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
Once upon a time families in North Cork, those who were lucky enough to enjoy seaside holidays, often took those holidays in caravans (mobile homes) or boarding houses in Ballybunion. In The Irish Examiner Alice Taylor remembers holidays with Nana in Ballybunion.
I’m giving you the opening paragraphs and the closing one.
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Notes for a Poem
The following is a blog post from a photographer poet called Nigel Borrington from 2014
One day last summer while I was walking along the beach at Ballybunion, County Kerry, I was trying to think of words that gave a sense of this place , so I jotted down the following word list for a poem, but I feel it’s a poem as it is.
Ballybunion beach
cool air, sound of sea birds, fresh breeze, people walking, dogs running, cold swimmers, children shouting, Waves rolling, people eating, chatting, talking, cliffs casting shadows,
Old castle walls dominating, caves temping you to explore, Posters offering family photographs, lunch time meals and places to shop, Restful moments , capturing views,
Old people pottering, memories of traditions past, Time dragging to a stop, mind slowing,
Families gathering, men managing, car doors shutting, keys locking, after parking, deep breaths taken, locations chosen, bags unpacked, People now sitting, grannies talking, best instructions, suggestions given,
Steps taken, shoes in hand, Temperature falling, evening calling, holiday homes inviting, Beach clearing, winds rising, cold setting in, Sea birds return, dogs last walk of the day Night fisher man setting lines, day over
Peace and nature returning, tide rising, On Ballybunion beach.
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They’re Home
Molly’s family are home from their sunshine holiday. This is Aisling adorned with holiday hair. Molly is delighted to have them home.
The Kerry ladies put up a gallant fight against a superb Meath team.
Beidh lá eile ag an bPaorach.
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Some of the Kerry Team Support in Listowel
Danny’s Hair and Beauty
Blossom in Market St.
Mermaids
When neighbouring counties win both the hurling and football, there are bound to be some very happy Listowel households.
Bailey and Co.
Ballybunion showing its support in typical Ballybunion fashion.
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Ballybunion 2022
Tommy Martin of The Irish Examiner holidayed in Ballybunion this year.
Here is how he opened his article on his experience.
For Sean O’Shea’s moment of square-jawed heroism NOT to be the prelude to Kerry’s ultimate deliverance just doesn’t seem to make any narrative sense. It would be stupidly anti-climactic. To north Kerry, in the space between two All-Ireland finals.
Your correspondent finds himself on his annual pilgrimage to Ballybunion this week, the seaside resort town which remains oblivious to global meltdown. While Europe burns, Ballybunion warily slips off its kagoule, not liking the look of those clouds one bit. “Some heatwave!” is the sardonic comment of choice, as two days of hazy pleasantness gave way to temperatures soaring into the mid-teens.
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A Meadow Walk
When the gardeners of the local council mow the grass in the town park they leave it tall for the birds, insects and bees and they cut paths through the grass for us to walk and enjoy. A great Idea!
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Lest we Forget
This award winning front page will forever be the image of the worst of Covid 19 restrictions. Now that we are at the other side of that awfulness we should spare a thought and a prayer for people scarred forever.
Molly gave me a great incentive to get out and about more. She is posing for me in the lovely Tidy Town community garden. By the wall there are flowers as well as herbs.
( I’m having a bit of an issue with image resizing at the moment so you’ll have to forgive a few over compressed ones. All along I had been putting up files that were way way too big and I’ve used up all my allowed disc space. I’m awaiting tech help (my son) to hopefully sort it out for me)
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Happy House on Bridge Road Listowel in July 2022
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The Homecoming
This surely was the homecoming to beat all homecomings.
Denny Street Tralee on Monday July 25 2022
Photo: Elizabeth Brosnan
July 2022; Festival of Kerry lights up and victorious team in town Photo; Breda Ferris
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Old Listowel
These two old photos are from the Lawrence collection in the National Library. They have been colourised by Frank O’Connor and shared on Facebook. You will notice in the St. John’s photo that it once had a low wall surrounding the church. This wall was topped with a railing which was an ideal post to which to tether a horse. I’m told that Catholic mass goes used to tie their horses to this raining while they attended the church across the road on Sundays.
You will also notice a house, painted white on the right of St. Mary’s in the photo. This house was purchased by the diocese and knocked to extend the church
Te church, the castle and the sweet factory by the river Feale
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A Bank Holiday Read
Tadhg Coakley wrote this charming essay recently in The Irish Examiner’s Mo Laethanta Saoire series. He returns to Ballybunion, the holiday destination of his childhood.
Tadhg Coakley, Irish Examiner
Mo Laethanta Saoire: vital life lessons from Ballybunion’s surf, amusements and Bunyan’s shop
Cork author, Tadhg Coakley, recalls the logistics of getting eight children on holiday to Ballybunion — and the joy of the beach, the bumpers and trips with family
THU, 14 JUL, 2022 – 22:00
TADHG COAKLEY
You’re walking around the North Kerry seaside town of Ballybunion. It’s the summer of 2022. The day is blustery and sunny.
You’re thinking of the summer holidays you and your family went on — to Ballybunion every year from the 1950s to the late 70s. How everything has changed and how everything is the same.
Such a feat of logistics and emotional intelligence to transport all eight children from Mallow, year after year. But your mother and father managed it: sometimes with the help of John Mannix, transporting beds and a clothes drier on a Springmount Dairy van. Mary remembers stopping at McKenna’s in Listowel to rent a washing machine and a TV for the fortnight. How very 1960s.
One year, when you were three or four, you forgot to bring your imaginary friend, Chummy, with you. When you realised your mistake you went into hysterics. What did your mother do? Turned the car around. Now, if the car had been closer to Listowel than Mallow there might have been a different result, but Chummy had a great fortnight at the seaside.
When was the last time you were here? You can’t remember. In 2018 when you were at Listowel Writer’s Week and took a little pilgrimage out to look around? Or was it 2019 when your pal Mick Quaid invited you to 18 holes on the Old Course? A stunning golf links which you can no longer do justice, but that’s okay too. Time erodes everything, including golf swings.You walk out the Doon Road to the north of the town. Costello’s shop is long gone. What a magical place it was when you were a child. A cornucopia of wonder. A milestone when you were first sent to that shop on your own to get the messages. That mixture of pride and anxiety to have such a monumental responsibility. It helped that there was no money involved, Mrs Costello having a ‘book’ in which she totted up everything at the end of holiday, when your mother would pay up.
You call into Bunyan’s just down the road and when Liam tells you he still uses that system for regulars, you are heartened. The Bunyans have been trading there since 1957; some things are different, but some things stay the same.The Ladies Strand still seems as stunning to you after all these years. Especially since the tide is coming in and the wind is whipping up towering waves which crash against the jagged cliff. Even through your jaded eyes, it still seems wondrous.
Did you and your brothers and sisters really dive into that tumultuous surf when you were small children? Did you lay down rugs in gale-force winds? Did you leave your clothes and towels in the shelter and run down through the rain to the distant sea at low tide?
Was the sand as soft and golden as it is today? Was the coast of Clare so close? Were the white horses so wild? Was the sky so blue and the clouds so white? Was the wind whipping off the water so bracing?
Memory is fallible. Like sepia-tinted photos, it fades. It can hide blemishes and beauty alike. But the ice cream cones were sweet and soft, the flakes hard and crumbly underneath. The water in the pools by the cliff was warm. The caves in the cliff were magical. The walk over to the Black Pool was thrilling. The bumpers and the amusements were electrifying. The dinner was served in the middle of the day, piping hot with floury spuds and butter. The salads for tea were delicious. The forty-five in the evenings was great fun — your mother, especially, loved those card games.
The days were as long and as full as days can be. You were never happier than on that strand with a ball at your feet or a hurley in your hand, your family all around you.
You walk out to the cliff-top chalets where ye rented in the later years. You are surprised they’re still here. Surrounded by ribbons of houses, now, and a plethora of mobile homes. The chalets look a bit jaded. All privately owned, these days, Liam told you. You’d forgotten how they all angled away from the central road. You think the final year for you was in 1977, in the last one on the left; could that be correct? You remember the shock at Elvis’ death and you know that happened when ye were on holidays, when you were 16. Padraig and Pauline went one more year with your Mam and Dad.Year after year, your mother and father managed to treat you all to that holiday, until — one by one — late teenage ‘sophistication’ eroded its wonders and other priorities took hold. How you were all nurtured and provided for so well for so long. It’s only now you realise that the nurture and provision never ended. Instead, it is being passed on to the next generation and the next one after that.
Tadhg Coakley in 1963 Irish Examiner
These days the holidays may be in the Cote d’Azur, or Noosa, or Hilton Head, or Gruissan, but the joy is just the same. You all learned how to have fun in Ballybunion — a vital life lesson.You check into the Cliff House Hotel, which was known as Bernie’s when you were a child. Your father would have approved of you forking out a few extra bob for a sea view. He used to have a pint there and tell Bernie (the legendary GAA man, Bernard O’Callaghan) what was wrong with Kerry football. Bernie must have enjoyed that. You remember when Pecker Dunne played there — how exotic that name to a 1960s child.
Later, you walk out to Nun’s Strand. There’s an old photo of you with a donkey along that path and you’re surprised there are no donkeys in the fields anymore. Some things change.
You meet a woman from Brisbane, her name is Catherine. You tell her about your niece, Una, living out there with Joel and Ronan. Catherine tells you she’s here to spread some of her mother’s and father’s ashes into the sea the following morning on the strand. Her father (Listowel) and her mother (Abbeyfeale) met in Montreal and then moved to Australia where she and her brother and sister grew up. They loved coming back to Ballybunion and now they will be reunited there again — this time, forever. She shows you a black-and-white picture of her mother taken at the very spot you are standing now — in the photo she is wearing a hand-knitted cardigan; she looks very like your own mother.You walk around the town. The amusements are open and you see children grouped around a shining noisy game. A boy passes you, hopping a football. Four American golfers cross the road. Some things stay the same.
On Church Road you can’t find the house you rented for a few years — the one with the big garden where Dermot took all those photos. You think it’s been knocked down to build a Celtic Tiger housing development. Some things do change.
In the morning you wake to the sound of the sea. Which was what you wanted more than the view. The sound is constant and is very like a distant wind. It’s the same sound you fell asleep to and woke up to all those years ago as a child on your holidays.
You chat to Maggie and Kevin at Reception as you check out from the hotel. You tell Kevin a story about your father and he tells you a story about his — the aforementioned Bernie. You turn the car left at the end of Church Road and head out on the straight road to Listowel and home. You think of Catherine’s mother and father and your own mother and father. You think of your brothers and sisters. You think about what William Faulkner meant when he said that ‘the past isn’t over; it isn’t even past’.
You wonder when your next trip to Ballybunion will happen, but in another sense, you know you’ve never left at all.
Stephen Twohig is an exile from his native Kanturk. On our Facebook group, Kanturk Memories, he is sharing his childhood memories. Day trips and holidays in Ballybunion were an important part of his young days in the 1970s.
Ballybunion, our Disney!
On day trips one could take the bus from the Square on a Saturday or Sunday, all your gear packed in bags. You were laden down with shovels, buckets, fishnets and armbands , blankets and picnic baskets.
When driving the long road through Newmarket, Rockchapel and Listowel the journey seemed to take forever. When we reached Listowel we knew we were on the home stretch. Finally cresting the last hill and long stretches of these last nine miles we would call out “Ballybunion here we come”” when we saw the gable end of the first row of houses in the town.
Ballybunion was our Disney. It had a magic and mystique about it. It was circus~ carnivaL sun and fun all in one place. Even the harsh winter Atlantic couldn’t erode all the warm memories we have from this seaside town. There are two long beaches split in the middle by a long outcrop into the ocean. On the tip are the remains of a castle, still standing guard. In the olden days the women went to one beach and the men the other and one still called them by those names. God forbid one saw the other in their long drab flax burlap costumes.! Doubtless there was any big run on sun block back then.
We always went to the men’s or right hand beach. You would scoot down the hill trying not to fall through the coarse sandy grass and finally plop down on the dry white sand. We would stay on the beach from morning until near sundown. More often than not we would be the last few stragglers left behind all huddled around each other in goosebumps from the cold. We would erect a windbreaker for a wall and drape a blanket over it if the showers came. When others ran for cover we were staunch and held our ground.
To give mother her credit she stayed with us from morning until dusk and never complained of getting bored. Dad on the other hand would last about an hour on the sand, on a good day. He would wait for us above on the grass and wave down and wonder when these kids were going to get fed up of the beach and want to go home. He would have a long wait. I like to imagine that he still watches over us, and still waits.
When the tide went out it left warm pools to bathe in over by the cliffs and in some cases small caves that you dared not venture in, in fear. Mike and I would pull plastic boats or ships behind us. When with us Dad would hold us high on his shoulders as he waded out into the tall waves scaring the daylights out of us on purpose. You could hear the screans and yells of children as they jumped the incoming waves. played ball or held on to flapping kites, or just made castles in the sand. And there sitting uncomfortably on the edge of the blanket looking out of place in his heavy tweeds, shirt and tie and cap is your man from the front of Roches, waiting. Out of place again, on the edge of more than the blanket. He will spend the required time then hoof it up for tea in the shade of a Hotel. Or head to the pub to wait it out.
Every few hours we would hop from foot to foot on the hot tar up the steep hill to the two shops near the bathrooms. These shops had all you ever wanted as a child. Little plastic windmills spun in the wind like propellers, balloons, kites, boats, bright buckets and shovels stuck out from every possible place. There, laid out was an array of sweets and delights that would leave your mouth watering if not so already in the sweltering heat. The smells of cotton candy, cones, periwinkles and sun lotions filled the sea air. We would each buy a ninety-nine cone with a chocolate crumbling “flake” stuck in the top. Then before it melted you would climb up the coarse grass to the hill on top and look down on the beach far below trying to see your own blanket. When finished scoot down the hill again with a runny and melting cone for the mother. In the late afternoon we would be left to ourselves as the parents went over and had tea at the far end of the beach. If indulgent they would treat themselves to a warm seaweed bath. All we could think about was the slimy. shiny fronds of the bubbled seaweed and we couldn’t believe they would willingly bathe in it.
If it was wet or rainy we would go for tea and Club Milks at Dana’s. There you would pick out postcards from the revolving racks and write and send them, though we probably would be home before they got there. There were always treats in the front window of Beasleys that would catch your eye and we wouldn’t be happy until we had emptied our pockets and had it in our hands. There were toy cars. diaries . seashells, boats, storybooks and the ever favourite candy rock. This was a long piece of hard candy, the o
utside pink and inside white and cleverly had the word Ballybunion ingrained in the white centre . You would bring them home as gifts or ruin many a good appetite or tooth.
Up the street were two arcades. We would spend every penny we had saved or borrowed on the bumper cars or many video games. There was one driving game called “Superbug” and the brother and I would challenge anyone to beat us such was our dedication and devotion to it.
At night we would go to the Bingo with mother and if you won, the lady calling the numbers would have you choose from a number of balloons tied above her tied on a string. Having chosen she would pop the balloon and as dramatically as she could unravel the winnings. Therein would be a brown fiver or if lucky a big red twenty pound note. On the way home we would buy a burger and bag of chips from the caravan across the street and head home.
If left alone in our room we would hang out at the window and watch the people go by outside. There was an alleyway between the Central and The Ambassador and at the back was a dance hall. All night long there would be a stream of people coming and going and in the distance the rhythm and boom of the muffled music. It was near impossible to sleep with all the excitement, the shouts, the loud motorbikes, scuffles, the odd smashing bottle but much laughter in the streets outside. Outside was the grown up world we longed for and would pass through, way too soon.
Yes if you had to choose, these were the good old days. And you had better remember them as you would have to write about it every first week back at school in “La Cois Farraige” (Day by the sea).
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Ballygologue Park Entrance
Molly and I love to walk on the John B. Keane Road
We took a small detour one day and went up Ballygologue Road. Their flower displays at the entrance to the park and along the grassy area are definitely worthy of another prize.
This is the little island at the exit.
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Listowel Pitch and Putt Course
If there is a picture out there of the founding fathers of Listowel Pitch and Putt Club please send it to me. These men are heroes. They had the vision. They planted the trees in whose shade they never sat. We are so lucky to have this lovely oasis in the middle of our town. I don’t play the game but I love the course. It is a joy to walk beside it every day.
Barry O’Halloran, whose father Tom was one of the early committee members has sent us copies of the receipts for the early planting.
I’m sure it seemed like a lot of money in 1974. It was money well spent.
I must not forget today’s committee and groundsmen who have built on that early course, enhancing it with trees, shrubs and flowers. They have kept the dream alive and I think you will agree with me that the course nowadays is a credit to those who look after it.
