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

Category: Listowel Page 3 of 184

A Roundabout

Ballybunion Road entrance to the cycle path

Simple and beautiful playthings

When did you last see a child play with marbles? These primitive toys were cheap and colourful. and hours of fun.

My collection

Roundabout on the Ballybunion Road

This roundabout takes you away from town and on to the relief road for Tralee.

This is the commemorative stonework marking the official opening of the new road.

The stonework is beautiful.

I’m presuming the stones were carved by B. Leen and C. O’s.

I have no idea what the significence of this is. Could it be that we’re all broken but there is a golden core of goodness in everyone?

Maybe not.

There is a bit of celtic knotwork on this stone. I know a man who thinks that Listowel deserves the title of the World Centre of Celtic Art.

I don’t know if this roundabout has a name. If it doesn’t, may I suggest calling it after John Pierse. It is located beside Teampall Bán. John did Listowel a huge service by researching and documenting the history of this place of pain and anguish…Listowel’s worst wound.

Because of John and his beloved Tidy Town group we will never forget.

Progress at Lidl site

I’m a bit behind with my photos.

This looks to me like a huge building project.

A Poem

On Lough Annagh, Co. Mayo

The Fisherman

by W. B. Yeats

Although I can see him still— 

The freckled man who goes 

To a gray place on a hill 

In gray Connemara clothes 

At dawn to cast his flies— 

It’s long since I began 

To call up to the eyes 

This wise and simple man. 

All day I’d looked in the face 

What I had hoped it would be 

To write for my own race 

And the reality: 

The living men that I hate, 

The dead man that I loved, 

The craven man in his seat, 

The insolent unreproved— 

And no knave brought to book 

Who has won a drunken cheer— 

The witty man and his joke 

Aimed at the commonest ear, 

The clever man who cries 

The catch cries of the clown, 

The beating down of the wise 

And great Art beaten down. 

Maybe a twelve-month since 

Suddenly I began, 

In scorn of this audience, 

Imagining a man, 

And his sun-freckled face 

And gray Connemara cloth, 

Climbing up to a place 

Where stone is dark with froth, 

And the down turn of his wrist 

When the flies drop in the stream— 

A man who does not exist, 

A man who is but a dream; 

And cried, “Before I am old 

I shall have written him one 

Poem maybe as cold 

And passionate as the dawn.”

A Fact

Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in Ohio in the USA in 1935.

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Sweet Things

A green corner of Listowel

I Remember These

Photo from the internet

A Youth Club in 1983

Today’s Street Sign

Bothar Thigh na Cúirte is Courthouse Road

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Lucky we brought that towel to dry the swing.

Expansion work at John Paul 11 graveyard

A Fact

The Netherlands was the first country in the world to make same sex marriage legal in 2001.

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+ Jim Cogan +

Jim Cogan 1948 – 2013

…”For that dash represents all the time
that they spent alive on earth.
And now only those who loved them
know what that little line is worth.

For it matters not, how much we own,
the cars…the house…the cash.
What matters is how we live and love
and how we spend our dash.”

Linda Ellis

Photo: John Stack

"He was my North, my South, my East and West, 
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; ...."
W.H. Auden

The Return of Local Cinema

Listowel Library in June 2025

Good News

First with the news, The Kerryman

A Kerry man is hoping to bring the big screen back to Listowel after finalising plans to setup a new cinema in a historic building within the town.

Tom McElligott, a retiree from Listowel, revealed to The Kerryman that he purchased Sluagh Hall on upper William Street for €99,000 at auction last Christmas. He hopes to repurpose the building into a ‘family leisure and entertainment centre’.

A bit of history from Vincent Carmody’s Snapshots of a Market Town:

The Sluagh Hall ( Old F.C.A. headquarters )

” Patrick O Neill, egg and poultry exporter, located his place of business from the 1890s at the top end of Upper William Street, by the side of the old railway bridge. The building was afterwards used , along with adjacent properties, as headquarters for the L.D.F. ( Local Defence Force) during what was known as ‘ The Emergency’, or the years of the Second World War. The post-war period saw the emergence of the F.C.A. ( Forsa Cosanta Áitiúl) and a refurbishment of the hall. It became known as the Sluagh Hall. It was equipped with a stage, and this served two purposes – to facilitate the mounting of a boxing ring and also a much sought after venue for the newly-formed Listowel Drama Group to stage their plays “

Along with the central hall, it contained offices and store rooms on the street side, the long room on the opposite side was used as a firing range.

Events to look forward to

We’re delighted to unveil the full programme for the Cornelius Lyons Harp Summer School 2025, taking place June 20–22 at Teach Siamsa Finuge, Co. Kerry.

 Friday, June 20

 6–8 PM

 Harp Workshop with Janet Harrison

 Saturday, June 21

 10 AM–3.30 PM

 Harp Workshop (lunch break at 12)

3.30–4.30 PM

Talk by Niamh O’Brien – “From the Parlour to the pub: Irish Harping from the 1950s”

 €5 (public)

 7.30–9 PM

 Concert & Album Launch – Janet Harbison & Two for Joy

 €15 (public)

Sunday, June 22

 10.30 AM–2 PM

 Final harp workshop

3.30–4.30 PM

 Concert at Rattoo Round Tower with Summer School performers

Tickets are available on Eventbrite:

Were you in First Year in St. Michael’s in 1979?

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders Fields

by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place, and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

A Fact

The creator of the safety pin — this simple object present in almost every home — was a man named Walter Hunt. But his story goes far beyond a bent piece of brass.

Walter Hunt was born in 1796 and was one of the most prolific inventors in American history. Creator of various devices, like a primitive sewing machine model, Hunt had a restless mind — but, like so many geniuses, he lived surrounded by financial difficulties.

In 1849, in debt with a friend for 15 dollars, Hunt did the unthinkable: he took an 8-inch brass wire, began folding it with his fingers, and in a little while, one of the most useful objects ever created appeared — the safety pin.

But Hunt didn’t just create a pin: he had the ingenious idea to include a spring and a protected tip, which would prevent accidental drilling. It was a small touch of genius with a giant impact.

He registered patent No. 6,281 on April 10, 1849 — and soon sold its rights for $400 to W.R. Grace and Company. Enough to pay off debt and, as always, continue your life as an anonymous inventor.

It wasn’t just an ingenious creation. It was a definitive solution to an everyday problem. Before him, common pins were dangerous, loose, unstable. Hunt’s model has radically changed it — with a design that endures to this day, almost unchanged.

While older versions exist, such as the Roman fibulaes, it was Hunt who created the model that is modern, functional, safe — and accessible.

Walter Hunt was not a millionaire But his little invention has become immortal. The safety pin is the perfect reminder that even the simplest idea, when done ingeniously, can transform the world.

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Correction

When is a fact not a fact?

When it’s out by 200 years.

Following its capture, New Amsterdam’s name was changed to New York, in honor of the Duke of York, who organized the mission. The colony of New Netherland was established by the Dutch West India Company in 1624 and grew to encompass all of present-day New York City and parts of Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey.

(Thank you, Jim Kennoy for the correction)

Remembering

Door of Listowel Arms Hotel in June 2025

Memorabilia at Behans

Do you remember the butter box? These marvellous wooden boxes used for storing butter from creamery to warehouse were put to many many reuses. They made stools, storage boxes, nesting boxes and containers for tools and stuff.

Jimmy Hickey told me that the men in his father’s shoemaking workshop used to go to he creamery in the afternoons and turn their hands to making butter boxes.

This is a modern vessel, more ornamental than useful.

These other old earthenware vessels held whiskey and spirits. It is lovely to see these old containers displayed, to remind us of how it used to be.

Lidl Update

The site is a hive of activity these days.

A Daily Challenge

Every day you can visit the library to read the daily newspapers or to do the crossword. It is now part of my daily routine to collect the crossword and bring it home to do with my elevenses.

Without a doubt the library is the best free resource in our town.

Jack Sheehan Remembered

On May 28th last Ciarán Sheehan posted on Facebook;

104 yrs ago my Granduncle Lieutenant Jack Sheehan gave his life for Ireland’s freedom just outside of Listowel, Co Kerry.

Ciarán and his sister on a visit to his ancestral home in North Kerry visited the memorial to Jack Sheahan.

John Curtin, Ciarán’s cousin and also a proud descendant of Jack Sheehan’s accompanied the U.S. based cousins to the memorial.

Martin Moore’s post fills in the story.

Dark foreboding clouds hover Coilbee today, and on this day one hundred and four years ago, neighbours gathered to console the widowed mother of Volunteer Jack Sheahan who was fatally wounded, near his home on 26 May 1921 

Jack was our local hero, an independent minded man, of an independent minded family. They had known all about evictions and legal decrees. The family was moved from Inchimoor, by the local landlord in 1861. 

He noted how he evicted ‘old Shehan’ for dividing his farm with his sons. 

A generation later, in 1889, the New Zealand tablet recorded how ‘Mr Sheahan of Colbie (was) ruthlessly evicted’. 6 years later, his son was proecuted for taking a bullock from the notorious George Sandes.

The ruthless suppression of the Gael in his own lands inspired Jack’s generation to finish the fight and wrest independence from the Empire’s grasp.

Following a number of fatalities in 1921, new volunteers stepped forward, including Donal Bill Sullivan who replaced Jack, and the legendary ‘Aero’ Lyons of Garrynagore.

Schools Folklore

Long long ago there was a man by the name of Mr. Stack. He made candles out of rush and fat. He got the white out of the rush and caught the two ends and he would roll it around and around in the fat till he had a candle made.

Kevin Sheehy from Dan Broderick

A Fact

The city of New Amsterdam was given to the Duke of York in 1864 as a birthday present. He renamed the city New York.

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