https://www.google.ie/maps/place/Durrus,+Co.+Cork/@51.5910319,-9.4669864,12z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x48459fe7ccd270df:0x231e3744ac95441a

1845 Appointment of Rev. William Moore Crosthwaite, Vicar of Kilcoe, to Vicarage of Durrus, His familiarity With The Irish Language Renders This Appointment To this Extensive parish Peculiarly Sensible.

William Moore Crosthwaite Minister, 1842-1854. He was fluent in Irish which was remarked upon at the time as making his suitable for the parish. His family said that his death was brought on by a fever contacted in the famine when he was doing relief work. In London in 1847 seeking to raise funds for relief and wrote to London Times. He attended the opening of the new Church of Ireland Church on Cape Clear in October 1849 when the Vicar, the Rev. Edward Spring preached in Irish. The itinerant preacher Rev. Daniel Foley, accompanied by Rev. Fisher of Altar and Toormore, visited his parish in early 1849. He had a Curate, paid for by the Irish Society in London…

Images: we take them so much for granted, because it’s easy for us to go out with a camera or phone and capture a place, an event or our friends and family. I’m sure we have now all got hard disks, memory sticks or ‘clouds’ full of hundreds of pictures – perhaps far too many for us to appreciate individually.

Here are some images of Ireland, both old and new. The old ones are taken from the collection of Tomás Ó Muircheartaigh, who documented life in rural Ireland between the 1930s and the 1950s – that’s between sixty and eighty-something years ago. I was fortunate enough to pick up a copy of his book of photographs when it first came out: now it’s ‘rare as hen’s teeth’*… The new ones are taken locally by my favourite contemporary photographer – Finola.

The thing about a photograph is that you know it is an…

As previously mentioned in posts, Bantry town and the surrounding countryside was convulsed with violent outbursts during January 1910. This did not abate with James Gilhooly’s election. A number of local incidents, including the assault on a local land agent in April, kept the political temperature high.

In June a rally in the town organised by the AFIL brought feeling back to boiling point. Although little or no serious incidents occurred during the major speeches by William O’Brien and Gilhooly, a number of events surrounding the rally served to further deepen divisions in the area.

To welcome O’Brien (or, more likely, to call attention to his new-found sympathy for the cause of Ulster unionism) a number of publicans in the town hung out Orange flags from their premises in the days leading up to the rally. The local police viewed this action to be in contravention of laws governing the display of flags and emblems…

The Square in Bantry, scene of many incidents of violence during 1910
(Source: http://www.bantry.ie)

Main St., Bantry c. 1900. James Gilhooly’s drapery store was located on the right of the photograph.
(Source: http://www.bantry.ie)

The campaigns in North-East and South-East Cork were relatively quiet
affairs in comparison with the turbulent campaigns in the three other contested
Cork constituencies. West Cork, which saw James Gilhooly challenged by Bantry
solicitor Daniel O’Leary, did not conform to these peaceable standards. Personal,
political and generational tensions combined to produce a catalogue of physical
and verbal violence. Many apparently neutral meetings condemned O’Leary for
foisting a contest on the constituency, or more pertinently damned the IPP
leadership for selecting O’Leary in spite of advice from local Nationalist
notables. The Bantry solicitor, it was argued, was the clerical choice, in
order to unseat Gilhooly and what he had come to represent. Not all clergy toed
this particular…