Top Dog
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More Young Tennis Players
Photographer; Danny Gordon
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John Dwyer, Policeman with Listowel roots
This illustrious policeman was a relative of Kerry historian, Martin Moore. You can read all about him in the latest issue of The Old Kerry Journal.
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Caught on Camera
My favourite builder, the genial Derry O’Carroll of Duagh, snapped off guard in Upper William Street
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Gas Works on Church Street
Feb 12 2019
Doggy in the Window
If Molly had a big red button, she’d put it here.
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When the pantomime was the talk of the town
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Year 1987; Photographer Danny Gordon
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St. Michael’s Black Tie Ball
They’re planning a black tie ball in St. Michael’s. It will be held on March 15th 2019 and tickets are available at the school.
The last time they held such an event was in December 1999 when the college was celebrating 120 years of education for boys in Listowel. Here is the souvenir booklet.
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Barn Dance
I found this photo on Facebook of two happy barn dancers, Patsy Kennedy and Kay Lane at William Street on Friday 8 2019 for Listowel’s barn dance in aid of Listowel Tidy Town’s proposed purchase of a van.
Curtain Call
Molly likes to sit on the window sill and keep a close eye on what is happening both indoors and outside.
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A St. Valentine’s Day (though a bit late) Treat
Listowel/North Kerry branch of MS annual St Valentine’s Day Coffee Morning on Saturday next, February 16th 2019 at Tomáisín’s. 11.00am – 1pm. Come along and catch up with the neighbours as Spring approaches. Delicious home baked treats and great raffle prizes.
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Tanavalla House
John Buckley found this old photo of Tanavalla House and Dave O’Sullivan looked up what happened to it.
The original house was destroyed by fire in the 1820s and rebuilt in Regency style. The Elliotts owned the property until the 1870s after which it was the occupied by the Cooke family. It was burned in 1920.
It was burned at the same time as the old library on Bridge Road as local republican forces believed that both buildings were to be occupied by the British military. In his witness statement in1955 Patrick McElligott stated that Information had been received locally that the library and Cooke’s mansion in Tanavalla were to be taken over by the British military. He issued orders for their destruction by burning.”
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Some Tennis Players in Action
Here are some sweet photos from Danny Gordon of Listowel youngsters playing tennis in 1987. Lots more to come in the next few days.
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Armstrong Sweet Factory
On the far right in this lovely Fr. Browne photo you can see the Armstrong, North Kerry sweet factory.
Dave O’Sullivan enhanced the image of the two garsúns but I don’t suppose we’ll ever know who they were.
This is an old sweet tin. There are still a few about.
Because an Armstrong descendant, Patrick McCrea, has been contributing to our blog, I have become very interested in this family who once upon a time had a strong Listowel connection.
Patrick’s latest email sheds light on an illustrious ancestor of his and considerably broadens the reach of Listowel Connection.
“Gabriel Mathurin was a 17th century ancestor of Kathleen Johnson who was married to Tom Armstrong .
Recently a genealogical research showed that she was descended from Gabriel
Mathurin who was a Hugeonot Protestant priest locked up for 25 years in solitary
confinement on the Island Political Prison just off Cannes .”
If you are following the story of the Armstrongs here you will remember that Tom was the owner of the sweet factory and he married Kathleen who was the daughter of the local bank manager.
Here is the story of the famous ancestor;
Then and Now
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Armstrong Marriage
This handsome couple are Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Armstrong of Gurtinard House, Listowel. Theirs was the society wedding of March 7 1905 and the whole thing was reported in The Kerry Evening Post.
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Watching the Tennis
When he was photographing the juvenile tennis tournament in the late 1980s, Danny Gordon turned his camera on the spectators who were engrossed in the action on the courts.
Veronica Corridan, Una McElligott, Maurice O’Sullivan, Josephine and Paul Henry and three children whom I can’t name.
Anne Cogan, Helen and Alice Moylan, Mary and Clíona Cogan and Maureen and Denis O’Connor.
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Look Up
When you look above street level, sometimes what you see shocks you and sometimes surprises. Pictures taken on Church Street, Listowel in January 2019
Then and Now
Lower Church Street
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Mrs Bibiana Foran of Listowel
Mrs. Foran was a kind of Lady Bountiful whose name comes up often in accounts of charitable acts in Listowel.
In 1915 she wrote this letter to The Kerryman
Dear Sir.—The present time of stirring events has, perhaps, been needed to bring home to us the importance of guarding the lives and preserving the vitality of our children. To those whom fortune has favoured in the way of wealth, there is no need to speak. The well-being of their children is taken as a matter of course; but the children of the poor—the future working assets of our nation, are those which must engage the thinking members of our population. We see around us every day, thousands of little lives dropping out, or children who go through life with maimed, deformed bodies, without considering why it should be so, or if it could be prevented.
See what they are doing in other countries, spending thousands of pounds to have even proper playgrounds while here we seem to be centuries behind time in everything considering child welfare. In England the State provides, free meals, medical examination of schools, dental clinics, free books, grants for baby clubs, and maternity centres, where the expectant poor mother has received advice for months before her baby is born.
A Child Welfare Committee has been formed in Dublin, of which the Solicitor-General is chairman, the views of which has secured the sympathy and support of Irish, Liberal, and Unionist Members of the House which guides our destinies, and it only remains now for you, sir, to arouse public opinion on the subject to strengthen their hands and obtain for the children of this country the same privileges as prevail in the Sister Isle.
You already know what the Id. dinners have done for the poor children in Tralee, and our small experience here has shown us what the lunch given at our school has done for the little boys who have been receiving it for the past few years. £10 donation towards the Samaritan Funds of the W. N. H. A. enabled us to begin the lunch one cold, raw winter’s day to about 35 children. Since then, the number has been raised to 80 and all honour to the generous people of our town and district, we have never since been in want of funds for carrying it on.
Our Queen’s Jubilee Nurse attend; three days every week during the lunch hours and any little boy showing signs of delicacy has been attended to quietly at her own cottage. And I venture to say the 80 odd little men were, in consequence, so much improved mentally and physically, within one year, a not to be known as the same. A little experience is worth volumes of writing and why not this be carried out in every school in Ireland by the State? We know that the present grant is absolutely inadequate and it only extends to urban districts, while the poor – children in country schools are labouring under the same, if not worse, conditions. Even one good, nourishing meal a day, medical inspection of schools where ailing children will be attended to in time; Dental Clinics, free books and a public playground in every town and city where children would be free to have that play so necessary for them, would change the whole aspect of those little ones in five years. While Baby Clubs and Maternity Centres would give them a chance -a fighting chance—for their lives with all the other nations of the earth.
It is only the Nuns and the Teachers who have been so nobly trying to battle with those drawbacks that could tell what it is costing us—and them—and surely leaving sentiment entirely out of the question is it not money well spent to preserve and fashion to its best the children of our race—THE FUTURE ASSETS OF OUR NATION.
The child makes the man. How can you expect a man to emerge with brain, bone and sinew whose veins were starved in childhood on bread and tea, what fills our jails, workhouses and asylums, and places such burdens on the rates? Perhaps the answer is here
Yours faithfully.
BIBIANA FORAN
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Tennis Club Championship Finalists in the 1980s
Photo : Danny Gordon
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Early Floral Display, January 2019
This lovely raised bed is on Market Street outside the old mart wall.
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Juvenile Tennis Players Named
Photo; Danny Gordon.
Names with a little help from Elaine
Back L to R; Dympna Galvin, Paul O’Neill, J.J. Walsh, Laura O’Neill
Front: Shane O’Connor, Elaine Kinsella, Sinead Finnegan and Dan Browne
Apologies if I have misidentified anyone. The year was 1987.
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Dance hall Devils
Hi, Mary, your dance-hall article reminds me of what Dan Paddy Andy ‘said’ (in J. B. Keane’s book) of such a ‘devil’ who was feared would arrive in his dance-hall. The devil was supposed to have been a clerical student. He was blamed for the ruination of so many young dance-hall women that he was christened, not the Lamb, but ‘The Ram of God.’ Dan Paddy Andy proclaimed that if the ‘Ram of God’ ever came to his hall at Renagown, he would go home a wether! As you know, if that happened, he would be (harmlessly) leading a different sort of flock!!
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