Written by Barry Lally (Originally Published in Feb/March 2014 issue of Ballinasloe Life Magazine)If you stand on Poolboy Bridge and look towards the town, you’ll see the ivy-covered remains of a medieval church a few hundred yards away, near the right bank of the Grand Canal. Known locally as “The Teampaillin” (little temple), it was used as a burial place for unbaptised children up until the 1950s. One of four such sites in the parish, it is only one associated with an ecclesiastical ruin. The Teampaillin’s former use as an infants’ interment location is not, however, its main point of interest. Writing in 1960, Fr. P.K. Egan identified the ruins as those of an early thirteenth century building with features linking it to Clontuskert Priory some three miles distant to the south. A gable window of sixteenth century date suggested that the church had been in use for divine worship over several centuries, very likely up to Penal time. Priests are said to have traversed the bog by means of a ‘togher’ or causeway to this church from Clontuskert to conduct religious services. Credence was apparently lent to this particular piece of folklore by a discovery made at Kellysgrove during Land Commission drainage operations in 1946 when a portion of the ‘togher’ was uncovered and recorded by the National Museum. If clergymen served the Teampaillin from Clontuskert they would undoubtedly have been members of the Order of Canons Regular St. Augustine founded on the Continent about the middle of the eleventh century and introduced into Ireland by St. Malachy a hundred years later. Here the earlier Celtic monasteries eventually submitted to their rule, so that at one stage over two hundred Irish Augustinian foundations were listed and they became the numerically dominant religious order in the country. In this diocese, in addition to Clontuskert, they had three other houses: Abbeygormican in Mullagh parish, Aughrim and Clonfert. Augustinian Canons were not monks but secular clergy who had come together to live a communal life and to serve the churches of the parishes adjacent to their houses. Unlike the other religious congregations, they had no central governing body and were answerable to local bishops. The order went into decline in the sixteenth century and had become extinct in Ireland by the dawn of the following century. The Canons, however, though greatly reduced in numbers, remained active on the Continent where some of their houses are still be found, particularly in Austria and Switzerland.
Sometime in the latter half of the twelfth century St. Mary’s Priory of the Canons Regular was established in Clontuskert by the O’Kelly family, Lords of Hy Many, probably on or near the site on an earlier monastic foundation. Situated as it was within the territory directly occupied by the O’Kellys, it was natural that it should have received its initial endowment from them and that through their patronage it should have attained in time a position of great wealth. Indeed, it was ruled almost exclusively by O’Kelly priors up to its official dissolution in 1551. The importance they accorded the Priory is evident from the fact that the inauguration mound of the Lords of Hy Many was located just outside the monastic precincts. The community of Canons Regular may have contrived to remain on in Clontuskert for some decades following the Dissolution of all the Monasteries by King Henry VIII. However, they were eventually dispersed and the Priory fell into ruin. The 1630s saw its reoccupation and partial restoration by Augustinian Friars, who seemingly did continue to reside there up to the end of the Williamite Wars, when St. Mary’s was finally abandoned.
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Written by Barry Lally (Originally Published in Oct/Nov 2013 issue of Ballinasloe Life Magazine)A local hotel has a restaurant called Marengo. Diners who happen to be historians may wonder what a battle fought in Northern Italy between the French and the Austrians on June 14, 1800, has to do with Ballinasloe. The explanation is simple. The French, who won that day, were led by Napoleon Bonaparte, who re-named the charger he had ridden in the field Marengo; a horse that was later to carry him to victory at the battles of Austerlitz, Jena and Wagram. Legend has it that Marengo had been bought at the Ballinasloe October Fair.
There appears to be no evidence to support this claim, but neither is there any proof that the story is false. Indeed, it may well be true, because continental quartermasters, or their agents, were a regular feature of the fair as major buyers of horse-flesh from the 18th century right up to WWII. It might be thought that the internal combustion engine had rendered the horse redundant in military affairs as the 20th century advanced; not so. European armies made extensive use of horses to draw gun-carriages and supply wagons because the horse could traverse terrain that a motor lorry would find difficult if not impossible to negotiate. Irish horses were especially prized for their versatility, both as mounts and for draught work. Odd as it may strike us today, up to 50 years ago horses were a minor – though important – component of the fair which was then mostly about the sheep and cattle until the livestock markets took over. Originally it seems that the week started off with a sheep fair for wether hoggets on a Monday that was followed by a fair for ewe hoggets on Tuesday. Wednesday was the Horse fair, Friday was for cattle and animals ‘missed’ earlier in the week were presented at the Country Fair on Saturday. By the middle of the 19th century however, probably at the behest of the Earl of Clancarty, a Monday start had been precluded; apparently so that the God-fearing townsfolk would be spared the sight of people desecrating the Sabbath by erecting pins in the Green on the eve of the sheep fair. Very likely it was around this time that the convention was established of holding the October Fair in the week in which the first Tuesday of the month fell. Thursday was allotted to the horse fair, but towards the end of the century there were complaints that the better quality animals were being sold off earlier in the week prior to the officially designated day. The solution was to move the horse fair forward to Monday, in the knowledge that no-one would dare to offer an affront to local sentiment by trading in horse-flesh on the Sabbath. Nowadays, however, there is probably as much, if not more, buying and selling done on the Sunday as on the Monday. The origins of the October Fair are lost in the mists of time, though there’s speculation that it developed in the 16th century in response to the export trade from Galway in hides and salted beef, a trade that expanded significantly in the following century when the city became a victualling port for the British West India Fleet, which meant that Galway merchants required large amounts of meat to process and sell to the navy. The October fair received an additional boost from the move towards pasture in the 1730s prompted by frequent wars and diseases among cattle on the continent, combined with the exemption of grazing land from tithes. By the end of the century the October Fair had become the principal sheep and cattle mart of these islands and indeed had acquired a European-wide reputation. The Fair continued to expand in the 19th Century, reaching a peak sometime in the 1860s. Perhaps the most powerful agent in its subsequent decline was the Railway, arriving in 1851. While it initially helped by facilitating in the transport of livestock, it eventually reduced its importance by aiding establishment of smaller fairs elsewhere. Due to growing mechanisation of Irish farms in the 1950s, it is conceivable that the horse fair would have gone the way of the sheep and cattle fairs by the 1970s had it not been for the efforts of successive Fair and Festival committees, along with the fact that more disposable income became available in the ‘60s, creating an increased demand for what might be termed ‘recreational horses’.Though the agents of foreign armies who bought the likes of Marengo have been consigned to the pages of history, visitors still flock from far and wide – the continent included - to savour the unique atmosphere of the Fair. Aside from the Fair’s strictly commercial aspect, it is one of the greatest social events of the West of Ireland, also an occasion for emigrants to return and renew old acquaintances. Ballinasloe, in the form of the October Fair, has had for years its own ‘Gathering’ without anyone thinking to name it so. Written by Barry Lally (Originally Published in Aug/Sept 2013 issue of Ballinasloe Life Magazine)The portrait of Cardinal Wiseman that once hung in the sacristy of St. Michael's ChurchWhile travelling about in Spain some twenty or more years ago I found myself one day in the old Jewish quarter of Seville when my attention was drawn to a plaque on a nearby building. The Spanish inscription read in translation: “On 2nd August 1802 Cardinal Wiseman, Archbishop of Westminster, was born in this house, a luminary of the Catholic Clergy and a worthy son of his fatherland. Their Excellencies on the city council ordered the erection of this plaque to preserve the memory of a most illustrious Sevilano 1865.” I was immediately reminded of a life-size portrait in oils of the prelate in question that once adorned the sacristy walls of St.Michael’s Church. How the painting came to hang there is a tale that is perhaps worth telling. Nicholas Patrick Wiseman, as his name suggests, was not of Spanish parentage. The younger son of an Irish merchant family who had settled in Seville, on his father’s death in 1805 he was brought to his parent’s home in Waterford. After a number of years he was sent to further his education in England, from whence he eventually proceeded to Rome to study for the priesthood. Following his ordination he was appointed rector of the English college in 1828, an office he held until 1840. Wiseman soon acquired a reputation as an outstanding authority on oriental studies and an exceptionally gifted linguist, speaking six languages fluently. His fame spread abroad, with many distinguished visitors to Rome eager to make his acquaintance, amongst them the Ballinasloe-born Power Trench, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Tuam. The newly-built St. Michael’s Church was scheduled for consecration on 25th August 1858, and the Bishop of Clonfert, John Derry, who incidentally, had been born in a Dunlo Street public house, decided to shed lustre on the event by inviting Wiseman to preach at the ceremony. Appointed Archbishop of Westminster in 1849, Wiseman had been raised to the Cardinalate the following year. Derry’s choice of Preacher was entirely appropriate because Wiseman had received Augustus Welby Pugin into the Catholic Church in 1834, and it was this Pugin, the foremost exponent of the Gothic revival in architecture, who had substantially revised the plans for St. Michael’s.
A carnival atmosphere seems to have prevailed in Ballinasloe during Wiseman’s visit. An estimated twenty-five thousand people gathered in the town where all available accommodation was booked to capacity. Special trains were run for the occasion, bringing clergy and laity from all over Ireland. Following the Cardinal’s arrival at the local railway station, the horses were removed from his carriage half-way to the town and he was drawn in triumph by prominent citizens through the streets festooned with banners, ribbons and Chinese Lanterns. Nicholas Patrick Wiseman, who was the first Cardinal to visit Ireland since Rinuccini in the 1640s, died on 16th February 1865 and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. Forty-two years later his body was exhumed and re-interred in the Crypt of Westminster cathedral, where it lies beneath a Gothic altar tomb, with a recumbent effigy of the Cardinal in full pontificals. Written by Barry Lally (Originally Published in June/July issue of Ballinasloe Life Magazine)It’s one of the quirks of history that some individuals who figured largely in the national politics of their day are, on their demise, promptly forgotten. Such was the fate of John O’Connor-Power, an eminent 19th century parliamentarian and orator who was reared in this parish. Born the third son of Patrick and Mary Power (née O’Connor), on 13th February 1846 in Clashganny, Tulsk, Co. Roscommon, John’s family home was in Ballygill, Creagh and Patrick was probably a tenant farmer on the estate on Dudley Persse, father of the future Lady Gregory of Coole Park. It was to Ballygill that John was taken shortly after his birth. In his childhood he contracted smallpox and consequently spent some time in the Ballinasloe Fever Hospital (What remains of this institution can be seen in the grounds of what was formerly the Tesco Supermarket on Sarsfield Road) Though the infirmary was part of the Workhouse complex, his sojourn there should not necessarily be interpreted as evidence of family destitution, because workhouses often provided the only hospital facilities available in the provincial Ireland of this period. His parents died in the late 1840s, having succumbed perhaps to one or other of the infectious diseases that accompanied the Great Famine, and John was brought up most likely in the household of either of his uncles, John and Thomas Power, both of whom farmed locally. On the completion of his elementary education, Power left Ballinasloe at the age of 15 to join his brothers in Lancashire where he worked by day as a house painter in the family business, and, in the winter months, in a flannel mill, while continuing his studies at the Mechanics Institute in Rochdale. Around 1866 he met Michael Davitt and was sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (Fenians), a secret organisation whose aim was to secure Irish Independence by force of arms. He was part of a plot to raid Chester Castle for guns and ammunition in February 1867; however, the attempt was called off when it was discovered that the plan had been betrayed to the authorities. The following September he was involved in an attack on a prison van to rescue some I.R.B. leaders. This was the incident that resulted in the execution of the Manchester Martyrs, Allen, Larkin and O’Brien. Power managed to evade capture and was later sent to the United States to discuss reorganisation of the Fenians. On his return he was arrested in Dublin in February 1868 and spent five months in Kilmainham and Mountjoy jails. Released in July, he moved to Galway as the Connacht representative on the I.R.B. Supreme Council, and helped in arms distribution. While there he developed an interest in constitutional politics when he came under the influence of George Henry Moore, a Catholic landlord and Member of Parliament for Mayo. Deciding that he needed to complete his formal education, Power enrolled in St. Jarlath’s College, Tuam, in January 1871. In addition to functioning as a diocesan seminary, the College in those years provided third-level courses for mature students. He spent three years in St. Jarlath’s and financed himself by lecture tours in Britain and America.
Power favoured using I.R.B. influence to remould the conservative Home Rule movement in Ireland along more radical lines, the so-called ‘New Departure’ and was a leading speaker at the inaugural convention of the Home Rule in Dublin in 1873. Having won a Parliamentary seat in a Mayo by-election the following year, Power became a pioneer of obstructionist tactics in the British House of Commons, and embarked on several fund-raising tours of the United States, gaining a reputation as the Home Rule movement’s finest orator and a serious rival to Parnell. However, the R.I.B. came to believe that he was now irrevocably committed to constitutional politics and accordingly expelled him in 1877. This led to his being marginalised by Davitt and Parnell who felt he would alienate physical-force advocates whose support they were anxious to cultivate. Power nevertheless retained credibility with small tenant farmers and addressed the first meeting of the Mayo Tenants’ Defence League, precursor of the Land League, in 1879. He was the only Member of Parliament invited to or who attended the historic Irishtown meeting. Topping the poll in the following year’s General Election in Mayo, Power had as running-mate Parnell who was believed to have stood in an attempt to remove him from the political stage. This belief is given added credence when it is recalled that Parnell successfully presented himself for election simultaneously in two other constituencies. Excluded from the Irish Parliament Party, Power abandoned obstructionist tactics and became a supporter of Gladstone, the British Prime Minister. Failing to defend his Mayo seat in 1885, Power subsequently made three unsuccessful attempts to re-enter Parliament, the last in Bristol South in 1895. Power, who had been called to the bar in 1881, earned his living by journalism and the practice of law, and in 1893 married Avis Weiss, the widow of a surgeon and the mother of one son. John O’Connor-Power died at his home in Putney, London, on 21st February 1919 and was buried in Abney Park Cemetery. His final years had been darkened by ill-health and the death of his stepson in the 1914-18 War. Written by Barry Lally (Original Published in April/May 2013 issue of Ballinasloe Life Magazine)In the south aisle of St. Michael’s Church, next to the chancel arch, is a stained-glass window bearing the legend: “In honour of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Of your Christian charity pray for the souls of Junius and Frances Horne. Erected by their son Sir Andrew Horne. A.D. 1915.” Who was this Andrew Horne? He was, in fact, one the leading obstetric and gynaecological physicians in the Ireland of his time, born on 8th August 1856 in Society Street. His father, described as a general merchant, owned several properties on the street.
Educated in Clongowes Wood College and the Carmichael School of Medicine, Dublin, after which he studied for a year in Vienna (1883- ), Horne returned to Dublin and set up an obstetric and gynaecological practice at 28 Harcourt Street. In 1894, as a founder member, first joint master and ex officio governor of the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, he was, from its beginnings, largely responsible for the management of the institution. A pioneer in obstetric procedures, he performed the first caesarean section at Holles Street in 1901. Horne served as President of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland from 1908 to 1910, and was re-elected joint master of Holles Street in 1909 and 1919, presiding over a period of medical development and expansion of the institution which later became the largest maternity hospital in Europe. He married Margaret Norman in 1884, and the couple had five children, two of whom followed their father into the medical profession. When his wife had a leg amputated in 1918, Horne preserved the severed limb in formaldehyde and on her death in 1920 placed it in her coffin. James Joyce featured Horne as a character in chapter 14 (The Oxen of the Sun) of Ulysses, where his name appears ten times and he also subsequently received a mention in the same author’s Finnegan’s Wake. Horne, though, never read Ulysses and was seemingly unappreciative of the bestowal of literary immortality, for it is said that on one occasion he had Joyce thrown out of the hospital when he caught him snooping about in the maternity ward. Sir Andrew Horne died on 5th September 1924 at his home 94 Merrion Square, Dublin, and was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. Written by Barry Lally (Originally Published in Feb/March 2013 issue of Ballinasloe Life Magazine)As Ireland journeys through a decade that will be rendered noteworthy by the number of its centenary commemorations, it may be appropriate to recall that we in Ballinasloe can justly claim the right to celebrate the life of one of the town’s most distinguished sons whose centenary will occur in 2019. His name was Eugene Watters, born on 3rd April 1919 in a house on Dunlo Hill next door to Dooley’s pub. Tom, his father, a veteran of the 1914-18 War, owned and drove a motor hackney cab, one of only two in Ballinasloe at the time.
From the infant school in the Convent of Mercy, Eugene moved across the road to the boys’ school in 1925, then housed in a number of rooms at the back of the Town Hall. While there he was greatly influenced by a young teacher from Kilconnell, Paddy Joyce, who instilled in him a lifelong love of the Irish language. In 1930 the family moved to a local authority house in Brackernagh, and two years later Eugene won a scholarship to Garbally College, which he attended first as a day boy and subsequently as a boarder. In Garbally he excelled in English, Irish and the Classical languages, and was awarded a scholarship to U.C.G. in 1937. Due to family circumstances, however, he was unable to take this degree, and went instead to St. Patrick’s Training College, Drumcondra. On qualifying as a national teacher, he obtained a post in a boys’ school in Rathfarnham in September 1939, and the following year he enrolled in the extra-mural BA course at UCD. Although Eugene did well at his studies, eventually graduating with a first-class MA Degree in English Literature, his experiences in college left him with an abiding dislike of academics. In November 1944 Eugene moved to a national school in Finglas, and on 10th March 1945 he married Una McDonnell from Cappagh, a librarian and a talented visual artist. The honeymoon was spent touring the south of Ireland in a horsedrawn caravan Eugene had built with his own hands. While he had been writing since his time in Garbally, it was in the years from 1946 to 1960 that Eugene developed as a prolific author. Articles, pantomime scripts, poems and short stories flowed from his pen, the latter mostly inspired by characters and incidents recalled from his earlier years in Ballinasloe, where he and Una would holiday each year, boating and fishing on the Suck. His long poem, The Weekend of Dermot and Grace, generally regarded as his most important work, was completed during this period, and his only novel in English, Murder in Three Moves, was published in 1960. By now Eugene realized that he could not successfully combine his career as a writer with his job as a teacher, so he decided to resign from the school to devote himself fulltime to his literary work. His decision had Una’s wholehearted support. Whereas hitherto most of his output had been in English, from 1961 onwards the emphasis shifted to Irish, and in that year his first play in the language, De Réir na Rúibricí (According to the Rubrics) was produced at both the Taibhdhearc in Galway and the Damer in Dublin. It was a comedy based on the characters of Michael Connolly, a sacristan in St. Michael’s Church in the 1920s, and Fr. John Heenan, a local curate, and received popular and as well as critical acclaim. Two years later Eugene was appointed editor of Feasta, a literary magazine published by the Gaelic League. Profoundly affected by the sudden death of his wife on 20th November 1965, Eugene experienced great difficulty in coming to terms with his loss, which was to adversely influence his writing for years afterwards. He spent some months teaching in the school attached to St. Mary’s Children’s Hospital, Cappagh, in 1967 and the following year he left his Dublin home and went to live in a riverside house he had bought in Maganey, located between the town of Carlow and Athy. His health, however, deteriorated, and he returned to Ballinasloe to reside with his family, now domiciled in “Pines View” at the Grand Canal Basin, formerly the harbourmaster’s house. While in Ballinasloe he directed a play be had co-authored with Sandra Warde, a young local wrier, The Song of the Nightingale, for the Relays Drama Group, and accompanied the production on its tour of the festival circuit. On 28th December 1972 he married Rita Kelly, a budding creative writer and a daughter of Peter Kelly, Brackernagh, in St. Michael’s Church, and the couple went directly to take up residence in the house at Maganey. Their time in the “Lough House”, as their home was known, proved to be a fruitful period for both Eugene’s and Rita’s writing. However, because of their precarious financial situation, Eugene was obliged to undertake a lot of non-creative work such as lecturing, adjudicating and reviewing, which ultimately took a heavy toll on his physical well-being. In August 1981 they moved to another house, this time on the main road to Carlow. Their last move was to “The leap” near Enniscorthy the following June, where Eugene succumbed to a heart attack on 24th August. Two days later he was laid to rest beside his beloved Una in Creagh cemetery. Apart from the works already mentioned, other notable publications of his include L’Attaque, Lux Aeterna, Dé Luain, Lá Fhéile Míchíl, Infinite Variety, The Road to Brightcity, An Lomnochtán and Fornocht do Chonac. Eugene Waters was indisputably the most versatile creative writer in Irish to come from a non-Gaeltacht background, and showed exceptional courage in attempting to live by his pen alone. If he is less well remembered today than he deserves to be, this may be at least partly due to the fact that he had a deepseated aversion to organisations and wasn’t part of the Irish language revival movement. Also, he failed to conform to the stereotype of the Irish man of letters, inasmuch as he never frequented public houses or cultivated the society of the Dublin literary set. His memory awaits a fitting and deserved monument in the town where he drew his first breath of life. Written by Barry Lally (Original Published in Oct/Nov 2012 issue of Ballinasloe Life MagazineA TV documentary partly shot in Ballinasloe last June focuses on the life of a local man few of the present generation will have even heard of. His name was George Brendan Nolan (right) who, as George Brent, went on to star in some 90 feature films in the Hollywood of the ‘30s and ‘40s, playing opposite such queens of the silver screen as Greta Garbo, Merle Oberon, Ginger Rogers, Myrna Loy, Barbara Stanwyck, Olivia de Havilland, Mary Astor and Bette Davis. Made by Dearg Films for TG4 and scheduled for screening next November, the documentary forms part of a series on Irishmen from a Republican background who subsequently carved out careers for themselves in Hollywood. While Nolan’s life offers a perfect example of the myth-making powers of Tinseltown’s spindoctors, the programme’s producer Brian Reddin has managed to disentangle the facts from fiction. The following has been incontrovertibly established: Nolan was born on 15th March 1904 in Main Street at his father John’s public house in the premises now occupied by Stronge’s Photography. His mother Mary (née McGuinness) hailed from Clonfad. When the family broke up, his mother took most of the children with her to New York, leaving George and two of his sisters behind. The 1911 Census of Population records him as living with his elder sister Lucy in the home of his maternal uncle Richard in Clonfad. In 1915 his mother sent for him and his sister Kathleen to come and live with her in New York, which they did. He eventually became involved in theatre in that city where he was spotted by Hollywood talent scouts in the late 1920s. Married five times, he had
two children, Barry and Susanne, by his last wife, and died on 26th May 1979 in Solana Beach, California. So much for the facts. Initially assigned tough-guy roles in his early films, Nolan soon changed his surname to Brent, and here the studios’ public relations people seemingly decided that his CV needed some fleshing-out to fit his screen image. What better than a national record as an active I.R.A. man in the War of Independence? To greatly assist matters it was conveniently discovered that a certain George Nolan from Kimmage in Dublin had been part of the Marrowbone Lane garrison as a member of “A” Company of the 4th Battalion, Dublin Brigade of the Irish Volunteers, during the 1916 Easter Rising. This George Nolan later joined an Active Service (full-time) Unit of the I.R.A. in 1920, and was involved in many engagements with British forces up to the Truce of July 1921. That a young lad of 15 or 16 would cross the Atlantic to participate in a guerrilla campaign in Ireland might be a tad difficult for even the most ardent movie fan to swallow. However, another fortuitous discovery was made which took care of that little problem. A George Nolan (of whom nothing else is apparently known) was born near Shannonbridge in 1899, and by conflating the three Georges the PR boys contrived to concoct a plausible tale. Nevertheless, Brian Reddin believes that it may just have been possible that Nolan did play a peripheral part in the War of Independence as a courier for the I.R.A. There were thousands of such couriers and the vast majority of their names were unrecorded. Whatever the truth of the matter, it cannot detract from George Brent’s achievement over two decades as an actor at the top of his profession in a very competitive environment. Ballinasloe can take legitimate pride in the story of his success. Written by Barry Lally (Originally Published in Aug/Sept 2012 issue of Ballinasloe Life Magazine)At the junction of the Market Square and Main Street, near the upper end of the Lazy Wall, for several decades a hoarding rested against the lamp-post. Popularly known as the Picture Board, it was used to display large, hand-painted posters advertising the current attractions at the Plaza Cinema.The hoarding’s situation in the middle of Ballinasloe could be taken as symbolizing the central position then occupied by film-going in the leisure activities of the town and its surroundings countryside.
The public house was still a male preserve, but everybody “went to the pictures”, all classes, men and women, old and young. At a time when the generality of homes were less warm and comfortable than they are today, the cinema offered a welcome refuge where a good seat could be had for the price of a pint of beer. With the assiduity of something akin to a religious obligation, many people attended the cinema once or twice a week regardless of “what was on” and were in no way deterred by the prospect of having to watch the screen through a fog of cigarette smoke. Although normally featuring the least attractive films of the week, Sunday nights saw the both the Plaza and Central Cinemas packed to capacity, with seats unobtainable booked before midday. While censorship was draconian, with some films so severely cut as to render their plots incomprehensible, this didn’t seem to greatly bother audiences at the time. It was enough that the cinema offered glimpses of a world of glamour, colour and excitement so much – and so pleasurably – at odds with everyday life. As the late John McGahern wrote in one of his novels: “All pictures were marvellous. People who said one was good another bad had some secret knowledge.” Thursday and Saturday matinees in the Central (Now Utah Outlet on Society Street) with a serial as part of the programme, seldom failed to draw in the town’s youngsters in their droves. A schoolboy nonsense rhyme that went the rounds in those days suggests the pervasiveness of cinema culture amongst the local children: I went to the pictures tomorrow. I took a front seat at the back. I fell from the floor to the gallery, and broke a front bone in my back. On certain Church holidays, such as Corpus Christi, altar boys were sometimes rewarded with complimentary tickets, or “passes”, as they called them, to the Plaza, (The Town Hall Theatre) then under parochial management. This cinema began operating in the Town Hall in the 1920’s, spanning both the silent era and the age of the “talkies”. Sunday matinees used to be part of its programme but were abandoned for some reason in the early ’50s. The Plaza underwent a change of name in the 1975 when it was taken over by a cinema chain and became known as the Aisling. It closed in June 1983 with a screening of David Attenborough’s Ghandi. The Central, colloquially referred to as “The New Hall”, opened its doors in Society Street in 1932 on the site of Harpur’s Dance Hall, and continued in business up to the spring of 1997, closing with The Man in the Iron Mask. When Telefís Éirann was launched in 1962 there was no sudden, dramatic drop in cinema attendance. Nevertheless, it marked the start of a steady decline in audience numbers extending over three decades. People lost the habit of regular movie-going, preferring instead to stay in and watch the magic box in the corner of the room. A modest increase in personal incomes in the ‘60s made possible domestic improvements, encouraging a stay-at-home attitude. Soon the serried ranks of country folk’s bicycles stretching from the wall of Fallon’s pub in Main Street to the edge of the pavement were no longer a sight to behold on Sunday evenings. The cinemas were dealt another blow in the early ‘80s with the advent of videos, enabling people to view the movies of their choice while relaxing on their living-room couches. Cinema-going experienced a revival in the 1990s when the multiplexes came on the scene. These were large cinemas, each comprising a number of auditoria, thus allowing for the screening of several films simultaneously. However, this development had a disastrous effect on the single-screen houses because of an arrangement whereby the film distributors would not release prints of movies until the multiplexes had done with them. As a result, there are few if any old-style movie theatres left in Ireland at present. In recent years a new cinema was mooted for Ballinasloe in relation to the Dunlo Retail Park. Sadly the downturn in the economy seems to have slowed the arrival of the screens. However, when things improve, as the surely must, hopefully the plans will again be taken out and progress made in ensuring their realisation. A cinema would constitute a considerable asset for the town and while it might never again play the important role on the local recreational scene as represented by the old “Picture Board”, its value in making Ballinasloe a more attractive place to live and work in can scarcely be in doubt. Written by Ken Kelly (Originally Published in Feb/Mar 2012 issue of Ballinasloe Life Magazine)As we approach the centenary of the terrible sinking of the “Titanic” on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic in April 1912, many families in East Galway will remember the loss of their loved ones who were on board. Five people from the locality boarded the luxury liner but only one woman returned later to live out her life in East Galway. Margaret Hopkins (nee Mannion) was one of five people from the Ahascragh/Caltra area who was on the ill-fated liner as they headed off to start a new life in America. But when “The Titanic” hit the iceberg only Margaret and her friend Ellie Mockler were saved as Margaret’s fiancé and two other men from the parish, perished in the disaster. The tragedy was horrific but for the closely-knit East Galway parish is was devastating. The five immigrants were widely known, all coming from large families, hoping to join other relations in the New World and make it their homes. For weeks prior to their departure families and relatives joined forces to ensure they would get a “rousing send off.” Margaret Mannion was born in the parish of Caltra on 1st November 1883 and at 22 years of age set sail for America with her fiancé Martin Gallagher, together with Thomas Kilgannon, Thomas Smyth and a friend, Ellen Mockler. The quintet had purchased their tickets in Ryan’s shop in Ballygar, for the princely sum of £7.14s 9d each, but a huge amount of money in those days. When tragedy struck, after the “Titanic” struck an iceberg, the two ladies, Margaret and Ellen were helped into a lifeboat by the three men, who the women never saw again. They unfortunately were among the nearly 1,500 who lost their lives on that fateful night. On reaching the States, Margaret joined up with her sister Mary, and worked there for seven years while Ellen Mockler joined the Sisters of Mercy in Worcester, Massachusetts. She never returned to Ireland, and died on her 95th birthday in 1984. In 1919, Margaret Mannion returned to Ireland, where she met and married Martin Hopkins. They lived in the village of Ahascragh, raising a family before moving to Lismany, Laurencetown, in the late fifties. In 1963, Margaret Hopkins featured on Telefis Eireann’s first ever live broadcast Television show from Hayden’s Hotel, in Ballinasloe which was titled “Location.” Interviewed by the late P.P. O’Reilly on the live programme, Margaret gave a graphic account of the night she lost her fiancé and two other close friends, right in front of her eyes.
“We were all so excited about starting a new life in America. I was with the man I hoped to marry. The five of us were all very close and we couldn’t get over the style and luxury of “The Titanic.” There were over 2,000 passengers on board and we were on D Deck (which was for third-class passengers). “I was just going asleep on the third night when there was a thud and the engines stopped. Panic set in and as we tried to run down the corridors sailors were firing shots in the air. Lifeboats were lowered as the waters rushed in as children and women were helped onto the boats. Some men tried to get on but were stopped by sailors. It was pure mayhem” she said. As Margaret managed to get into the second last lifeboat she looked up and saw her betrothed saying the rosary and minute later “The Unsinkable” went down. “I will never forget the roaring and crying of the drowning men. It was heartbreaking” she recounted. After twelve bitterly cold hours at sea, Margaret and other survivors were taken on board the “Carpathia” and it was only then she saw her friend, Ellen Mockler, safe and well on board. Both reached New York safely, thanking the Lord for saving them. Spending the last eleven years of her life in Lismany, Margaret gave many interviews to the media of her memories on that ill-fated trip. She had first-hand experience of one of the world’s worst disasters and “lived to tell the tale”. Naturally she still got very emotional recounting the horrific deaths that three of her close friends met. Each time she related the saga, Margaret always paused to say a silent prayer in their memory. Ironically it was on the “Carpathia” that Margaret returned to Ireland seven years after it had rescued her from the icy waters and taken her to New York. When she died on 15th May 1970, in her 86th year, Margaret Hopkins was the last survivor of The Titanic disaster, living in Ireland. She was a remarkable woman who returned to marry and raise a family in Ireland instead of what might have been only for that enormous iceberg striking “The Unsinkable” nearly one hundred years ago. |
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