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
Sunset in Ballyheigue in February 2023 photo; Dulce
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Burning of Tannavalla
Newspaper accounts at the time of the destruction of this glorious house were found for us by Dave O’Sullivan a few years ago.
So much destruction was caused during the struggle for independence.
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Waiting for the Bus
One of the great innovations in recent years has been the advent of accessible community transport for rural areas. You just call them the day before and they will collect you as near to your door as possible. They will bring you to town to do your shopping, attend doctor’s or other appointment or simply to just have an outing.
These lovely men were waiting for the bus home. They were sitting on Listowel Tidy Town’s Darren Enright’s convenient seat, another godsend to weary shoppers.
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Advice to Adult Children
WHEN PARENTS GET OLD … Let them grow old with the same love that they let you grow …
Let them speak and tell repeated stories with the same patience and interest that they heard yours as a child …
Let them overcome, like so many times when they let you win …
Let them enjoy their friends just as they let you …
Let them enjoy the talks with their grandchildren, because they see you in them …
Let them enjoy living among the objects that have accompanied them for a long time, because they suffer when they feel that you tear pieces of this life away …
Let them be wrong, like so many times you have been wrong and they didn’t embarrass you by correcting you …
LET THEM LIVE and try to make them happy the last stretch of the path they have left to go; give them your hand, just like they gave you their hand when you started your path!
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The Rambling House
If you are anxious to join a seisiún or if you just want a night of music and song there is a rambling house in the Community Centre in Knockanure on the first Thursday of every month.
Listowel Rambling house is on the last Thursday of every month at Kerry Writers’ Museum (The Seanchaí) starting at 9.15
Jim Lyons’ rambling house is in Knockalougha on the third Tuesday.
(Information gleaned from Kerry’s Eye)
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A Fact
At the end of the day you are approximately one quarter inch shorter than when you got up. The amount your height decreases depends on what you are doing. Walking, or better still, running, will shorten you the most.
Elephants, cows and horses can sleep standing up but sometimes choose not to do so. Maybe they are tired of standing tall.
I don’t think I’ve been in Athea since Covid. It was high time I visited my favourite outdoor art gallery. Last time I was there Jim Dunn, artist/muralist had a cover erected so that he could work in all weathers. That was gone and I could see the work in progress in all its splendour.
The forge mural is across the road from the church.
The morning was sunny and the standard for the hanging baskets was casting its shadow on the doctor.
The blacksmith/farrier is a new addition. Isn’t that such a kindly face? The anvil awaits another day.
I love all the men in the artwork.
I love all the horses too.
While I was there I met two lovely real men who stopped for a chat and posed for a photo.
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The Optical Suite
Lower William Street, February 2023
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A Very Sad Relic of 1950s Ireland
When “many young men of twenty” said goodbye to Ireland forever.
This was donated by Eileen Fahey to John Creedon’s National Treasures.
Here is what she wrote;
“A Catholic Handbook. This little booklet measuring 9cm x 11.5cm, which cost sixpence highlights a very different Ireland. Published in 1954, the handbook was drawn up because “economic difficulties especially the scarcity of work in counties like Mayo, Kerry and Galway have caused boys and girls to leave homes in Ireland and seek a living in the land across the water.” When I took up my first teaching post in Roscommon in 1974, it was part of the library in the school. I was given the responsibility to sort out the school library and when I found this document, I decided to keep it because it speaks volumes about Ireland at a certain period in time. You wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cry reading it but when I first read it, I recognised its historical value. In many ways, it was sad that it was a reference book in a school library where many students would have emigrated from. It gives insight into the loneliness, isolation, and fear of emigration in the 1950s. On arrival in England, the book advises that one of the first things you should do is look up the local parish priest.”
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Fact of the Day
Actor and film star, Jack Lemmon was born in 1925…..in a lift.
His mother was playing Bridge and was engrossed in a particularly good game, so good that even though she realised that birth was imminent she refused to leave the table until the last minute.
The Taelane Store isn’t in Taelane. It’s on Church Street.
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Reprieved!
The new owners of the Iceland chain have had a change of heart. Iceland, in Mill Lane, Listowel is staying open.
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In Listowel Library
Vincent Carmody and Kathy Buckley’s niece, Orla Buckley.
On Friday February 24 2023, local historian, Vincent Carmody introduced us to one of Listowel’s most illustrious emigrants. Kathy Buckley of William Street, Listowel was the White House cook for three U.S. presidents.
Kathy’s Listowel home
Plaque unveiled by the US ambassador during Listowel Food Fair a few years ago.
Sections of the audience as we listened in fascination to Vincent’s story of this formidable lady who represented us so well in the U.S.
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Uplifting poem
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A Bookplate
This is another chapter in the MichaelO’Connor story. The Cork Examiner account found by Dave O’Sullivan explains this novel fundraising initiative by Trinity.
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Fact of the Day
Butterflies smell with their antennae and taste with their feet. The monarch butterfly’s feet (proper name tarsi) are approximately two thousand times more sensitive than a human tongue.
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Just a Thought
My last week’s reflections as broadcast on Radio Kerry
Fitzpatricks, Church Street Listowel February 2023
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Must be Thursday
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Celtic Crosses
Ever wondered where the circle around the arms of the cross came from?
Wonder no more. My friend, Catherine Moylan, learned why at a course in West Kerry.
When evangelists came to convert the pagan Irish to Christianity, they observed that we were very attached to our pagan gods. These were gods of Nature and the solar system. They reckoned they wouldn’t stand a chance of converting us unless they included element of pre-Christian symbolism and belief.
They put a sun into the cross to marry symbols of the sun god and the Christian god…Result a Celtic Cross.
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The Navigator
When I was in St. Mary’s photographing the mosaic saints I missed St. Brendan because the spotlight on him was too strong. Helen turned off the spotlight and ta da…here he is with his bishop’s crook and his boat.
A piece from The Irish Times in 2007 has surfaced again lately. It’s well worth a read.
Carrolls of course 2007
Overlooking the square in Listowel, MJ Carroll has met the town’s hardware requirements – and more – for nearly 100 years, writes Rose Doyle
The square in Listowel, Co Kerry – even allowing for the Kingdom’s well-known modesty – is without a doubt one of the loveliest in any town in the country. It helps that there’s a picturesque old church at its centre, and that there are ivy-clad and other buildings of venerable age in good condition all around.
One of the latter, rapidly heading for its 100th year on the square, is home to the MJ Carroll Hardware store – it has been there since 1908. You can’t miss it: the name and legend are a part of the square, the date over the door for all to see.
Maurice Carroll, with his brother John, runs the business today. It’s changed since 1908 but, in the way of companies with community roots, has somehow stayed the same. The Carrolls have diversified, of course, the emphasis no longer on the agricultural supplies which were the bread-and-butter of the earlier shop, when customers wanted and got potato diggers and prams, ammunition and guns and petrol from the pump outside the door.
MJ Carroll Hardware these days supplies everything from electrical and gardening supplies to household goods and DIY needs and timber, but all of it, as ever, in answer to the needs of the citizens of Listowel and hinterland.
Maurice Carroll, on a sunny Sunday with only the quietest of buzzes on the square outside, tells the story of the hardware store, how his grandfather, an earlier Maurice Carroll, established the business in 1908. “He came from Ballylongford,” says Maurice, “and started off originally with hardware and poultry. He used to pluck chickens, woodcock and snipe for export to England. They had chicken pluckers in the laneway behind.”
His grandfather, Maurice, married Catherine Welsh, whose people were publicans in the town. She and Maurice Carroll had one child, a boy they called John Joe who grew up to be father to Maurice and John, today’s custodians of the business.
“My grandfather and grandmother lived over the shop, always,” Maurice explains. “We’re a bit lacking in history because my grandfather died in 1928 and my grandmother Catherine about 1948. I’ve no memories of either of them. My father, John Joe Carroll, was born in 1912; he was well-known locally and developed the business well. We were into farm machinery in the 1920s and 1930s. My father was sent away to school in Roscrea when he was about 14. He was able to drive, even then, and never spent a day in the classroom! The chief abbot had him driving him around to other monasteries and convents. He didn’t do a Leaving Cert or a thing – he made the contacts in the monasteries and schools and convents and developed his head for business.”
Catherine Carroll looked after things when her husband died and, in 1930, her son John Joe came on board. He loved it, had an instinctive feel for marketing and increased awareness of MJ Carroll Hardware with large hoardings outside the town (one encouraged a viewing of the famous Stanley Ranges at Carrolls), drove much emblazoned, free-delivery vans and came up with the slogan “Carrolls of course” – in use to this day.
He married when he was 40, to Elizabeth (Lila) O’Sullivan from Tarbert who had, her son says, “a hardware background as well; she worked in Roches Stores in Limerick and in Cork.”
Growing up over the shop, Maurice, who was born in 1953, remembers the square and Listowel as “magic. Fair days were held every two weeks in the square. People would come in at 5am or 6am to sell cattle, from all around the countryside. It was the market in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. As a child, it was great to go out in the morning early and get 6d from a farmer to mind his cattle.” He pauses. “There was a lot of drinking involved.”
He has pictures galore, of a square filled with high sided donkey and horse drawn carts, with animals and men in long coats and caps.
MJ Carroll in those years, and for a long time, sold milk churns and “a big thing at the time”, Maurice says, “O’Dearest Mattresses. Prior to the TV in 1961 O’Dearest had an ad with an old woman putting money into a mattress. They lent us the model and during race week we would have crowds at the window queuing up to see her putting the money away, doing the same thing every few minutes.”
The square was magic, too, when he was a child. “You could play football in it. There were only 4,000 people in the town, a figure that never changed much, even to today. It’s a lovely town and one of the finest squares in Ireland.
“Listowel has hosted the races for the last 150 years and the Fleadh Cheoil about 12
to 13 times. It was ‘Writers’ Week’ which really put the town on the map.”
And the shop, of course, was magic when he was growing up. “There wasn’t a day you didn’t have something to do; it was full of old-fashioned boxes and such. I remember the bank manager next door getting presents of turkeys at Christmas and them flying over the wall. It was that rural!
“There was a great staff, 25 or so, a lot of them stayed for years and years. I remember Patsy Leahy, Dan Kennelly, Pat Shine. There was no boss/employer relationship, everyone just worked together. Tom Dillon was with us 44 years and retired only lately.”
Maurice was sent to school in Clongowes, to where his father would drive to see him in the van, which “would be plastered with writing”, Maurice remembers, “you’d have every priest and pupil looking at it. I used to be mortified. Other pupils would have dads pulling up in a Mercedes!”
John Joe Carroll died in 1968. Maurice, the eldest, was 14; sisters Olive, Pamela and brother John were younger.
“Everyone loved him,” Maurice says, “he had a colossal following.”
His mother, Lila, took over. She still lives over the shop and only very recently, now she’s in her 80s, stopped coming down every day. “People liked her being in the shop, she used talk about the old days. Up to 10 years ago the place was old-fashioned, the way it always was. But a fire destroyed a lot of it and we had to rebuild. Only the front wall remained.”
Before he died John Joe Carroll set up a builders’ providers in Listowel. “It happened piece-meal,” Maurice explains. “There were no builders’ providers around here at the time. I look after it now and it’s doing very well. My brother does the furniture and electrical part of things.
“We’ve a staff of 12 or 13 and have been part of the ARRO group of suppliers for 25 years.”
Maurice and his wife, Mairead, have two daughters, Emma and Sarah, in their early 20s and studying at UCD. Maurice doesn’t think they’ll join the business. John and his wife, Anne-Marie, have a daughter, Maire, who at 14 is still at school and not, for now, likely to join the firm.
“Next year is our 100th year,” Maurice reflects a moment, on the past and on the future. “We’ll take it on from there,” he says.
The biggest change to Listowel is the increased traffic. “That and more and more new faces, both our own people and other nationalities. It’s a good thing, there’s more movement going on.
“Listowel is a nice town, a nice looking town too. The community is great, but then you get that everywhere in Ireland when people mix together.
“There’s a culture change from drinking to eating with about 20 restaurants now and, where there once was about 60 pubs, about 15 to 20 now.”
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Listowel’s Oldest Mural?
Is this VW on Tarrant’s gable the oldest mural in town.
Gerard Leahy grew up in Market Street across the road from the garage, 60 years ago and he remembers it.
Ned O’Sullivan lived next door to Tarrants and he reckons it was painted in 1960 or 61.
Unfortunately the artist didn’t sign his name but Violet Dalton would bet her bottom dollar it was a Chute.
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Lovely Paint Job at Lees
Job finished and looking great on Church Street.
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Another Business Closure
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It’s Lent
Lenten display in St. Mary’s, Listowel in February 2023.