’s 28 per cent rate. Diageo released a statement to the London stock exchange denying the report.Despite the merger that created Diageo plc in 1997, Guinness has retained its right to the Guinness brand and associated trademarks and thus continues to trade under the traditional Guinness name despite trading under the corporation name Diageo for a brief period in 1997. In November 2015 it was announced that Guinness are planning to make their beer suitable for consumption by vegetarians and vegans by the end of 2016 through the introduction of a new filtration process at their existing Guinness Brewery that avoids the need to use isinglass from fish bladders to filter out yeast particles.This went into effect in 2017, per the company’s FAQ webpage where they state: “Our new filtration process has removed the use of isinglass as a means of filtration and vegans can now enjoy a pint of Guinness. All Guinness Draught in keg format is brewed without using isinglass. Full distribution of bottle and can formats will be in place by the end of 2017, so until then, our advice to vegans is to consume the product from the keg format only for now. Guinness stout is made from water, barley, roast malt extract, hops, and brewer’s yeast. A portion of the barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark colour and characteristic taste. It is pasteurisedand filtered. Until the late 1950s Guinness was still racked into wooden casks. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Guinness ceased brewing cask-conditioned beers and developed a keg brewing system with aluminium kegs replacing the wooden casks; these were nicknamed “iron lungs”.Until 2016 the production of Guinness, as with many beers, involved the use of isinglass made from fish. Isinglass was used as a fining agent for settling out suspended matter in the vat. The isinglass was retained in the floor of the vat but it was possible that minute quantities might be carried over into the beer. Diageo announced in February 2018 that the use of isinglass in draught Guinness was to be discontinued and an alternative clarification agent would be used instead. This has made draught Guinness acceptable to vegans and vegetarians. Arguably its biggest change to date, in 1959 Guinness began using nitrogen, which changed the fundamental texture and flavour of the Guinness of the past as nitrogen bubbles are much smaller than CO2, giving a “creamier” and “smoother” consistency over a sharper and traditional CO2 taste. This step was taken after Michael Ash – a mathematician turned brewer – discovered the mechanism to make this possible. Nitrogen is less soluble than carbon dioxide, which allows the beer to be put under high pressure without making it fizzy. High pressure of the dissolved gas is required to enable very small bubbles to be formed by forcing the draught beer through fine holes in a plate in the tap, which causes the characteristic “surge” (the widget in cans and bottles achieves the same effect). This “widget” is a small plastic ball containing the nitrogen. The perceived smoothness of draught Guinness is due to its low level of carbon dioxide and the creaminess of the head caused by the very fine bubbles that arise from the use of nitrogen and the dispensing method described above. “Foreign Extra Stout” contains more carbon dioxide, causing a more acidic taste. Contemporary Guinness Draught and Extra Stout are weaker than they were in the 19th century, when they had an original gravity of over 1.070. Foreign Extra Stout and Special Export Stout, with abv of 7.5% and 9% respectively, are perhaps closest to the original in character.Although Guinness may appear to be black, it is officially a very dark shade of ruby. The most recent change in alcohol content from the Import Stout to the Extra Stout was due to a change in distribution through North American market. Consumer complaints have influenced recent distribution and bottle changes.
    Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers found that “‘antioxidantcompounds’ in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.”Guinness ran an advertising campaign in the 1920s which stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint, the slogan, created by Dorothy L. Sayers–”Guinness is Good for You”. Advertising for alcoholic drinks that implies improved physical performance or enhanced personal qualities is now prohibited in Ireland.Diageo, the company that now manufactures Guinness, says: “We never make any medical claims for our drinks.”  
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    1875/76 Guinness Showcard St James’s Gate Offices and Wharf

    €80.00
    Guinness Showcard depicting the then new front offices in St James St and the brewery wharf on Victoria Quay. 50cm x 37cm  Limerick Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain. Arthur Guinness started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading.[12] The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.
    The Guinness Brewery Park Royal during demolition, at its peak the largest and most productive brewery in the world.
    The Guinness brewery in Park Royal, London closed in 2005. The production of all Guinness sold in the UK and Ireland was moved to St. James’s Gate Brewery, Dublin. Guinness has also been referred to as “that black stuff”. Guinness had a fleet of ships, barges and yachts. The Irish Sunday Independent newspaper reported on 17 June 2007 that Diageo intended to close the historic St James’s Gate plant in Dublin and move to a greenfield site on the outskirts of the city.This news caused some controversy when it was announced.The following day, the Irish Daily Mail ran a follow-up story with a double page spread complete with images and a history of the plant since 1759. Initially, Diageo said that talk of a move was pure speculation but in the face of mounting speculation in the wake of the Sunday Independent article, the company confirmed that it is undertaking a “significant review of its operations”. This review was largely due to the efforts of the company’s ongoing drive to reduce the environmental impact of brewing at the St James’s Gate plant. On 23 November 2007, an article appeared in the Evening Herald, a Dublin newspaper, stating that the Dublin City Council, in the best interests of the city of Dublin, had put forward a motion to prevent planning permission ever being granted for development of the site, thus making it very difficult for Diageo to sell off the site for residential development. On 9 May 2008, Diageo announced that the St James’s Gate brewery will remain open and undergo renovations, but that breweries in Kilkenny and Dundalk will be closed by 2013 when a new larger brewery is opened near Dublin. The result will be a loss of roughly 250 jobs across the entire Diageo/Guinness workforce in Ireland.Two days later, the Sunday Independent again reported that Diageo chiefs had met with Tánaiste Mary Coughlan, the deputy leader of the Government of Ireland, about moving operations to Ireland from the UK to benefit from its lower corporation tax rates. Several UK firms have made the move in order to pay Ireland’s 12.5 per cent rate rather than the UK’s 28 per cent rate. Diageo released a statement to the London stock exchange denying the report.Despite the merger that created Diageo plc in 1997, Guinness has retained its right to the Guinness brand and associated trademarks and thus continues to trade under the traditional Guinness name despite trading under the corporation name Diageo for a brief period in 1997. In November 2015 it was announced that Guinness are planning to make their beer suitable for consumption by vegetarians and vegans by the end of 2016 through the introduction of a new filtration process at their existing Guinness Brewery that avoids the need to use isinglass from fish bladders to filter out yeast particles.This went into effect in 2017, per the company’s FAQ webpage where they state: “Our new filtration process has removed the use of isinglass as a means of filtration and vegans can now enjoy a pint of Guinness. All Guinness Draught in keg format is brewed without using isinglass. Full distribution of bottle and can formats will be in place by the end of 2017, so until then, our advice to vegans is to consume the product from the keg format only for now. Guinness stout is made from water, barley, roast malt extract, hops, and brewer’s yeast. A portion of the barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark colour and characteristic taste. It is pasteurisedand filtered. Until the late 1950s Guinness was still racked into wooden casks. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Guinness ceased brewing cask-conditioned beers and developed a keg brewing system with aluminium kegs replacing the wooden casks; these were nicknamed “iron lungs”.Until 2016 the production of Guinness, as with many beers, involved the use of isinglass made from fish. Isinglass was used as a fining agent for settling out suspended matter in the vat. The isinglass was retained in the floor of the vat but it was possible that minute quantities might be carried over into the beer. Diageo announced in February 2018 that the use of isinglass in draught Guinness was to be discontinued and an alternative clarification agent would be used instead. This has made draught Guinness acceptable to vegans and vegetarians. Arguably its biggest change to date, in 1959 Guinness began using nitrogen, which changed the fundamental texture and flavour of the Guinness of the past as nitrogen bubbles are much smaller than CO2, giving a “creamier” and “smoother” consistency over a sharper and traditional CO2 taste. This step was taken after Michael Ash – a mathematician turned brewer – discovered the mechanism to make this possible. Nitrogen is less soluble than carbon dioxide, which allows the beer to be put under high pressure without making it fizzy. High pressure of the dissolved gas is required to enable very small bubbles to be formed by forcing the draught beer through fine holes in a plate in the tap, which causes the characteristic “surge” (the widget in cans and bottles achieves the same effect). This “widget” is a small plastic ball containing the nitrogen. The perceived smoothness of draught Guinness is due to its low level of carbon dioxide and the creaminess of the head caused by the very fine bubbles that arise from the use of nitrogen and the dispensing method described above. “Foreign Extra Stout” contains more carbon dioxide, causing a more acidic taste. Contemporary Guinness Draught and Extra Stout are weaker than they were in the 19th century, when they had an original gravity of over 1.070. Foreign Extra Stout and Special Export Stout, with abv of 7.5% and 9% respectively, are perhaps closest to the original in character.Although Guinness may appear to be black, it is officially a very dark shade of ruby. The most recent change in alcohol content from the Import Stout to the Extra Stout was due to a change in distribution through North American market. Consumer complaints have influenced recent distribution and bottle changes.
    Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers found that “‘antioxidantcompounds’ in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.”Guinness ran an advertising campaign in the 1920s which stemmed from market research – when people told the company that they felt good after their pint, the slogan, created by Dorothy L. Sayers–”Guinness is Good for You”. Advertising for alcoholic drinks that implies improved physical performance or enhanced personal qualities is now prohibited in Ireland.Diageo, the company that now manufactures Guinness, says: “We never make any medical claims for our drinks.”     Origins : Dublin Dimensions ;50cm x60cm
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  • 1882 Irish Great Northern Railways Poster

    €90.00
    47cm x 38cm The Great Northern Railway (Ireland) (GNR(I) or GNRI) was an Irish gauge (1,600 mm (5 ft 3 in)) railway company in Ireland. It was formed in 1876 by a merger of the Irish North Western Railway (INW), Northern Railway of Ireland, and Ulster Railway. The governments of Ireland and Northern Ireland jointly nationalised the company in 1953, and the company was liquidated in 1958: assets were split on national lines between the Ulster Transport Authority and Córas Iompair Éireann.

    Foundation

    The Ulster, D&D and D&BJct railways together formed the main line between Dublin and Belfast, with the D&BJct completing the final section in 1852 to join the Ulster at Portadown. The GNRI's other main lines were between Derry and Dundalk and between Omagh and Portadown. The Portadown, Dungannon and Omagh Junction Railway together with the Londonderry and Enniskillen Railway enabled GNRI trains between Derry and Belfast to compete with the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway, and both this and the Dundalk route gave connections between Derry and Dublin. These main lines supported the development of an extensive branch network serving the southwest half of Ulster and northern counties of Leinster. The GNRI became Ireland's most prosperous railway company and second largest railway network.
    The coat of arms of the GNR.
    In its early years the GNR(I) closely imitated the image of its English namesake, adopting an apple green livery for its steam locomotives and a varnished teak finish for its passenger coaches. Later the company adopted its famous pale blue livery for locomotives (from 1932), with the frames and running gear picked out in scarlet. Passenger vehicles were painted brown, instead of varnished. On 12 June 1889, a significant rail accident occurred when a passenger train stalled between Armagh and Newry. The train was divided, but during the uncoupling operation ten carriages ran away and collided with another passenger train. A total of 80 people were killed and 260 were injured in what was then the deadliest railway accident to have occurred in Europe. The accident remains the deadliest ever to have occurred on the island of Ireland.

    Growth and partition

    In the early 20th century increasing traffic led the GNRI to consider introducing larger locomotives. The Great Southern & Western Railway had introduced express passenger locomotives with a 4-6-0 wheel arrangement, and the GNRI wanted to do the same. However, the lifting shop in the GNRI Dundalk works was too short to build or overhaul a 4-6-0, so the company persisted with 4-4-0 locomotives for even the heaviest and fastest passenger trains. This led to the GNRI to order a very modern and powerful class of 4-4-0's, the Class V three cylinder compound locomotives built by Beyer, Peacock & Company in 1932. This class has been compared with another notable V class, that introduced by the Southern Railway in England in 1930. The Partition of Ireland in 1921 created a border through the GNRI's territory. The new border crossed all three of its main lines and some of its secondary lines. The imposition of border controls caused some service disruption, with main line trains having to stop at both Dundalk and Goraghwood stations. This was not eased until 1947 when customs and immigration facilities for Dublin–Belfast expresses were opened at Dublin Amiens Street and Belfast Great Victoria Street stations.

    Nationalisation and division

    GNR loco sheds at Adelaide, 1959
    A combination of the increasing road competition facing all railways and a change in patterns of economic activity caused by the Partition of Ireland reduced the GNRI's prosperity. The company modernised and reduced its costs by introducing modern diesel multiple units on an increasing number of services in the 1940s and 1950s and by making Dublin–Belfast expresses non-stop from 1948. In Dundalk at the GNR Works the railway engineers developed railbuses for use on sections of the rural network. Nevertheless, by the 1950s the GNRI had ceased to be profitable and in 1953 the company was jointly nationalised by the governments of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The two governments ran the railway jointly under a Great Northern Railway Board until 1958.
    Preserved GNRI Class S no. 171 Slieve Gullion at Lisburn
    In May 1958, the Government of Northern Ireland's wish to close many lines led to the GNR(I) Board being dissolved and the assets divided between the two territories. At midnight on 30 September 1958, all lines entirely within Northern Ireland were transferred to the (nationalised) Ulster Transport Authority (UTA) and all lines entirely within the Republic of Ireland were transferred to Córas Iompair Éireann (CIÉ). CIÉ had been formed as a private company in 1945 but had been nationalised in 1950. In an attempt at fairness, all classes of locomotive and rolling stock were also divided equally between the transport operators of the two new owners.: 184–185 Most classes of GNRI locomotive had been built in small classes, so this division left both railways with an operational and maintenance difficulty of many different designs all in small numbers. The Government of Northern Ireland, which had a very anti-rail policy, rapidly closed most of the GNR(I) lines in Northern Ireland.Exceptions were the Belfast–Dundalk and Portadown–Derry main lines and the Newry–Warrenpoint and Lisburn–Antrim branches. It made the Lisburn–Antrim branch freight-only from 1960 and closed the Portadown–Derry and Newry–Warrenpoint lines to all traffic in 1965.The Republic of Ireland government tried briefly to maintain services on lines closed at the border by the Northern Ireland government, but this was impractical, and the Republic had to follow suit in closing most GNR(I) lines within the Republic. Since 1963, the Drogheda–Navan branch has survived for freight traffic only.
    The Fintona horse tram circa 1930
    The GNR's north western main line between Dundalk and Derry bypassed the small County Tyrone town of Fintona, which was instead served by a 1 mile (1.6 km) branch line from Fintona Junction station. The service was operated by the double-deck Fintona horse tram until the line's closure in 1957. CIÉ also acquired the Hill of Howth Tramway, in the northern suburbs of Dublin, in the 1958 dissolution of the GNRI Board. CIÉ closed the tramway about a year later. Today, the GNR routes remaining consist of the main line from Dublin to Belfast, the Howth branch, electrified for Dublin commuter services since 1984, the Drogheda - Navan (Tara Mines) line, which carries only freight traffic associated with that mine, passenger traffic having ceased with the closure of the line beyond there to Oldcastle in 1963, and the Lisburn to Antrim branch, now mothballed but retained in operational order for the time being.

    Preservation

    Rolling stock

    No.85 taking on water on the former Northern Counties Committee line at Ballymena railway station.
     
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  • 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".  
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  • 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.
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  • 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.      
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  • 1903 Map of the Golden Mile Kalgoorlie Australia-The richest square mile of gold country in the world

    €120.00
    33cm x 57cm In the winter of 1893, prospectors Patrick (Paddy) Hannan, Tom Flanagan, and Dan Shea were travelling to Mount Youle, when one of their horses cast a shoe. During the halt in their journey, the men noticed signs of gold in the area around the foot of what is now the Mount Charlotte gold mine, located on a small hill north of the current city, and decided to stay and investigate. On 17 June 1893, Hannan filed a Reward Claim, leading to hundreds of men swarming to the area in search of gold, and Kalgoorlie, originally called Hannan's Find, was born.
    Hannan Street in September 1930; the Exchange Hotel is at the centre, with the Palace Hotel on the right.
    The population of the town was 2,018 (1,516 males and 502 females) in 1898. The mining of gold, along with other metals such as nickel, has been a major industry in Kalgoorlie ever since, and today employs about one-quarter of Kalgoorlie's workforce and generates a significant proportion of its income. The concentrated area of large gold mines surrounding the original Hannan's find is often referred to as the Golden Mile, and was sometimes referred to as the world's richest square mile of earth. In 1901, the population of Kalgoorlie was 4,793 (3,087 males and 1,706 females) which increased to 6,790 (3,904 males and 2,886 females) by 1903. The 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) narrow-gauge Government Eastern Goldfields Railway line reached Kalgoorlie station in 1896, and the main named railway service from Perth was the overnight sleeper train The Westland, which ran until the 1970s. In 1917, a 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in(1,435 mm) standard gauge railway line was completed, connecting Kalgoorlie to Port Augusta, South Australia, across 2,000 kilometres (1,243 mi) of desert, and consequently the rest of the eastern states. The standardisation of the railway connecting Perth (which changed route from the narrow-gauge route) in 1968 completed the Sydney–Perth railway, making rail travel from Perth to Sydney possible; the Indian Pacific rail service commenced soon after. During the 1890s, the Goldfields area boomed as a whole, with an area population exceeding 200,000, composed mainly of prospectors. The area gained a reputation for being a "wild west", notorious for its bandits and prostitutes. This rapid increase in population and claims of neglect by the state government in Perth led to the proposition of the new state of Auralia, but with the sudden diaspora after the Gold Rush, these plans fell through. Places, famous or infamous, for which Kalgoorlie is noted include its water pipeline, designed by C. Y. O'Connor and bringing in fresh water from Mundaring Weir near Perth, its Hay Street brothels, its two-up school, the goldfields railway loopline, the Kalgoorlie Town Hall, the Paddy Hannan statue/drinking fountain, the Super Pit, and Mount Charlotte lookout. Its main street is Hannan Street, named after the town's founder. One of the infamous brothels also serves as a museum and is a major national attraction. Paddy Hannan was the son of John Hannan and Bridget Lynch, and was baptised on 26 April 1840 in the town of Quin, County Clare, Ireland. His baptismal record shows that his godparents (sponsors) were Margaret Lynch and John O'Brien. Many of the people in his family emigrated to Australia from 1852 onwards, and close ties were maintained. Two of Hannan's nieces would welcome Hannan into their house for the last years of his life. Hannan emigrated to Australia when he was 22, arriving in Melbourne on 23 December 1862 aboard the Henry Fernie from Liverpool. He is recorded in the passenger list as Pat Hannan, a labourer.

    Prospecting success

    Hannan's Western Australian miner's right, 1893
    In 1893 in Western Australia, Hannan and his partners were the first to find gold near Mount Charlotte, less than 40 kilometres from the existing Coolgardie Goldfields. Hannan, Flanagan and Shea were following a large number of prospectors who set out for a rumoured new prospect at Mount Youle. One version of the story of the find has it that on the night of 14 June 1893, Hannan found gold in a gully. Not wanting to cause a rush, he concealed the find. During the night the trio moved one of their horses into the scrub. The following morning Hannan informed the main party they were going to stay behind to find their lost horse. After the main group moved off east, the three men started to pick up the gold and peg out their lease. Amongst the various counter-claims to emerge over the years, one lively version of the story was told in 1909 by Fred Dugan (another prospector, who was present at the time) relating how Thomas Flanagan found the first nuggets, and covered his find with brushwood to conceal it until the following day. By law, those finding "payable" gold were required to report the fact to the warden's office within seven days, so Hannan set off for Coolgardie to register their find, doing so on 17 June 1893. It has been suggested that Hannan, rather than Flanagan or Shea, was chosen to officially register the claim because only he could read and write, but there is evidence that Flanagan was literate, since, in 1864, he had clearly signed the official death certificate of his brother John Flanagan, and had written his own place of residence at the time - White Hills (in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia). The other possible reasons for Hannan going alone to the office at Coolgardie are set out by Martyn Webb,who relates that:
    The fact that Flanagan and Shea were able to secure another 100 ounces while Hannan was away registering their claim at Coolgardie might help to explain why Hannan was chosen ... simply because they were better at specking than he was – it needs good eyesight. On the other hand, since the journey was arduous and had to be done as quickly as possible, Hannan might have been chosen because, as Uren and others suggest, he was the youngest and the fittest of the three. … The most likely reason … was that he was the undisputed leader of the party.
    — Webb, p. 103
    Hannan registered the claim in Flanagan's name as well as his own. Within hours a stampede began. It was estimated that about 400 men were prospecting in the area within three days, and over 1,000 within a week.

    Final years

    Hannan's grave in Melbourne Central Cemetery, Section Y
    In 1904, at the age of sixty-four, Hannan was granted an annual pension of £150 by the Government of Western Australia. Having searched for gold throughout his adult life, he did not cease his prospecting activities until after 1910, his seventieth year. At that time he went to live with two of his nieces in Fallon Street, Brunswick, Victoria (close to the city of Melbourne). He died there in 1925 and was buried in Melbourne Central Cemetery, in the Catholic section, near the North Gate. In 1993 his grave was restored by the citizens of Kalgoorlie, led by Tess Thomson, as a part of the celebration of the 100-year anniversary of the original find by Hannan, Flanagan and Shea.

    Legacy

    1929 statue of Paddy Hannan in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia
    In memory of a man who is regarded as the founder of Kalgoorlie, the main street and a suburb in Kalgoorlie both bear Hannan's name, and in 1929 a statue of him by the sculptor John MacLeod was erected there. The city boasts several commemorative plaques to the three Irishmen, Hannan, Flanagan and Shea. A popular Irish pub at the Burswood Entertainment Complex was also named after Hannan. In Ireland there is a plaque dedicated to his memory opposite Quin Abbey, Quin, County Clare, and there is a bust with an explanatory dedication on display inside the DeValera Library in Ennis, County Clare.
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  • 1908 Clare Hurling Team Photo (Croke Cup Winners)

    €90.00
    Superb print of the 1908 Clare Hurling Team who won the Croke Cup. Origins : Ennistymon Co Clare   Dimensions: 33cm x 40cm.  Glazed
    Dr Croke Cup Medal, 1908 The Dr Croke Cup was a second inter-county competition instituted in both hurling and football in 1896. Clare was the first winner of the Dr Croke Cup for Hurling in 1896. This medal was won by Ned Grace, one of seven O’Callaghan’s Mills players on the Croke Cup winning Hurling team of 1908.    
    1908 Dr Croke Cup Medal 2000.112
    Dimensions ; 30cm x 40cm
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  • 1910 Vintage Tipperary Hurling Captains Print

    €80.00
    45cm x 35cm  Thurles Co Tipperary Superb framed portrait taken in 1910 of three separate Thurles men when captained Tipperary in the early 20th century- Tom Semple of Fianna Road  ,Dinny Maher of Killinin  & Jim Stapleton of Cathedral Road. Thomas Semple (8 April 1879 – 11 April 1943) was an Irish hurler who played as a half-forward for the Tipperary senior team. Semple joined the panel during the 1897 championship and eventually became a regular member of the starting seventeen until his retirement after the 1909 championship. During that time he won three All-Ireland medals and four Munster medals. An All-Ireland runner-up on one occasion, Semple captained the team to the All-Ireland title in 1906 and in 1908. At club level Semple was a six-time county club championship medalist with Thurles.

    Playing career

    Club

    Semple played his club hurling with the local club in Thurles, the precursor to the famous Sarsfield's club. He rose through the club and served as captain of the team for almost a decade. In 1904 Semple won his first championship medal following a walkover from Lahorna De Wets. Thurles failed to retain their title, however, the team returned to the championship decider once again in 1906. A 4-11 to 3-6 defeat of Lahorna De Wets gave Semple his second championship medal as captain. It was the first of four successive championships for Thurles as subsequent defeats of Lahorna De Wets, Glengoole and Racecourse/Grangemockler brought Semple's medal tally to five. Five-in-a-row proved beyond Thurles, however, Semple's team reached the final for the sixth time in eight seasons in 1911. A 4-5 to 1-0 trouncing of Toomevara gave Semple his sixth and final championship medal as captain.

    Inter-county

    Tipperary Hurling Team outside Clonmel railway station, August 26, 1910. Semple is in the centre of the middle row.
    Semple's skill quickly brought him to the attention of the Tipperary senior hurling selectors. After briefly joining the team in 1897, he had to wait until 1900 to become a regular member of the starting seventeen. That year a 6-11 to 1-9 trouncing of Kerry gave him his first Munster medal.Tipp later narrowly defeated Kilkenny in the All-Ireland semi-final before trouncing Galway in the "home" All-Ireland final. This was not the end of the championship campaign because, for the first year ever, the "home" finalists had to take on London in the All-Ireland decider. The game was a close affair with both sides level at five points with eight minutes to go. London then took the lead; however, they later conceded a free. Tipp's Mikey Maher stepped up, took the free and a forward charge carried the sliotar over the line. Tipp scored another goal following a weak puck out and claimed a 2-5 to 0-6 victory. It was Semple's first All-Ireland medal. Cork dominated the provincial championship for the next five years; however, Tipp bounced back in 1906. That year Semple was captain for the first time as Tipp foiled Cork's bid for an unprecedented sixth Munster title in-a-row. The score line of 3-4 to 0-9 gave Semple a second Munster medal. Tipp trounced Galway by 7-14 to 0-2 on their next outing, setting up an All-Ireland final meeting with Dublin. Semple's side got off to a bad start with Dublin's Bill Leonardscoring a goal after just five seconds of play. Tipp fought back with Paddy Riordan giving an exceptional display of hurling and capturing most of his team's scores. Ironically, eleven members of the Dublin team hailed from Tipperary. The final score of 3-16 to 3-8 gave victory to Tipperary and gave Semple a second All-Ireland medal. Tipp lost their provincial crown in 1907, however, they reached the Munster final again in 1908. Semple was captain of the side again that year as his team received a walkover from Kerry in the provincial decider. Another defeat of Galway in the penultimate game set up another All-Ireland final meeting with Dublin. That game ended in a 2-5 to 1-8 draw and a replay was staged several months later in Athy. Semple's team were much sharper on that occasion. A first-half goal by Hugh Shelly put Tipp well on their way. Two more goals by Tony Carew after the interval gave Tipp a 3-15 to 1-5 victory.It was Semple's third All-Ireland medal. 1909 saw Tipp defeat arch rivals Cork in the Munster final once again. A 2-10 to 1-6 victory gave Semple his fourth Munster medal. The subsequent All-Ireland final saw Tipp take on Kilkenny. The omens looked good for a Tipperary win. It was the county's ninth appearance in the championship decider and they had won the previous eight. All did not go to plan as this Kilkenny side cemented their reputation as the team of the decade. A 4-6 to 0-12 defeat gave victory to "the Cats" and a first final defeat to Tipperary. Semple retired from inter-county hurling following this defeat.

    Personal life

    Semple was born in Drombane, County Tipperary in 1879. He received a limited education at his local national school and, like many of his contemporaries, finding work was a difficult prospect. At the age of 16 Semple left his native area and moved to Thurles. Here he worked as a guardsman with the Great Southern & Western Railway. In retirement from playing Semple maintained a keen interest in Gaelic games. In 1910 he and others organised a committee which purchased the showgrounds in Thurles in an effort to develop a hurling playing field there. This later became known as Thurles Sportsfield and is regarded as one of the best surfaces for hurling in Ireland. In 1971 it was renamed Semple Stadium in his honour. The stadium is also lovingly referred to as Tom Semple's field. Semple also held the post of chairman of the Tipperary County Board and represented the Tipperary on the Munster Council and Central Council. He also served as treasurer of the latter organization. During the War of Independence Semple played an important role for Republicans. He organized dispatches via his position with the Great Southern & Western Railway in Thurles. Tom Semple died on 11 April 1943.
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  • 1913 All Ireland Hurling Final Programme Cover:Tipperary v Kilkenny

    €80.00
    45cm x 35cm  Thurles Co Tipperary The 1913 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship Final was the 26th All-Ireland Final and the culmination of the 1913 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship, an inter-county hurling tournament for the top teams in Ireland. The match was held at Croke Park, Dublin, on 2 November 1913, between Kilkenny, represented by a club side from Mooncoin, and Tipperary, represented by club side Toomevara. The Munster champions lost to their Leinster opponents on a score line of 2–4 to 1–2.

    Summary

    J. Murphy opened the scoring with a goal for Tipperary and Matt Gargan replied with a Kilkenny goal. Kilkenny's vital second goal was scored by Sim Walton. It was Kilkenny's third All-Ireland title in-a-row and a remarkable seventh All-Ireland title in ten championship seasons. It was also the first all-Ireland final in which teams of 15 took part. A matchday programme from the game sold at auction in Kilkenny for more than €2,000 in 2018.

    Details

    1913-11-02
    Kilkenny 2–4 – 1–2 Tipperary
    Attendance: 12,000
    Referee: M. F. Crowe (Limerick
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  • 1914 Clare All Ireland Hurling Champions

    €65.00
    23cm x 26cm  Tulla Co Clare Life in Ireland in 1914 was a very different world . In European terms, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand lit the fuse that plunged the continent into the Great War in August 1914.  Women didn’t have the vote and Emily Parkhurst, pioneer of women’s emancipation, was jailed for protesting outside Buckingham Palace, and not for the first time.  In Ireland, we still lived under British Rule.  Independence was on many people’s minds and life was a struggle. In hurling terms, life and work impacted on training and opportunity.  These days, the All-Ireland championship is a sophisticated journey involving coaches, motivators, nutritionists and media appearances.  In 1914, it was a different.  This was illustrated by Tom McInerney, younger brother of Pat ‘Fowler’ McInerney (1914 medal winner) speaking to Liam Ryan of The Irish Times newspaper on August 28, 1995.  Tom spoke of the difficulties his brother encountered before the 1914 final.   Apparently, young Pat’s labour was so badly needed on the family farm that his father didn’t want him to play hurling. So, when Pat  ‘Fowler’ was called up for All-Ireland pre-match training, he was unable to tell his father.  One day after dinner, he left home without telling anyone and joined the team for two weeks collective training. He came home with an All-Ireland medal. The Clare season had begun long before All-Ireland day – October 18, 1914. It began in May of that year with a series of divisional games involving East, South and Mid Clare.  These games, the brainchild of Amby Power, were designed to allow the best hurling talent to emerge. And they did, producing much needed young blood, including John Fox, Brendan Considine, Sham Spellissy, Jim Guerin and Fowler McInerney for the senior county side. Clare started with a decisive 7-3 to 4-1 win over a strong Kerry team.  Goals were prolific in hurling at this time because of the abundance of first-time ground striking.   Clare went on to conquer Limerick, who had earlier beaten Tipperary by 14 points.   A delayed Munster final meant that Cork were nominated to represent Munster in the All-Ireland semi-final and they easily overcame the challenge of Galway, but subsequently lost to Clare in the Munster final. In Leinster, an exciting and dashing Laois team became the provincial champions for the first time. Along the way, the Midlanders defeated Wexford, Dublin and All-Ireland champions Kilkenny.  Laois were the team who would now meet Clare in the All-Ireland final.
    Players only, from left: Extreme back row wearing dark jerseys are John Rodgers; Patrick McDermott and Patrick Moloney. Standing l/r: Tom McGrath; John Fox; Rob Doherty; Michael Flanagan; Jim Clancy; Joe Power. Seated: Jim Guerin; Patrick ‘Fowler’ McInerney; Willie ‘Dodger’ Considine; Amby Power; Martin Moloney; Ned Grace; John Shalloo. Front seated: Brendan Considine; James ‘Sham’ Spellissy. Also in the photograph are Dr. T.P. Fitzgerald (team doctor); James O’Regan (chairman of Clare County Council); Jim O’Hehir (team trainer) and Stephen Clune (chairman of the Clare County Board).
    Players only, from left: Extreme back row wearing dark jerseys are John Rodgers; Patrick McDermott and Patrick Moloney. Standing l/r: Tom McGrath; John Fox; Rob Doherty; Michael Flanagan; Jim Clancy; Joe Power. Seated: Jim Guerin; Patrick ‘Fowler’ McInerney; Willie ‘Dodger’ Considine; Amby Power; Martin Moloney; Ned Grace; John Shalloo. Front seated: Brendan Considine; James ‘Sham’ Spellissy. Also in the photograph are Dr. T.P. Fitzgerald (team doctor); James O’Regan (chairman of Clare County Council); Jim O’Hehir (team trainer) and Stephen Clune (chairman of the Clare County Board).
    On All-Ireland day itself, the Clare team came on to the pitch, accompanied by William Redmond, MP for East Clare.   Croke Park was then a smaller venue that had been purchased by the GAA in 1913.  The team was greeted by terrific cheering from the estimated attendance of 15,000, who had paid a total of £475 at the gate. Cars were scarce and many people would have travelled to Dublin by train.  One of those was Elizabeth Cremins, then an 18-year-old girl from Newmarket-on-Fergus.  Speaking me in 1995, when she was then almost 100 years old, she said,   “I went to every hurling match, especially when Newmarket were playing.  Newmarket and Ennis were great rivals.  I knew John Fox, Jim Clancy, Jim Guerin and Rob Doherty.  Rob Doherty was very stylish.  He used to thrill the crowds when he’d race along the wing. I remember the newspapers describing his dramatic sprints.  Newmarket had great hurlers. We went by train from Ballycar to Dublin.  Many of us had never been on a train before.  Mike, my brother, was with me and I remember him singing The Croppy Boy on the journey.  We got out at Kingsbridge, as it was then and we got on the first tram and got off when it stopped.  We thought we were in Jones’ Road (Croke Park). In the Clare dressing room before the throw in, then as now, switches were made.  Management decided to play Jim Guerin instead of the selected Paddy McDermott. Clare got off to a terrific start building up an interval lead of 10 points, 3-1 to Nil with a goal from Jim Clancy after seven minutes and two from Jim Guerin. Laois, who were never let play with their usual dash, fought back with an early second half goal, but with the Clare backs playing soundly, the forwards went on to score two more goals to leave Clare comfortable winners by 5-1 to 1-0 against a disappointing Laois team. Clare’s win was reported in the following day’s Irish Independent.  “They excelled in both science and dash.  Not only in attack did they demonstrate marked superiority, but their backs gave a grand display, which was generally admired. The victorious Clare team collected the Great Southern Challenge Cup and the aftermath celebrations took place in Wynne’s Hotel, Lower Abbey Street.  They returned home the following day to a hero’s welcome.” To day, the All-Ireland final is an extraordinary spectacle, with attendances of over 82,000 and transmitted to millions of people all over the world.  In 1914, the attendance was smaller and word of the Clare win filtered slowly back to the county. But, the honour, pride and sense of achievement were exactly the same. The Team. The Clare senior team of 1914 sported a white jersey with green sash, while Laois togged in amber jerseys with black bars.  The Clare senior team was:  Pat ‘Fowler’ McInerney (O’Callaghan’s. Mills); John Shalloo (O’Callaghan’s Mills); William ‘Dodger’ Considine (Ennis Dalcassians); Amby Power (Quin), captain; John Fox (Newmarket); Rob Doherty (Newmarket); Joe Power (Quin); Tom McGrath (O’Callaghan’s Mills Mills); Edward ‘Ned’ Grace (O’Callaghan’s Mills); Michael Flanagan (Quin); Brendan Considine (Ennis Dalcassians); Martin ‘Handsome’ Moloney (Ennis Dalcassians); James ‘Sham’ Spellissy (Ennis Dalcassians); Jim Guerin (Newmarket); Jim ‘Bawn’ Clancy (Newmarket).  Subs:  John ‘Landger’ Rodgers (Tulla); Patrick ‘Bucky’ Moloney (Killanena) both used.  Also Paddy Kenny (Ennis Dalcassians) and F. Brady played in the game against Limerick. Paddy McDermott (Whitegate) and Patrick ‘Bucky’ Moloney played in the Munster final. Trainer:  Jim O’Hehir.   Referee:   Mr. John Lawlor (Kilkenny) Juniors make it a double CLARE was the first county to win the senior and junior double in 1914.  In the junior championship, the Banner County defeated Kerry, Tipperary, Cork and Laois in the final by 6-5 to 1-1.  The final wasn’t played until March 1915.    Match reports in the newspapers of the day were short and erratic.  Only four of Clare’s six goals were accounted for.  Two are credited to Dan Minogue and the other two to Ted Lucid. The junior team that defeated Laois at Croke Park was: – Dan Minogue (captain), James Marrinan, Paddy Gordon, Edward (Ted) Lucid, Jack Spellissy, Michael J. Baker, Tommy Daly (goal), Paddy Quinn, Jim Quinn, Michael Bolton, Dan Flannery, Pat Hannon, Atty Gleeson, Simon Minogue, Dan Crowe.  Others to play in the championship included John Cody and Charlie Stewart from Ogonnelloe, Freddie Garrihy, Johnny ‘Joker’ Coote, Paddy Connell, P. Rodgers and others.  It is important to note that the Clare junior team that defeated Kerry by 6-1 to 1-1 on 21st June 1914 at the Ennis show grounds bore little resemblance to the team that finally won the championship.
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  • 1914 Clare All Ireland Hurling Champions Team Selectors

    €70.00
    25cm x 25cm  Tulla Co Clare Framed newspaper cutting off the 1914 Clare Hurling Selectors . t was a very different world then.   In European terms, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand lit the fuse that plunged the continent into the Great War in August 1914.  Women didn’t have the vote and Emily Parkhurst, pioneer of women’s emancipation, was jailed for protesting outside Buckingham Palace, and not for the first time.  In Ireland, we still lived under British Rule.  Independence was on many people’s minds and life was a struggle. In hurling terms, life and work impacted on training and opportunity.  These days, the All-Ireland championship is a sophisticated journey involving coaches, motivators, nutritionists and media appearances.  In 1914, it was a different.  This was illustrated by Tom McInerney, younger brother of Pat ‘Fowler’ McInerney (1914 medal winner) speaking to Liam Ryan of The Irish Times newspaper on August 28, 1995.  Tom spoke of the difficulties his brother encountered before the 1914 final.   Apparently, young Pat’s labour was so badly needed on the family farm that his father didn’t want him to play hurling. So, when Pat  ‘Fowler’ was called up for All-Ireland pre-match training, he was unable to tell his father.  One day after dinner, he left home without telling anyone and joined the team for two weeks collective training. He came home with an All-Ireland medal. The Clare season had begun long before All-Ireland day – October 18, 1914. It began in May of that year with a series of divisional games involving East, South and Mid Clare.  These games, the brainchild of Amby Power, were designed to allow the best hurling talent to emerge. And they did, producing much needed young blood, including John Fox, Brendan Considine, Sham Spellissy, Jim Guerin and Fowler McInerney for the senior county side. Clare started with a decisive 7-3 to 4-1 win over a strong Kerry team.  Goals were prolific in hurling at this time because of the abundance of first-time ground striking.   Clare went on to conquer Limerick, who had earlier beaten Tipperary by 14 points.   A delayed Munster final meant that Cork were nominated to represent Munster in the All-Ireland semi-final and they easily overcame the challenge of Galway, but subsequently lost to Clare in the Munster final. In Leinster, an exciting and dashing Laois team became the provincial champions for the first time. Along the way, the Midlanders defeated Wexford, Dublin and All-Ireland champions Kilkenny.  Laois were the team who would now meet Clare in the All-Ireland final.
    Players only, from left: Extreme back row wearing dark jerseys are John Rodgers; Patrick McDermott and Patrick Moloney. Standing l/r: Tom McGrath; John Fox; Rob Doherty; Michael Flanagan; Jim Clancy; Joe Power. Seated: Jim Guerin; Patrick ‘Fowler’ McInerney; Willie ‘Dodger’ Considine; Amby Power; Martin Moloney; Ned Grace; John Shalloo. Front seated: Brendan Considine; James ‘Sham’ Spellissy. Also in the photograph are Dr. T.P. Fitzgerald (team doctor); James O’Regan (chairman of Clare County Council); Jim O’Hehir (team trainer) and Stephen Clune (chairman of the Clare County Board).
    Players only, from left: Extreme back row wearing dark jerseys are John Rodgers; Patrick McDermott and Patrick Moloney. Standing l/r: Tom McGrath; John Fox; Rob Doherty; Michael Flanagan; Jim Clancy; Joe Power. Seated: Jim Guerin; Patrick ‘Fowler’ McInerney; Willie ‘Dodger’ Considine; Amby Power; Martin Moloney; Ned Grace; John Shalloo. Front seated: Brendan Considine; James ‘Sham’ Spellissy. Also in the photograph are Dr. T.P. Fitzgerald (team doctor); James O’Regan (chairman of Clare County Council); Jim O’Hehir (team trainer) and Stephen Clune (chairman of the Clare County Board).
    On All-Ireland day itself, the Clare team came on to the pitch, accompanied by William Redmond, MP for East Clare.   Croke Park was then a smaller venue that had been purchased by the GAA in 1913.  The team was greeted by terrific cheering from the estimated attendance of 15,000, who had paid a total of £475 at the gate. Cars were scarce and many people would have travelled to Dublin by train.  One of those was Elizabeth Cremins, then an 18-year-old girl from Newmarket-on-Fergus.  Speaking me in 1995, when she was then almost 100 years old, she said,   “I went to every hurling match, especially when Newmarket were playing.  Newmarket and Ennis were great rivals.  I knew John Fox, Jim Clancy, Jim Guerin and Rob Doherty.  Rob Doherty was very stylish.  He used to thrill the crowds when he’d race along the wing. I remember the newspapers describing his dramatic sprints.  Newmarket had great hurlers. We went by train from Ballycar to Dublin.  Many of us had never been on a train before.  Mike, my brother, was with me and I remember him singing The Croppy Boy on the journey.  We got out at Kingsbridge, as it was then and we got on the first tram and got off when it stopped.  We thought we were in Jones’ Road (Croke Park). In the Clare dressing room before the throw in, then as now, switches were made.  Management decided to play Jim Guerin instead of the selected Paddy McDermott. Clare got off to a terrific start building up an interval lead of 10 points, 3-1 to Nil with a goal from Jim Clancy after seven minutes and two from Jim Guerin. Laois, who were never let play with their usual dash, fought back with an early second half goal, but with the Clare backs playing soundly, the forwards went on to score two more goals to leave Clare comfortable winners by 5-1 to 1-0 against a disappointing Laois team. Clare’s win was reported in the following day’s Irish Independent.  “They excelled in both science and dash.  Not only in attack did they demonstrate marked superiority, but their backs gave a grand display, which was generally admired. The victorious Clare team collected the Great Southern Challenge Cup and the aftermath celebrations took place in Wynne’s Hotel, Lower Abbey Street.  They returned home the following day to a hero’s welcome.” To day, the All-Ireland final is an extraordinary spectacle, with attendances of over 82,000 and transmitted to millions of people all over the world.  In 1914, the attendance was smaller and word of the Clare win filtered slowly back to the county. But, the honour, pride and sense of achievement were exactly the same. The Team. The Clare senior team of 1914 sported a white jersey with green sash, while Laois togged in amber jerseys with black bars.  The Clare senior team was:  Pat ‘Fowler’ McInerney (O’Callaghan’s. Mills); John Shalloo (O’Callaghan’s Mills); William ‘Dodger’ Considine (Ennis Dalcassians); Amby Power (Quin), captain; John Fox (Newmarket); Rob Doherty (Newmarket); Joe Power (Quin); Tom McGrath (O’Callaghan’s Mills Mills); Edward ‘Ned’ Grace (O’Callaghan’s Mills); Michael Flanagan (Quin); Brendan Considine (Ennis Dalcassians); Martin ‘Handsome’ Moloney (Ennis Dalcassians); James ‘Sham’ Spellissy (Ennis Dalcassians); Jim Guerin (Newmarket); Jim ‘Bawn’ Clancy (Newmarket).  Subs:  John ‘Landger’ Rodgers (Tulla); Patrick ‘Bucky’ Moloney (Killanena) both used.  Also Paddy Kenny (Ennis Dalcassians) and F. Brady played in the game against Limerick. Paddy McDermott (Whitegate) and Patrick ‘Bucky’ Moloney played in the Munster final. Trainer:  Jim O’Hehir.   Referee:   Mr. John Lawlor (Kilkenny) Juniors make it a double CLARE was the first county to win the senior and junior double in 1914.  In the junior championship, the Banner County defeated Kerry, Tipperary, Cork and Laois in the final by 6-5 to 1-1.  The final wasn’t played until March 1915.    Match reports in the newspapers of the day were short and erratic.  Only four of Clare’s six goals were accounted for.  Two are credited to Dan Minogue and the other two to Ted Lucid. The junior team that defeated Laois at Croke Park was: – Dan Minogue (captain), James Marrinan, Paddy Gordon, Edward (Ted) Lucid, Jack Spellissy, Michael J. Baker, Tommy Daly (goal), Paddy Quinn, Jim Quinn, Michael Bolton, Dan Flannery, Pat Hannon, Atty Gleeson, Simon Minogue, Dan Crowe.  Others to play in the championship included John Cody and Charlie Stewart from Ogonnelloe, Freddie Garrihy, Johnny ‘Joker’ Coote, Paddy Connell, P. Rodgers and others.  It is important to note that the Clare junior team that defeated Kerry by 6-1 to 1-1 on 21st June 1914 at the Ennis show grounds bore little resemblance to the team that finally won the championship.
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  • 1916 Easter Rising Rebel Leaders Print

    €100.00
    43cm x 33cm  Ringsend Dublin   A beautiful portrait of the 14 Rebel Leaders executed after the 1916 Easter Rising.

    14 men executed in Kilmainham Gaol

    A 15th man, Thomas Kent, has also been executed in Cork

    Dublin, 13 May 1916 - 14 men have been executed in Kilmainham Gaol for their involvement in the recent Dublin rebellion. The executions were carried out by firing squad at dawn. The men had earlier been tried in secrecy at Richmond Barracks in Dublin at a series of field general courts-martial where they were permitted no defence counsel. The executions began on the morning of 3 May with Patrick Pearse, Thomas Clarke and Thomas MacDonagh being shot by firing squad at the Stonebreaker’s Yard in Kilmainham Gaol. The following morning Joseph Plunkett, Edward Daly, Michael O'Hanrahan and Willie Pearse were shot, followed by John MacBride on the morning after. Éamonn Ceannt, Michael Mallin, Seán Heuston and Con Colbert were shot on 8 May, followed by Seán Mac Diarmadaand James Connolly on 12 May. There are reports that Connolly was already grievously ill and was unable to stand in front on the firing squad that shot him. Among the men who have been shot are all seven signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic that was posted on walls around Dublin during the rebellion and was read aloud outside the GPO on Sackville Street by Patrick Pearse on Easter Monday. A further execution in Co. Cork took place on 9 May where Thomas Kent was shot after his arrest 7 days earlier. Mr Kent had been heavily linked with land agitation in Cork, but it is not clear that he had any involvement in the Rising in Dublin.

    Cartoon from Issues and Events commenting on the freedom of Ireland. (Image: Villanova University)

    Other rebels Also executed were leaders of various garrisons of volunteers who took over key buildings around Dublin. The decisions to single out Willie Pearse and John MacBride for execution appear unrelated to any rank they held, however. Other rebel leaders – including Eamon de Valera and Constance Markievicz – remain in custody and it is not clear what their fate will be. In London, Roger Casement awaits trial for treason and is being held in the Tower of London, following his arrest in Co. Kerry on Good Friday. It appears that Casement was attempting to facilitate a shipment of arms from Germany for use in the rebellion. Meanwhile, the arrests of hundreds of people associated, or deemed by the authorities to be associated with the Rising, continues. Those arrested are being interned, with some being sent across the Irish Sea to England and Wales. [Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]
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  • 1916 Executed Rebel Leaders Framed Miniature Prints-James Connolly

    €50.00
    Beautiful and poignant collection of four of the 1916 Easter Rising Rebel Leaders who were executed by the British Crown Forces at Kilmainham Jail a few weeks later.Featured here are Padraig Pearse,Thomas Clarke,James Connolly,Thomas Kent. James Connolly (5 June 1868 – 12 May 1916) was an Irish republican and socialist leader. Connolly was born in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, Scotland, to Irish parents. He left school for working life at the age of 11. He also took a role in Scottish and American politics. He was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World and founder of the Irish Socialist Republican Party. With James Larkin, he was centrally involved in the Dublin lock-out of 1913, as a result of which the two men formed the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) that year. He opposed British rule in Ireland, and was one of the leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916. He was executed by firing squad following the Rising.

    Early life

    Connolly was born in an Edinburgh slum in 1868, the third son of Irish parents John Connolly and Mary McGinn.His parents had moved to Scotland from County Monaghan, Ireland, and settled in the Cowgate, a ghetto where thousands of Irish people lived. He spoke with a Scottish accent throughout his life. He was born in St Patrick's Roman Catholic parish, in the Cowgate district of Edinburgh known as "Little Ireland". His father and grandfathers were labourers.He had an education up to the age of about ten in the local Catholic primary school. He left and worked in labouring jobs. Owing to the economic difficulties he was having, like his eldest brother John, he joined the British Army. He enlisted at age 14, falsifying his age and giving his name as Reid, as his brother John had done. He served in Ireland with the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Scots Regiment for nearly seven years, during a turbulent period in rural areas known as the Land War.He would later become involved in the land issue. He developed a deep hatred for the British Army that lasted his entire life.When he heard that his regiment was being transferred to India, he deserted. Connolly had another reason for not wanting to go to India; a young woman by the name of Lillie Reynolds. Lillie moved to Scotland with James after he left the army and they married in April 1890.They settled in Edinburgh. There, Connolly began to get involved in the Scottish Socialist Federation,[17] but with a young family to support, he needed a way to provide for them. He briefly established a cobbler's shop in 1895, but this failed after a few monthsas his shoe-mending skills were insufficient.He was strongly active with the socialist movement at the time, and prioritized this over his cobbling.

    Socialist involvement

    After Ireland is free, says the patriot who won't touch Socialism, we will protect all classes, and if you won't pay your rent you will be evicted same as now. But the evicting party, under command of the sheriff, will wear green uniforms and the Harp without the Crown, and the warrant turning you out on the roadside will be stamped with the arms of the Irish Republic.
    James Connolly, in Workers' Republic, 1899
    In the 1880s, Connolly became influenced by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx and would later advocate a type of socialism that was based in Marxist theory.[21] Connolly described himself as a socialist, while acknowledging the influence of Marx. He became secretary of the Scottish Socialist Federation. At the time his brother John was secretary; after John spoke at a rally in favour of the eight-hour day, however, he was fired from his job with the Edinburgh Corporation, so while he looked for work, James took over as secretary. During this time, Connolly became involved with the Independent Labour Party which Keir Hardie had formed in 1893. At some time during this period, he took up the study of, and advocated the use of, the neutral international language, Esperanto. His interest in Esperanto is implicit in his 1898 article "The Language Movement", which primarily attempts to promote socialism to the nationalist revolutionaries involved in the Gaelic Revival. By 1892 he was involved in the Scottish Socialist Federation, acting as its secretary from 1895. Two months after the birth of his third daughter, word came to Connolly that the Dublin Socialist Club was looking for a full-time secretary, a job that offered a salary of a pound a week. Connolly and his family moved to Dublin,where he took up the position. At his instigation, the club quickly evolved into the Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP).The ISRP is regarded by many Irish historians as a party of pivotal importance in the early history of Irish socialism and republicanism. While active as a socialist in Great Britain, Connolly was the founding editor of The Socialist newspaper and was among the founders of the Socialist Labour Partywhich split from the Social Democratic Federation in 1903. Connolly joined Maud Gonne and Arthur Griffith in the Dublin protests against the Boer War. A combination of frustration with the progress of the ISRP and economic necessity caused him to emigrate to the United States in September 1903, with no plans as to what he would do there.While in America he was a member of the Socialist Labor Party of America (1906), the Socialist Party of America (1909) and the Industrial Workers of the World, and founded the Irish Socialist Federation in New York, 1907. He famously had a chapter of his 1910 book Labour in Irish History entitled "A chapter of horrors: Daniel O’Connell and the working class." critical of the achiever of Catholic Emancipation 60 years earlier. On Connolly's return to Ireland in 1910 he was right-hand man to James Larkin in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. He stood twice for the Wood Quay ward of Dublin Corporation but was unsuccessful. His name, and those of his family, appears in the 1911 Census of Ireland - his occupation is listed as "National Organiser Socialist Party".In 1913, in response to the Lockout, he, along with an ex-British officer, Jack White, founded the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), an armed and well-trained body of labour men whose aim was to defend workers and strikers, particularly from the frequent brutality of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. Though they only numbered about 250 at most, their goal soon became the establishment of an independent and socialist Irish nation. He also founded the Irish Labour Party as the political wing of the Irish Trades Union Congress in 1912 and was a member of its National Executive. Around this time he met Winifred Carney in Belfast, who became his secretary and would later accompany him during the Easter Rising. Like Vladimir Lenin, Connolly opposed the First World War explicitly from a socialist perspective. Rejecting the Redmondite position, he declared "I know of no foreign enemy of this country except the British Government."

    Easter Rising

    Connolly and the ICA made plans for an armed uprising during the war, independently of the Irish Volunteers. In early 1916, believing the Volunteers were dithering, he attempted to goad them into action by threatening to send the ICA against the British Empire alone, if necessary. This alarmed the members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, who had already infiltrated the Volunteers and had plans for an insurrection that very year. In order to talk Connolly out of any such rash action, the IRB leaders, including Tom Clarke and Patrick Pearse, met with Connolly to see if an agreement could be reached. During the meeting, the IRB and the ICA agreed to act together at Easter of that year. During the Easter Rising, beginning on 24 April 1916, Connolly was Commandant of the Dublin Brigade. As the Dublin Brigade had the most substantial role in the rising, he was de factocommander-in-chief. Connolly's leadership in the Easter rising was considered formidable. Michael Collins said of Connolly that he "would have followed him through hell." Following the surrender, he said to other prisoners: "Don't worry. Those of us that signed the proclamation will be shot. But the rest of you will be set free."

    Death

    Location of Connolly's execution at Kilmainham Gaolin Dublin
    Connolly was not actually held in gaol, but in a room (now called the "Connolly Room") at the State Apartments in Dublin Castle, which had been converted to a first-aid station for troops recovering from the war. Connolly was sentenced to death by firing squad for his part in the rising. On 12 May 1916 he was taken by military ambulance to Royal Hospital Kilmainham, across the road from Kilmainham Gaol, and from there taken to the gaol, where he was to be executed. While Connolly was still in hospital in Dublin Castle, during a visit from his wife and daughter, he said: "The Socialists will not understand why I am here; they forget I am an Irishman." Connolly had been so badly injured from the fighting (a doctor had already said he had no more than a day or two to live, but the execution order was still given) that he was unable to stand before the firing squad; he was carried to a prison courtyard on a stretcher. His absolution and last rites were administered by a Capuchin, Father Aloysius Travers. Asked to pray for the soldiers about to shoot him, he said: "I will say a prayer for all men who do their duty according to their lights."Instead of being marched to the same spot where the others had been executed, at the far end of the execution yard, he was tied to a chair and then shot. His body (along with those of the other leaders) was put in a mass grave without a coffin. The executions of the rebel leaders deeply angered the majority of the Irish population, most of whom had shown no support during the rebellion. It was Connolly's execution that caused the most controversy.Historians have pointed to the manner of execution of Connolly and similar rebels, along with their actions, as being factors that caused public awareness of their desires and goals and gathered support for the movements that they had died fighting for. The executions were not well received, even throughout Britain, and drew unwanted attention from the United States, which the British Government was seeking to bring into the war in Europe. H. H. Asquith, the Prime Minister, ordered that no more executions were to take place; an exception being that of Roger Casement, who was charged with high treasonand had not yet been tried.

    Family

    James Connolly and his wife Lillie had seven children. Nora became an influential writer and campaigner within the Irish-republican movement as an adult. Roddy continued his father's politics. In later years, both became members of the Oireachtas (Irish parliament). Moira became a doctor and married Richard Beech. One of Connolly's daughters Mona died in 1904 aged 13, when she burned herself while she did the washing for an aunt. Three months after James Connolly's execution his wife was received into the Catholic Church, at Church St. on 15 August.

    Legacy

     
    Statue of James Connolly in Dublin
    Connolly's legacy in Ireland is mainly due to his contribution to the republican cause; his legacy as a socialist has been claimed by a variety of left-wing and left-republican groups, and he is also associated with the Labour Party which he founded. Connolly was among the few European members of the Second International who opposed, outright, World War I. This put him at odds with most of the socialist leaders of Europe. He was influenced by and heavily involved with the radical Industrial Workers of the World labour union, and envisaged socialism as Industrial Union control of production. Also he envisioned the IWW forming their own political party that would bring together the feuding socialist groups such as the Socialist Labor Party of America and the Socialist Party of America.Likewise, he envisaged independent Ireland as a socialist republic. His connection and views on Revolutionary Unionism and Syndicalism have raised debate on if his image for a workers republic would be one of State or Grassroots socialism.For a time he was involved with De Leonism and the Second International until he later broke with both. In Scotland, Connolly's thinking influenced socialists such as John Maclean, who would, like him, combine his leftist thinking with nationalist ideas when he formed the Scottish Workers Republican Party.
    Statue of James Connolly in Belfast
    The Connolly Association, a British organisation campaigning for Irish unity and independence, is named after Connolly. In 1928, Follonsby miners' lodge in the Durham coalfield unfurled a newly designed banner that included a portrait of Connolly on it. The banner was burned in 1938, replaced but then painted over in 1940. A reproduction of the 1938 Connolly banner was commissioned in 2011 by the Follonsby Miners’ Lodge Banner Association and it is regularly paraded at various events in County Durham ('Old King Coal' at Beamish Open Air museum, 'The Seven men of Jarrow' commemoration every June, the Durham Miners' Gala every second Saturday in July, the Tommy Hepburn annual memorial every October), in the wider UK and Ireland. There is a statue of James Connolly in Dublin, outside Liberty Hall, the offices of the SIPTU trade union. Another statue of Connolly stands in Union Park, Chicago near the offices of the UE union. There is a bust of Connolly in Troy, New York, in the park behind the statue of Uncle Sam. In March 2016 a statue of Connolly was unveiled by Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure minister Carál Ní Chuilín, and Connolly's great grandson, James Connolly Heron, on Falls Road in Belfast. In a 1972 interview on The Dick Cavett Show, John Lennon stated that James Connolly was an inspiration for his song, "Woman Is the Nigger of the World". Lennon quoted Connolly's 'the female is the slave of the slave' in explaining the feminist inspiration for the song. Connolly Station, one of the two main railway stations in Dublin, and Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown, are named in his honour. In a 2002, BBC television production, 100 Greatest Britons where the British public were asked to register their vote, Connolly was voted in 64th place. In 1968, Irish group The Wolfe Tones released a single named "James Connolly", which reached number 15 in the Irish charts. The band Black 47 wrote and performed a song about Connolly that appears on their album Fire of Freedom. Irish singer-songwriter Niall Connolly has a song "May 12th, 1916 - A Song for James Connolly" on his album Dream Your Way Out of This One(2017).  
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  • 1916 Executed Rebel Leaders Framed Miniature Prints-Padraig Pearse

    €50.00
    Beautiful and poignant collection of four of the 1916 Easter Rising Rebel Leaders who were executed by the British Crown Forces at Kilmainham Jail a few weeks later.Featured here are Padraig Pearse,Thomas Clarke,James Connolly,Thomas Kent.   Patrick Pearse, in full Patrick Henry Pearse, Patrick also spelled in Irish Pádraic, (born November 10, 1879, Dublin, Ireland—died May 3, 1916, Dublin), Irish nationalist leader, poet, and educator. He was the first president of the provisional government of the Irish republic proclaimed in Dublin on April 24, 1916, and was commander in chief of the Irish forces in the anti-British Easter Rising that began on the same day.The son of an English sculptor and his Irish wife, Pearse became a director of the Gaelic League (founded 1893 for the preservation of the Irish language) and edited (1903–09) its weekly newspaper, An Claidheamh Soluis (“The Sword of Light”). To further promote the Irish language as a weapon against British domination, he published tales from old Irish manuscripts and a collection (1914) of his own poems in the modern Irish idiom. He founded St. Enda’s College (1908), near Dublin, as a bilingual institution with its teaching based on Irish traditions and culture. On the formation of the Irish Volunteers (November 1913) as a counterforce against the Ulster Volunteers (militant supporters of the Anglo-Irish union), Pearse became a member of their provisional committee, and he contributed poems and articles to their newspaper, The Irish Volunteer. In July 1914 he was made a member of the supreme council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). After the Irish Volunteers split (September 1914), he became a leader of the more extreme nationalist section, which opposed any support for Great Britain in World War I. He came to believe that the blood of martyrs would be required to liberate Ireland, and on that theme he delivered a famous oration in August 1915 at the burial of Jeremiah O’Donovan, known as O’Donovan Rossa, a veteran of Sinn Féin.
    As early as spring 1915 Pearse, as an IRB supreme council member, helped to plan the Easter Rising. On Easter Monday he proclaimed the provisional government of the Irish republic from the steps of Dublin General Post Office. On April 29, when the revolt was crushed, he surrendered to the British. After a court-martial, he was shot by a firing squad. More than any other man, Pearse was responsible for establishing the republican tradition in Ireland.
    Pearse’s Collected Works appeared in 1917–22 (3 vol.) and again in 1924 (5 vol.), and his Political Writings and Speeches appeared in 1952.
     
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  • 1916 Executed Rebel Leaders Framed Miniature Prints-Thomas Kent

    €50.00
    Beautiful and poignant collection of four of the 1916 Easter Rising Rebel Leaders who were executed by the British Crown Forces at Kilmainham Jail a few weeks later.Featured here are Padraig Pearse,Thomas Clarke,James Connolly,Thomas Kent Thomas Kent (Irish: Tomás Ceannt; 29 August 1865 – 9 May 1916) was an Irish nationalist who was court-martialled and executed following a gunfight with the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) on 9 May 1916, in the immediate aftermath of the Easter Rising.

    Easter Rising

    Kent was part of a prominent nationalist family who lived at Bawnard House, Castlelyons, County Cork. They were prepared to take part in the Easter Rising, but when the mobilisation order was countermanded, they stayed at home. The rising nevertheless went ahead in Dublin, and the RIC was sent to arrest well-known sympathizers throughout the country, including known members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Sinn Féin, and the Irish Volunteers. When the Kent residence was raided they were met with resistance from Thomas and his brothers Richard, David and William. A gunfight lasted for four hours, in which an RIC officer, Head Constable William Rowe, was killed and David Kent was seriously wounded. Eventually the Kents were forced to surrender, although Richard made a last minute dash for freedom and was fatally wounded.

    Trial and execution

    Thomas and William Kent were tried by court martial on the charge of armed rebellion. William was acquitted, but Thomas was sentenced to death. David Kent was brought to Dublin where he was charged with the same offence, found guilty and sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted and he was sentenced to five years penal servitude. Thomas Kent was executed by firing squad in Cork on 9 May 1916, the only person outside of Dublin to be shot for his role in the events surrounding Easter Week (Roger Casement was hanged for treason in London). Kent was buried in the grounds of Cork Prison, formerly the Military Detention Barracks at the rear Collins Barracks, Cork (formerly Victoria Barracks). The former army married quarters to the rear of Collins Barracks are named in his honour.

    State funeral

    Taoiseach Enda Kenny offered a state funeral to the Kent family early in 2015, which they accepted. Kent's remains were exhumed from Cork prison in June 2015 after being buried for 99 years. The analysis of Kent's remains, which had been found in a shallow, quicklime-filled grave, involved the State Pathologist's Office, the National Forensic Coordination Office at the Garda Technical Bureau, Forensic Science Ireland, and scientists from University College Dublin, and the scientific team was led by Dr. Jens Carlsson from the University of California-Davis. The State funeral was held on 18 September 2015 at St Nicholas' Church in Castlelyons. Kent lay in state at Collins Barracks in Cork the day before. The requiem mass was attended by President Michael D. Higgins, with Enda Kenny delivering the graveside oration.

    Memorials

    Bust of Kent at Cork Kent railway station by sculptor James MacCarthy.
    The main railway station in Cork, Kent Station was named after Thomas Kent in 1966. The bridge over the River Blackwater in Fermoy, Co. Cork, where Thomas Kent was detained following his arrest, was named after him and his brothers in 2016.    
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