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

Tag: Ballybunion Page 3 of 33

Ballybunion, What our Forefathers Ate and some Listowel Premises getting a Facelift

Molly’s Back

Trouble -the -House is back for her Kerry holidays. You’ll spot us out and about these days as I reintroduce her to her second home.

<<<<<<<


Ballybunion is Buzzing


Ballybunion loves a Summer Sunday. The Bunker was full to capacity and overflowing on to the street.


Flash had set up outside the Railway Bar and was entertaining the whole street on Sunday July 7 2019

<<<<<<<<


Food in Olden Times


from the Dúchas Folklore collection 

(Read to the end. I think he got the bit about the tea wrong.)

In olden times the chief food of the people was potatoes three times a day and sour skim milk and sometimes porridge made from yellow meal for supper and two meals of potatoes. 

Breakfast was usually taken at nine o’clock in the morning so that three hours work was done before breakfast. 

At each meal the table was placed in the centre of the floor and all sat down and commenced eating. In later years meals became more plentiful and bread was made from it by mixing with boiling water and afterwards baked in a griddle. The breakfast consisted then of yellow bread and sour skim milk filled out in wooden mugs. In the morning the bread was often heated in front of the fire before being eaten. In those days very little meat was used but salt mackerel for supper but potatoes were not unusual, supper hour being about nine o’clock. 

Easter Sunday was a feast and each member of the house was allowed as many eggs as he or she could eat. 

Tea was scarcely known until some sixty years ago and was not drank only at Christmas. Then it was made in a parcel and put away until the arrival of Christmas again.

Location: Cappagh, Co. Kerry- Teacher:T.F. Sheehan.

<<<<<<<

Running Repairs in Listowel 

Fitzpatrick’s iconic bay window in Church Street is being replaced.

Jumbo’s is being repainted

<<<<<<<



A Trip Back in Time




Dont forget to take a trip on the Lartigue in summer 2019. Open every afternoon.

Michael Guerin, Lartigue Driver. Oxana Sean, Seamus Kyritz from Tampa, Florida. Diane and Robert Moloney from Ennismore Listowel Canada. Pat Walsh Lartigue wayman.

These visitors to the Lartigue on Wednesday are descended from  families who left Listowel for Canada under the Peter Robinson Resttlement Scheme of the 19th century.

<<<<<<<


Weekly Guided Walks



This photo was taken before the start of the first guided walking tour of the town on Saturday last. It is planned that these walks will take place every Saturday until the end of August, starting at 11.00a.m.

The cost is €5 and includes tea or coffee and a scone in The Kerry Writers Museum at the end of the walk.

If you are planning on taking the tour tomorrow,  July 13 2019, your volunteer guide will be…………….me.

Friday Market, Commemorative Seats, Ard Churan Concert and Revival 2019 line up

Ballybunion Sunset 2019



Photo; Jason at Ballybunion Prints Beach

<<<<<<<<<

Music in The Square at the Friday market

<<<<<<


Commemorative Seats in Listowel Town Park


Donating a seat seems to have replaced planting a tree as a means of remembering a lost loved one. Here are the two new seats in the park.




<<<<<<<

Ard Churam Concert


On Thursday May 30 we were treated to a great night of music by the people behind Ard Churam fundraising.

Photo; Ger Holland, official Writers’ Week photographer

The undisputed stars on the night were the members of the Ard Churam choir and their coach, soprano Mary Culloty O’Sullivan. Cyril Kelly took us down memory lane and reality television star, Fr. Ray Kelly sang songs from his album. The concert was a great success and helped greatly in raising funds for the planned dementia care day centre.

Mairead Slemon and Rachel Guerin congratulate Aine Guerin on a great night’s work.

Mary and Peter  McGrath were enjoying the music.

 Vourneen Kissane and Margaret Reidy were there too.

Sr. Consolata met her old friend, Jackie McGillicuddy who was singing with the choir.

<<<<<<<



Courthouse Plaza






Courthouse Road leads to a lovely plaza area with three public buildings surrounding asome newly planted raised beds.

This is the back of Áras an Phiarsaigh.

Áras an Phiarsaigh

Listowel Courthouse



Listowel branch of Kerry Library

<<<<<<<



Revival 2019




Saturdays’ headline act, The Coronas has been confirmed. This promises to the best Revival yet. Tickets are selling out quickly .


President Michael D. O hUigínn in town, Ballybunion Dining, Writers’ Week 2018

Presidential Visit to Kerry Writers’ Museum

The purpose of the president’s visit to Listowel last weekend was to celebrate Listowel’s great win in the Super Valu Tidy Towns’ Competition 2018. While he was in the area he fitted in a few other engagements as well. On Friday evening one of Listowel Tidy Town’s  hardest working volunteers, Breda McGrath was out giving the place a last sweep up when she spotted Uachtarán na hEireann in his motorcade on his way to The Seanchaí.

There were gardaí everywhere. Here are three who assured me that they have a Listowel connection.

Rambling house musicians waiting to play for the president.

The greeting party at Kerry Writers’ Museum with their VIP guests, Eoin Moriarty, David Browne, Sabina and Michael D. Higgins and Madeleine O’Sullivan

I’ll have more photos from the presidential visit after my short break.

<<<<<<<

Ballybunion, Main Street

<<<<<<<<



Cosmopolitan Ballybunion


Eating in Ballybunion can be a very interesting experience with cuisine from around the world offered in different establishments around town. Here are a few examples.

<<<<<<<<


Writers’ Week 2019


Tomorrow May 29 2019 is opening night. Here are a few photos from last year to whet your appetite. Here’s to a great week for those who love to write, those who love to read and those who love to photograph the people who write and read.

I’ll be busy Writers’ weeking for the next while. I’ll share all the photos later.

Adare, Ballybunion Street Names and a Look back at Writers Week 2018 and a few photos from the weekend

May 24 and 25 2019

This weekend I was at two Michael D. events, two book launches, MS busking and the Eucharistic procession. I took tons of photos. It will take a while to process them, to tell the story and to drip  feed some of the best of them into blog posts. This week I’m busy with Writers’ Week so please be patient. There will be lean days yet and I’ll post the pictures for you.

VIP visitors, Michael D. and Sabina Higgins with Listowel VIPs, Julie Gleeson and Mary Hanlon.

Hard working Listowel/North Kerry M.S. Society volunteers with Ballybunion musicians and singers at their annual busking day in Listowel on Friday May 24 2019.

Joe Hanlon can’t wait to read his copy of Under the Bed…. Robert Pierse’s autobiographical work launched on Friday May 24 2019.

John Devoy signs his book, Quondam  for Limerick visitors in Woulfe’s bookshop on Saturday May 25 2019.

Annual Eucharistic procession at Convent Cross on Saturday May 25 2019

<<<<<<<<

Picturesque Adare, Co. Limerick

I stopped recently on my way home from Kildare. Adare is such a beautiful little town.



Adare Manor is a no-go area but otherwise the town is charming and welcoming.

<<<<<<


Ballybunion Street Names


Remember I told you all about the palaver Listowel had over street names?

Well we could take a leaf out of Ballybunion’s book. They used a very simple method, e.g. if the road leads to a doon call it Doon Road. If it leads to a sandhill, call it sandhill Road

Here are just a few examples I snapped while I was in town last week

All self explanatory but wait……..

A few roads are named after famous Ballybunion people but that’s understandable.

and




<<<<<<<<<



Two More Sleeps to Opening Night Writers Week 2019


A few more from last year.

A Goat, Our Tidy Town Seat, Winding Wool, a ghost and an Old Album Cover

Irish Wildlife Photography Competition

Feral Goat: Neil T. Halligan

<<<<<<



We Care with a Chair


Thank you Tidy Town people. I rarely pass the seat in this fine weather but there is someone taking their ease. These two local ladies were waiting for the bus.

<<<<<<<



Newspaper Pins its Colours to the Mast in 1912



Kerry Weekly Reporter  Saturday, October 12, 1912


THE POST OFFICE AND THE PARTY.


The 30th September, the fatal day when an Englishman was to be brought in to ride roughshod over able Irish officials, has come and gone. Mr. Norway has been duly installed as Secretary of the Irish Post Office: an office, we believe, he never previously put his foot in, and no explanation good or bad is vouchsafed by the Irish Party in the Irish Press -why an Englishman who never was in Ireland should be placed on the necks of the whole Irish Post Office staff. One can only, ask is this one of the fruits of the Balance of Power.

If this rotten job be one fruit of the Balance of Power and Mr. Runciman’s Regulations are another, and Mr. Winston Churchill’s Home Rule for Ulster scheme is yet another, and Mr. Birrell’s anti-Irish, anti-Catholic educational balloons are yet some others, everyone will shudder at what the Balance of Power may bring to Ireland out of the womb of the future. “Sinn Fein “



<<<<<<<<




Winding Wool




It is May 6 2019 and my little girlies are learning a social history lesson. A friend recently gave me some skiens of pure wool and I took the opportunity to teach my little granddaughters a lesson.

Do you remember when all wool (It was wool. No acrylic back then) came in 1 oz. hanks and you had to wind it into a ball before you could start on your knitting project? The girls were full of enthusiasm to start with but they found the job a bit tiring on the arms. Happy days!

<<<<<<<<


Scary Story from Ballybunion Convent School in the 1930s



From Dúchas, the school’s folklore project


About thirty years ago on Christmas night a man in Beale had to leave his own house and he had to take his candle in his hand to a neighbour’s house, because he was hunted by ghosts who asked him to leave as there was to be a fight that night between the Wrens and the Shines who lived in the neighbourhood some year before. As he and his sister were leaving, a man whom they knew to be dead of years offered to lead them and when they went out in the yard, he had to divide the crowd to allow them pass. The day before the place was covered with magpies and he did not know what was to happen. 

The morning after this he was going fishing. The moon had risen. When he got up, he thought it was day. He went to the boathouse and waited under his canoe until it was bright. As he was about to lie under the canoe, the man who told him to leave his house the night before came to the canoe and peeped in. He told him that if they went fishing that morning, someone would be drowned. When it was bright he and four other men went fishing. They were not far out when a great storm came and overturned the boat and two men were drowned.


Sheila Sheahan 

Beale Middle

Co Kerry

 <<<<<<<


Old Album Sleeve



Liam OHainnín found this one.

<<<<<<

Meeting a Blog Follower




I was lucky enough to meet (by chance) one of my most faithful blog followers in Flying Saucer on Monday.

Noreen Holyoake – Keese grew up in Listowel and now lives in New York.

Page 3 of 33

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén