On the 1st July the Lancaster Gazette carried a report on the Monster Meeting addressed by Daniel O’Connell.  Quoting the ‘Cork Examiner ‘, it repeated the reputed number of attendees of 500,000.

Daniel O”Connell arrived heading four stage coaches and a battalion of bands.  Parishes from all over West Cork were represented by crowds headed by the respective clergy of each parish.

Among the parishes were,

Bantry, Thomas Barry P.P.

Drimoleague,  John Ryan P.P., John Creedon C.C.

Kilmaceba,  Joseph Sheehan P.P.

Castlehaven, James Mulcahy P.P., Daniel Freeman C.C., Michael Ross C.C.

Aughadown, Maurice Geary P.P.

Durrus,  Richard Quin P.P.

In his address to the crowd Daniel O’Connell stated the it was for the right of every man over 20 years of age having a house, so they would  all have a vote except some idle gorsoons (young fellas), without a dwelling and who could not get some honest girl to…

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…