THE CLONTARF ATLAS

Dublin from railway bridge at Hollybrook,
c. 1850, by Edward Radclyffe

The Clontarf Atlas is a magnificent work of art.

It is the first volume in a new series of Town Atlases dealing with the suburbs. I have not seen the town atlases themselves so this is my first introduction to the series and it blew my mind.

The illustrations are really high class and seeing them across a two page spread is wonderful. You can really appreciate them at that size.

There are black and white engravings like the one from which I reproduce a detail above.

Beached boats at Clontarf
looking north, 19th cent., by O. M. Latham

There is this beautiful watercolour from which I have just reproduced a detail.

Royal Charter School, Clontarf Road
looking east, 1794, by William Ashford

And there are full blown pictures like that from which the above is a detail.

Late 17th Century, Clontarf

Then there are the specially drawn thematic maps in a clear and very attractive style.

Parish of Clontarf 1868

And the more conventional OS type maps, but in great detail and relating to different periods.

This is probably the right place to mention that every page in the volume is perforated at the inner margin so pages can be taken out and arranged to form eg larger maps.

The detail above shows the building of my first school as it was in 1868. When I go to the comprehensive text I find that it was built in 1823 and acquired by the RC Church for a school in 1940. I spent a year there in 1949/50 in Miss Hayde's class (babies). In fact, during my relatively brief stay, I actually kicked teacher. I also find that Dollymount Park, where I lived then, was built in 1949, so it all comes together.

The text takes you through Clontarf from a fishing village, through a Township and finally a classy suburb. The gazetteer type entries (if that's what they're called) give you comprehensive information on roads, buildings, institutions and the like.

I must really compliment the authors here for picking up (p 56) the typo on the gate of Brian Boru's Well. This was first pointed out to me by Seán Cromien, a former Secretary of the Department of Finance, who has an eye for such matters. Even some local historians missed this one.

Some photos below from the launch in RIA on 6 December 2017.

Colm Lennon, author

Mícheál MacDonncha, Lord Mayor & Michael Peter Kennedy, President RIA

Lord Mayor shares a joke with Colm and Raymond Gillespie

Raymond is an editorial board member of the Irish Historic Towns Atlas.

Full marks to all concerned in the production of the CLONTARF ATLAS


Check out Colm's video on the volume

BEYOND DRACULA

Silly Old Vampire
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Clontarf is well known to be the home of Bram Stoker, creator of Dracula. But there is much more to Dublin 3 than this horrific tale, soon to be celebrated in this year's Bram Stoker Festival.

You may not be familiar with it, but Nolan's of Clontarf is an excellent supermarket. It has great variety and quality of produce, constant attention to detail by an extensive and friendly staff and reasonable prices. What more can I say?

A lot, it appears.

As Halloween approaches some very weird characters have been turning up in the store. While they are mostly congregating around the vegetable area they are also popping up in other areas.

So what's afoot?

Wise looking Old Gentleman

Let's ask this wise looking old gentleman, shall we?

It appears we have just arrived in time for a spooks' wedding.

The Bride

The Groom

The Witnesses

The Celebrant

Granny and the Fruits of Love

Leftovers at knockdown prices

The Complete Web of Intrigue

You can see all these characters in Nolan's up to the end of the month.

So when your doing your shopping, have a word with some of them and weave your own Halloween story when you get home.

Everyone can be a Bram Stoker. Let no one tell you otherwise.


Update 29/10/2016
It really is amazing. Every time I revisit the store I see yet more spooks. I don't know if they are breeding while I'm gone or whether I just missed them first time round, they being so many.

Anyway, here's an update:

Looks like this newly married guy has now eloped with the cook.

But his freedom may be short lived if this guy catches up with him.

Perhaps he should have listened to the wise young witch (now who does she remind me of?).

Or heeded the original celebrant when he intoned "till death do us part". Though that phrase didn't carry much weight under the circumstances.

No doubt this guy will sort him out before it's time to return to the crypt.
,

And as time is running out, let's wish our friends a happy haunting over the weekend.

Eileen

Eileen Griffiths

I first met Eileen through my cousin Carmel, who had been in school with her in Balla, Co. Mayo, many years ago. I only got to know her any way well in more recent years when Carmel, who lives in France, came home on visits, stayed with Eileen, and I encountered Eileen when I met up with Carmel in her house.

Eileen was a warm, generous, gentle and very civilised lady.

We shared an interest in the Civil Service where she spent a career in the Department of Education and I in the Department of Finance. We also shared an interest in local and family history. Eileen was engaged in a permanent search for her ancestors who she was prising, one by one, out of a forgotten past.

Her health had been failing in recent times but she appears to have died as a result of a simple domestic accident. Such are the quirks of fate.

Eileen at rest in St. John the Baptist church, Clontarf

She was buried from St. John the Baptist church in Clontarf. That church has some resonances for me as my grandfather was baptised there in 1870 and my cousin Nuala (RIP) was married there in 1954. I also found the administration there most helpful when I was chasing up church registers for my family history.

It didn't disappoint with Eileen's farewell. The priest was very down to earth and, though he hadn't known Eileen personally, had sounded out the family and included some very apposite remarks in the service. He concelebrated the funeral mass with a priest who was a longtime friend of Eileen's family.

Eileen's son, John, delivered an emotional eulogy which touched all those present. The hymns, in English and Irish, were beautifully sung and accompanied. John observed afterwards that Eileen would not only have approved of, but would have enjoyed the service.

A lovely lady and a sad loss.

RIP

Rose Festival 2014

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So I set off for the Rose Festival in St. Anne's Park and, as you can see, not a rose in sight. Now, I have been to the Rose Festival before and know that it is not just roses, roses all the way. It is a much wider based family outing with all sorts of entertainment for young and old. So, what's with the picture?

Well, I had a two hour window to check out the festival, but as parking would be a major hassle I decided to go on foot. And, not surprisingly I got distracted along the way. This to the point that I had barely a half an hour on the premises.

The first distraction was Dublin's two iconic ESB chimneys, which were unsuccessfully trying to hide behind a bush. While there is a lobby campaigning for their retention, and I gather the Council has now listed them, there is a vociferous lobby out there that wants them pulled down. So they are effectively an endangered species and entitled to some protection in the nature reserve in the photo above.

The next distraction was a pair of ducks making hay in the pond, or lake, or whatever Lord Ardilaun called it in his day.

And then there was this Greek folly. A mini Ozymandias close to home.

And if all that wasn't enough, what did I come across but my family tree with a profusion of roots to keep me busy up to next Christmas.

So it was with a half an hour or less to go that I finally hit the festival. My first priority was the Heritage Tent, and in this year of Brian Boru, I made for the Clontarf stand. Collette Gill was busy discussing Brian Boru's well with a client. I have dealt with the well's gate on Castle Avenue elsewhere. Collette has done trojan work during the year, and in the run up to it, bringing loads of threads together for the 1014 celebrations locally.

Just one of these projects has been the Battle of Clontarf Heritage Trail along the shoreline walkway at Clontarf (example of one of the panels above). I have reported elsewhere on the very high quality lecture series organised by the Clontarf and Raheny Historicals, and on other aspects of local commemorations, including the reconstruction of the Battle itself.

Madeleine and Brian

Next came the Raheny Heritage Society stand. The society has been working over the years researching and presenting the history of Raheny to the public and they have amassed a wonderful set of thematic displays.

The work is ongoing and their latest project is The Howth Road, exploring all sorts of aspects of the road from Fairview to Blackbanks. These include famous residents, house styles, historic sites and so on. It is the sort of project that just swallows you up if you don't call a halt at some stage. They have been reporting progress along the way in some of these displays and I hope to see a definitive book in the near future.

Before my half hour runs out, I want to come back to the Clontarf Historical Society display. It is an open question who won the Battle of Clontarf. I learned in school that Brian Boru was the decisive victor but nobody bothered to point out to me that Sitric was still King of Dublin twenty years later. Come to think of it, a lot of things were glossed over in my schooldays, like, for example, Gormlaith's romps between the sheets with at least three kings. No doubt the teaching of history has improved significantly since my day. As it happens, I'm a late comer to this sort of exciting stuff.

If the Isle of Man's 1014 exuberance is anything to go by the Vikings won by a mile. They have issued a beautiful series of stamps commemorating The Battle of Clontarf and the original artwork (on loan), along with many other aspects of the issue, were on display at the stand.

These are just two of the set of six stamps, a general battle scene and Brian with his sword and cross (yes, he had Vikings fighting on his side too and they were Christians, as were many of the opposing Vikings).

This cover for the set gives an idea of the quality of the artwork, really beautiful stuff.

And the back of the cover even has the Irish Battle of Clontarf logo on the sets at the festival, done by the IOM postal authorities. Pity An Post didn't rise to the specific occasion of the Battle's millennium celebration in this sort of style.

And what did I spot, just as my phone alarm went off to tell me to go home, but a real live version of Collette's Twitter avatar.

Enjoy.

Material from 2011 & 2013 Rose Festivals

Typocast

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I can't claim the high moral ground when it comes to proofreading. I'm still finding typos in stuff I wrote many years ago and had proofread more than once since.

Today, with so much stuff just online, you can correct your typos as though they never existed. Hardcopy is another matter. And another matter still is when they are cast in stone, or just plain cast.

The picture above is from the 1964 film "A Home of Your Own" and it shows Bernard Cribbins sculpting an inscription on a monument in a new housing estate to be opened by the mayor the following morning. The unveiling of the monument brings gasps from the crowd as the finished inscription is suddently revealed as "The money for this erection was raised by pubic subscription". Your worst nightmare. I've never forgotten it.

And when you end up doing legislation, where whole new legistlation is required to be passed to correct any typos you've missed, I can tell you that sharpens up your proofreading skills.

Still, no one is perfect, not even in 1850, when this gate for Brian Boru's well at Castle Avenue Clontarf was cast. You'd need to be wide awake to spot it: the H should follow the M in Brian's name. The cló rómhánach here denies us the luxury of the floating buailte (see below)

An author, who is an authority on matters relating to Clontarf, attempted to persuade me that this was a legitimate variation in the name, but when I looked up his own book on the matter I found he had actually corrected it himself in his text.

And in case you think I'm having a go at Dublin and its suburbs, I'll take you as far west as my granny's birthplace in Kiltimagh, Co. Mayo, where BOHOLA has dropped an O in the casting. [Update - 11/2/2015: Carol Maddock has just pointed out that I missed the apostrophe in "area's" and I've now spotted another one in "1950's". Clearly proofreading is a never ending task.]

[Update - 5/4/2016: "Bohola" has now been corrected but it looks as if the other two typos have been reproduced in this new plaque.]

Or to my father's birthplace, Ballyhaunis, in the same county, where the MILLENNIUM has dropped an N in the same process.

Not so nice when your typos are cast and would require a complete recast to remedy them.

There are some fine cast signs which currently suffer from typos but where the typo is not in the casting but in the subsequent tarting up. These are easily remedied. But, of course, you have to spot them first.

The above sign, from the Cornmarket in Wexford town, is perfectly cast. However when it came to tarting it up subsequently there was a problem. Tarting up meant painting the whole thing gray and then painting the surround and the script white. And they did a lovely job. But nobody told them that those little irregularites over the d and the b were in fact part of the script - Irish buailtes or séimhiús which mutate the consonants concerned.

I remember floating buailtes from school. Quite often, given the complexity of Irish grammar, you were not sure whether to apply one or not. So we always made sure there were a few floating ones above each line of script to be pressed into service as required.

And don't get me started on street name signs in Irish where the follies are a compound of typos and plain pig ignorance. My web page on this comes with a health warning - keep the blood pressure pills handy. Enjoy.

End of an Era

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I went down to my local cobbler this morning with shoes for soling, but he wasn't there.

The place was locked up and the notice below was displayed on the door. Sad story.

Michael Yeates was a native of Clontarf and had been in the cobbling business for 70 years, 50 of them in these premises, in Churchgate Avenue, at the bottom of Vernon Avenue. Michael was 87 last year.

I had many conversations with Michael over the last 30 years. My own great-grandfather was a cobbler in James's Street, but way before Michael's time.

Michael used to cycle from his present home in Drumcondra to his lock-up premises in Clontarf every working day. He was a cheerful, if resigned, man whose work was as much an opportunity for a chat as it was a source of income. He took great pride in his work.

He has now been driven out. A victim of "progress", a mews, no less.

You can hear him in Natalia McCarthy's radio documentary, when he was still fighting his threatened eviction. Clearly he lost.



Update 16/8/2016

I was down in Churchgate Avenue the other day and was surprised to see no sign of development and Michael's shoemaker's looking just like the day he left it.

Except his farewell note is unsurprisingly no longer there.

How cruel.

I wondered what had become of him.

Update 26/4/2019
I had an email from Michael's granddaughter Avryl today to say that Michael passed away yesterday.

My sympathy to Avryl and to Michael's family.

He was a lovely man.

Rest in Peace