We can’t thank George Stacpoole and the valuers enough.  They travelled from near and far – Eoin Ryan from Straffan Antiques, Michael Connell, Dublin, Weldon Jewellers, Dublin, George Mealy, Castlecomer, Jim Noonan, Limerick, Eddie McMahon, Clare, our own Robin O’Donnell, Ballina and George himself from Adare. 

There were lots of happy people leaving with great valuations for their items, George Mealy took quite a few books and maps for auction so we have the results of their sales to look forward to.  

We raised €736 in valuation fees and a further €150 in donations, so we have a bit to go before we can afford our Historic Information Plaques and self-guided walk but it is a start and we would like to thank all who attended and of course the Lakeside who kindly provided the venue free of charge as they do for all our talks.

We would also like to thank the Clare Champion, Clare FM and the Nenagh Guardian who promoted the event in print and on air.

George Stacpoole has generously agreed to co-ordinate the valuers those being: Michael Connell (Michael Connell Antiques, Dublin) John Weldon (Weldon’s Antique Jewellers, Dublin), Eoin Ryan (Straffan Antiques), Robin O’Donnell (Hibernian Antique Fairs), Eddie McMahon (Coins and Banknotes, Clare), Jim Noonan (Noonan’s Antiques, Limerick) and Fonsie Mealey (Fine Art and Rare Books, Castlecomer) and of course, George (Stacpoole Antiques, Adare).   
Many of the valuers are members of the Irish Antique Dealers Association and will happily value your items for a fee of €5 for one item or €10 for two or more.  Between the valuers there is a broad range of specialities from jewellery, furniture, porcelain, coins and notes, books and fine art so attendees on the day will be guaranteed an expert valuation of their items. 

A wonderful way to pass a summer Sunday on the banks of the Shannon in the beautiful twin villages of Killaloe and Ballina. 

Approximately 60 people, both residents and local people joined us in the dining room of the Nursing Home for an afternoon of sharing memories and telling stories. We invited anyone who grew up in the Killaloe-Ballina area and had memories of what our twin-towns were like in times past, and we also welcomed those who wanted to hear stories of what it was like to live here, and how the towns have changed over the years.

A fantastic slideshow of over 60 photos of local buildings, people and events was presented first which was thoroughly enjoyed by all, and there was great reminiscing about local people and times past.
The Local History Society were delighted to find out that a number of older people from our communities would be happy to be interviewed and recorded, and we also have been given a number of photos which we can scan and document for future generations.

Following this, we tucked into some tasty treats which were kindly provided by Lakes Nursing Home.

Local band, the Shannon Folk, finished off the evening with a variety of local and Irish songs which everyone could sing along to, and they even managed to get some dancers to the floor.

We would like to say a huge thanks to everyone who made this such a special day for all! We hope to do it again soon.

This event was held as part of The Big Hello! – The National Community Weekend 2019. The National Community Weekend 2019 took place on the May Bank Holiday weekend and was a celebration to everybody, for everybody!
It was kindly sponsored by Clare Local Community Development Committee and Tipperary Local Community Development Committee.

At a special Awards ceremony in the Royal Irish Academy on Dawson Street, Dublin last Wednesday, MC Mary Kennedy commended communities and individuals all over the country who in total organised 5,300 events in Ireland to celebrate Heritage Week in August 2018. Prizes were presented on the day by Minister Seán Kyne, accompanied by Virginia Teehan, the newly appointed CEO of the Heritage Council and Michael Parsons, Chairperson of the Heritage Council.

Awards were presented in five different categories:

Heritage Hero Award –
The Heritage Hero Award celebrates an individual who always goes the extra mile for heritage, who makes an outstanding contribution to the protection and promotion of heritage in Ireland. We would like to say huge congratulations to Eugene Dunbar from Co. Westmeath, who was chosen from 592 entries under this category.

Le Cheile san Eoraip Awards
As part of European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018 the new Le Cheile san Eoraip Award recognises event organisers who explore Ireland’s heritage connections with other places in Europe. Three prizes of €1,000 are awarded to the organisers of events during EYCH 2018.

Heritage Communities
The Heritage Communities Award recognises events that bring communities together to celebrate National Heritage Week.

Cool for Kids
The Cool for Kids Award recognises events that helped children learn about and enjoy heritage and encouraged children and families to participate in National Heritage Week.

Hidden Heritage Award –
The Hidden Heritage Award shines a light on Ireland’s hidden heritage. This award recognises event organisers who successfully explored lesser known aspects of Ireland’s heritage during National Heritage Week.

The Killaloe Ballina Local History Society were delighted and honoured to be shortlisted under this category for our Heritage Week event “Sharing Memories”, where we shared recordings from the Killaloe Heritage collection; a project which took place in the early 1990’s and involved interviewing and recording a number of older people from the Killaloe & Ballina area. These oral history projects capture the lives of the ordinary everyday people in our communities and give an insight into what these historical twin-towns were like to live in years ago. The Killaloe Heritage Collection is currently stored in the Local Studies Centre in Ennis and very few people are aware of its existence, including family members of those who were interviewed as part of this project.
The Killaloe-Ballina Local History Society has now digitised this entire collection of cassettes and we aim to make them available locally and online over the coming year.

We would like to say a huge thanks to all those who have assisted with this project.

Further details on Killaloe Ballina Local History Society, and this Oral History project, can be found on http://www.info---links.com

This month is the birthday month of the society, and to celebrate we have here a gift for you – a history of a history society!

We sorted out a logo straight away, choosing a bridge icon to represent the twin towns. We set up this website, a Facebook page, a mailing list, and our email address (killaloeballinalhs@gmail.com). We asked the library if they would mind us having a talk there the following month, and maybe the one after that – they said yes!

Since that first talk we have hosted twelve more, not stopping even for Christmas! People suggested speakers, we approached others, lecturers contacted us – there seemed to be so much to say about the local history of our twin towns. Take a look through our posters below. Click on any image to see it bigger.

After the first two talks, it became clear that we need to establish a formal committee. We couldn’t join the Irish Local History Federation without one, or apply for grants for projects we wanted to carry out. So, in October 2017, we wrote a constitution and assigned roles to committee members. The 2017-2018 committee are:

• Chairperson: Rose Anne White
• Secretary: Arlene White (no relation!)
• Treasurer: Graham Lightfoot
• Research Officer: Deborah Dudgeon
• Membership Officer: Mary Goss
• Committee Member: Jessica Brown
• Committee Member: Elaine Dinan

Our constitution stipulates two-year terms, and after our AGM in January 2019, this list will change! Unfortunately we don’t have a photo of the group to put up here. We did all go for a few glasses of wine in Wood and Bell wine bar last weekend to celebrate the birthday, and you know it was probably better off that the cameras were absent!

We have always had wonderful attendances at our monthly talks, with a minimum of around sixty in attendance at each, although many times it was much more. This was the reason that, in January 2018, we sadly left our first home in Killaloe Library, where we had always been made so welcome. Our last night there was the December talk on local genealogy by Paddy Waldron. We celebrated with lovely mulled wine and warm mince pies.

Happily we managed to secure a bigger venue, still for free (so we could keep the talks free of any admission fee), from the management at Wood and Bell café, and we were delighted to move in here in January. It was just as well too, as the January talk by Ger Madden on the historic islands of Lough Derg attracted over 130 people! Now people were able to buy coffee, tea, snacks, wine, or beer both before and after the talks, and they were very happy too! As a thank you to Wood and Bell, our Research Officer Deborah wrote a history of their building, which you can read here.

Writing online articles has been a good way to explore the history of our local area. In the past year, we have published quite a few, including:

• The Historic Boat ‘Phoenix’ of Killaloe
• Bennett’s Chemist on Church St
• The History of Rohan’s on Main St
• A Loyal Servant – Killaloe Bridge
• Moving a Church Without a Boat
• Storied Space: a Visit to Kilnaboy
• Ballina’s Old Fountain Stone
• St Flannan’s Cathedral

In fact we were enjoying researching the local area together so much that we came up with a way that anyone else could drop in and research it too. In February 2018 we established Saturday Morning History Club. It runs from 10am to 12noon every second Saturday morning in Killaloe Library. It is FREE to attend, and Gráinne the librarian lets us bring coffee in, thanks Gráinne! We use the local history shelves of the library, or the computers to link up with online Ordnance Survey maps. Since February, we have welcomed members of the public who wanted help with their genealogy research, or with piecing together the history of the buildings they own or live in. In June, we added a scanning service to this morning club, which led to a number of brilliant local finds, including the Historical Retail Receipts Archive.

Once we knew that there were projects that we might need to apply for grants for, we quickly realised that we needed member numbers, as all the grant applications asked for how many subscribing members your society had. To that end, in March, we opened up membership to the Society. We ordered cards online that we could fill in with people’s names and their numbers, and we are on our second order of these as we ran out! We currently have around sixty paying members, and we are very grateful for their support.

As an incentive for people to join, since our lectures were all already free, we decided to run some members-only tours. We ran two of these so far this year. The first was in April to Clarisford Palace (photos here) and the second in July to St Flannan’s Cathedral (photos here). The reaction was fantastic, and our members are so illustrious that they were themselves able to contribute to the history of both buildings on the tour. We were delighted to be the facilitators of these new channels of communication between the carers for this historic buildings and local researchers.

Speaking of grants, we are delighted to say that thanks to laying the groundwork previously mentioned (setting up a committee and membership), we were able to apply for a Creative Ireland grant earlier this year. Society Secretary Arlene White won the grant to carry out an oral history project. This oral history project was presented to the public for the first time just this past week, and has grown legs since. Arlene worked with Dr Kevin Griffin of DIT to research interviews carried out in 1992 of the most elderly residents of Killaloe and Ballina. You can read a full summary of the night here. We received so much positive feedback from the community that night that the project is going ahead, with new interviews to take place of elderly residents locally, to record their memories of living in our local area during past times. The first interview, with Jimmy Whelan, pictured above, was played last Wednesday night. Watch this space for more on this exciting new project!

Which brings us up to now! We have great plans for the future. We put out a call for speakers for 2019 a month or so ago, and we are now booked up for at least the next twelve months. When we had a hunch this time last year that there was a lot to say about local history in Killaloe and Ballina, we were not wrong!

The committee would like to thank all of our supporters during this past year, especially the local community who have come together to share the stories of their families, buildings, and folklore. We would also not be able to do any of what we do without the specific support of Kincora Guesthouse, who accommodate our travelling speakers for free, of Killaloe Library, who continue to be our home from home on Saturday mornings, and of Wood and Bell café, who allow us to use their beautiful historic venue as a place to hold our talks every month.

Thank you for the past year, and here’s to the next one!