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: Newmarket

In Newmarket

Róisín Darby riding Eclipse on the avenue at Lee Valley Equestrian Centre

23 Years on

Sand art on Ballybunion beach on September 11 2024.

Alice Moylan sent us the photo and she also did the research. The number 343 is the number of New York fire department personnel who died in 9/11.

Something Old

We all had this beautiful old cutlery in the days before the dishwasher.

Bone used to be used to make the handles. Bones of cattle or deer which were available locally and cheaply were used. But then came plastic and I think our knives were faux bone. They were warm and comfortable to hold.

Cora and Molly

Cora read a reflection from Moments of Reflection to Molly. She didn’t show much interest. Molly’s nose is out of joint because she is not in this book.

Newmarket

Scarteen Street, Newmarket, looked picturesque in the September sunshine last week.

Tony O’Callaghan Bronzes

Liz Kearney, daughter of the late Bill, shared these photos of two beautiful pieces presented to her father. The first was from Listowel Pitch and Putt Club. It is replete with symbols of Bill’s life, his family and friends.

This one from Listowel Drama Group, celebrated his involvement with their production of Our Town.

Owen MacMahon will remember Bill and other stalwarts of the drama group in his talk in Kerry Writers’ Museum at 12.00 noon on Saturday, September 21.

From the Archives

The Sydney Herald

May 4 1840    Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

TEMPERANCE REFORMATION IN IRELAND. The intelligence we have communicated from time to time, respecting the rapid diminution of drunkenness, and its concomitant evils, crime and distress, in various parts of the South of Ireland, has given to many a heart an impulse of pure and benevolent pleasure. Thousands in this country have panted for the amelioration of Ireland, but have almost despaired of realising, even in distant prospect, the accomplishment of their desires. The wretchedness and degradation of Ireland seemed curable and hopeless, and hung as a dead weight the neck of British philanthropy. A brighter day is at length dawning. A movement, doubtless proceeding under a special blessing from above, has commenced, having for its object the extinction of drunkenness. Already have thousands of the Irish population risen as one man, and freed themselves, by a single fart, from their hereditary bondage to an appetite which entailed upon them almost the total sum of misery and degradation which human nature was capable of sustaining. Not the least pleasing feature in this incipient social revolution is, that it is self – originated and self sustained. It is from first to last an Irish movement, and therefore promises to be both thorough and permanent. In introducing the following extracts, it may be desirable to remark that they are called both from Orange and Catholic journals. So far as we see, this glorious cause redeemed from the bitterness of sectarianism and partisanship, being carried on by true lovers of their country, of various sentiments in religion, and of diverse opinions in politics. ” We have heard, ” says the Dublin Evening Post, from authority which cannot deceive, and which has no object in deceiving – good Protestant authority too – that in almost all the small towns of Cork, Kanturk, Bandon, Middleton, Mill-Street, Fermoy, the progress has been so extraordinary that the whiskey shops are in the process of being shut up and soap, coffee, and tea houses are establishing generally. In the small town of Listowel, in the county of Kerry, seven or eight of these have been closed within the last two months. In the county of Clare the progress also has been very great, and we expect that we shall speedily have Galway to add to our list.

An Artist Paints at the Gallery of another Artist

Martin Chute at Olive Stack’s this week.

A Fact

In the US in the 1940s a chicken lived for 18 months without a head. His jugular vein and his brainstem were left mostly intact.

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Signs and Wonders

Red Sky at Night, taken from my front door

Wrong in so many Ways

This is Mick Wallace’s lone poster in a town where every other candidate has respected the agreement to keep Listowel free of posters.

The poster is big and the image is sinister looking. It arrogantly presumes that everyone will recognise the surname.

This particular corner of town has a lovely little wildflower bed.

There amidst the poppies, the daisies and the marsh marigolds is this.

I have recently visited Ballincollig where they don’t have a no postering agreement and every possible vantage point is polluted with images of candidates.

Cora under one of the poles on Carriganarra Road. Every pole has two, three or even four posters.

An Old Sign

This old sign was shared on a Newmarket Memories Group on Facebook. The distances measured in miles and half miles are a throwback to another era.

Local People lead Great Free Walking Tours at Writers’ Week 2024

More from Monday’s Schools’ Show

The talent on the stage at the two Listowel themed concerts on Monday, May 20 2024 was exceptional and heart warming.

Here are just a few of the talented artists from the participating schools.

These girls introduced the show and set the tone for a spectacular variety of entertainment.

It was lovely to hear the young people singing all the local songs. This young girl gave us a superb rendition of Bryan MacMahon’s My Silver River Feale.

These are just a few of the many talented singers who regaled us.

A Fact

“Lucy Lockett lost her pocket

Kitty Fisher found it….”

How could someone lose her pocket?

Answer; In the 17th and 18th century, a pocket was actually a piece of material fashioned into a pouch that ladies wore tied with cords around their waists. These ‘pockets’ were accessed through slits in skirts and petticoats. Because they carried everything in them, the strings sometimes came undone and the pocket was mislaid.

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Newmarket, WW1 Stories, Field Names and Christmas in Listowel

Olive Stack’s Christmas tribute to her hometown


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Tree in Listowel Town Square in November 2018

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Pals Brigades

This is one of the recruiting posters from World War 1.  This and other similar posters played on man’s desire to be one of the gang. This policy of putting men from the same area together worked in that it cemented friendships between men who shared common memories and loyalties. It also formed a bond born out of shared experiences in the battlefield.

At his excellent lecture on Kerry and the Great War in Kerry Writers’ Museum on Sunday November 11 2018 Tom Dillon told us several stories of men risking life and limb to save a friend from home.

Denis Baily of Tralee won the Military Cross for bravery. At the Battle of the Somme in 1916, he went out, under fire, to rescue a fellow Tralee soldier, Patrick Collingwood.

Paddy Kennelly from Ballybunion lay dying on the battlefield in Messines in 1917.  The soldiers were under orders not to stop to help the wounded or they would be shot. Mickeen Cullens, a neighbour of Kennelly’s recognised him, defied orders and hoisted the wounded soldier up on his shoulders and brought him to safety. Both men survived the war and remained friends back home.

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Newmarket Co. Cork

Just outside Newmarket, Co. Cork there is a lovely place called The Island Wood. Raymond O’Sullivan took this photo there.

Here is what he wrote on his Facebook page to accompany the photo;

Strabo, the Greek geographer, philosopher and historian who lived around the time of Christ, believed that in Ireland the limits of the habitable earth should be fixed. He described the natives as wholly savage and leading a wretched existence because of the cold. Other Classical writers also describe it as a cold and miserable place and go even further to to accuse us of cannibalism, endocannibalism (the ritual eating of relatives), incest and all forms of fornication. Opinions reflecting Classical prejudices to anyone living outside their narrow sphere, no doubt. It is clear that none of them ever set foot on our green and misty isle and definitely never stood on the bank of the Poll Fada on a sunny mid- November morning

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Shannon Mouth (Dúchas Collection)



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Field Names


Our ancestors had a name for every field. Maybe families still retain these names. Do farmers invent names for fields anymore?

Here is a contribution from a child in Ballylongford to the folklore commission and now preserved in the Dúchas Collection.

There are many names given to the different fields in our farm, such as, the “Well’s Field,” so called because there was a blessed well there one time. This well moved from where it was first, owing to a woman who washed clothes in it one time.

The Three Cornered Field, so called because there are three corners in it.

The Pound Meadow, this gets its name from cattle who were being pounded in it at night, long ago.

The New Field, is so called because it was a garden before, and now, cattle are being pounded there.

The Parkeen, this gets its name because it is a small field.

Griffin’s Field, this gets it name from a family of Griffins who once lived there. This family left the place and it is now owned by my father.

The Fort Field, is so called because there was a fort there at one time. The ring of the fort is all that now remains to be seen, as the trees were cut down long ago.

The Long Field is so called because it is the longest field in our farm.

The Gate Field, this field is so called because there is a gate going in to it from the public road.

The Hill Field, is so called because it is a very hilly field.

These were told to me by my father who lives in the townland of Ahanagran about two miles from Ballylongford.

Collector Teresa Holly- Informant Patrick Holly, Relation parent, Age 60 Address- Aghanagran Middle, Co. Kerry, Location- Aghanagran Upper.

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Christmas in Listowel


This year once more the local traders have a Christmas website up and running. It’s worth while checking back every so often to see what’s happening and what’s on offer.

Christmas in Listowel


This is the Christmas supplement that came last week with Kerry’s Eye. The eagle eyed will spot yours truly in the picture on the cover.

Debs 1991, Ballybunion and Newmarket

Jim MacSweeney’s photo of a sparrow hawk won him a prize at the Rebel Cup photography competition.

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St. Michael’s Debs 1991



This photo was given to me by James Scanlon and he did the best he could do with the names.  James, whose family owned The Spinning Wheel  had left Listowel as his family went to live in Limerick before the Debs but he came back for the night out.

Included in the photo are Liam Kelly, Gerard McGuinness, Don Keane, Evan MacAulliffe, Shane Comerford, Mike Carmody, Seán Pierse, Eddie Bolger, John O’Riordan, Berkie Browne, Frank Quilter, Aidan O’Connor, Shane Hartnett, Michael Mann,Victor Sheehan, Donny O’Connell

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Ballybunion by the Sea


I’m going back to Kerry, From the Land of Liberty, 
To my little Irish home town, Ballybunion by the sea,
To walk along the old Slip Road, Where the breezes softly blow, 
And to get out to the ocean, Where the tides of memory flow.


To walk along the beach, Down below the Castle Green. 

Up to the lovely Cliffs of Doon, The likes you’ve never seen. 

From Listowel to Ballylongford and back into Tralee.
There’s no place else in Ireland like Ballybunion by the sea.


I’ll take a walk down Main Street, And see my friends from home, 
Go tell my own true sweetheart, I never more will roam,
Go tell the lads I’m coming back, That’s where I want to be,

 In my little Irish home town, Ballybunion by the sea.

In my little Irish home town, Ballybunion by the sea.


This song was written by Pecker Dunne and recorded by Larry Cunningham  Here

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Newmarket, Co. Cork


Newmarket is one of the small towns you pass through if you take the Rockchapel road to Cork. Let me tell you an interesting fact about Newmarket. It has three public statues and they are all women.

Alice Taylor is a very successful writer of novels, short stories and memoir. Her first runaway success was a memoir of growing up in Newmarket called To School Through The Fields. Her gift for nostalgia and vivid descriptions of a way of life that was dying caught the mood of the time and following their first success she has gone on the write numerous books describing village and parish life in her adopted Inishannon. She is a frequent visitor to Listowel Writers’ Week.

 Sarah Curran is a less down to earth heroine. She defied her family to allow Robert Emmett to court her and is seen by history as a tragic romantic figure.

 This doorway beside the statue of Curran struck me as a little odd. Did you ever see a padlocked door leading to a Main Street?

The third lady commemorated with a statue is Our Lady of Lourdes whose grotto stands at the east end of the town.

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“The French are on the sea and old Ireland will be free”




Ita Hannon photographed this French Navy training ship in the Shannon estuary last week.

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Circle of Friends




Lyreacrompane Development Association posted this photo to Facebook. It shows friends of  the late Fr. Pat Moore  circled around Mario Perez sand art tribute in Ballybunion on May 11 2017.

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