Upcoming Lecture : Waterford Through the Lens of Lesser-Known Photographers by Andy Kelly, 30/05/2025

 

The Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society 2024 – 2025 lecture series continues at 8 pm on Friday, May 30th, when Andy Kelly, will deliver a talk titled ‘Waterford Through the Lens of Lesser-Known Photographers’, in St Patrick’s Gateway Centre, Waterford (Eircode X91 YX61).

Andy Kelly writes :

‘When I was asked to present a showing of some of my collection of Waterford photos to the Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society it occurred to me that most of the members would probably be familiar with the Arthur H Poole, William Laurence and the James Valentine collections which are readily available both on line and at the National Library in Dublin.

This led me to the title 'Waterford Through the Lens of Lesser-Known Photographers'.

Photography in Waterford goes back to the decade after Fox Talbot launched his 'calotype' process in 1839. By the early 1850s William Despard Hemphil of Clonmel and Francis Edmund Currey of Lismore were exhibiting in both Dublin and London.

My interest in collecting old photographs started in the mid 1960s when I came across a box of photographic materials, which included a quantity of glass negatives from the late 1890s or early 1900s. They were about to be sent to the local refuse dump in Dungarvan and when I showed interest I was allowed to take them home. I started collecting old photos and photographic equipment at that time and I am still collecting to this day.

My presentation will feature the work of up to twenty, both professional and amateur cameramen and women. It will also include some images from collections, which I have acquired over the years as well as a selection glass negatives, and magic lantern slides.

To finish off the presentation I will screen a number of digitised 16mm film clips from the 1930s to the 1950s.’

Andy Kelly was introduced to photography at the age of eight when his mother gave him an old Brownie box camera. Within ten years he had his own darkroom in a converted box room and from then on he was hooked on the hobby of photography.

For over sixty years he has been collecting old photographs of Waterford and surrounding areas. It started after coming across a box of photographic equipment and glass negatives that were about to be dumped. This was in Dungarvan in the early 1960s. The negatives were of Dungarvan around the late 1890s or early 1900 and were taken by Edward Brennan, a Dungarvan photographer. Andy’s fascination with collecting old photographs and film stemmed from that time. He has contributed many photos from his collection to local and national historians, and to film documentary makers down through the years.

His collection now comprises of several hundred glass negatives and magic lantern glass slides and over 60.000 photographs in both negative and digital format. He also has quantity of 16mm film from the 1930s to the early '60s.

In the past year Andy has been instrumental in establishing a film and photographic museum in Youghal, Co. Cork which now has over one hundred and fifty exhibits from a number of donors around the country and abroad.

 

**************** FORTHCOMING TALKS & LECTURES *****************

 

There will be a special lecture in association with the Heritage Office, Waterford City and County Council

13/06/2025 Neil Jackman ‘The Woodstown Viking Settlement – latest discoveries’

To be held in the Medieval Museum

 

**************** SUMMER OUTINGS*****************

Provisional programme further details to be circulated 

22/06/2025       Discovering historic Mothel (afternoon outing)

Full day coach outing: 06/07/2025        Exploring East Cork – Fota House and gardens and St Mary's Collegiate Church, Youghal. Dinner in Youghal.

27/07/2025       St Carthage's Cathedral, Lismore (afternoon outing)

10/08/2025       Ormond Castle, Carrick-on-Suir – Ireland's finest Elizabethan manor house (afternoon outing)

28/08/2025       Milling in Mullinavat – Phelan's Mill (afternoon outing)

 

Upcoming Lecture : A Waterford Chaplain In Romanov Russia by Dr Angela Byrne 25/04/25

The Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society 2024 – 2025 lecture series continues at 8 pm on Friday, April 25th, when Dr Angela Byrne, will deliver a talk titled

 ‘The tsar is far away’: 

Revd Robert Walsh, a Waterford chaplain in Romanov Russia 

in St Patrick’s Gateway Centre, Waterford (Eircode X91 YX61).

 

This talk will focus on the Waterford-born Reverend Robert Walsh (1772–1852), who was a member of the British and Foreign Bible Society and lived in St Petersburg in 1825–6. Walsh published an account of his experiences and impressions of Russia which reveals his understanding of the role of the Orthodox Church in the growing empire and autocratic state. His thoughts on Russian serfdom informed his later investigation of slavery in Brazil. 

Dr Angela Byrne is a historian of women, migration, and travel and exploration in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and has published widely on these topics. She is an editor with the Dictionary of Irish Biography (Royal Irish Academy) and has previously held research and lecturing positions at the universities of Toronto, Greenwich, Ulster and Maynooth, and EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2021 and is a former Marie Curie Fellow.

Upcoming Lecture 28/02/25 : Exploring the Making of 'Irish Food History: A Companion' by Dr Máirtin Mac ConIomaire

 The Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society’s next lecture will be at 8 pm on Friday, February 28th in St Patrick’s Gateway Centre, Waterford (Eircode X91 YX61) when Dr Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire, will deliver a talk titled ‘Exploring the making of ‘Irish Food History: A Companion’’.

 

Food permeates every aspect of Irish life and society, from birth to death—from the new-born’s first suckle to the food traditions associated with Irish wakes and funerals. Essential for survival, historically it has proven elusive to scholarly research, hidden in plain sight. Entangled with the domestic and the feminine, it was perhaps traditionally regarded as too mundane and too quotidian for consideration. Yet, consider what can be revealed by applying the ‘food lens’ to something as fundamental as our sense of place, our basic grounding in townland and byway. Consider the etymological richness of ‘Bóthar’, the Irish word for road (from ‘bó’—cow), defined in width by the length and breadth of a cow, a signifier of the long affair of our bovine past; extending also to our ‘buachaillí’ (boys) and ‘cailíní’ (girls), meaning, respectively, cowboy or herd boy and little herder, the suffix ‘ín’ denoting the diminutive. The true meaning of placenames such as Clonmel, Cappataggle, Glenageary, and Kanturk, all food-related, can only be unlocked through an understanding of their Irish language origins. All are instances of what Martin Doyle succinctly explains as ‘a transliteration from the Irish, preserving the sound but obliterating the meaning’.

In September 2024 an 800-page book titled Irish Food History: A Companion was published by the Royal Irish Academy, and in an open access online version by EUt+ Academic Press. The volume was co-edited by Dr Mac Con Iomaire and Dr Dorothy Cashman, with a foreword by the distinguished historian Professor James Kelly. This exciting new companion to Irish food history builds on the existing work of scholars across various disciplines. Within its twenty-eight chapters, there are contributions from experts in the fields of archaeology, history, mythology, linguistics, literature, folklore, Irish studies, food studies, beverage studies, gastronomy, and culinary history, who apply the latest thinking and scholarship to the history of Irish food from the earliest inhabitants to the twenty-first century. The book is divided into six sections:1. Prehistory and Archaeology of Food in Ireland; 2. Bog Butter, bees and banqueting in medieval Ireland; 3. Sources for food history in early modern Ireland; 4. Developments in food supply, technology, and trade; 5. Food, folklore, foclóirí, and digital humanities; and 6. The development of modern Irish food and identity. The section breaks are interspersed with food related poetry from Raiftearaí, Seamus Heaney and Paula Meehan, along with some recipes and old songs.

In his talk Máirtín will discuss the background to the book, outlining the development of food history in Ireland. He will discuss some of the seminal scholars who paved the way for this endeavour, and the key publications that preceded it. He will also discuss the main findings outlined in the book, before opening the floor to a wider discussion on Irish food history more generally.

Dr Mac Con Iomaire is a senior lecturer in the School of Culinary Arts and Food Technology, Technological University Dublin and Chair of the Masters in Gastronomy and Food Studies in TU Dublin, the first such programme in Ireland. With Dorothy Cashman and Michelle Share, he has been co-editor of the new European Journal of Food, Drink, and Society since 2021. Mac Con Iomaire is co-editor with Eamon Maher of ‘Tickling the Palate’: Gastronomy in Irish Literature and Culture (Peter Lang: 2014) and New Beginnings: Perspectives from France and Ireland (Peter Lang, 2023), and with Rhona Richman Kenneally on ‘The Food Issue’ of The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies (2018). He is also the co-founder and chair of the biennial Dublin Gastronomy Symposium, and a former two-term trustee of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. In 2018, he presented Blasta, an eight-part television series for TG4 celebrating Ireland’s food heritage. In 2021, Máirtín guest edited a special issue of Folk Life: Journal of Ethnological Studies in the topic of Irish Food Ways. He was awarded an IRC Research Ally Prize in both 2021 and 2022 for mentoring doctoral candidates.

Free Event for Heritage Week 2023 - Short Talks

 As its contribution to National Heritage Week the Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society  is delighted to host a free public event on Friday Aug. 18th at 6 pm in St Patrick's Gateway Centre, Waterford. 

The event comprises a series of short talks by members of the Society on various aspects of Waterford 's rich heritage. 

The talks will cover a miscellany of subjects ranging from Waterford's oldest continuously inhabited house to tales of the patriot Thomas Francis Meagher and more besides.

Upcoming Lecture on 26 May 2023 : Jewish Footprints in Provincial Ireland and the Minority Experience by Trisha Oakley Kessler

The Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society 2022 – 2023 lecture series concludes at 8 pm on Friday, May 26th in St Patrick’s Gateway Centre, Waterford (Eircode X91 YX61) when Dr Trisha Oakley Kessler, research associate, Woolf Institute, Cambridge, will deliver a talk titled ‘Jewish Footprints in Provincial Ireland and the Minority Experience’.

 Harry Goodman ran a photographic studio in Waterford from 1900, branching out to open other studios in Tramore and Carrick-on-Suir over the following decade. This undated photograph of a shopkeeper in Waterford could well be that of Isaac Levi in his shop on John Street. Levi’s wife, Florie Goldring, was, according to the 1901 Irish census, also a photographer and most likely working with Goodman. She may have taken this photograph. Seemingly, Goodman was successful in his profession, photographing Irish men, women and children. By doing so, he created a visual recording of provincial Irish lives that hopefully have been passed down the generations. Yet, ironically, the only visible artefacts of Goodman’s life in Waterford are his embossed signature on this photograph and several announcements in the local paper regarding his studios. This raises the question of why there are so few traces of  Jewish lives outside the larger communities in Dublin, Belfast, Cork and Limerick.

Dr Trisha Oakley Kessler’s talk will map the presence of Jews in provincial Ireland in the early decades of the twentieth century to explore how they negotiated belonging and identity during a period in which the Irish people were also navigating political, economic and social change. Exploring the Jewish minority experience highlights concepts of agency, visibility and invisibility. In addition, it examines minority strategies as Jews engaged in new encounters to find a sense of place in Ireland.

Dr Trisha Oakley Kessler explores the Irish economy through a socio-cultural lens to understand everyday life, racism, nationalism and gender in Irish history. Her doctoral thesis from University College Dublin explored political and economic change in 1930s Ireland through the prism of three factories established in provincial Ireland by Jewish refugees, which helped to build a new ladies' hat industry. How these factories came into existence, the economic networks that enabled them to arrive, the challenges they faced entering the Irish economy and their political and economic impact offer a prism to explore identity, modernity, belonging and industrial change. She is interested in the workings and the shifting meanings of factories in twentieth-century Irish provincial life.

Her research interests also focus on the Irish-Jewish community and Irish-Jewish encounters in Ireland and the diaspora. Working with ‘ego documents’, autobiographical writing including memoirs, private correspondence and oral histories, she is working on a social-cultural history of Jews in the Irish economy.

Trisha has taught on a Special Subject Paper, 'An alternative history of Ireland: religious minorities and identity in the 26 counties, 1900-1959' at the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge, where she also supervises undergraduates on modern Irish history. In addition, Trisha is a Co-Convenor of the Cambridge Modern Irish History Seminar. She is a Research Associate at the Woolf Institute Cambridge and a Non-Stipendiary Teaching Research Fellow at the Herzog Centre, Trinity College Dublin.

Upcoming Lecture 24 /02 / 2023: Tales of Tramore 1816 -1916 by Paul Brent

In this talk local historian Paul Brent will provide an insight into the lives of the residents and the visitors to Tramore over the period of one hundred years, encompassing the Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian eras, starting with the wreck of the military transport ship “The Sea Horse” and the terrible loss of life that this disaster brought with it. The symbol of the Seahorse has remained as part of the heritage of the town and Waterford Crystal.

Paul’s talk will cover many other events that had a major impact in the development of the town. As a tourist destination, the infrastructure of the town was designed to cater for the needs of the visitors. Their physical needs were well catered for with the large number of hotels and guest houses built at this time. While the spiritual needs of the two major religious denominations were also catered for by the building of two new churches, the Roman Catholic Holy Cross Church and the Anglican Christ Church.

Tramore is famous for its horse races. Martin J. Murphy played a big part in developing this industry in Tramore. This talk will look at the people, places and events that made Tramore a destination much sought after in the past and also in the present.

Waterfordmen and the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War by Emmet O'Connor

The Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society 2022 – 2023 lecture series continues at 8 pm on Friday, January 27th in St Patrick’s Gateway Centre, Waterford (Eircode X91 YX61)

Our first lecture of the year will be delivered by Waterford native Dr Emmet O’Connor,

a senior lecturer in Ulster University who has published widely on labour history including, with Barry McLoughlin, In Spanish Trenches: The Mind and Deeds of the Irish Who Fought for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War (UCD Press, 2020), and Rotten Prod: The Unlikely Career of Dongaree Baird (UCD Press, 2022) 

     Irish volunteers with the International Brigades photographed at Jarama, Spain. The front row includes Waterfordmen Peter O’Connor (2nd from left), Paddy Power (4th from left), and Johnny Power (right). Courtesy of the late Peter O'Connor.

On Saturday 19 December 1936, four Waterfordmen made their way to London’s Victoria Station and caught the boat train to Paris. Their true destination was the training base of the International Brigades at Albacete, 264 kilometres south east of Madrid. It was another step in the making of Waterford’s substantial connection with the Connolly Column, the name which has become a blanket term for the Irish who fought for the Spanish Republic. The four – Jackie Hunt, Peter O’Connor, Johnny Power, and Paddy Power – were followed to Spain by Billy Power, younger brother of Johnny and Paddy, Johnny Kelly, Harry Kennedy, Jackie Lemon, John O’Shea, and Mossie Quinlan. The eleventh man was Frank Edwards.

Conditions in the International Brigades were tough and often deadly, and the Waterford volunteers reflected the variety of experiences. One was killed. One deserted. Five were wounded, one on two occasions; a sixth was hospitalised from an illness contracted in battle; a seventh was stunned by a trench mortar. They returned to a changed Ireland, where economic prospects were bleak, and attitudeswere hostile. But the 1980s would bring new perspectives on the Spanish Civil War and the emergence of a politics of commemoration in which Waterford was prominent.

Heritage Week Event - Mini Lectures

Join us for our Heritage Week special,  mini-lectures delivered by members of the society this Friday 19th August at 6 pm in St Patrick's Gateway Centre.

The speakers will be : 

Joe Falvey : The rich heritage of Waterford streets,

Bill Walsh : A Stone Upon A Stone

Monica Cahillane: The development of New Street 

Béatrice Payet : Samuel Barker's Exotic Gardens

Simon Dowling : Reconstructing Waterford's Lost Cathedral

Open to all, free entrance as part of Heritage Week. 

Upcoming Lecture 25 March 2022 : Eighteenth-Century Waterford: A Singular City? by Prof. David Dickson

 The next lecture of our 2021-2022 programme will be  on Friday, March 25th at 8:00pm in St Patrick’s Gateway Centre, Waterford (Eircode X91 YX61) when historian Prof. David Dickson will deliver a talk titled ‘Eighteenth-Century Waterford: A Singular City?’.

 

Prof. Dickson’s lecture will begin by reflecting on the emergence of the first cities in eighteenth-century Ireland, distinguishing them from what had come before –  walled towns, very modest by European standards, that had been repeatedly shattered in seventeenth-century warfare. In what respects were these new Irish cities similar to what was happening in Britain and Europe? In the second part of the lecture David will look more closely at 'the quays of the kingdom', Cork, Limerick and Waterford, and the common elements in the rise of the three Munster Atlantic ports; he will also touch on the common elements in the social and economic crisis that beset them in the 1820s. The third segment will focus on how far Waterford was an outlier, a singular city,  in the history of religious conflict and exclusion that was evident in most Irish cities of the period, and it will explore why this may been the case.  The lecture will conclude with a comparison of  the evolution of Waterford and Derry, which were each situated on broad-rivers and graced with their first bridges in the 1790s.  Both cities were very much influenced by the interventions of their Church of Ireland bishops and, more discreetly, by the shadowy influence of the Beresford family.  But was that all?

David Dickson is Emeritus Professor of Modern History in Trinity College Dublin, and was based in the History Department there for most of his career.  He has published very widely on eighteenth-century Irish social and economic history, on regional and urban development, and on the genesis of Irish radicalism. He has also had a lifelong interest in Sub-Saharan African history, and in Ireland's place in European imperial history.  His publications include Old World Colony: Cork and South Munster 1630-1830 (2005), Dublin: The Making of a Capital City (2014), and The First Irish Cities: An Eighteenth-century Transformation (2021).

Upcoming Lecture 25th February : Dr Edward Pollard on investigations of the Copper Coast’s eroding promontory forts

Upcoming Lecture 15 October 'A Reflection of Importance’ by Karen Hannon

  

A lecture by Karen Hannon to the Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society

The next lecture in our 2021 – 2022 lecture season on Friday October 15th will be at 8 pm in St Patrick’s Gateway Centre, Waterford when historian and genealogist Karen Hannon will deliver a talk titled ‘A Reflection of Importance’ – A Study of the Memorial Stained Glass Windows of Co. Waterford.

Almost every parish on the island of Ireland, and in the county of Waterford, is home to a memorial stained-glass window.  So often neglected, observed but not truly seen, it would be easy to regard these stained-glass monuments as nothing more than colourful biblical allegories displayed to give inspiration to the devout. But this would oversimplify their role and value as a local history resource. In her talk Karen Hannon will give an overview of the history of stained glass in Ireland and why it was the most highly prized ecclesiastical art form for much of the nineteenth and twentieth century.  She will consider this history through several Waterford case studies examining not only the windows and their designers, but the local families who donated these windows, hoping to shed some light on why these windows were commissioned and by whom?

Other questions that Karen will address include whether stained glass memorial windows were a declaration of importance by families establishing their standing in their parish?  Were they displays of religious commitment by the devout?  Or were they simply an insurance against the finality of death by those wishing to not be forgotten? Karen’s research has shown that the answers to these questions are as varied as the windows themselves, and in the lecture she will reflect on both the craftsmen, the studios and the patrons of these captivating decorative artworks demonstrating both the artistic value of these stained glass windows and their significance for social history.

Karen Hannon is a Waterford historian and genealogist, she has been awarded a BA in History and Diploma in Genealogy by University College Cork.

As usual, the lecture will be at 8 pm in St Patrick’s Gateway Centre, Waterford. Please note that due to current public health restrictions capacity of the lecture venue is limited to 50%, unfortunately WAHS cannot guarantee admittance.

Upcoming Lecture -in St Patrick's Gateway Centre- by Cian Flaherty on 17th September

 Lucky escapes, rising damp or something else entirely? Why so few  County Waterford ‘big houses’ were burned in the Irish Revolution. 

A lecture by Cian Flaherty to the Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society 

After a Covid-enforced suspension of our lecture series in 2020 and 2021 the Waterford Archaeological  and Historical Society are delighted to inform members that our 2021 – 2022 lecture season is  commencing on Friday September 17th next.

Our first lecture will be delivered by historian Cian  Flaherty whose subject is Lucky escapes, rising damp or something else entirely? Why so few  County Waterford ‘big houses’ were burned in the Irish Revolution. 

Members of the IRA, West Waterford Flying Column, at  Cappagh House. Source: Waterford County Museum.

The use of arson in the Irish Revolution has been discussed before. So far, the focus has been on 'big house' burning and the motives behind it. Less attention

has been paid to the reasons why ‘big houses’ were not burned. 

Taking Waterford as a case study, Cian will address the question why the vast majority of Waterford’s ‘big houses’ managed to escape the arsonist’s torch, before discussing the use of arson more broadly in the revolutionary period.

Cian Flaherty is from Stradbally, he graduated from Trinity College Dublin with a  BA (Mod) in History in 2018, and completed an MPhil in Modern Irish History at  Trinity the following year. He has an abiding interest in the history and culture of  mid-Waterford and is currently working on a survey of the old graveyard in  Stradbally.
 
As usual, the lecture will be at 8 pm in St Patrick’s Gateway Centre, Waterford. 

Please note that due to current public health restrictions, capacity of the lecture  venue is limited to 50%, unfortunately WAHS cannot guarantee admittance. 

We have an exciting programme of lectures lined-up for the year ahead. Here are details of the talks  planned for October and November: 

15/10/2021 Karen Hannon ‘A Reflection of Importance - A study of the memorial stained glass  windows of Co. Waterford.’ 

26/11/2021 Cóilín Ó Drisceoil ‘The Dungarvan Valley Caves Project – searching for evidence of  Waterford’s earliest inhabitants’ 

The full programme will be circulated in the coming weeks and will be posted on the Society’s website  and Facebook page. 

Upcoming Lecture 28 February : Inspired language – cursing, swearing and blessing in early modern Waterford and Kilkenny.

Inspired language – cursing, swearing and blessing in early modern Waterford and Kilkenny.

A lecture by Dr Clodagh Tait

Time: 8 pm 

Venue : St Patrick’s Gateway Centre, Waterford 

Irish cursing traditions are often treated in a lighthearted way. 

One nineteenth-century observer commented that ‘Irish curses are always picturesque’. 

But close examination of accounts of the ritual curse and of other acts of ill-wishing, reveals 

deep fears about their power, danger and potential to cause real harm. Traditions of cursing in

 the Waterford and Kilkenny area are recorded as far back as the medieval period, and 

continue to the present day. In her lecture Dr Tait will give an overview of Irish cursing traditions,

 and will focus in particular on the seventeenth century. 

Strong belief in the power of the parental blessing and the parental curse can be found in the 

surviving wills and letters of this period. Looking at the language of cursing and blessing as used

 in family documents tells us much about understandings about the relationship between parents and 

children in this period, about the cultural resources used by fathers to attempt to guide or control their 

children and wives, and about ideas about love and duty in early modern families.

Clodagh Tait lectures in History at Mary Immaculate College, having previously worked in the 

University of Essex and UCD. She is the author of Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland,

 1550-1650, and co-editor of Age of Atrocity, and Religion and Politics in Urban Ireland, and has

 published articles on a variety of early modern topics including women, maternity, infant care, 

death, commemoration, martyrdom, belief and crowd violence. She wrote the chapter on 'Society

 1550-1700' in the second volume of the Cambridge History of Ireland. 

Her current projects include a history of Irish cursing and ill-wishing between 1550 and 1950 and 

a study of the supernatural labours of Irish mothers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Upcoming Lecture : Crisis and Long Term Effects of the Influenza Pandemic in Waterford and Ireland by Dr Ida Milne

The Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society 2019 – 2020 lecture season continues on Friday January 31st January 2020 with a lecture at 8 pm in St Patrick’s Gateway Centre, Waterford when Dr Ida Milne will deliver a talk titled “Crisis and long term effects – the 1918 – 1919 influenza pandemic in Waterford and Ireland”.

Dr Milne will take a global, national and regional perspective to examine the 1918-1919 pandemic and its political and social history, and look briefly at the figures.  South-east Ireland was quite the hot spot for flu in the second wave in October through December 1918, and to a lesser extent in the spring of 1919.

What this talk will focus on are the oral histories of the flu that Dr Milne collected during her research. Some oral histories were collected from survivors who caught it as small children and often didn’t realise until she spoke to them that what they had been through was this amazing disease that killed upwards of 50 million globally. When Ida started collecting oral histories about the flu she thought that she would find out about the illness, the treatments given to patients, doctors visiting, and other immediate experiences. What she found was much more fascinating, the flu had wider ramifications than just illness and death. Often if a parent died, it changed the entire economic status of families, they might also lose their home if it went with the parent’s job, or the single remaining parent might decide to emigrate. So the fallout was a lot more that it seemed, and often caused long term emotional crises too.

Dr Ida Milne is a lecturer in European history at Carlow College.  She is a social historian who specialises in using oral history to explore her research interests which include Irish Protestant identity, working lives and broad interests in the history of infectious disease. ‘Stacking the Coffins, Influenza War and Revolution in Ireland’, the book based on her doctoral research on the 1918 flu pandemic, was published in 2018. She is co-editor with Dr Ian d’Alton of the recently published book ‘Protestant and Irish – The Minority’s Search for Place in Independent Ireland’. A native of Wexford, Ida attended Waterford’s Newtown School in the 1970s.

A Sense of Community

Going through the daily grind we never think of the impact we might have on others.
It is very rare to have someone giving you feedback and saying 'Hey, you've inspired me'
or
'I got curious and wanted to know more after I heard / saw...'

We've been using St Patrick's Gateway Centre now for a while...

We've seen it being transformed over the months, we attended lectures on its history, on the lives
of people past. What about today's people?

Have we stopped to notice the changes or just rushed in and out of the doors?

The entrance hall has been decorated, volunteers working in the background have contributed in their own way.

Tables are moved, chairs set up, decorations hanged, refreshment served, and so many other things we are not aware of.

Sometimes we get a chance to chat to the volunteers that help set things up for our lectures.

Has anyone noticed a new frame on the right hand-side, as you go in the main hall?

Jay has taken time to find out about the history of the church, and discovered so much,  he put in his own words the importance of the church for communities throughout the centuries.

The last lines of his composition sum  up so well what the centre is about. (Click on picture to enlarge)

November Lecture: Red Hand on the Suir by Francis Devine

Our next lecture will be

Red hand on the Suir – 

the Irish Transport and General Workers Union 

in Waterford in the early 20th century

 by Francis Devine, retired ITGWU/SIPTU official, historian, writer, singer.

Date: Friday 29th November 2019 

Venue: St. Patricks Gateway Centre, Patrick Street, Waterford.

Time: 8pm.

Admission 5 Euro,   members no charge

Waterford was a founding branch of the Irish Transport & General Workers' Union in 1909 but its early years were turbulent.
Re-established after 1918, the ITGWU presence was badly affected by the historic Farm Labourers' Dispute of 1923 – a dispute with national consequences and central to the Free State's attack on labour. 
Defeat for the ITGWU arguably had repercussions for the union in West Waterford which have lasted until the present day. In 1923, the ITGWU spent a huge amount – over £40,000 – in Strike Pay within county Waterford in an attempt to prevent wage cuts for their farm labourer members. 
However, by 1930, membership had fallen from over 4,700 in 1923 to a mere 300 with many branches wiped out. 
Thomas Dunne was the Waterford ITGWU Branch Secretary throughout the period, a lengthy tenure that did not conclude until the 1940s. The ITGWU's declining fortunes reflected those of organised labour nationally but the union survived and was to revive after 1945 to again become a significant force within the city.



Francis Devine is a retired ITGWU/SIPTU official, a historian, an author and an editor. He wrote Organising History: A Centenary of SIPTU, 1909-2009 (Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 2009) and has also written histories of the Medical Laboratory Scientists' Association and the Communications Workers' Union. He co-edited two volumes of Left Lives in Twentieth Century Ireland with Jack McGinley, and a collection of essays on William Walker's Centenary with Patrick Smylie. He is a former editor of Saothar, the Journal of the Irish Labour History Society. 
He is a member of the Expert Advisory Group on Commemorations which was established by the Taoiseach in 2011 to advise the Government on historical matters relating to the Decade of Centenaries. Francis is an accomplished singer, he released the CD My Father Told Me in 2014, and has a second CD An Ownerless Corner of Earth due for release in February 2020.

AGM 2019 - Friday 5th April 2019

Our Annual General Meeting 2019 will be held on Friday April 5th at 8pm in St. Patrick's Gateway, Patrick Street. 

The Agenda is as follows:

1. Welcome
2. Minutes of the 2018 AGM
3. Chairpersons address
4. Secretary's report
5. Treasurers report
6. Election of Officers and committee
7. A.O.B.

It will be followed by a talk given by William Whelan, editor of the recently published book "Towns and Villages of the Waterford Greenway". 

Lecture: Waterford and New Ross: piracy, court cases and the theft of silver – medieval economic politics in action

Waterford and New Ross: piracy, court cases and the theft of silver – medieval economic politics in action

A lecture by Dr Linda Doran to the Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society will take place on the 29th March 2019 at St. Patrick's Gateway Centre at 8pm. 

The founding of the town of New Ross by William Marshal c.1200 was an integral part of the exploitation of his lordship of Leinster. The construction of the bridge at Ross linked the rich farmlands along the Barrow valley in Carlow with the new port of Ross and the caput of the lordship at Kilkenny. A sense of the importance of this bridge is reflected in the name of the town,Pons Novus, Villa Willelmi Marescalli [the new bridge, William Marshal’s town], given by King John in his letter written from Ross in June 1210. From its foundation the town was an outstanding success.

The creation of New Ross disrupted the economies of neighbouring trading centres of Wexford and Waterford. Both of these towns were Norse foundations with long established commercial connections across Europe. Waterford, which had the status of a royal port, was Ireland’s nearest port to France and had strong connections with Bristol. In 1215 King John agreed to Marshal’s request that ships should be allowed bypass Waterford and sail directly into New Ross ‘if this did not hinder the trade of Waterford’. Merchants, therefore, could come right into the heart of the Marshal lordship without having to side-track to the King's town of Waterford. Using the communication hub of the navigable Barrow and Nore rivers and the ancient routeway known as theslighe culann they could then travel, by water and road, deep into the lordship. This permission was revoked four years later and re-instated and revoked at regular intervals. The need for constant petitions to have the ban on the bypassing of Waterford re-instated indicates that it was impossible to enforce. This lead to intense rivalry between the two towns. A long series of petitions, counter-petitions and charters detail the dispute that lasted almost two hundred years. This lecture will examine this dispute and will also consider the European dimension to the rivalry and, in particular to the founding of Ross.

Linda Doran is a graduate of University College Dublin where she completed her PhD in 2001. She carried out a Heritage Council-funded study of medieval settlement along the valleys of the Barrow, Nore and Suir rivers. She has published numerous papers on settlement and communication routes, is editor of the New Ross section of the Royal Irish Academy’s Irish Historic Towns Atlas and has edited books on medieval lordship (2008) and Glendalough: City of God (2011). She is a former honorary general secretary of Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland and is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. She lectures in medieval history in University College Dublin

Lecture: Pilgrimage in Medieval Waterford

Pilgrimage in Medieval Waterford

A lecture by Dr Louise Nugent to the Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society

The Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society 2018 – 2019 lecture season continues on Friday March 1st with a lecture at 8 pm in St Patrick’s Gateway Centre, Waterford when Dr Louise Nugent will deliver a talk titled “Pilgrimage in Medieval Waterford”.

Pilgrimage was a central part of life throughout the medieval period. It was practiced in Ireland from the 7th century to the 15th centuries and following the reformation it continued down to the present day. This lecture will explore what motivated people to go on pilgrimage to in Medieval Ireland, where they went and the various types of sites that were used for pilgrimage. It will have a particular focus on evidence relating to Waterford and the south-east.

Dr Louise Nugent is a Tipperary-based archaeologist and blogger who specialises in pilgrimage and folk art. In 2010 she was awarded a PhD by University College Dublin for her research on Pilgrimage of Medieval Ireland. She has contributed papers on her research to a variety of journals and edited books and is in the final stages of writing a book on Irish pilgrimage. She curates the blogs Irish Folk Art Project (https://irishfolkartproject.wordpress.com/) and Pilgrimage in Medieval Ireland (https://pilgrimagemedievalireland.com/) in the latter she covers topics relating to modern and medieval Irish pilgrim traditions

Photos: 'Waterford Archaeology From the Air' Lecture

Lecturer Simon Dowling with Waterford Archaeological & Historical Society Chairperson Beatrice Payet. 

On January 25th, a full-house heard Waterford Archaeological & Historical Society member, Simon Dowling, deliver a fascinating and accessible lecture titled ‘Waterford’s Archaeology From the Air’.  

St. Patrick's Gateway Centre hosted the talk by Simon Dowling. 

Simon illustrated a variety of the aerial photographic techniques he has used and how he analyses publicly available satellite and laser imagery to reveal otherwise hidden aspects of many archaeological sites in Waterford. It was a well-received lecture which generated a lively discussion afterwards.