Thursday, April 26, 2012

Vintage Photograph of a Boat Crew : Vintage Album : Pictures From My Camera

Got given a vintage photo album by a man called Larry last Sunday. He bought it some years ago in Cumberland street market for a fiver. The photographer seems to follow a boat crew, methinks, and the second person from the left and the one on the right are reoccurring in some of the photographs. The the hardcover bound book is clothed in green with a light orange brown rectangle card on the left that reads ” Pictures From My Camera” with a flower underneath that looks like a Fuschia blowing in the wind …There are about 2 dozen photographs in all. The crew, some different sailing boats, one the size of the “Jeanie Johnson” and another like a “Galway Hooker”, landscapes and a few street scenes … What a crew! They look like they’re about to embark on an expedition. There is comfort amongst them and it feels like they know eachother well. I think the time frame is early decades of the 1900′s. The photographs are very thin photography paper, most of them matte with a few glossy ones. I’ve been fascinated ever since and want to make it one of my pet projects. I’ll keep updating as time permits, Go to my other site and follow the tag ” PicturesFromMyCamera ” or " History "on the right or subscribe to the newsletter if you want to keep updated. Peace and Cheese More Photographs

Friday, May 20, 2011

The Card Players : Paddy Ryans : Horseleap : Ireland : Photography

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Horseleap (Irish: Baile Átha an Urchair) is a town situated upon the Offaly, Westmeath county border in Ireland, along the R446, formerly the main Dublin to Galway road. The village itself possesses a church, primary school, a garden centre, a pub, and a petrol station. Horseleap dates back to the 12th century steeped in Ui Neill, Geoghegan history.

The village’s Irish name (Baile Átha an Urchair or Áth an Urchair) was historically anglicised as Ballanurcher, Athnurcher and Ardnurcher.[1] The name probably derives from the legend that Conchobar mac Nessa was killed here.[2]

Horseleap’s present name dates back to 1192. The Norman lord Brian Fitzgerald had been riding through the lands neighbouring his castle in Donore when he came across members of the Mac Geoghegan clan who had long disputed De Lacy’s claim to the lands. Following a dispute, De Lacy was forced to flee on horseback from the Mac Geoghans. On approaching his castle he discovered that the drawbridge was raised forcing De Lacy’s horse to jump the castle’s moat. De Lacey survived the jump and escaped almost certain death at the hands of the Mac Geoghegan clan.[citation needed]

The battle of Ardnocher took place here in 1329 between the forces of Thomas Butler and William Mac Geoghegan. Mac Geoghegan won and Butler and many of his soldiers were killed.

Modern Day

Apart from the story of how it got its name Horseleap also has a new story of modern day interest. The 12 foot high bronze statue of the prancing horse that stands on the village green was actually made in Italy by Ferrari. In the nineties the Ferrari formula one racing team made a present of one of these statues of its famous logo to each of their F1 drivers. This one was shipped to Ireland in 1999 to be given to Eddie Irvine who had finished as runner up in the World championship for Ferrari that year. It was stored in a barn in County Tyrone and was to be a surprise to Irvine. However just before this was to take place Irvine told Ferrari he was leaving them to join the Jaguar team. Ferrari never told Irvine about the statue and it stayed in the barn for a year until a local farmer from Horseleap was up in Tyrone buying cattle and was told about it. A delegation from the village was then dispatched to make the case that they had the ideal home for this statue and that they wished to purchase it. They bought the statue for a fee less than it cost to make and it was erected in 2000.





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Sunday, May 01, 2011

Hill of Uisneach : Bealtaine : 2011 : Ireland



The Hill of Uisneach, or Ushnagh, also Uisnech (Irish: Cnoc Uisnigh),[1] formerly regarded as the centre of Ireland, is a historical site in County Westmeath (National Monument Number 155).[2] The 182 metre hill [3] lies on the north side of the R390 road, 8 km east of the village of Ballymore, beside the village of Loughanavally. The Hill of Uisneach occupies parts of four adjacent townlands: Ushnagh Hill, Mweelra, Rathnew, and Kellybrook.[3]

In Irish mythology, it was considered to be the omphalos or mystical navel of Ireland, upon which rested a great stone (Ail na Míreann, which means “stone of divisions”) which was said to indicate the meeting point of the provincial borders of Leinster, Munster, Connacht, Ulster, and Mide (which was once a separate, fifth province). Tradition tells that the Hill of Uisneach was a site favoured for Beltane fires and Druidical ceremonies, and as a ceremonial site it was regarded as second only to Emain Macha. In the poetic history Lebor Gabála Érenn (Book of the Takings of Ireland), the Nemedian Druid Mide lit the first fire there. A fire was also lit on the Hill of Uisneach on the feast of Bealtaine. This fire could be seen from Tara, and when they saw it, they lit their fire.

According to a popular passage from the same record, Ériu, a tutelary goddess sometimes viewed as the personification of Éire (Ireland), meets the invading Milesians at the Hill of Uisneach where, after some conversation and drama, the Milesian poet Amairgin promises to give the country her name. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) claims a common belief that Stonehenge was transported to Britain from the Hill of Uisneach. St. Brigid of Christian legend, who is also notably connected with fire, took the veil at this sacred locus.

Based on co-ordinates alone, some have theorised that this may be the site identified as Raiba or Riba, by Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy), the Egyptian-Greek astronomer and cartographer, writing in his Geographia around the year 140 A.D.

Archaeologically, the site consists of a set of monuments spread over two square kilometres in the closely adjoining townlands of Ushnagh, Kellybrook, and Rathnew,[3] which includes enclosures and barrows, a possible megalithic tomb, and two ancient roads. The largest enclosure was excavated in the 1920s by R.A.S. Macalister and R. Praeger and showed evidence of occupation from prehistory up to the early mediaeval period.



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Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Jeanie Johnston : Irish emigrant famine ship


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Replica emigrant famine ship
The story of the Jeanie Johnston is the story of one of the most momentious periods of Irish History - the era of the Great Famine that swept Ireland in the middle of the 19th century.

Emigration has been a feature of Irish life for centuries but the mass exodus which accompanied the Great Famine (1845-50) is unparalleled in Europe in a time of peace. At the time the potato was the staple diet of the Irish people and when it failed in consecutive seasons from 1845 to 1848 disaster struck.

Between 1840 and 1860 the population of Ireland was halved from 8 to 4 millions through famine and emigration. Two million people boarded the emigrant ships for North America to flee famine-ravaged Ireland. The effects of the famine were felt throughout the island, North and South, almost every Irish family was touched in one way or another.

The "Jeanie Johnston" (1847-58) was the most famous of the Irish emigrant vessels. Despite the cramped conditions by todays standards, the Jeanie Johnston was a well run ship and, unlike the infamous and disease-ridden "coffin ships" of the period, Jeanie never lost a passenger to disease or the sea.

The Ship

The "Jeanie Johnston" was built in Quebec City in 1847 (Black '47) by the Canadian shipbuilder John Munn (1788-1859) for the Donovan family of Tralee. She was a triple-masted barque, 123 feet long and weighed 408 tons. She was constructed of oak and pine, and was copper-fastened. Like the majority of the ships of the period she was a cargo cum passenger vessel. She brought timber and foodstuffs to Ireland and took on passengers for the return journeys to the United States and Canada. She carried a full complement of 200 passengers and a crew of 17.

An amount of fascinating information about the Jeanie Johnston has been uncovered from the ship's manifests, her crew agreements, local newspapers, from reports held in Irish, British, US and Canadian archives, and from the Minute Books of the Tralee and Killarney Workhouses where the destitute famine victims sought relief.

Maiden Voyage

The Jeanie Johnston made at least 16 voyages from Tralee to Baltimore, New York and Quebec over the period 1848 to 1855. Her principal destination was Quebec which at the time served as the Gateway to North America and stepping stone to Boston and other US cities for Irish immigrants.

On Jeanie’s maiden voyage from Tralee to Quebec on April 26, 1848 a baby boy was born aboard. To mark the unusual surroundings of his birth, his parents - Daniel and Margaret Ryal - named the child after the owner of ship (Nicholas Donovan) and the ship itself. So Nicholas Johnston Ryal was added to the passenger list. The Ryals were married in St. John's Church, Tralee on April 1st, 1845 and Nicholas was their first child. The search for his descendants continues under the direction of project historian, Ms. Helen O'Carroll, M.A. So far it has been established that relations of his mother (Margaret Foran) settled in the Benton Harbour area of Michigan.


New York Sends Help

During the Winter of 1848, at the height of the famine, the Jeanie Johnston arrived back in Tralee from New York with badly need famine relief. The cargo consisted of 360 tons of Indian corn, 1000 barrels of flour, 1,100 bags of yellow meal and 30 tons of wheat seed.

By March, 1849 the Jeanie Johnston was back on the high seas again heading for Baltimore. The passenger list for the Baltimore voyage gives some indication of the profile of the emigrants. They were predominantly in their mid-twenties, with the majority of them unskilled labourers and servants.

Many emgrants travelled in family groups, a feature of emigration during and after the Famine. Perhaps the most poignant entry on the lists records Eliza O'Leary, a widow at the age of 26, with her three children aged 10, 9 and 8 years.

Another feature of Irish emigration in the mid-19th century was the high proportion of female emigrants and on a passenger list, dated April 1854, half those listed were single women and the average age was 21 years.

Almost all of the Jeanie Johnston's crew lists survive and they provide us with valuable information on the conditions for sailors on the North Atlantic route. They were usually 17 crew members on board, including at least two apprentices. They came from all parts of Ireland, England, Continental Europe, Canada, the United States and South America. The master of the ship was Captain James Attridge, a member of the famous seafaring family from Castletownsend in Co. Cork. The ship’s doctor was the respected Dr. Richard Blennerhassett a product of the famous Edinburgh University Medical School.

The decreasing profitability of the cargo/passenger trade and more stringent passenger legislation prompted the Donovans to sell the Jeanie Johnston in 1856. She was sold to William Johnson of North Shields in England and continued to sail the North American route. On October 31, 1858 she became waterlogged in Mid-Atlantic with a cargo of timber and sank slowly. Fortunately, there was adequate time for the crew to be picked up by the Dutch ship, the "Sophie Elizabeth" en route to New York, keeping Jeanie's remarkable safety record intact to the end.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Grafton Street Dublin : Buskers


Long before the street was pedestrianised in the 1970s Noel Purcell sang "Grafton Street's a wonderland with magic in the air . . .".
Grafton Street is Dublin's principal shopping street, running from St. Stephen's Green in the south to College Green in the north. The street was named after the first Duke of Grafton, who owned land in the area. It was developed from an existing country lane by the Dawson family in 1708, after whom the parallel Dawson Street is named.

Since the 1980s, the street has been mostly pedestrianised, with the exception of the short stretch running between Nassau Street and College Green. This short stretch contains two notable Dublin landmarks, the eighteenth century Trinity College Provost's House and the late twentieth century statue of Molly Malone, which has become a popular Dublin meeting place. A life-size bronze statue of Phil Lynott was unveiled on Harry Street, off Grafton Street, on 19th August 2005.

Street entertainers such as buskers, poets and mime artists commonly perform to the shopping crowds.

The opening of the Luas tram system at the end of June 2004 has led to a 20% increase in pedestrian traffic on the street as of October 2004, although the construction of a large shopping centre in Dundrum towards the other end of the line could threaten these figures. Grafton Street rents increased by 46% between 2003 and 2004, making the street the fifth most expensive in the world.

Bewley's Oriental Cafe, a Grafton Street institution since its opening in 1927, announced at the end of October 2004 that it would be closing before Christmas, along with its Westmoreland Street cafe. Following a campaign by the Mayor of Dublin, Catherine Byrne, the Cafe on Grafton Street was kept.

For the sightseer, Grafton Street is close to Dáil Éireann, the Irish houses of Parliament, The National Museum, The National Library, the Dublin Civic Museum, Dublin's Mansion House and Trinity College.View more Photos

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Sunday, November 06, 2005

Trinity College 360 degrees view

Trinity College Dublin 360 view: "Trinity College"

St Stephen's Green



St Stephen's Green is park in the heart of Dublin city centre. A popular lunchtime retreat for many of the office workers in the area and tourists alike.
it was originally open public ground until 1663.
The Green remained private ground until 1877 when a member of the Guinness brewing family, pushed an act through Parliament making the Green open to the public once again. The Green includes gardens and ponds.
The park has many statues including memorials to Yeats and also to James Joyce. Also present are the Three Fates, a group of bronze female figures watching over man's destiny.

The Green today is very popular, particularly during the summer, to go and spend time watching the passing crowds or just spending time in the sunshine. The gates of the Green are open according to daylight hours.
The photograph depicts one of the Georgian houses alongside the Green.View more Photos

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Some Artists: IRISH ARTISTS LINKS NETWORK

Some Artists: IRISH ARTISTS LINKS NETWORK

Ha'Penny Bridge Dublin


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One of Dublin's most famous bridges is the Ha'penny Bridge, a walk over bridge that crosses over the river Liffey and an important part of Irish heritage.

It was erected in 1816 as the Wellington Bridge and it acquired its better known nickname from the halfpenny toll levied on all users of the bridge up to 1919.

The Ha'penny Bridge is Dublin's oldest pedestrian crossing over the River Liffey.

This photo was taken from the southside of the river.

Monday, October 31, 2005

Some Artists: Artists Tax Exemption : IRELAND

Some Artists: Artists Tax Exemption : IRELAND
Letter from the Sculptors' Society of Ireland
www.sculptors-society.ie
Last chance to have your say

Gullivers Travels


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Jonathan Swift Gulliver's Travels
Although in its abridged form Gulliver's Travels (1726) is known as a classic children's adventure story, it is actually a biting work of political and social satire by an Anglican priest, historian, and political commentator. Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift parodied popular travelogues of his day in creating this story of a sea-loving physician's travels to imaginary foreign lands. Structurally, the book is divided into four separate adventures, or travels, which Dr. Lemuel Gulliver undertakes by accident when his vessel is shipwrecked or taken over by pirates. In these fantastic tales, Swift satirizes the political events in England and Ireland in his day, as well as English values and institutions. He ridicules academics, scientists, and Enlightenment thinkers who value rationalism above all else, and finally, he targets the human condition itself.

Like all of Swift's works, Gulliver's Travels was originally published without Swift's name on it because he feared government persecution. His criticisms of people and institutions are often scathing, and some observers believe he was a misanthrope (one who hates mankind). Other critics have suggested that while Swift criticized humans and their vanity and folly, he believed that people are capable of behaving better than they do and hoped his works would convince people to reconsider their behavior. Swift himself claimed he wrote Gulliver's Travels "to vex the world rather than divert it." He succeeded in that aim, as the book is considered one of the best examples of satire ever written. Swift's sharp observations about the corruption of people and their institutions still ring true today, almost three hundred years after the book was first published.

Friday, October 28, 2005

Giant's Causeway




The Giant's Causeway lies at the foot of the basalt cliffs along the sea coast on the edge of the Antrim plateau in Northern Ireland. It is made up of some 40,000 massive black basalt columns sticking out of the sea. The dramatic sight has inspired legends of giants striding over the sea to Scotland. Geological studies of these formations over the last 300 years have greatly contributed to the development of the earth sciences, and show that this striking landscape was caused by volcanic activity during the Tertiary, some 50–60 million years ago.

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Thursday, October 27, 2005

Dublin Pubs


Pubs are as much a part of life in Ireland as the cafes are in Paris. This is where a diverse cross-section of society gather to converse and to drink the famed dark local stout. The "character establishments" you may wish to visit when in Ireland.

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Dublin or Baile Atha Cliath



Baile Atha Cliath is how the Irish call their capital city in their native language!
An architecturally striking city, with a dramatic history full of extraordinary personalities - many of them engraved in stone or bronze and scattered around the city - Dublin has recently reinvented itself as a chic euro city. It is this mix of grand old and funky new that makes it such an attractive, lively destination.


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Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Peace Statue Derry Northern Ireland

Sunday, August 07, 2005

Magic Window



St Stevens Green Dublin

Trough the looking glass

On the way to Donegal




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Thursday, July 21, 2005

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