Upcoming Lecture on 23 /02/24 : Irish Women's Experiences in the Great War and its Aftermath by Dr Fionnuala Walsh

"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.

Upcoming Lecture by Mr Tony Hennessy : ‘Annestown, Lovely Annestown...' Friday 26/01/24

 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!’’.  

                                                            

This talk is an exploration of the origins, history and development of the village of Annestown, Co. Waterford from its beginnings in the very late 1700s, through the 1800s to the mid-1900s, insofar as all that can be encapsulated within a short presentation.

While the history of Annestown House and its several incumbents ie. Henry Cole, the Palliser and the Galloway families all necessarily play a central part in the story of the Annestown and in the presentation other less prominent members of the community also feature in the story.  ‘History remembers the celebrated; genealogy remembers them all’.

Tony will be exploring the earliest of days in the shape of fascinating new findings from recent excavations at the nearby promontory fort.  Tony will also look at Annestown before it became Annestown.  

We will hear of The Earl of Enniskillen and his cousin Henry St. George Cole, who played a significant role in the story of Annestown.

EXCLUSIVE! Tony will also reveal for the first time who the ‘Anne’ of Annestown is!!

Then there is Ann’s Town Hotel and the latest craze of Sea Bathing - and its impact on the village

Shipwrecks, seaweed, songs, cycling, cauliflower, a swimming pig and even a village pub may also be discussed, with some wistful poetry to finish.

As usual, the lecture will take place at 8 PM in St Patrick's Gateway Centre, Patrick Street, Waterford Eircode X91 YX61

Programme of Events Spring 2024

 Please see below a list of the upcoming lectures up until summer this year, starting  Friday, 26/01/24.

26/01/2024	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

Upcoming Lecture 24/11/23 : New Perspectives on the Archaeology of Iron Age 'Celtic' Ireland' by Dr Katharina Becker

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.

Just Published BLAA-THERINGS by Cian Manning

 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

Upcoming Lecture 20/10/23 : The Lure of the Sea in Georgian Ireland by Dr Vandra Costello

 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).

Upcoming Lecture : The Ordnance Survey in Ireland 1824 – 1913 by Richard Kirwan on 29/09/23

This lecture will be held exceptionally in the Medieval Museum

The Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society 2023 – 2024 lecture series commences at 8 pm on Friday, September 29th in The Medieval Museum, Waterford Treasures, Waterford (Eircode X91 K10E) when Richard Kirwan, former Director, Ordnance Survey Ireland, will deliver a talk titled ‘The Ordnance Survey in Ireland 1824 – 1913’.

 

In this lecture Richard Kirwan will present an overview of the establishment and work of the Ordnance Survey in mapping the country in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Irish Ordnance Survey was established by the Duke of Wellington in 1824 resulting from a parliamentary select committee’s investigation into the inequitable land valuation system in the country. The Survey’s primary purpose was to provide maps for a new valuation. Major General Thomas Colby, scientist, mathematician, and a man of singular focus was appointed Director General with overall responsibility for carrying out the work.

The maps were to be compiled at a then unprecedented scale of six inches to one mile, a map scale never before used for mapping an entire country. Colby was faced with major challenges. There was no readily available suitable workforce. Hence his first major task was to train sufficient surveyors and cartographers. For the most part, instrumentation had to be manufactured and, in some cases, invented. Work practices had to be put in place to carry out this major task within a reasonable time scale.

Initially, the six-inch map was to only include townland boundaries, communication infrastructure and an outline of urban areas. But after widespread criticism about the lack of detail and hence the difficulty with accurate valuation, field boundaries together with areas were added on Colby’s initiative.

It took a workforce of two-thousand five-hundred men, comprising military surveyors and civil assistants, twenty-two years to complete the mapping, the maps of County Kerry being the last to be published in 1846. By 1857 contours had been added to the six-inch map. A first revision of the six-inch was undertaken immediately, beginning in the northern counties. This revision was superseded in 1887 by a new map at a larger scale of 1:2500 which was needed for land conveyancing, resulting from the various Land Acts of that time. This mapping was complete by 1913 and subject to a further revision.

Placenames were an important attribute of the new maps. Anglicized versions of townland names were to be used. Initially these were collected by the military survey officers with the version of the name supplied by the majority of sources to be used for each townland. Thomas Larcom disagreed with this method when he took over responsibility for placenames. He appointed a Gaelic scholar, John O’Donovan, to assist him with deciphering the anglicized townland names which most closely resembled the original forms of the Irish names. O’Donovan spent ten years travelling Ireland collecting the names and researching their origins in private and public libraries. O’Donovan’s letters to Larcom, in addition to placenames information, also included details of antiquities, local history and, in many cases, humorous details of local customs.

Ordnance Survey also produced town plans at a very large scale of major cities and towns between 1827 and 1842, none of which were ever published. For instance, it produced eleven very detailed maps of Waterford in 1840 which could provide valuable detail to the historian on life in the city at that time. It was not until 1872 that town plans, not as detailed, of Waterford were published. The first one-inch maps of the country were produced in the 1850s and updated through to 1913

Richard Kirwan, is a native of Waterford, he was educated at both Mount Sion and De La Salle schools. He graduated as a civil engineer from University College Cork, where he undertook post graduate studies. Richard is also a graduate of the School of Military Survey in the UK and of Trinity College Dublin.

He spent most of his career working in Ordnance Survey Ireland, initially as senior technical officer before becoming Assistant Director and Director from 1996 until 2006. He also was a founder member and president of the European National Mapping Agencies. After his career in Ordnance Survey, Richard undertook consultancy work, advising National Mapping Agencies in Eastern Europe and South America on the use of modern technology in mapping.

In his early years at Ordnance Survey, he was responsible for the modernisation of the organisation, particularly for pioneering the introduction of digital technologies into mapmaking. During his tenure, Ordnance Survey totally remapped the country, producing both large scale maps and the tourist 1:50,000 scale maps, completing the task in 2005. He also undertook computerising the historic maps of Ireland and publishing them on the internet.

Richard has published two books, If Maps could Speak which won praise from Brian Friel, and a novel Minding Jack, a story set in the streets of Waterford in 1964.