This blog is a personal take on Listowel, Co. Kerry. I am writing for anyone anywhere with a Listowel connection but especially for sons and daughters of Listowel who find themselves far from home. Contact me at listowelconnection@gmail.com

Month: June 2016

Three new businesses, Thade Gowran remembered and an upcoming Music Festival

Three New Businesses Open Their Doors

This colourful shop is located at No. 3 Main Street. In  it,  you can customise a cup or plate with birth, marriage, Fathers’ Day or other details or just bring home your very own souvenir of your visit to Listowel.

Lizzie’s Little Kitchen on William Street opened on June 17 2016. This is the Listowel outlet of a food emporium which is very popular in Ballybunion and at the Friday Market in Listowel.

Jimmy Deenihan’s constituency office premises is now Purtill Solicitors.

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Trade Gowran’s Descendants



Bernadette Beardsley sent this photo . She and all of Thade’s descendants are proud of their Irish heritage.

“Hello My name is Bernadette Bardsley you recently published an article about my Great Grandfather Thade  Gowran who was my mothers  Hannah Teresa Flaherty’s Grandfather My mother was featured in the article as was my Father who was an Englishman Warren Paul Bardsley, also featured my sister Fran Blyth and her three children my nieces and Nephews Michael, Sean Chamberlain and her daughter Alexis Johnstone.

Thade’s  Decendents from his Granddaughter are many, and many of us have his love of Poetry including myself, I sing like my Great Grandfather and play an Instrument, I was also born in the same month of May, his Great Grandson Anthony Warren Bardsley is very talented in Poetry and has a Book Published, Kathleen Johnson is also gifted with writing, also his Great Granddaughter, of course many of us have children too, so the spirit of Thade  carries on to a fourth Generation .”

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Expect Delays



Vital repair work on both sides of the Big Bridge is causing some delays to traffic recently as a stop go system is in operation.

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A Saturday Night in Listowel Town Square like no other



Some big names booked for Listowel for August 13 next.

A Few Success Stories and The Euros


Summer Came and Went while I was away


Ballybunion on the June Bank Holiday Weekend was like a throwback to the good old days. (Photo; Ballybunion Prints Beach)


Listowel Writers’ Week 2016 was a great success. (Photo LWW)




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A Few Success stories while I was on my break




Professor Rob Landers, formerly Listowel, now Chief Clinical
Director South/South West Hospital Group had the Honour  of delivering the
Conferring Address at UCC Medical Conferring. He is pictured congratulating Hons. Graduate Darragh Enright, Glin, grandson of the late Tom
& Eileen O’ Halloran, Bridge Road.

 Included also is Dr. Zelie Gaffney Daly,
Newmarket , Co. Cork and Darragh’s Mam, Brenda. Darragh expects to take up a
position shortly in one of the Dublin hospitals. Prof. Landers inspiring address
to the graduates offered words of encouragement and support as they enter a
difficult and challenging work environment in the health service. A double
Listowel connection on this auspicious occasion!

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Meanwhile on the Agricultural Show Circuit



 No sooner were they home than the horsey crowd were off to the show. Sonny Bill won all round him in Clonakilty. My brother and his daughter are holding the two cups he won. I don’t think that horse could look more proud if he tried. His very able rider is Joanna Jones.



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We’ve all Gone Football Crazy



Spotted in a shop window in Market Street, Listowel on the Monday of the Ireland Sweden game.

In Athea Co. Limerick  (photo from Athea Village site on Facebook)

The fans who are in France are doing us proud too.

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Who’d be a football manager?



According to Dough McLeod, the three greatest football managers of all time were Jock Stein, Jock Stein and Jock Stein, so maybe it is worthwhile to listen to what Jock Stein has to say about what makes a good manager;

 “The secret to being a good manager is to keep the six players who hate you away from the five who are undecided.”

While I was away

Adventure in St. Louis, Missouri


During my break from blogging I went on a big adventure to St. Louis in the U.S.A. The occasion was the marriage of my nephew, Philip Ahern to local girl, Anna Sobotka. There is little else but this joyous event would have persuaded me to leave Listowel during Writers’ Week.


 I was with this Irish gang and we stayed at The Parkway Hotel…So far so good, until I stepped into the lift.

I never did find out what happens if you press this button.

Parents of the groom, my brother, Pat and his wife Breda Ahern.

The humanist ceremony was held in a rooftop venue. The Officiant, Holly, personalised the ceremony to include a nod to Philip’s Irish heritage and Anna’s Jewish background. Elizabeth Ahern read Heaney’s Scaffolding and Philip smashed a glass and we all cheered mazel tov.

 Another Listowel connection ( besides me) was the rings. The beautifully engraved gold bands were custom made for the couple by Listowel goldsmith and silversmith, Eileen Moylan.

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While we were in town we did a few touristy things. One of the most magnificent tourist attractions in St. Louis was within walking distance of our hotel. We attended Sunday mass in the Catholic basilica. This church has very strong Irish connections. It has had many Irish archbishops, priests and bishops. The most famous is Cardinal Glennon who was very involved in building the cathedral.

This is one of the many mosaics in the church. The basilica in St. Louis  has more mosaic work than any other church in the U.S. It took artists, working in teams of 15, 75 years to complete all the mosaics in the church.

 This is Cardinal Glennon, much revered in these parts. The man who was on duty in the souvenir shop on the day we visited was called Glennon after the cardinal.

St. Louis is home to Anhauser Busch who make Budweiser. We took the tour. If you are ever in this part of the U.S. it’s a worthwhile lesson in automation. We saw the old way with the Clydesdale dray horses and the labour intensive brewing process. There was scarcely a human being to be seen on today’s factory floor.

 The Clydesdales are treated like royalty.

Our hotel was right next to Barnes Jewish hospital. This is just a small portion of this huge hospital which is famous for transplants and particularly for children’s cancers. 


This visitor attraction is called The Museum. It’s not a museum but more like a huge children’s adventure playground. Do you see that plane? Well, look above it and you will see a bus teetering over the edge of the tenth floor. It is possible to climb up to the bus and slide down the ten stories to the ground. There are swaying ropewalks, caves and dungeons, tunnels to crawl through and all sorts of scary places to get wedged or lost or just plain scared to death.



The trolley bus tour was much more my cup of tea. It was a hop on and never hop off tour of the   city.

I’m Back…..Kinda!

The Return of your Blogger


When I was away from it for a bit, I realised just how much time I put into this blog. So if I don’t make it every day from now on, it just means life got in the way.

Here are some of the things you might have missed while I was away.

Eamonn Keaveney passed through town as he walked barefoot around Ireland in an effort to raise money for suicide awareness.

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A Young Lady who is Going Places


(story and photo from The Irish Examiner)



Barrister Marie-Louise Donovan, 24, from
Moyvane in Co Kerry, jetted out to the US at the weekend to begin a three-month
voluntary placement with the Innocence Project which has freed over 340
wrongfully convicted prisoners, some of whom were facing the death penalty.

She is one of just three Irish lawyers chosen
by the Bar Council of Ireland to work this year on the project founded by
lawyers Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, who were both on OJ Simpson’s defence
team in his famous murder trial in 1995.

Each US state now has its own Innocence
Project, which, since its foundation in 1992, has proven the innocence of and
secured the freedom of over 340 wrongfully convicted inmates, at least 20 of
whom served time on death row. The inmates served an average of 14 years before
being cleared.

The Wisconsin Innocence Project helped
highlight Steven Avery’s case which was the focus of the global hit Netflix
documentary Making a Murderer. Avery, who has been in jail for 18 years,
remains behind bars despite serious questions over his conviction.

Ms Donovan will be based in Cincinnati until
August, working with the Ohio Innocence Project which has, since its foundation
in 2003, exonerated 23 inmates in a state where the current method of capital
punishment is lethal injection.

“I applied to work on the Innocence Project
when I was 21, shortly after qualifying as a barrister, but I was told I was
too young,” Ms Donovan said.

“Looking back now, they were probably right.
But I’m really looking forward to it now. It is such a worthwhile cause and I’m
looking forward to helping. I think this is a very worthwhile cause and we are
always striving to improve our own criminal justice system here so I am very
much looking forward to moving over to Ohio and working with the Innocence
Project there over the next few months.

“It should be a very educational and rewarding
experience. It will be a privilege.”

Ms Donovan, whose parents are teachers in
Listowel, started school aged four, sat her leaving cert aged 16, graduated
from UCC with a law degree aged 19, and was called to the bar shortly after her
21st birthday, making history by becoming the youngest person to qualify as a
barrister in Ireland.

After three years working in Dublin, she is now
working on the South Western Circuit covering Kerry, Limerick and Clare.

She will spend the summer recess working
voluntarily in Ohio with other lawyers from around the world to help exonerate
wrongfully convicted inmates who are serving life sentences or who are on death
row.

The Innocence Project teams take on certain
cases post conviction and specialise in using advances in DNA testing,
uncovering evidence of police misconduct, and in driving reforms of the
criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.

They also review cold cases and engage in
fieldwork interviews with key witnesses in the hope that they can prove a
person’s innocence before they are executed.

Ms Donovan said witnesses often come forward
with new evidence or testimony years after a person has been convicted.

She said some of the cases she will be working
on will involve inmates who are facing execution soon.

“I hope to provide a fresh pair of eyes. Coming
from another jurisdiction, we might see things that may have been overlooked,”
she said.

An Irish Innocence Project was founded in
Dublin in 2009 by David Langwallner, the Dean of Law at Griffith College


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Some Green Shoots of Recovery

L.D.s Hair Salon moved a few doors back Market Street.


I spotted this sign in a shop window in Market Street.

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Do you remember Hand Milking?


It’s now a bit of fun when the children go to the pet farm but once upon a time it was a very serious business.

The boy in my photo, who wouldn’t survive 2 minutes under a real cow, is my grandson, Sean. His great grandmother, my late mother, was a great milker. She milked six or eight cows every morning and evening for as long as I can remember.

She knew all the cows by name and she talked away to them as she brought them home and settled them into their stalls. Cows are creatures of habit and they like to go to the same stall every time and they like to be milked by the same person every time as well.

The doors of the cow house were always left open at milking time and the yard cats would be perched waiting anxiously for their portion of the fresh milk.

My mother settled her three legged milking stool, rested her head against the cow’s flank and coaxed the milk into the bucket held between her knees. There is a knack to hand milking. If you are not doing it right the cow will let you know with a kick or a belt of her tail.

As soon as my mother stood up from the first cow the cats went crazy, tripping her up, mewling and bawling, maddened with desire for the warm milk. For the sake of peace, she  always threw a good portion into their bowl first. Then she climbed the milk stand and poured the milk into a strainer atop an old fashioned milk churn. The same ritual was repeated for all her small herd.

It all came back to me recently: the cows, the cats and my poor hard working mother when I saw milking turned into a visitor attraction at Kennedy’s Pet Farm and Muckross Farms.

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