LOCAL HISTORY DAY 2018

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Christmas comes but once a year, and sadly the same can be said of Local History Day in the Dublin City Library and Archive (DCLA) in Pearse Street.

It is a wonderful, enjoyable and stimulating day for all those with any wisp of an interest in local history. And, of course, as I keep telling myself, much local history is also national history as everybody comes from somewhere and also needs a place to be historical in.

I'm up again myself this time round and I can't comment on my own performance other than to say I was satisfied with it and the turnout, and I think the audience got the message.

Pól Ó Duibhir

No Blood on the Ceiling
The Story of Edward Ball.
Edward put a hatchet in the Mammy's head in Booterstown and disposed of the body in the sea in Shankill. That was in 1936, before my time, but I managed to dredge up a few personal connections with the case.

I lived in Ballybrack for 20 years and at my youngest played in the battery on the cliffs at Shanganagh, not far from Corbawn lane where the Mammy's body had set sail. I was born in the same house as Edward, and would not rule out the same bed. And, my uncle may have played cricket with Edward during his (Edward's) detention in the Central Criminal Lunatic Asylum in Dundrum. Surely I am approaching the status of a second class relic at this stage.

I didn't spare my audience the grue and the literal grizzle, the animal sex and the rumour of post-mortem-incestual courting, the feat of motor car (Baby Austin) engineering, and more. So far nobody has complained.

But it was not without its funny moments, heterobonking and unrequited homosexual advances, funny in retrospect but a source of frustration and embarrassment at the time to some of those involved.

Now, see what you missed if you weren't there.

James Scannell

Service Terminated: the Last Trams
from Dartry & Miltown, October 1948
James is a reliable regular here, and this time he gave us a potted history of the trams and a vivid version of the termination of two of the routes in the general post-war shut down of the system.

The early part was new routes and corporate amalgamations. Then there was the advent of buses which used to vie with each other for passengers. The last time I heard a reference to this practice was in Jimmy Meenan's class in UCD in the early 1960s.

CIE rationalised this area but its preference for buses over trams and the depreciation of the trams' infrastructure led to a general tram shutdown.

CIE preserved the logo and the route numbers. The number 14 and 15 bus routes on which I used to travel in the early 1950s, when we lived in Orwell Gardens, inherited their numbers from the earlier Dartry and Terenure tram routes. The CIE logo was one we used to draw in our copybooks in school. Sadly it was surrendered to the modern culture of graphic design, which has its occasional merits, but of which I am not an uncritical fan.

James gave us a graphic desciption of the last trams being stripped of their fittings by eager souvenir hunters en route. The Howth tram lasted a further decade as it was run by the Great Northern Railway (GNR) until that company's operations in the South were merged with CIE. The closure of that tramline in 1958 was better policed. Lessons had been learned.

That tram used to go up the back of our house when we lived in the Gem in Howth in the late 1940s. There was a certain romance in the trams: the passing points along the route, reversing the trolley for the return journey, and the reversible wooden slatted seats of which there is an example in Dublin's Little Museum.

When I was small I wanted to be either a tram driver or a bishop, or so I'm told. The tram driver I can understand but have no idea where the bishop bit came from.

Cecelia Hartsell

"I live a New Life":
Frederick Douglass in Ireland
It hadn't struck me until I sat down to write this but this was the first talk I was ever at given by an African American. Amazing at my age. But it does go to show how homogeneous white Irish society had been up to relatively recent times.

It certainly added punch and poignancy to the content. Had I been around in 1845 I just might have heard Frederick Douglass speak as that was the time when this educated not-yet-free black, though of mixed race, slave came to Ireland.

I can't remember the precise percentage but I think Cecelia said she was 10% Irish. I think that came out of my remarking on Irish participation in slave ownership in America, particularly in the Caribbean.

Douglass was amazing. Born a slave and got himself educated while still in slavery. Escaped northwards but still at risk of recapture, he took up the cause of anti-slavery, women's rights and democracy generally.

His trip to Ireland & Britain got him temporarily out of the way of possible recapture and he was bought out of slavery on his way back to the USA. Ireland seems to have been his first taste of real freedom, free from the danger of recapture but also of the petty harassment of blacks even in the supposedly free Northern States. He was amazed at being fully accepted into the society in which he mixed here.

He was highly influenced by Daniel O'Connell and has recorded his astonishment at the power and appeal of the Liberator's oratory.

Cecelia made the point that Douglass's dress, education and manners acted as a bridge to white society and gave lie to the malicious belief that negroes were some sort of lower class humans, totally inferior to their then masters.

She was asked why the qualified term Afro-American is so often invoked in the States. Are they not just Americans like everyone else over there?

Cecelia referenced other communities describing themselves in generic terms like Irish or Italian Americans. I take the point to a limited extent. With others the qualification is probably only invoked when relevant to what is going on. Its more widespread invocation in respect of African-Americans probably suggests that there is still a long way to go.

Frank Whearity

Aspects of the Skerries Irish Volunteer Company's reorganisation
& it involvement as "C" Company with the 1st Battalion 8th Fingal Brigade
as told principally from the papers of participants,
James & Charley Murray, Skerries, Co. Dublin
Frank's long title illustrates well that his presentation was a patchwork of incidents and relationships.

He invoked men coming home from Frongoch and other detention centres following the 1916 rising, right through to the vicious retribution of the Tans in the Sack of Balbriggan during the War of Independence.

Many activists in the area were marked men and they with others suffered torture and death at the hands of British forces. The Auxiliaries were supposed to be putting some restraint on the Tans but often as not the latter ran amok at will.

Frank has assembled a huge amount of local material, just some of which he presented with a promise of more to come next year.

As I understand it this material is an expansion of Frank's MA thesis of 2011 but with a greater focus on Skerries itself.

Mary Muldowney

Remembering Our Referenda:
the 1983 Referendum Campaign
Mary is a historian and an activist. The second one is important as it raises the question objectivity. Mary deals with this by firmly declaring an interest at the outset and presumably expecting that we adjust our perspective accordingly. As she says, all historians are coming from somewhere and will have preconceptions. I suppose the important thing is that facts are facts and the rest is up for debate.

She briefly outlined the background to the 1983 abortion amendment referendum, reminding us that abortion was illegal at the time and the purpose of those pushing the amendment was to use the constitution to prevent the law being changed to allow abortion in the future.

Much is made of the pro-amendment lobby's opposition to divorce, contraception and other issues on the "liberalisation" agenda. That may be true of many others but I see abortion as sui generis, both a health and a human rights issue but I'm not going to get stuck into that here.

Mary comments on the cowardice of Haughey in bending to the pro-amendment lobby to get votes, despite the advice of his Attorney General, and of Fitzgerald in following him. There was still at that time the institutional abuse of power of the Roman Catholic Church threatening eternal hellfire, a product over the distribution of which it claimed ownership. Apparently the other churches held their peace.

Fast forward to 2018 when the moral clout of the Roman Catholic Church has all but disappeared and the mood of society has changed so that people are more likely to speak out and also recount their own personal experience.

Meanwhile the steady trek of women to England for abortions has become less a moral imperative for the rest of us and its devastating effect on a significant cohort of women has become better known.

Mary is making intensive use of oral history and I am a great fan of this often neglected method of research since reading the work of Kevin Kearns.

It is very labour intensive and the question of confidentiality arises particularly in the case of subjects as sensitive as abortion. This means that transcriptions cannot be outsourced and current speech-to-type software is not much use when you're dealing with multiple inputs which vary in cadence and accent. So a funding problem arises pretty quickly.

Bring in Mary's current full time job as resident historian for Dublin Central and you have added a serious time constraint. I really don't know how this can be resolved.

Let me just compliment DCLA and the resident historians, some of whom I know, on this wonderful project. It is not only subsidising the spread of local history but the actual research of the resident historians themselves and stimulating that of others.

Enda Leaney

Occasions like this local history day are then a great outlet for presenting the results of the research for both the professionals and completely lay people like myself.

So it's thanks and compliments to Enda and his team for another great day.

LOCAL HISTORY DAY - MARCH 2018

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This event in the Dublin City Library and Archive in Pearse St. is becoming ever more popular not only with audiences but with speakers. This is a very encouraging trend. As I never tire of repeating to people, outlets like this not only promulgate the results of existing research but stimulate people to do further research in the knowledge that the results will have a platform.

For those who are not professionals in the game, it ensures that their work will be up to the highest standards, not only in content but also in presentation.

I think it was mentioned that this is the thirteenth year of this event which would have its existence coincide with the explosion in local history over that period. Much more than a coincidence I imagine.

Enda Leaney

This session, the first of two scheduled for this year, took place on 24/3/2018.

I nearly had a paper on the agenda myself but in deference to the plethora of aspiring speakers I was happy to settle for the second session in November next, and even further ahead if there is any danger of me squeezing anyone out.

I was thinking of a paper looking at some of the deaths in my family against the wider national background of when they occurred. I have infant deaths, drownings, war, TB and even a potential double mercury poisoning.

However, I am now contemplating putting that one off for a while and instead introducing the story of Edward Ball who murdered his mother in Booterstown in 1936. We'll see.

Enda, who is running these sessions, had his hands full this time round. The queue of speakers meant reducing presentations from forty five to thirty minutes, skipping lunch, and postponing any Q&A until the end of the session. I'm not sure if this will be the new template or is just a temporary response to the current profusion of riches.


Starting a Local History Group.
James Madigan, Liberties Cultural Association

James Madigan

James took the line of advise by example. He sketched the brief history of the formation and success to date of the Liberties Cultural Association.

From a small coffee group beginning, it is now organising very successful tours/walks in the area. Core group members bring varied sets of skills to the table. They have eschewed a written constitution as being too restrictive and likely to dampen the spontaneity and enthusiasm of members, That enthusiasm was palpable in James's presentation.

The name and the logo were the subject of much debate and the result achieves both inclusiveness and historical resonance.

I have a particular interest in the Liberties (outer reaches in James's St.) where my great grandfather was a master bootmaker and where my granny was born (up at the Fountain).


Closure of an Unremunerative Railway Line: Harcourt Street to Bray, 1958.
James Scannell, The Old Bray Society

James Scannell

James gave us the rundown on the Harcourt street line, from its opening to its closure and substitution by the crazy 86 bus route which staggered all over the place on its way to and from town. He took us through some of the many accidents on the line and the plight of the unfortunates who were seen to have caused them.

You could sense his sorrow and frustration at the withdrawal of the Drumm battery trains, and, indeed, at the closure of the line, most of which is, ironically, now back on the rails, so to speak.

I have memories of the No.15 bus on its way into town from Terenure. Passengers passing Terenure church blessed themselves, a common reflex in those days. Then again passing Rathgar church and again passing Rathmines church and yet again passing Harcourt Street Station. It's amazing what an imposing frontage will do to your subconscious.


The Meeting at Rochestown Avenue, 1884 and related history.
Thomas Burke, Local History Alumni Group

Thomas Burke

Tom sounded like he was building up to a bloody confrontation in Rochestown Avenue with his account of preparations for the big National League meeting there in 1884.

The Orangemen were making elaborate plans to attack the meeting from two sides. One crowd coming straight out from town and the Bray crowd trekking up from Killiney Station. The venue was on the borderline between the jurisdictions of the DMP and the RIC and both forces were highly mobilised for the event.

However, we were denied what appeared inevitable bloodshed by the weather and some Protestant good sense. So the epic tale turned into a shaggy dog story but not before it had got us all going.

Another item in which I had a great interest as I used to live just down the road from Rochestown Avenue.


“Dear Miss B” – a Collection of Edwardian Postcards.
Brian McCabe, Kill History Group

Brian McCabe

Brian was great entertainment with a sample from his collection of Edwardian postcards from around 1909/11. He had the audience in stitches betimes.

The postcards were all addressed to the same lady who appeared to be in service to a much traveling Lord. So the destinations were varied and interesting. The brevity of expression stimulated our imagination and some of the banalities rang loud bells - trust you are all keeping well, no news here.

Brian has produced a little book of some of his cards and I look forward to going through it when I finish this post.


An Irish Country House in Cloyne, Co. Cork.
Marie Guillot, Cloyne Literary & Historical Society

Marie Guillot

Marie has achieved the magnificent feat of living in Cork for the last twenty years and not picking up the slightest trace of a local accent.

I didn't think I'd have much interest in this item as big houses and their various accoutrements tend to leave me cold. But Marie's enthusiasm and her careful tracing of the evolution over the last three centuries of Kilcrone House in Cloyne had my rapt attention.

Each new family added a bit and the old pile just growed over the years. Marie had done a mountain of research, not forgetting her intensive personal interrogation of one of the former maids.

I took it from what she said that she is now living in the house, though I may be mistaken. Her evident pain at the work of some of the local jerry-builders in the house's distant history makes me feel I might have heard right.


Lesser Known Dubs – The Good, the Bad and the Downright Despicable.
Ken Finlay, The Old Dublin Society

Ken Finlay

Ken Finlay is no stranger to Dublin history. He's been at it for years and has published all over the place. What he was giving us here were snippets on some of Dublin's less well known characters.

He started with Charles Cameron, who profoundly affected the life of the city and that for the better. Cameron became the city's medical officer in 1876 and, as Ken pointed out, being a polymath he was able to rise above the silly preoccupations of the time and see the wider picture. I think of him as a major contributor to the emergence of epidemiology. He was one of the good guys.

Ken he went on to Frank Dubedat. From a well got Huguenot family, he let them down by scarpering with a load of his client's dosh. He was presumably a bad guy.

And then there was Leonard McNally who turned informer on the 1798 crowd. He was presumably a despicable guy.

Ken had got through just a few more off his long list when time ran out.


My Experience as a Dublin Docker 1963-2009.
Thomas Walsh, Dublin Dock Workers Preservation Society

Thomas Walsh

Thomas Walsh's contribution was riveting, so much so that he's been booked for an encore at the next session.

His description of his life as a docker was not only a personal testimony, it was a significant contribution to the not-so-glorious history of the city port.

He explained how hard and precarious was the life of a docker. The work was backbreaking at the best of times. There was the constant danger of serious accident which could end a career and deprive a family of the breadwinner. There were health hazards such as the handling of asbestos.

And then there was the inequality of the button system which created a permanent and hereditary elite, the button men. You can see examples of buttons in the photo above. Eventually, the Port Authority took over directly employing the dockers, so work, or at least remuneration, was spread over a wider pool.

But that was not the end of the story. Despite prolonged resistance from the dockers mechanisation and containerisation put paid to most of the jobs.

Just on a personal note: he mentioned a union/button meeting in Coláiste Mhuire. I assume that was in the halla. The whole complex there is scheduled for redevelopment, including where a meeting of nationalist groups took place in 1914 to start planning the 1916 Rising. I hope the new building will respect the site's historic past.

I'm looking forward to Part 2 in November.



irishhistoryonline.ie – a Resource for Local History Groups.
Jacqueline Hill, NUI Maynooth

Jacqueline Hill

Jacqueline's contribution was short and straightforward. Irish History Online is a mammoth bibliography of Irish history and if local historians want to be in it they will have to ensure that their journals are captured by the system. One way of doing his would be to be sure to comply with current copyright legislation regarding legal deposit.

LOCAL HISTORY DAY 2017

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One of the great annual outings for amateur local historians is the local history day at the Dublin City Library and Archive in Pearse St. (DCLA). It has not only provided us with an outlet for our research but has stimulated us to dig deeper and longer.

In particular the link up between DCLA and Maynooth University (NUIM) has stimulated local research and has given graduates in this relatively new academic discipline an outlet for their work.

Equally, people like myself, who are not connected with any institution and have probably come late in life to this area, are not only given an outlet but they can find themselves in some very exalted company.

If you add in DCLA events outside of this one day, it is clear that this institution is a jewel in the City's crown.

We'll say nothing about the doors being a wee bit late opening on a frozen morning or the automatic doors then getting stuck. This is outside our brief, but my own view is that it is a manifestation of the recently discovered CURSE OF URBUS, a more than century old anomaly.

That, however, is a story for another day.

Enda Leaney

Regular readers of this blog will know that Máire Kennedy who ran this event for many years has retired and I was interested in who might be in charge of this year's event as I don't think Máire's post has yet been filled.

That task fell to Enda Leaney whose line up for the day and whose enthusiasm for the speakers and their subjects reassured us that Máire's baby is in good hands.

I chased up Enda on the internet and had to stop at page n+. He is a serious academic whose qualifications and interests range far and wide.

For the purpose of today's event he is Senior Librarian at DCLA but you could call him by many other academic names and you probably wouldn't go far wrong.

James Scannell

Anyway Enda introduced the day (25/11/2017) and the line-up and we got off to a great start with a puff of steam and a complicated cover-up.

James Scannell seems to be accident prone. I first heard him talk about a ship that ran aground in a storm leading to complicated rescue efforts by the Bray and Dunleary lifeboat crews. On a subsequent outing he entertained us with the story of the 1957 Dundrum Railcar Collision and the blame game that ensued.

Today he was back to Bray but this time it was on the other side of the Head.

In 1867 a train heading north towards Bray came off the rails at the approach to the tunnel and half of it fell thirty feet while the rest of it stayed on the rails more or less.

There were only two fatalities and both inquests found the event to have been an accident. They were both unaware that the "crime scene" had been tampered with immediately after the accident.

It took a later inquiry by a railroad inspector to discover the original negligence which led to the accident and reveal the cover-up which ensued. Because the inquest verdicts were already in at that stage, they could not be changed and the event remained in the State's books as an accident.

Frank Whearity

Earlier this year, at family history day, Frank Whearity recounted the history of the Soho Engineering works in Bridgefoot Street. He kept us enthralled with the history of the Watt family who owned the works. He was able to illustrate much of the history with personal anecdotes as he had spent much of his own life working there himself.

Today he was on a different tack altogether. He was giving us a centenary perspective on Thomas Ashe. Now if you're like me you'll put Ashe into a list of revolutionaries associated with the 1916 Rising. And you'd be right. But Ashe was a Commandant in the Dublin Brigade and the only one still winning the war when Pearse called the surrender. His immediate fate was to see the inside of a number of English jails before his release in 1917.

At that stage he embarked on a tour of the country making speeches. The authorities deemed at least one of these seditious and back to prison he went. He then went on hunger strike and was subjected to a botched forced feeding which landed him in the Mater where he died.

Frank then recounted the standoff with the British Army over plans for Ashe to lie in state in City Hall. At the end of the day the laying in state went ahead and the funeral was huge.

That's just the bones of it and, as usual, Frank spiced it with many anecdotes.

John Dorney

John Dorney is a historian who has been paying particular attention to the revolutionary period for the last ten years. He is the man behind The Irish Story website. He has authored a number of books, his latest and probably most ambitious being The Civil War in Dublin - The Fight for the Irish Capital 1922-1924.

Today he was bringing us the Civil War in Dublin, the bones of his book in 45 minutes. It was a fascinating talk and at the end of it we were in no doubt why nobody wanted to talk about the Civil War. It reflected no credit on anybody and the atrocities committed by both sides were beyond belief.

It is very difficult to see how this period can be commemorated in a way that is not viciously divisive. Not John's fault, to be sure. He has gone out of his way to attempt an objective or neutral account of the war but at the same time leaving nothing out. You can get a flavour from his interview with Cathal Brennan on the Irish History Show, broadcast on NearFM.

Liz Gillis

I first met Liz in Howth when, with Mícheál Ó Doibhilín, she gave a presentation to the Howth Peninsula Heritage Society on the 1921 Custom House Raid. That has since turned into a marvellous book which Enda was recommending to all present.

But that is not what she was at today. Her talk was on her beloved Liberties and her angle The Rebel Liberties. She didn't quite go back into pre-history, though God knows what those folk were up to then. Rather, she started in 1798 and stitched in a load of Liberties-connected United Irishmen.

Skip ahead a few years and we have Robert Emmet hanged, drawn and quartered outside St. Catherine's (Protestant) church in Thomas St. in 1803. There is a well known painting of the scene with the hangman holding Emmet's head aloft.

However, there was more to it than the relatively standard story depicted in the painting. In the first place the hangman didn't bring all his tools and a butcher's cleaver and saw had to be sourced locally for the decapitation.

Liz is not prepared to endorse the popular rumour that the head was dropped and rolled all the way down into the Liffey. Apparently we have a death mask and you need a head for that. However, the remainder of the body parts disappeared, whether to far flung points of the colonies or not is unknown.

Fast forward to 1916 and The Liberties is alive with the sound of gunfire - the South Dublin Union, Marrowbone Lane and so on. Then there is the John's Lane church connection with Patrick Pearse (his daddy sculpted the angels on the steeple, and, no doubt, more besides).

There is no-one more passionately committed to their subject, whatever it may happen to be at the moment, than Liz. She carries you along on a great big wave complete with gesticulations and expressions that would put Marcel Marceau to shame.

I visualise her in the photo above as a sean nós singer with not a pin dropping in the house.

Liam O'Meara

Liam's talk was entitled "Who remembers Keogh Square?" but you can't keep a good historian down and before you can blink we're back in Richmond Barracks which played a significant role in the 1916 Rising. After independence it housed some of the city's poor, and not very adequately we heard.

The Duke of Richmond ceded to Tom Keogh after whom the Barracks was named by the Free State. Tom was a member of Michael Collins's Squad and has a massive warrior's memorial for a headstone in Knockananna in Co. Wicklow. Been there, seen that.

Liam was really giving us the social history of the site with particular reference to its period as Keogh Square when the people were housed in the original barracks buildings. Apparently there was great community spirit but little else, though former inhabitants remember it fondly.

Most of the barracks buildings were eventually demolished and replaced by St. Michael's estate, but that eventually went downhill and, with the exception of a few barracks buildings. the place is now a vast green space.

Liam has written the history of Richmond Barracks and he has now published a book on Keogh Square.

My grandfather worked in the barracks prior to his untimely death by drowning in the Liffey in 1918, but that too is another story.

Taking Liberties - Liz & meself

Local History Society Day

Eithne Massey
Dublin City Library and Archive
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Don't be afraid. We are not talking high society here. No croquet on the lawn or shooting up the local peasants.

This is the day when members of local history societies present some of their work to an admiring public.

And no, you don't have to be a history buff to attend. In fact I'd recommend attendance if you have the slightest interest in your local history, or in your family history, which has to be based in some locality.

I went to a talk in Raheny library the other night. Noel Carolan was presenting his family history and showing us some of the magic he used in compiling it. I expected it to be of moderate general interest at most but went along anyway. I'm glad I didn't miss it. Not only had he systematically captured his family history, filed it all and presented it in gorgeous multimedia, but, more importantly for me, he turns out to be from the same townland as one of my great grandparents, Creewood in the parish of Grangegeeth in Co. Meath. I am currently in a cul de sac on that part of my research, so who knows what Noel's familiarity and expertise might unearth. If you don't go to thee things you'll never know what you are missing.

Back to local history day. Eithne (above) was MC for the day and she started out with Joan Sharkey's talk on Marie Elizabeth Hayes.

Marie Hayes's story is an inspiring one despite its sad ending. Marie was the Raheny Rector's daughter who studied medicine and went to India as a doctor/missionary to serve the poor. She took on a lot of responsibility, was loved by those among whom she lived, but died within two years of arrival.

Joan Sharkey
Raheny Heritage Society

A celtic cross was erected to Marie's memory in Raheny and a miniature replica is now the centrepiece of the newly opened memorial garden in All Saints Church. Joan will be publishing her latest research in an upcoming issue of the Dublin Historical Record.

Edmond O'Donovan treated us to a fascinating glimpse into church archeology - how to find old church sites and what to do with them when you do. He took us through some examples of excavations in Wicklow and Dublin and even mentioned my own ancient church in Killiney.

Edmond O'Donovan
Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland

He stressed that nobody should be put off by the name of the Society. The Royal bit didn't mean you had to be of noble extraction or dress up to join and take part in its activities. Nor did the antiquary label denote a crowd of fuddy duddies. They were all normal folk like himself.

James Scannell gave us a forensic analyis of the 1957 Dundrum Railcar Collision in which one of the drivers lost his life. It all started with a cow on the line, but the accident was not the cow's fault. Human error was the problem. One very basic error compounded by a number of others. The signalman at Foxrock station, who made the first, and most grievous, error was summarily dismissed from his job. It is a very interesting case ethically, quite apart from the railway mechanics, and it would be interesting to see how such a situation would pan out today.

James Scannell
Old Bray Society

I suggested that when the railways were changing over from single to double track they should have kept the old staff system which had a built in fail safe mechanism. I think James might have had some sympathy with that view. But, at the end of the day, we are all slaves to "progress".

Rosemary Raughter gave us a run down on the Whitshed family of Dublin and a right lot of scoundrels they seem to have been. One of them who crossed Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's, never quite recovered from the good Dean's riposts.

Rosemary Raughter
Greystones Archaeological and Historical Society

Rosemary also drew attention to the danger of having your gravestone moved around a lot.

Henry Fairbrother took us on a trip through Mount Jerome cemetery. The cemetery is currently owned by Alan Massey who has undertaken a major refurbishment. As well as outlining the history of the cemetery, Henry filled us in on the background of some of those buried there.

Henry Fairbrother
Old Dublin Society

As well as attending the day, I accidentally found out on my way in that the Spanish training Tall Ship, Juan Sebastián de Elcano, was in town, so I went home with a crop of photos in addition to anything I may have picked up at the day.

In Print

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Up to yesterday I had never published a book. Today I have published three books.

They are unique because they are books of talks I have given on local and family history and they are limited editions - limited to one copy of each. Priceless.

Thought I'd share. What you see above are the three books. From the bottom up: The Shoemaker's Daughters - my Burgess ancestors; A Policeman's Lot - my Dwyer ancestors; and, The Corsican Defence - the restoration of a Martello Tower in Killiney Bay.

They are beautifully produced and bound, on hard glossy pages with bright crisp images.

My grandfather, Michael Dwyer, who joined the RIC from the family homestead in East Limerick and spent most of his career in Co. Mayo, principally in Ballyhaunis.

Martello Tower (No. 7 Dublin South) beautifully restored and armed by Niall O'Donoghue on a site where I used to attend, and I hope entertain, Patrician meetings in my youth.

Thanks to Eoghan and Susan for this magnificent present.

Further reading: Daughters Policeman Tower