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
My photo is from May 21 2025. Text is from Listowel and its Vicinity by Fr. Antony Gaughan.
<<<<<<<<
Ballincollig, My Home Away from Home
Congratulations to Ireland’s Tidiest Town
the hard working volunteers
<<<<<<<<<
Jack, the cattle herder
Jack is a pal of Stuart’s. He helps him keep his ladies in line.
<<<<<<<<<<
Where the streets have no name
Or have so many it’s hard to pick one.
I apologise to the people who have heard all of this before on here. If that’s you, just skip to the poem.
St. Patrick’s Hall is on William Street Upper. Some people prefer Patrick Street but that’s not an official address.
That’s the Sluagh Hall with the Palistinian flag. Wonder who put that there?
The Street sign at the top of the street giving the Irish and English street names…no Patrick, unless it’s Patrick Pearse but that’s stretching it a bit.
<<<<<<<<<
A Poem
<<<<<<<<
Progress at Lidl Site
Warning signs at the site
I am standing on the footpath opposite to where Dowd’s house stood.
The present Lidl store
Another load of concrete arrives at the site.
<<<<<<
A Fact
Our eyes are the same size from birth to death but our nose and ears never stop growing.
Text from Antony Gaughan’s Listowel and its Vicinity
<<<<<<<<
What a difference a Season Makes
Stuart, Pat Breen’s bull, was a surprise breakout star of my Moments of Reflection.
He was photographed by my niece in early spring, after a wet and mucky winter. He was a bit overweight from all the weather related confinement.
Here is the bold Stuart a few months later in May 2025. He is happily grazing among his ladies. He is slimmed down, clean and much more attractive to his harem.
<<<<<<<
Out and About with Camera
The fine weather saw me out in town and I was delighted to have a few local people pose for me.
Two lovely ladies who are always a joy to encounter in the Vincent de Paul shop. Mary and Eileen are both over seventy but still volunteering and working hard.
Jean, always cheerful and energetic, rested for a minute on the Tidy Town seat.
<<<<<<<<
Lidl Yesterday
looks like the foundation of the new store
Corner of Dowd’s Road and John B. Keane Road
<<<<<<<<
A Thought
People who don’t learn from the mistakes of history are destined to repeat them.
Killian and his friends climbed Carrauntuathail on a sunny day in May 2025.
Ballincollig lads on the summit, Killian, Riain, Sorin and Callum
A photo Killian sent on his way up.
<<<<<<<
Congratulations
What an achievement for Billy Alexander and all the wonderful crew at Kells Bay, a third gold at the Chelsea Flower Show.
<<<<<<<<<
Listowel Writers’ Week 2025..Listowel Literary Festival
Opening night is tomorrow night. There is a great programme planned for the week.
Here is a new venture involving the local community… Your chance to be part of the story.
<<<<<<<<
Clarification
An eagle eyed reader spotted yesterday that Fr. Antony Gaughan in this extract from his Listowel and its Vicinity refers to the street we know as Church Street as Ashe Street.
We have been down this road on Listowel Connection before. A quick recap is all I’m going to give here. A burst of republican fervour at one time in Listowel lead to requests to change the street names to commemorate Irish patriots. That campaign failed. Changing street names poses a huge problem for businesses with several issues, some of them fairly costly as well as inconvenient, of changing their business address on all printed and other documents, on bank accounts and invoicing accounts with suppliers etc.
Anyway the issue was eventually resolved by a compromise which saw the Irish version of the street names commemorating the dead republicans and the English version left unchanged. The above sign is an example.
Some people, unhappy with this solution, went on to call Church Street Ashe Street. Fr. Antony Gaughan, it would appear, was one of these.
Probably the best example today is Patrick Street which is in fact Upper William Street. There is no Patrick Street in Listowel.
<<<<<<<
Progress at Lidl
This is where Dowd’s house used to be.
The present Lidl store on the left will be demolished.
The store was busy yesterday. Monday is always busy with the “specials’.
This big lorry arrived to the site while I was photographing.
We are going to get a brand new store, just like the Tralee one and the bigger carpark will be where the shop is now.
<<<<<<<<<<
A Fact
In 1310 shoes were made for the left and right feet for the first time.
This photo was taken in Rosbeg in Co. Donegal and shared on Facebook.
<<<<<<<<
A Poem for our Time (and all times)
<<<<<<<<
Old Banteer
If you ever take the Nadd road to Cork you will pass through Banteer. It doesn’t look like this now. This picture from 1920 was shared by Denis O’Mahoney.
<<<<<<<
Our First Church
I took this photo of the old church tower on May 21 2025.
Here is what Listowel and its Vicinity has to say about it.
<<<<<<<<
A Fact
Fidel Castro holds the record for the longest speech ever delivered the the United Nations. He spoke for 4 hours and 29 minutes.
Yesterday I brought you Leah Glasheen’s email. In response to my request she told us a little more about herself and about her recent visit. Her ancestors left Asdee for Quebec in 1849.
“Mary, here are my fourth great grandparents, Patrick and Mary (Scanlon) O’Rielly. They spent (roughly) one third of their lives in north County Kerry, one third in Canada, and one third the United States, finally settling in Union County, Dakota Territory, now South Dakota.
I’ve also included a photo of six of their children who survived into their adulthood. Left to right, front: Brothers Patrick, John and Robert
Back: Sisters Bridget, Kitty (Katherine) and Johanna. John, Patrick and Bridget Ann were born when the family lived in Asdee; the others were born in Canada.
Leah also sent some photos taken on her recent visit to North Kerry.
Attached are pictures of myself in Asdee, my husband as he is about to tuck into a delicious lunch at Listowel’s Lizzy’s Little Kitchen. The last shows the two of us with our daughter, a public school math teacher, at Newgrange.
Isn’t it lovely to see people come back to reconnect with the home of their forebears. Their return to the land their ancestors fled in poverty shows us our close links with America, where so many Irish emigrants have thrived and contributed.
<<<<<<<<
Aoife’s Visit
Aoife loves Listowel Town Park
Her favourite spot is the swings. So often when she has visited in the past, it’s been raining and all the equipment is wet. Not so on May 16 2025, when the temperature was 22 degrees,
<<<<<<<<
R.I.P. Paul Durcan
Mark Holan wrote a heartfelt tribute to the great poet who passed away at the age of 80.
Irish poet Paul Durcan has died in Dublin. He was 80. His “contribution to the performed poem was of enormous importance to the appreciation of poetry in Ireland,” Irish President Michael D. Higgins said.
In his introduction to the poet’s 80th birthday collection, 80 at 80, Irish writer Colm Tóibín said Durcan’s “voice as he read from his work and spoke about poetry could be both deadpan and dead serious; it could also be wildly comic and brilliantly indignant.” Tobin continued:
I loved the undercurrent of anarchy playing against moral seriousness and I began to go to his readings. These were extraordinary performances where many parts were acted out, and where the comedy was undermined by anger sometimes, or pure melancholy, or raw quirkiness, or a sympathy for pain or loss or loneliness.
Paul Durcan
My wife and I attended a Durcan reading at the 2012 Listowel Writers’ Week, the year he published Praise in Which I Live and Move and Have my Being. The reading occurred in a ballroom at the historic Listowel Arms Hotel on the town’s main square. Durcan sat with his back to a large bank of windows, beyond which the lovely River Feale shimmered in the long, lingering dusk of the approaching summer solstice.
Durcan read from his new collection, including “On the First Day of June,” which happened to be the date of the performance. He exclaimed:
I was walking behind Junior Daly’s coffin Up a narrow winding terraced street In Cork city in the rain on the first day of June …
The poem describes how Daly and his friend John Moriarty had died 12 minutes apart, each from “the same Rottweiler of cancer,” and now their spirts stood together watching the mourners inside Cork city’s North Cathedral. “Christ Jesus, Junior, wouldn’t you want to lift up their poor heads in your hands like new baby potatoes and demonstrate them to the world,” Moriarty says. The poem concludes:
… Outside in the streets and the meadows In Cork and Kerry On the first day of June on the island of Ireland Through the black rain the sun shown.
This poem about the swiftness of life and the suddenness of death still brings a shudder of emotion to me, a watering of the eye. It is not his best poem; was not selected for 80 at 80. But the delightful serendipity of hearing Durcan read the poem on the date of its title, in such a lovely setting, made this one of my favorite moments in Ireland. it remains so seven visits and 13 years later.
After Durcan’s performance I stood in line for nearly 30 minutes to have the poet sign–and date–a copy of his new volume, which I purchased for my wife. I was anxious to join her and some dear cousins in the hotel bar. But I am grateful that my patience prevailed.
<<<<<<<<
A Fact
13 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in India.
