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: Róisín

St. John’s. School photos, A Covid 19 card, a Covid 19 poem and Easter Ceremonies in Listowel 2020

St. John’s in Lockdown


I took these photos a day or two before  I was locked up.

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Newspaper photo of the opening of Tarbert Comprehensive School

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Senior Infants 1986

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Being a Nana during Lockdown


An Post has given us free postcards to send to people to cheer them up. I haven’t sent mine because I’m not allowed to leave the house. I was delighted to receive one last week.

To explain, Róisín doesn’t have a phone and you need a phone number to associate with  a Tik Tok account. She can text and use the account from her iPod. 

Sometimes its easy to make someone happy.

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A Poem from Róisín Meaney

To Venice the fish are returning,

Down under, the bush has stopped burning.

When humans stay home,

And leave nature alone,

The world gets the break it’s been yearning. 

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Jill Freedman Subject identified


“That’s Mikey Faulkner , a much loved traveler in North Kerry in the 1940s and 1950s”

 Jim MacMahon.

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St. Mary’s , Listowel, Holy Week 2020




Thank you Canon Declan and Denise

The Well, Coburg St. Cork, Beano and Storied Kerry

Main Street, Listowel

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Water fromThe Well

The following extract is taken from Jim Costelloe’s great rural memoir of Asdee in the 1940’s and ’50s



In the days before group water schemes were introduced to rural areas, domestic water was sourced from wells and pumps. If the water supply lasted through the summer and into October it was the sign of a good spring. I well remember trips to the local well with a white enamel bucket and trying to move the green moss on the surface of the well water so that it would not get into the bucket and make the water in the pure white bucket appear dirty.

Getting clear water into the bucket was a skilful job, between trying to avoid the green moss on the surface and the “dirt” at the bottom of the well. How wonderfully cool and refreshing a mug of water was straight from the well. There was always a mug beside the well and we often drank from it during those warm summers that we seemed to get long ago.

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Random Item


From Random Cork Stuff on Twitter


Incredible snap of Coburg St, Cork, with Shandon in the background, from 1905. (found by Joe Healy)
Random fact: Coburg was the old family name of the British royal family before they changed it to Windsor to make it sound less German.



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When I Made a Little Girl’s day



Yesterday I told you about my child minding on polling day in Ballincollig and the find we made in the charity shop.

These pictures were taken when we got home with our haul.




Oh to be nine again!



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Storied Kerry Meitheal Saturday October 27 2018




This man is Professor Joseph Sobol, professor of storytelling at the University of South Wales and, as far as we know, the only professor of storytelling . He was reluctant to claim that distinction as he sees everyone as a storyteller. He told us about story tellers who have influenced him and he told us how the story is centralised in all our lives.



At the seminar we were divided into eight districts to discuss where we go from here.


Mary Kennelly was the board member of Storied Kerry in charge of our North Kerry breakout group.



Here we are, ready to discuss the North Kerry story. We got a bit bogged down in the story of decline, pub, shop and post office closures, rural decline and rural isolation. We touched on the rambling house and festivals as a way of keeping the story alive. We decided on tourism as the most likely industry to keep our story going. we decided to meet again and to spread the word.

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