Listowel Connection

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: Charles Street Page 1 of 2

A Little Known Listowel Panto

By

On September 2, 2024

In Listowel

St. Patrick’s Hall in late August 2024

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Ta Dah!

It’s here…my beautiful new book, Moments of Reflection, is all done and ready for launch. Paul Shannon of Listowel Printing Works did an excellent job once again.

Mark this date in your calendar

Saturday September 21 2024

Please join me in The Listowel Arms at 7.00 p.m. We will read a few reflections and we will have a few songs.

And, of course I’ll be signing the books.

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Charles’ Street Cinderella

The late Mrs. O’Keeffe of Charles Street was a great lady for holding on to newspaper cuttings. Her daughter found this treasure among her collection. Rose (Guiney) Treacy shared it with us. We don’t have the exact date but sometime in the 1970s.

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A Stag in the National Park

Photo; Chris Grayson

This magnificent animal is pictured surrounded by ragworth. This yellow “weed” is everywhere this year. Once upon a time you would be fined if you allowed it to grow in your fields or ditches.

Ragworth is loved by pollinators. But it is poisonous to horses. Strangely, sheep thrive on it and in some parts of Kerry, farmers used to bring sheep down from the mountains to clear the fields of ragworth before putting the cattle out to pasture.

Maybe, over time, animals have become immune to it. I hope so, because, with the amount of it flourishing in roadside ditches this year, the emerald isle will soon be the yellow isle.

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Castlemaine

When Cora was with me this summer we took a little road trip. This trip took us through Castlemaine.

In the Square is this really big postbox. I hadn’t seen one this size before.

Sad to see many of the shops in this corner of town are now closed but the owners have painted them in bright colours and decorated the windows with scenes from times gone by.

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Date for the Diary

Lartigue Monorail Museum will feature on Nationwide on Wednesday next, September 4 2024, on RTE 1 at 7.00p.m.

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A Fact

According to readers’ letters in The Guardian on August 29 2024, expectant mothers in England in the 1950s, 60s and 70s were routinely prescribed a glass of Guinness a day.

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Remembering and Celebrating

By

On April 16, 2024

In Just a Thought, Listowel, Poem

Charles Street, April 6 2024

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Forty Years of Gardening

Radio Kerry’s lovely new wagon was the first indication that today was a big day at Listowel Garden Centre.

Forty years in business for the MacAuliffe Roberts family

There were raffles every hour on the hour in aid of Listowel Hospice.

A great day of celebration and fun.

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Remembering Michelle

It is always unbelievably sad when a yearbook contains an obituary. Michelle had only just left Pres. and her memory was still very much alive in the school when she died. She made a mark. May she rest in peace

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Just a Thought

Here is the link to my reflections in the Just a Thought slot on Radio Kerry last week.

Just a Thought

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Immigrant Communities in Britain

This is Rook Street in London in 1912. There was a large Irish community in the Poplar area in the East end of London in the early 1900s. This photograph shows local residents preparing for their Corpus Christi procession.

The photograph is part of a collection in the National Archives in Britain. The postcard was sent to me by Ethel Corduff (formerly Walsh of Tralee). Ethel has a great interest in immigration and immigrant communities. It was she who studied and documented the story of Irish girls training as nurses in British hospitals. Her important book, Ireland’s Loss, England’s Gain tells their story.

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A Poem

John McAuliffe doesn’t find an empty house creepy at all.

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Today’s Fact

During the 1950s atomic bomb tests were a popular tourist attraction in Las Vegas.

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The Stunning to Headline Revival 2024

By

On April 15, 2024

In Listowel

Charles Street, Sunday April 6 2024

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A Find

James Kenny found this copy of Michael Hartnett’s Last Aisling in the poet’s handwriting, dated and signed. I’m presuming the original is in the Hartnett archive.

David O’Sullivan located the poem in an old Sunday Independent.

An Aisling is a genre of Irish poetry. In it Ireland appears to the poet in the form of a beautiful woman. She tells him her troubles but encourages him and gives him hope for help is on the way.

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The Stunning

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Pres. Yearbook 2004-2005

Cover design by Joan Stack

A great year for basketball

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Jer’s find in the Newspaper Archives

Irish Examiner Saturday, 27 January, 1894;

A KERRY Missionary. Among those selected by the Holy Father to go forth during the present year to preach the Gospel in foreign parts, is the Rev Thomas Griffin, a young Kerryman, who comes of a family which have given many faithful and zealous servants to the Church. Father Griffin, who is a son of Mr Jeremiah Griffin, formerly of Listowel, and late of Queenstown, was educated at the College of the Pious Society of Missions (to which Order he belongs) at Rome, where be was ordained last autumn, and had a most successful collegiate career, acquiring in addition to the indispensable classical and theological curriculum, a thorough knowledge of French, Italian, Spanish and German, which he speaks with fluency and ease.

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A Fact

In 1937 laminated glass in vehicle windscreens became mandatory in Britain. My calendar didn’t tell me if Ireland followed suit but there was little or no vehicle manufacturing going on here anyway. Factories like Ford assembled cars from parts imported into their Cork plant.

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Charles St., Women in Media 2019 and Teampall Bán

By

On May 2, 2019

In Uncategorized

Easter in St. Mary’s


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Charles Street/ Sráid Uí Chonghaile

Here is another example of a street with a name in English, by which it is known and a name in Irish which no one uses. I have also discovered that not only does no one I know use the Irish name but most of my friends  are unaware that there is an Irish name that is not a translation of the English.

In the case of Charles Street, local lore has it that the street was named by Lord Listowel after one of his sons.

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Women in Media 2019


Here are a few of the local people I photographed in Ballybunion on Saturday April 28 2019

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Teampall Bán



I had visitors for the weekend and, as well as going to two productions in St. Johns, a few panel discussions in Women in Media conference, and a brilliant seminar in Lixnaw I found a minute to bring them to Teampall Bán. They absolutely loved it and vowed to return.

They thought this gable mural by Maurice Pierse was both moving and prayerful.

They loved the little oratory and the stations of the cross.

They appreciated that there was somewhere to sit and contemplate all the history that is gathered in this place, a whole swathe of Listowel’s population wiped out by the Great Hunger.

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The Workhouse



from the Dúchas Folklore collection

The Workhouse was built in 1841. In the famine years it was full up of people who had no food to eat and other houses were used as workhouses. One of these was the college and another Dowd’s house. The People who died in the workhouse were buried in Teampall Bán. In the year 1920 the workhouse was closed and the poor people were removed to the county Home in Killarney. 

The house next to the workhouse was turned into a convent in 1891. The mercy nuns lived here. Before that this house was occupied by a party of British horse-soldiers called the Scots’ Greys. They lived there from 1880 until 1883. One of these was drowned in the river and the place is now known as the Corporals’ hole

In 1922 the workhouse was burned down by the Republicans and at the present time a new hospital is being built.

COLLECTOR
Maurice Bambury

Mayor’s Award for LWW, Garda John O’Donnell R.I.P.. Auction at Gurtinard House and changes on Charles Street

By

On January 28, 2019

In Uncategorized

Listowel Garda Station in 2019




Church Street, Listowel, January 2019


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Mayor’s Award for Writers’ Week

The great literary festival that is Listowel Writers’Week was recognised last week at the presentation of the Mayor of Kerry’s awards,

If ever there was a definition of blue sky thinking, Writers’ Week is a living example. The literary festival goes from strength to strength. Now it is expanding outside a short week in summer into a year long engagement with other festivals and events. The visionary committee well deserves this award.

Accepting the award on behalf of everyone in Listowel Writers’ Week are;

Left to Right; Eilish Wren, Joanna O’Flynn, Máire Logue, Norma Foley (Mayor)

 Madeleine O’Sullivan, Miriam Griffin and Elizabeth Dunn

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The Late Garda John O’Donnell




I told this story before in 2012 but I think it’s worth telling again.

Garda John O’Donnell who was in his early thirties was stationed in Kanturk, Co. Cork.  In the summer of 1940 he was on holiday in Ballybunion with his wife and three young children.  He told a relative that he would have preferred to holiday in his native Burtonport but petrol was rationed during the war  and he couldn’t secure enough fuel for the journey.

On the evening of July 20 1940 he was swimming near Castle Point when a freak wave swept him and other swimmers on to the rocks. John drowned while attempting to rescue two local girls, Vera and Patricia O’Carroll. The girls were eventually rescued by others who were present.

Listowel’s Dr. Joseph McGuire was the coroner who presided over the inquest which was held on the following day. The jury commended Mr. Jack McGuire, then a medical student, for his bravery in taking out a life buoy into rough seas in a vain attempt to  save John O’Donnell who was being dragged out to sea by the strong current.

In an extra tragic twist, the body of John O’Donnell was formally identified by his brother who was then only 17 years old.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, letters were published in The Kerryman calling for life guards on Ballybunion beach and the presence of a rescue boat and a competent crew to man it.

Garda O’Donnell was remembered in Kanturk, where he had been living for six years, as a quiet, unobtrusive, helpful brave man. 

He was posthumously decorated by the state for his bravery. 

This courageous man was the grandfather of the very talented artist, playwright and composer Mike O’Donnell.

Dave O’Sullivan found a few newspaper cuttings relevant to the awful tragedy.

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Auction at Gurtinard House in 1868


In June of 1868, Lord Listowel’s agent, James Murray Home sold everything in Gurtinard House in an “unreserved auction”. The notice was published in the Evening Post of May 23 with a list of items to be disposed of. It makes interesting reading

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Then and Now




Charles Street, January 2019

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