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On the 24th August 1843 the ‘Cork Examiner’ reported on the discovery on ‘an ancient brewery’ in a lios (ringfort) in Brennymore, Kealkil, four miles from Bantry.

Ernest Blythe, The Minister for Finance in the first Free State Government has had a terrible press for cutting the old age pension and trying to balance the budget.  A statement attributed to him in this period was that he could if left run the Free State for £20 million a year.  In the light of the recent past maybe its a pity a little more of his Northern Presbyterian financial ethic wasn’t incorporated into spending public and private.

An interesting aside is that during this period and in the 1930s the Northern Ireland Government under the Unionist Party was divided into two factions, one led by the Prime Minister Craig, Andrews, and Dawson-Bates were populists and spenders, the other comprising the head of the cicil service Sir Wilfed Spender and Minister Milner-Barbour were trying to balance the budget.  In theory most of the expenditure was supposed to be raised…

In issue 16 of ‘The Archive’, the Journal of the Cork Northside Fiolklore Project, there is an article about the Crowley Music family and shop in McCurtain Street, Cork.

It relates how in the 1926, Henry Ford (1863-1947) the Motor Magnate, sent a set of uileann pipes, belonging to his father William (1826-1905) for repair.  The pipes are reputedly in the Ford Museum in Detroit on display.

The Fords occupied a 23 acre farm on the Bence Jones estate at Lisellan near Ballinascarty, before emigrating to the US, the rest is history.

The implication in the article was that William was able to play the pipes a matter that might yield further research.

John Stevens was a Jacobite and landed in Bantry on the 2nd May 1689.  The enclosed piece is from a collection of tales in ‘Diaries of Ireland’,  An Anthology 1590-1987, by Melosine Lenox-Conyngham, The Lilliput Press, 1998.

Thursday 2 May 1689

We landed in Bantry, which is a miserable poor place, not worthy of the name of a town, having not above seven or eight little houses, the rest very mean cottages… Two nights that we continued here I walked two miles out of town to lie upon a little dirty straw in a cot or cabin, no better than a hog-sty among near twenty others.  The houses and cabins in town were so filled that people lay all avor the others.  Some gentlemen took up their lodgings in an old rotten boat that lay near the shore, and there wanted not some who quartered in a saw pit.  Meat…

On the 8th  January 1886 it was reported in the Shields Daily Gazette and Shipping Telegraph that ‘moonlighters’ savagely beat Mr. David Burley, the Petty Session Clerk, in search of arms the previous day and no arrests were made.

At that time the Petty Sesssions were held in Carrigboy (Durrus), the courthouse is still extant next to Ó Suilleabhaín’s pub.  Mr Burley (or Burleigh) lived in the large house between the West Lodge Hotel and the cemetry in Bantry.

From Trinity College/Circle.

Patent Roll 5 Richard II

Caerar Otway 1780-1842 was a Minister and publisher among others of William Carleton  and co-operated with George Petrie in the first edition of  the Dublin Penny Journal.  They published an article about a journey to Durrus:

https://durrushistory.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=373&action=edit

This account is from The Grand Tour of Cork by Cornelius Kelly, Cailleach Books, 2003.

I proceeded to take my leave of Skull…on my way to Bantry I passed the dark and lofty Mount Gabriel to the left, and took my dreary way over a comfortless tract of country, the peninsula of Ivaugh, the ancient territory of O’Mahony Fune; princes these O’Mahonys were of bogs and rocks enough: here the tribe of the O’Mahonys has contrived to increase and multiply, and has replenished these wastes with Paddies, pigs, and potatoes.  Let no one say after looking at these moors, studded over with cabins, and those cabins crowded with children, pigs, goats, cocks and…

William Warner of Bantry owned creameries at Killarney, Enniskeane and Ballinacarriga and developed a brand of butter aimed at the export market. In partnership with James Manders (son-in-law) who later left the partnership he started a factory at William Street.  By 1886 its production was £6,000 in the summer and employed a hundred men including fifty coopers. In 1892 it was producing 800 tons a year.

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The original manuscript is held at the Lambeth Library in England and is written after the Battle of Kinsale and prior to the storming of the O’Sullivan Castle at DunboySIR GEORGE CAREW to LORD DEPUTY MOUNTJOY.  MS 624, p. 141  13 May 1602

Arthur Wellesley 1769-1852 jorneyed from Bandon to Bantry to inspect defences.  He famously said re nationality that because a man is born in a stable that does not make him a horse.  His paternal grandfather was Richard Colley of an old English or Gaelic family of origin who had conformed to the Established Church.  The grandfather had taken the name of a childless relative Wellesley.

This extract if from the grand Tour of Cork, Cornelius Kelly. Cailleach Books, 2003.

28th (Summer) 1806 set off at half past six and arrived at Bantry and half past four – and very bad road and miserable country after you pass Dunmanna – got a boat and went to look at Whiddy Island and the fortification construction there – the island is of greater extent then I had imagined and the formation of it makes it more difficult the I had thought- though the…