The Country Cooking Of Ireland By Colman Andrews

Eddie Dee & John Moore At Coolnagour Dairy

This lavishly produced Cookery book, published by Chronicle Books San Francisco, has two photographs from the Waterford County Museum image archive. The Coolnagour Dairy in O'Connell including Eddie Dee and John Moore. The other photo is of Liam Morrissey's butcher shop, O'Connell Street - featuring the Morrissey family and lots of meat carcasses hanging on the outside of the shop! The book is available to buy from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

Our image archive has become popular with  publishers, researchers, film makers at home and abroad as a source for historic images.

Visit From 3rd Class, St. Mary's National School, Dungarvan

 

St. Mary's 3rd Class

On Monday morning bright and early we had a visit from the girls from 3rd Class St. Mary's National School, Dungarvan, with their teachers Ms. Veale and Ms. Harty. They were doing research on the Famine and so came along to see our display. For a lot of the children this was their first visit to the Museum and they thoroughly enjoyed their visit. Our Education Officer, Tony, was on hand with some pictures for the children to colour. The handling objects and the display of toys were also a big hit.

Community Service Awards 2009

The Service To Community Awards are given each year to people who give their services to their Community. This year one of our Founding Members and present Committee Member Mr.Jim Shine was the recipient of one of these awards.
Jim received his award for his years of  work with the 4th Waterford Scout Troop and for the overseeing and development of the scout camp site at Glenshelane.  We congratulate Jim on this well deserved award.

Waterford Museum On TV

Just a brief note to let everyone know that the museum appeared on RTE television last night. The piece was for the Nationwide programme and it features interviews with three museum society members about the train service between Waterford City and Mallow.

Donal Walsh, a founder member of the museum society filmed the last journey of the train on the line in 1967. This film forms the basis for the feature. Museum Curator Willie Fraher and museum member (and web designer) Martin Whelan were also interviewed. There are a few nice film clips showing the interior of the museum which we have worked so hard to renovate over the past year.

The clip can be viewed at http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0201/nationwide.html

Click on the Waterford-Mallow link. Hope you enjoy the footage.

Spring 2010 Lecture Series By Historian Julian Walton At Dunhill Education Centre

A series of Lectures will be given by one of Waterford County Museum's trustees Julian Walton including some Special Guest Speakers at the Dunhill Education Centre every Thursday from 21st January 2010. Lectures to commence at 8.00 pm and last approx one to one and a half hours, followed by tea/coffee and biscuits.  Admission is €7.00.

Waterford And Newfoundland
Ray McGrath: 21st January

Lismore, The Boyles And Cavendishes
Julian Walton: 28th January

Arming The IRA: Running Guns Into County Waterford, 1921-1922
Pat McCarthy: 5th February (Friday)

The Life And Times Of Dan Fraher
 William Fraher: 11th February

Professor O'Hickey And The Revival Of Irish
 Julian Walton:18th February

The Pallisers Of  Comeragh
 Séan Murphy: 25th February

 Curraghmore, The Powers And Beresfords
 Julian Walton: 4th March

 Tyrone Power And His Descendants
 Julian Walton: 11th March

A surprise!
Julian Walton: 18th March

Lecture Series On How To Trace Your Family Tree
Joanne Rothwell will also hold a series of lectures which will be held in the Dunhill Education Centre on the following Mondays: February 15th, February 22nd, March 1st and March 8th. Lectures take place from 10.30 to 12 noon and tea/coffee will be served afterwards.

Cost For Lecture Series:  €40 Adults & €30 Students and unemployed. To book a place please call 051 396934. If you want to trace your genealogy please read our useful Guide To Tracing Your Family Tree In Waterford.(.pdf file)

Ireland Newfoundland Committee

Group Of The Irish Contingent In New Foundland, 2009

The Ireland Newfoundland festival is a community festival that rotates between Ireland and Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada. This festival focuses on the links between the coastal communities on both sides of the Atlantic. Ireland is set to host the festival in September 2010.

Up until now the Irish  festival was hosted by the Counties Waterford, Wexford and Kilkenny. This year the festival has been opened up  to the Island of Ireland. Due to this change local committees are needed to organise events and attractions in their area for the festival. A meeting was held recently in Merry's Pub to organise a local committee, which was attended by our President Níoclas ó Griofáin.

Níoclas  travelled to Newfoundland in 2009 with a local group, and Waterford County Museum hopes to hold an event to coincide with the visit of the group to Dungarvan in September.

Book Review: Arses & Elbows By James G. Cullinane

If I had to pick my favorite local history book of the first decade of the 21st century I would be hard pressed to choose between Rebel Heart By Terence O'Reilly (click the link for the review) and Arses & Elbows by James G. Cullinane.

I liked O'Reillys book because of the extensive research and easy to read style he brought to an unjustly neglected part of Waterford history, the struggle for independence and the aftermath.

Cullinane's book is an entirely different beast, it is more a memoir than a history book. Part of the attraction of the book for me is that the topic is Abbeyside and in particular the people of Abbeyside. However I don't think you need to be a native of the village to enjoy or learn from the story it tells. What the book has is a great big dollop of honesty and truth running through it. It manages to steer a path halfway between rose-tinted nostalgia and Angela's Ashes misery. The truth might be the authors truth, people may disagree with his opinions and his presentation of the facts but that is the nature of any memoir. Cullinane recognises the flaws and hypocrisies of the world in which he grew up but also celebrates the characters, organisations and community spirit that allowed families to survive in these difficult times.

The book is subtitled 'A time of little change: A boy's life in a small seaside village in 50's Ireland'. Arses & Elbows doesn't concern itself with great historic events and to be honest it doesn't even have a very strong narrative trend through the book. Chapters about Christmas, Dungarvan, the local scout troop, school, the cinema, fair day, sports and local characters can be read independent of each other.

Most of us with an interest in local history have read books that range in presentation from being barely readable to having a high academic style, scattering footnotes like landmines, throughout the text. Fortunately for the reader of Arses & Elbows, Cullinane (as a frequently published author with an MA in Creative Writing) recognises that he has duty to entertain as well as inform his audience. The book is extraordinarily enjoyable to read, a real page turner, packed with colloquialism's and characters.

Cullinane has performed an extraordinary service to his native place in producing this book, it is one of the finest pieces of local social history I have had the privilege to read. Perhaps it is a book that could only have been produced by an emigrant (Cullinane now lives in Mount Kisco, New York). The ribald passages in it may not suit all tastes, I suspect these passages would have been difficult to write if the author was still living cheek by jowl with his subject matter. Be that as it may, for the non-prudish local history enthusiast (a niche target market if ever there was one) this is a must purchase. The book is available from Amazon.com or from Waterford County Museum, email history@waterfordmuseum.ie for availability and pricing.