https://docs.google.com/document/d/17mNOsOVegkNNM6uo-9M1It8AU_-RM4kIHQQGfwNCPsc/edit

Rural electrification did not come to the more isolated areas of West Cork until about 1961, supplemented by a further drive about 1972.

This advertisement highlighted the importance of bottled gas for cooking and lighting by a silk mantle. In Cork City bottled gas was used right up to the mid 1970s for Superser heaters. Probably a time bomb.

I can just about recall as a child the yellow gas bottles on horses and carts going back to the shop.

The Kosan-gas bottles were a distinctive yellow. Calor Gas was also used but probably not to the same extent.

Rita Shannon, who died in the last few years, who is referred to never got recognition as an entrepreneur. She had her own travelling shop, a Volkswagon van. In a way a legacy of her Shannon ancestry. Her branch was Catholic. The main family probably came down from the northern counties c 1740 in connection with flax/linen/weaving. By 1790 in the general Durrus/Bantry area the Shannons were heavy hitters lending money to the local landlords. Contractors to the Grand Jury working with the Flynn family in house building in Bantry.

Rita married Gerald McCarthy, his father Dr. McCarthy was praised for helping the RIC men in the IRA raid on the Durrus RIC barracks. What was not known at the time war that he had prepared the explosives possibly a result of his experiences as a doctor on the front in WW1.

Rita’s branch of the Shannon were active in the War of Independence in Brahalish in Durrus in conducting Dáil Courts. They also descend from the influential ‘King’ Tobin’ family of Kilcrohane.