Listowel Connection

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

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Mary Cogan, retired from teaching in Presentation Secondary School, Listowel, Co. Kerry. I am a native of Kanturk, Co. Cork.
I have published two books; Listowel Through a Lens and A minute of your Time

The Highs and the Lows

By

On March 24, 2025

In Listowel

St. Patrick’s Day 2025

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A Class at the Convent Door

Margaret Kennedy sent us this lovely photo. The best part is that she can remember all the names.

6th class primary presentation  convent Listowel 
Front L-R Kay Dillon, Clem Crowley,  Geraldine Kenny  Ann McAulliffe Cora and Marie Stack, Theresa Conway,  Maura Walsh, Bernadette Canty  Mary  Connor, Margaret Doyle, Mai Cahill, Sinead Curtin R.I.P
Middle Row L-R Kathy Ryan, Mary O Flaherty, Isabel O Dowd, Margo Kennedy R.I.P, Therese Lenihan  Brenda O Halloran, Eileen Kennelly Kathleen Curtin, Ann Rossiter, Marita O Connor, Caroline Finucane, Sinead Barrett, Geraldine Walsh 
Back Row L-R Kay Healy, Beata Sweeney, Linda Carey, Cathriona OGorman, Sr Carmel, Lucy Bambury, Miriam Hilliard, Miriam Walsh R.I.P, Ann McElligott,  Elle Marie Gibbons, Mary Jo Hartnett,  Kathleen Walsh, Dorothy Guinea

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Sometimes Life is Hard

My granddaughter loves football.

She is fourth from the right in front in this photo with her U14 Cork squad on Saturday March 15 2025. Their season is just starting.

She is front and centre, with the headband, with her Lakewood soccer team, photographed before the quarter final of The National Cup on Sunday, March 16 2025.

The game was played at home in Lakewood.

The Lakewood girls went on to win. This is the usual ceremony at the end where everyone congratulates everyone else.

This is Cora, half way through the second half being carried off injured by her mom and her coach.

Cora has sustained a full MCL tear. It’s like an ACL only a different ligament. It is horrendously painful. Her knee is in a brace and she is on crutches because she can take no weight on her leg. Next week she will see the consultant who specialises in knees to see if she needs surgery.

Heartbroken.

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St Patrick’s Day Parade 2025

Ní raibh nathair nimhe fágtha i Lios Tuathail

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A Fact

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Signs of Spring

By

On March 21, 2025

In Listowel

Upper Church Street in March 2025

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A Corner of Tralee

Pillar Post Box and Telephone Box at the top of Denny Street.

You’ll have to tell me who he is. His image is on the utility box on the same corner.

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Beautiful Daffodils immortalised in Moments of Reflection

This is the vase and these are the descendants of the daffodils I wrote about on page 4 of my latest book. These flowers are from the 2025 crop.

Below is the reflection on page 3 of Moments of Reflection.

Daffodils

I love daffodils. I love to see them raise their yellow heads to tell us another winter has passed.

We know where to look for them as they flourish in the same locations year after year.

This year my friend brought me a lovely bunch. These were not the dainty elegant narcissi so popular now. They were the original old daffodils, the kind that Wordsworth saw “tossing their heads in sprightly dance.” They were the more raggedy unkempt looking daffodils of my childhood.

I knew exactly the right vase for this gorgeous posy. These daffodils are the descendants of bulbs that were planted over 100 years ago. Years ago my friend’s mother-in-law gave me daffodils from this same garden. When she gave them to me, she also left me keep the beautiful old vase that she had brought them in.

So I placed my charming old daffodils in my beautiful old-fashioned vase and I said a prayer for Kitty and Bridget and for all the people who have enjoyed these beautiful flowers over the years.

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John Kelliher’s Pictures of the 2025 Confirmation Classes

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Lenten Display in St. Mary’s

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from the Newspaper Archives

Jer Kennelly found this one.

            New York Irish American Advocate June 1914

Potter and Shaughnessy

Sunday, June 7, a t five o’clock in the afternoon. Both bride and bridegroom are natives of Listowel, North Kerry, and were schoolmates in the younger days at th e old town on the Feale.

Twenty years ago th e two parted, Mr. Potter entering th e educational

department of European schools in British East India. Mr. Potter came

to America, where he again met his sweetheart of school days and the
youthful admiration ripened into eternal love, and then the inevitable
happened. Miss Julia O’Shaughnessy, a sister of the bride, will be the bridesmaid and the best man will be Arthur Jenkins, who is an expert accountant in the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. William Moore will act as master of ceremonies.

Mr. Potter, who is a dramatist of note, has written many successful
plays of Irish Life, the latest of which, “The Eviction,” will be
produced on Broadway this fall. Mr. Potter is the American
correspondent of the Dublin “Weekly Freeman,” Ulster “Guardian” and
the Cork “Examiner.”

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St. Patrick’s Day Parade 2025

The Listowel Celtic crew are always good for a laugh.

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Traffic in Town Yesterday

Is it just me or does anyone think that there are now more heavy lorries going through town than before we had the relief road?

Yesterday a tractor broke down on Church Street just after mid day. By the time the gardaí sorted it out, it felt like half the town was in a traffic jam. I was in town (on foot) and I did my citizen journalist thing for you.

Eventually

Order was restored and all’s well with the world…except for all the heavy traffic!

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A Fact

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An Extraordinary Story

By

On March 20, 2025

In Listowel

Church Street Upper

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Another Business Closes

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Extracts from the 1942 Tourism Survey of Listowel

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A Book that Connects Kanturk and Glenflesk

The old courthouse in Kanturk is still standing. A few years ago when some of the plasterwork fell off, in the holding cells there was revealed an old cell wall where Republican prisoners had written their names. A committee of Kanturk historians is campaigning to have the names preserved.

A Killarney woman has undertaken to find out more about one of the prisoners. She has just published her book.

The title of the book comes from Fred’s nickname.

Some members of the Kanturk Courthouse restoration committee who attended the book launch in Killarney

Dan Dennehy, Sheila OKeeffe, Mary O’Donoghgue (author) John Bradley, Jack Joy (journalist) and Michasel Moynihan, T.D.

John Bradley told me the story of how the book came about.


Mary O’Donoghue was watching Nationwide on the 13th March 2024 which featured an article about our efforts to save the precious graffiti on the walls of    The Bridewell jail at the back of kanturk courthouse.Some photos were shown of the names and messages on the walls and one was Fred Healy, Glenflesk, Killarney.. Mary who was going through cancer treatment at the time immediately became curious as did the whole of Glenflesk asking Who the hell was this Fred Healy?

Tim Horgan who is a well known Kerry historian found that Fred was buried in an unmarked grave..Mary started researching and as she says herself,it gave her something to do to take her mind off cancer issues.. Fred and his brother Patrick joined the Royal Munster Fusiliers in Oct 1914.He lost his eye in September 1916 and was transferred to non combatant duties in England.

Fred was discharged in January 1919 to come home to a different Ireland to the one he left 5 years earlier. It was not long before Fred joined the local Irish freedom fighters and was it seems a valued asset with his training and experience…

How Fred finished up in a Kanturk jail we may never know but for him to be rediscovered over 100 years later is an amazing story..
Just a synopsis Mary but the book has more information obviously.

Mary is donating profits from her book to Recovery Haven.

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St. Patrick’s Day in Listowel 2025

I positioned myself on William Street, across from Jumbos. It’s a goos spot to catch the parade coming up the hill. I later went across to Church Street to try to catch a few I had missed.

A family selfie to remember the day. Good way to pass the time while we were waiting for the show to start.

The first indication that the parade was on its way was Garda Dave, the first of the Garda escort.

Crowd control wasn’t an issue. The good crowd was well behaved, enjoying Jumbos speciality green cones, applauding and bantering with the participants,

Where would we be without the Convent School marching band.

They were, as always, a credit to their school. The music and the marching was perfect. Well done, Mrs Brosnan and all who made it such a success.

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A fact

Facebook is primarily blue because Mark Zuckerberg has colour vision deficiency….that’s the new term for the conditin we used to inaccurately call colour blindness. There is no blindness involved.

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History all Around Us

By

On March 19, 2025

In Listowel, Poem

Bridge Road on a sunny morning in March 2025

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Confirmation in St. Mary’s

St. Mary’s looking lovely for last Friday’s confirmation.

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Eleanor Belcher Remembers the Sheehy Brothers

Mary,
You showed a bench remembering Martin, Michael and John Sheehy of Main Street recently. I grew up with the Sheehy family.
Marty( Martin) was the oldest and was very important to all of us who used to play tennis on the Cows’ Lawn where there still was a hard court and the club house was an old carriage from the Lartique Railway. Marty organised tournaments, got a large official poster where he organised seeding and ran tournaments for us. He also showed me how to pour a beer when I was about 16 at a party in Helen Buckley’s home in Ballybunion. I thought it was so sophisticated! He went on to be some an anaesthetist in the US.

I don’t remember Michael but Pat was next , He was great fun and very popular. I think he entered the Seminary for a while but as far as I know didn’t go on to be a priest.

The twins were John and Jerry, John being the more solemn one. Jerry loved comics and got the Dandy. My mother didn’t allow us to have comics and Jerry used to share his with us. We used to sit on the steps of what were then the Dennehy and McGuire houses in the Square. So I got to know Dennis the Menace, , the Bash Street kids and more. Again Jerry loved soccer which was not discussed in my home( my Dad having played rugby). Jerry was a fan of Denis Law and I thought of him recently when the great Scottish player died and his funeral was big news in Glasgow.

It is lovely that the family are remembered on that bench.

It is lovely to see such successful men still fondly remembered by their old friends in Listowel.

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Street Furniture

In one small space on Upper Church street there is a wealth of Irish, and Listowel history in three items of street furniture

Eamon Bulfin (1892–1968) was an Argentine-born Irish republican. He was the son of writer William Bulfin (1864–1910) of Birr, in County Offaly (then called King’s County). His father had emigrated to Argentina at the age of 20 and was a writer and journalist who became the editor/proprietor of The Southern Cross. (Wikipedia)

Bulfin was the man who raised the flags on the GPO in 1916. He was later condemned to death but reprieved.

He lived in Argentina and worked as a journalist.

In the 1920 County Council elections, Bulfin was nominated in his absence for a seat on the council of Offaly, his family’s county of origin. He was elected and though he was in Argentina, immediately appointed chairman of the council. One of the first actions of the new council was to agree that King’s County be renamed Offaly, the name of the ancient Gaelic kingdom from which part of the modern county was formed. (Wikipedia)

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Ashe Street

Thomas Patrick Ashe (Irish: Tomás Pádraig Ághas; 12 January 1885 – 25 September 1917) was an Irish revolutionary and politician. He was a member of the Gaelic League, the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and a founding member of the Irish Volunteers.[1]

He was a senior commander in the Easter Rising of 1916. After release from prison just over a year later he was soon re-arrested on separate charges of sedition, and died as a result of forcible feeding whilst on hunger strike in prison. (Wikipedia)

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For the Grieving

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1942 Tourism Survey

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A Fact

In 1906 William Kellogg formed the Battle Creek Toasted Cornflake Company. I think by now his wildest dreams have come true.

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Pieces of History

By

On March 18, 2025

In History, Listowel

William Street in March 2025

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St. Patrick’s Day 2025

I snapped Doran’s Patrick’s Day window .

Great blend of fun and greenery

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Pillar Postbox in Main Street, Listowel

It has lost its collection notice but it’s very much still in use. It is important that we don’t lose these lovely old pieces of street furniture which are part of our history.

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New Sign

The Shebeen in Main Street

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1942 Survey

In 1942 a man called Tim Dennehy was tasked with conducting a survey for the Irish Tourist Board of amenities in Listowel.

Maria Stack found his report on the Kerry County Council website. It makes interesting reading.

I’ll give you bitesize chuncks over the next while.

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Re Issue of an Important Book

Kay Caball has taken pains to track down very many of the Kerry Girls who emigrated to Australia under the Earl Grey Scheme. Her book has been reissued with input from the descendants of some more of the “Kerry girls”.

I’m sure Kay will be taking her rightful place in the new exhibition of female writers soon to be curated for Kerry Writers’ Museum.

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Seán Carlson

“My short dispatch from the Tralee to Ballybunion afternoon route was featured in the winter/spring 2025 issue of Trasna, a journal on Ireland and its diasporas.”

Bus to Ballybunion

The five o’clock bus is nearly full by the time it leaves Tralee eight minutes after the hour. The transport lurches from the station, shifting between low gears in afternoon traffic.

“This is ridiculous,” an older man says.

“It is,” a younger woman affirms across the aisle.

“Every day now,” one of them offers.

The first temporary-protection permit holders arrived in Ballybunion six months after the Irish Times declared “Scores killed as Russia invades Ukraine from land, sea, and air.” A local crowd almost the same in size gathered on the beach in welcome beneath a cliff-top castle wall.

At first, Ukrainian licence plates adorned some cars parked outside seasonal businesses. A year later, many new residents rely instead on the hour-long bus to reach the main county town.

Stopping at the technological university, the driver leaves the door locked, tallies the seats.

“Who are the lucky three?” he asks the six students waiting for the day’s last trip.

As the bus departs, another passenger rushes down the aisle. His voice breaks: four seats remain unused. Others grasp his tension if not the language. The driver stays silent.

There are few vehicles on the road now, a clear route forward, only a roundabout ahead.

“You can still do right,” the passenger begs. 

And for a breath, the possibility holds.

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A Fact

In 1997 scientists in Edinburg cloned a sheep called Dolly.

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