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: Fire station

St. Patrick’s Day cards

By

On March 13, 2024

In Festivals, Listowel

Listowel Fire Station in March 2024

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St. Patrick’s Day Cards from An Post

A Post have come up with a scheme that seemed to me like a great idea when I heard about it on the radio.

You go to the An Post website and you choose to send a St. Patrick’s Day card. You are given a choice of categories and then you will be given an AI generated image for your card. You write your greeting, the name and address of the recipients. Then you pay €4 and An Post will print and deliver the card anywhere in the world.

Brilliant!

I have these lovely friends whom you met here before. They are Wolfgang and Anita Mertens. They live in Germany. They love Ireland. Since I met them for the first time last year they have kept in touch and send me greetings, cards, photos and stuff.

So I set to make my greeting card for them.

Wolfgang is a scholar in the field of Anglo Irish literature. His special field of interest is the work of Listowel’s Bryan MacMahon. So the first category I chose was “literature” and the above card is what AI generated. Not so much literature. Lots of Paddywhackerry…rainbow, pots of gold, four leaved clovers masquerading as shamrocks. It was just short the leprechauns. I was definitely not choosing that one.

So next I chose the category St. Bridget’s Cross. The AI bot who made the above didn’t know too much about Saint Brigid since she numbered a pot of gold, a guitar and tricolour among her assorted artefacts at the foot of her very elaborate high cross. I rejected this one too.

I settled for my third and final choice, green landscape. Not very Irish but very very green. I thought I detected a few camels at the foot of those pyramids but who am I to question AI?

An Post had better up its game or I won’t be going there for my Easter cards.

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I met Two Famous Men

At lunch in Behan’s last Thursday I ran into Billy Keane and Michael Healy Rae having a chat. I disturbed them to bring you this.

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From Pres. Yearbook 1988

1987/88 was a great year for sport in the school. There were many exceptionally talented basketballers and footballers among the pupils.

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A Very Grim Fact

1740 to 1742 was the longest period of extreme cold in modern European history.

With rivers frozen, coal could not be delivered to ports, Animals and fish died. Birds fell dead out of the sky, having been frozen to death in flight. Starvation and hypothermia killed thousands of people.

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Stained Glass and Artwork in Gorey

By

On October 23, 2023

In Listowel

Listowel fire station early morning in October 2023

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People I met

It was lovely to meet Cáit Baker and Marie McMahon on their day out when I was on my day out.

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Last of the Kanturk Twomey Treasure Trove

Cunn Ella were an Irish company making beautiful blouses. Google didn’t have much on them so I don’t know any more.

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Art Treasures in Gorey

Michael O’Callaghan sent us this great story.

I am starting todays walk from Christchurch in Gorey which is just a few hundred metres from where I live. I pass this lovely building several times a day and remember its great history since it was built on a site donated by Stephen Ram in 1861. It was probably replacing an earlier church built in 1619. It can truly be said that it had a real part in the development of Gorey over the 400 years

Christ Church Gorey has a very nice link to a great art treasure. 

There is a lovely Harry Clarke-stained glass window to the left of the entrance door of Christchurch commissioned by Marie Lea-Wilson, the subject being Saint Stephen and it was dedicated in 1922, in remembrance of her husband Captain Percival Lea Wilson. This is one of two windows in the church dedicated to him. He had been involved in the 1916 rising and mistreated prisoners who were held in the Rotunda hospital after they had surrendered in the GPO.


His mistreatment of Tom Clarke was noted by some prisoners who swore revenge. After the troubles he was posted to France but by the end of 1917 he was back in Ireland and was posted to Gorey. He was not popular here because he carried out too many raids looking for arms. On June 15th, 1920, he was walking home from the RIC barracks in Gorey and went to Eason’s stand in the railway station to buy his paper, but as he was heading back home at Westmount on the Ballycanew Road he was shot dead. The RIC were unaware that Michael Collins had given the order to have him killed. 

His wife Marie decided to stay on in Gorey and commissioned the Harry Clarke stained-glass window. 

Later she made a trip to Edinburgh and while browsing bought a painting called ‘The Betrayal of Christ’, for 12 guineas in 1922. Marie went on to study medicine and she had the painting hanging in her room. One day in 1934 she decided to have a clear out of her house and gave the painting to the Jesuits who hung it in their dining room until 1993 when they asked the National Gallery to look at it and there was the missing Caravaggio ‘The Taking of Christ’, worth €50,000,000 but as we all know, the Jesuits have given it to the state on indefinite loan. 

Marie died in 1971 in 19 Fitzwilliam Place and is buried in Deansgrange. Percival lea Wilson is buried in Putney Vale Cemetery in London with the inscription on his grave saying he was assassinated in Gorey in June 1920.

They were different times.

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Convent Cross

Calvary at Convent Cross

Lovely stone was as a backdrop to a bench, a bin and a postbox

Edward VII postbox

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A Fact

Halloween began as a pagan festival, Samhain, in Ireland 2000 years ago.

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