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: St. John’s Page 1 of 10

Writers’ Week and other things

Listowel Town Square in June 2022

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Listowel Writers’ Week 2022

What a great few days, (Writers’ Week is not really a week) we had. I enjoyed every moment from start to finish. I haven’t had such a hectic time since before Covid.

I’m going to tell you all about it, not necessarily in the order in which it happened.

This event happened in St. John’s on Friday June 3rd. 2022. The ladies onstage are best selling authors, Catherine Ryan Howard, Carmel Harrington and Hazel Gaynor. They write in three very different styles. What they have in common is that they are all really successful, they write full time and their work has been categorised as commercial fiction as if that was somehow inferior to literary.

As Catherine said, they write the books people read.

With them on stage is Catherine Moylan who is chair of Writers’ Week. Catherine is passionate about including these writers in the festival of writing. It was a great event.

Catherine Ryan Howard wrote a brilliant thriller set in lockdown Dublin. It is called 56Days and I’d highly recommend it. Her Nothing Man is great too.

Carmel Harrington writes what is called up lit. Up Lit is a new trend. It stands for uplifting literature, stories with kindness at their core. Carmel is hugely popular. She is on her 11th book. Her tenth, A Mother’s Heart is in the shops now.

I particularly love Hazel Gaynor’s books. She writes historical fiction and she is a meticulous researcher of sometimes little known topics. Many of her books are available in audio book form or for Kindle.

I’m delighted these three ladies came to Listowel. They have proven that they deserve their place in a festival that celebrates writing.

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Meanwhile

While I was enjoying plays and books, another exciting thing was taking place.

A lovely lovely Listowel girl was being picked as Kerry Rose for 2022.

Édaein O’Connell has everything you could want in a Rose. She is “lovely and fair as the rose of the summer”. She is also media savvy, well able to account for herself, a witty and entertaining journalist who appeals to readers at home and abroad.

I hope she sings The Night Visiting Song as her party piece. It will bowl the judges over. My money is on Édaein to be the first ever Kerry Rose to win the contest outright. Even if she doesn’t, she will be a brilliant Kerry Rose for the year.

Édaein was sponsored by Garvey’s Super Valu and one of her first tasks as Rose was a visit there.

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A Half Century Ago

This class of Leaving Certs. from 50 years ago had a reunion lately but I got no pictures unfortunately.

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A Request

Dear Mary 

I am writing because I found your blog, and I was wondering if you could help me with some research I am conducting.

In particular I am looking for fifth and sixth year class photos of the Presentation Secondary School, for girls in Listowel for the following years: 1957, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62 and 63. 

I would really appreciate if you could help point me in the right direction, or if indeed you might know anyone who might have a yearbook with class photos, that they could send me by taking a picture of the yearbook themselves.

Kind regards,

Mel Cannon

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Family, Theatre and Other Stuff

Photo; Teddy Sugrue of Mallow Camera Club

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More local drama in St. John’s this week. The old ones are the best!

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Family reunion at Easter

Lovely to be back in the bosom of my family. Molly Madra makes herself at home on my gilet.

I took on the Rummikub champion again. My 3 last tiles are hopeless, all over the place and I am heading for defeat. Cora, because she is a lovely child, shows me how to win. So a victory of sorts, at last.

This is us on a night out. Remember the two boys at the front in the photo? Our days in Listowel in the Lilac Studio, Kennedy’s Pet Farm, The Donkey Sanctuary and Athea or Tarbert Fairy Trails seem very long ago now.

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Last of My Extracts from Pres. Yearbook 2002 ’03

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Schull and Dunamase

Photo; Breda OMullane

This image is one of a selection of photographs by members off Mallow Camera Club which are framed and hanging in Kanturk Community Hospital.

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From Pres Yearbook 2003

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Schull, Co Cork

Éamon ÓMurchú took this picture on a lovely weekend in Schull.

I was further east. I visited The Rock of Dunamase. I had so often wondered about it as I passed the signs on the motorway. This fortress once belonged to Isabel, daughter of Strongbow and his wife Aoife MacMorrough. Aoife, wife of Strongbow got Dunamase as part of her dowry from her father, Diarmuid MacMorrough.

It is now in ruins and more famous for the spectacular views it provides over the surrounding countryside.

Rock of Dunamase from the churchyard of the nearby Protestant church which is still in use

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Weather Signs from Beale School in the Schools Folklore collection

Michael Griffin, the schoolboy who recorded this, got the information “from people at home”.

Weather Signs
When bad weather is near at hand you will notice in this locality the foam rise and dash against the Cliffs off the coast of Clare. The Rooks and Seagulls fly to the land when severe weather is approaching searching for food. The cat sits on the hearth, the soot falls down the Chimney when we are near bad weather. You would also notice a circle round the sun and moon and the clouds are very dark. the wind is generally from the west or south west when we have bad weather.
When we have good weather in this locality you will hear the waves at the north or north east. When we have good weather the birds fly high into the air in search of food. This is generally the case with the swallow. The sun and moon shine bright and clear and the sea is quite calm.

Michael Griffin v.
Bromore,
Ballybunion
June 23rd -1938
Information from people at home

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A Poem for our Time

By Trista Mateer

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Look where I was Last Night

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The Bad Old Days

St. John’s, Listowel in March 2022. Photo by Éamon ÓMurchú

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Market Street, Spring 2022

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Nurse O’Donovan’s

This is a private nursing home which was located on Church Street, Listowel.

The photo is in Tipperary Studies Photos of Munster

Once upon a time there were lots of private nursing homes in Listowel. Maybe someone in your family was born in one.

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Old School

If you have someone in your house who felt frozen to death during the Covid restrictions, show them this from the schools’ folklore collection of the 1930s. Sitting beside an open window and wearing a mask is small hardship by comparison with what our ancestors endured in schools like Derrindaff.

About sixty years ago there was an old school in Meenganare. It had a thatched roof and only one small window to let in light. The floor was an earthen one. In wet weather the roof let in the rain and it formed into pools under the children’s feet. The seating accommodation consisted of long planks placed on two blocks of wood. There was only one teacher in this school Mr Purcell, a native of Cork. He lodged near the school. He was paid every Friday evening.
Irish and English were the only subjects taught, Irish was spoken by master and pupils. The teacher wrote on a large stone flag placed against a wall : the pupils wrote on slates.
Mr Purcell taught in that school from 1844 to 1879 . Told by Mrs Quill of Derrindaff.

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Covered dining in Listowel Town Square

This is the scene in the Square. Work is underway to prepare for the erection of the canopies to cover our new dining and performance area.

Our returning emigrants won’t recognise the place when they come home.

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A Poem for our Times

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Something to Look Forward to

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A Worthwhile trip to Ballylongford

From The Advertiser

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Aspects of Listowel

Listowel’s Twin Spires, November 2021
Newly restored St. John’s
Beautifully restored stain glass window and stonework

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A Listowel Fact

Listowel’s Garden of Europe was originally a extensive quarry. It later became the town landfill site. Finally Listowel Rotary Club transitioned it into The Garden of Europe with a section for each country in the European Union.

The Holocaust Memorial occupies a central place in the garden. It serves as reminder of the awful atrocities perpetrated during Hitler’s reign.

The memorial is made of railway sleepers, reminding us of the railways in Europe that transported so many innocent people to a horrific life and, for some, death in concentration camps. The sleepers are surrounded by chains, representing the shackles of captivity.

I am grateful to the farseeing rotarians who left Listowel this reminder of Europe’s darkest days. May we never forget.

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Christmas, a Time for posting mail

Pillar box in Listowel in December 2021

These three stylised ones are on Christmas cards. Even though fewer and fewer Christmas cards are posted each year, the postbox still remains a very strong symbol of Christmas.

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That Time before Time Began

Cyril Kelly remembers happy carefree days “fishing” in The Feale and lazing in the sun in those summers before Time began.

I love this one.

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