“Playing at war”? The Waterford National Volunteers, 1914-1917
The on-going success of the Society depends on enthusiastic members volunteering a small amount of time each month.
“Playing at war”? The Waterford National Volunteers, 1914-1917
"Life will never be the same again": Irish women's experiences in the Great War and its aftermath by Dr Fionnuala Walsh
Date: Friday, February 23rd
Time: 8 pm
Venue: St. Patrick’s Gateway Centre, Waterford (Eircode X91 YX61)
(left) Irish War Savings Committee, Poster No. 3 (source: Imperial War Museum Art.IWM PST 13602)
(right) Hely's Limited, Litho, 1915, unkown artist (source: Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2003668400/)
In this lecture Fionnuala will explore the impact of the Great War on ordinary women's lives in Ireland.
With over 200,000 Irish men serving in the wartime British Army, the war's effects were inevitably felt at home. Drawing on extensive primary research, this lecture explores life on the home front for women.
The war caused an increase in the cost of living and women in Ireland struggled to cope with rising inflation and food shortages. The mobilisation of men for the armed forces brought distress and anxiety for those waiting at home and too many received the telegram with devastating news as the war waged on. Women were keen to do their bit in Ireland as elsewhere and thousands of Irish women participated in war effort activities at home or close to the front in the Red Cross and Irish War Hospital Supply Depot. Some also joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps and Women’s Royal Naval Service. The establishment of munitions factories in Ireland, including one in Waterford, provided new opportunities for women’s employment. Many of the war’s effects on women’s role in society were short-lived and the paper briefly explores women’s lives in the aftermath of Armistice and demobilisation. There will be some local case studies of Waterford women included highlighting the commonalities of wartime Waterford with the wider national experience.
Dr Fionnuala Walsh is Assistant Professor of Modern Irish History at University College Dublin.
She completed her PhD and Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship in Trinity College Dublin. Her first book, Irish women and the Great War was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. It won the National University of Ireland Publication Prize in Irish History in 2021 and was shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society Whitfield Prize. She has published extensively on the social history of Ireland’s experience during the First World War and its aftermath.Dr Walsh served as secretary of the Women’s History Association of Ireland from 2020 to 2023.
********************* FORTHCOMING LECTURES **********************
The Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society’s 2023 – 2024 lecture series continues in February and March in St Patrick’s Gateway Centre:
22/03/2024 Dr Shane Browne will deliver a talk titled "Playing at war"?: The Waterford National Volunteers, 1914-17.
26/04/2024 Prof. Terence Dooley will deliver a talk titled The Irish Land Commission and its archives: why they should be opened to the research public
********************* ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING **********************
The Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society’s AGM will be held in St Patrick’s Gateway Centre at 8pm on April 12th, 2024.
The committee would like to encourage any memberswho are interested in joining the committee to contact any of the current committee members.
The on-going success of the Society depends on enthusiastic members volunteering a small amount of time each month.
On Friday 26th January 2024, genealogist and local historian Tony Hennessy, will deliver a talk titled ‘‘Annestown, Lovely Annestown – oh do you wonder why I dream of you!’’.
Please see below a list of the upcoming lectures up until summer this year, starting Friday, 26/01/24.
| Tony Hennessy Annestown, lovely Annestown, oh do you wonder why I dream of you! |
23/02/2024 | Dr Fionnuala Walsh "Life will never be the same again": Irish women's experiences in the Great War and its aftermath |
22/03/2024 | Dr Shane Browne "Playing at war"?: The Waterford National Volunteers, 1914-17 |
12/04/2024 | Annual General Meeting |
26/04/2024 | Prof. Terence Dooley The Irish Land Commission and its archives: why they should be opened to the research public |
31/05/2024 | Dr Edel Bhreathnach Ardmore, Lismore and Waterford: a tale of three competing medieval churches |
Our final lecture of the year will take place on Friday 24th November at 8pm in St Patrick's Gateway Center, Patrick Street, Waterford.
Topic : New Perspectives on the Archaeology of Iron Age 'Celtic' Ireland'.
In this lecture Dr Becker will explore the fundamental changes in our knowledge and interpretation of the archaeology of Ireland's Iron Age past. Until recently the people and communities who lived in Ireland during the Iron Age were solely visible through finds of 'Celtic' Iron Age artefacts. These objects were mostly found in the northern half of the island which led scholars to ponder what sort of society existed in those parts of the country, like Waterford, where these objects were not found. New discoveries, from archaeological excavation and other research, over recent decades now allows us to reconstruct the lifeways of local Iron Age populations across the whole island and to re-visit old questions relating to the cultural and ethnic identity of the people who lived here in this formative period.
Dr Katharina Becker is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology in University College Cork, where she teaches on the Late Bronze Age and Iron Archaeology of Ireland, Britain and Europe. Her research is focused on the archaeology of Later Prehistoric Ireland, about which she has published extensively. Katharina is director of UCC's Higher Diploma in Archaeology, a 1-year conversion degree for anyone who already has an undergraduate degree in another subject and would like to obtain an Archaeology qualification, she is always delighted to chat to potential new students.
BLAA-THERINGS
STORIES FROM THE GENTLE COUNTY, WATERFORD
BLAA-THERINGS is a collection of stories that look at the forgotten, unusual and quirky tales and lives that concern the history of the Gentle County, Waterford.
From colourful local characters to titans of European and World History, this eclectic assortment of essays is easy reading for those who wish to discover stories about unfamiliar figures in remarkable times during the history of Waterford city and county.
There's something for everyone, from music and sport to economics and politics. All these tales come with a Deise-view, that transforms blackguarding to blaggarding into BLAA-THERINGS.
A SELECTION OF WATERFORD STORIES:
⦁ TAKE ME TO THE RIVER: THE SWEET SUIR IN SONG & STORY
⦁ ANNE HUNTER: WATERFORD POETESS & HAYDN’S MUSE?
⦁ ‘cogomen of the “untouched”’: WATERFORD & A FOILED-PLOT IN THE 1798 REBELLION
⦁ KATE TOWNSEND (1830s – 1883): ‘QUEEN OF THE DEMIMONDE’
⦁ WILLIAM J. KENNY: WATERFORD’S BRITISH CONSUL-GENERAL OF THE PHILIPPINES, 1903-1908
⦁ DENIS A. MCCARTHY: CARRICK-BORN POET OF BOSTON
⦁ A WATERFORD CHANGELING?: ADOPTION & ABDUCTION ABSURDITIES IN 1880
⦁ THE WATERFORD ‘WATCHDOG OF ECUADOR’: COMMODORE JAMES F. POWER
⦁ MOUNTFORD LUPTON: REMAINS WITH ROYAL CONNECTIONS
⦁ KUBELÍK CAN: A CZECH VIOLINIST AT THE THEATRE ROYAL
⦁ P.A. POWERS: MICKEY MOUSE’S WATERFORD CONNECTION
⦁ LUCIE DORICE WHITE: TEN YEARS IN SOVIET RUSSIA
⦁ MICHEAL O’BRIEN & THE FIRST TELEVISION SET IN WATERFORD CITY
⦁ EDWARD MORLAND LEWIS (1903 – 1943): A WELSH OFFICER ARTIST IN WATERFORD
⦁ MARY LARKIN: A BIGAMOUS BARMAID OR SOCIETY’S SHAME?
⦁ TOWER AT WATERFORD BY L.S. LOWRY (1965)
Available from Amazon at Blaa-therings by Cian Manning
Dr Vandra Costello, will deliver a talk titled The lure of the sea in Georgian Ireland , how the pursuit of the sublime and the fashion for sea bathing changed the appearance of the coast and the ways in which people engaged with the sea’ to the Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society at 8 pm on Friday, October 20th in St Patrick’s Gateway Centre, Waterford (Eircode X91 YX61).
From the mid-eighteenth-century seaside resorts began to develop in Ireland and the practice of sea bathing was first popularised. In her lecture, Vandra Costello will explore notions of the therapeutic benefits of sea air which led the aristocracy to build or reorientate houses to give views of, and access to, the sea with resulting effects on coastal landscapes.
Dr Vandra Costello is a garden writer and historic gardens and landscape historian. She publishes widely on garden and landscape history and is the author of Irish Demesne Landscapes 1660–1740 (Four Courts Press, 2015).