Transcript of the Annascaul village history  

 Can you all hear  good. an you all hear me . Unfortunately I have a cold so I  wont be projecting that well.

Delighted to see the numbers here. We’re very grateful thankful as a committee that so many of you have turned up. The purpose of today’s walk  is raise a  little funds for the historical group.  Through Mary and Laurence work in general we have managed to secure funding to buy Valentia stone plagues. for village sites, commemorating important places in the village.

We’ve got generous funding from South Kerry Partnership but we  we need to raise about 2,000 euro over the next year to fund the rest of it . Hence the bit of walking and a  bit of talking for the next few months

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We hope and are assured  by the council that the road improvement through the village  will begin in the second quarter

The council will do the work for us , new roads and new pavements in the villge. The slabs that have been ordered  will be laid in the pavement. We ordered 15 or  16  slabs so that is the purpose of today’s walk.

1:35

So  right, we have a beautiful village and I am delighted to promote  and the beauty of the people here. This is a great place to start

The first settlement here , most of the settlement in Annascaul was up towards the lake towards Ballinacourty side or over east  towards the Ballyvoher site

 The village over 200- 250 years ago  was effectively not,  not here , What ever settlement was down as at the bottom of the village.

So  that was the first significant thing is that this road was built and that road up the Maum. The purpose of the road, These roads were built in the 1760s and there were British military roads and there were built to link the garrison towns of Dingle and Killarney, so they shortened the distance of the march by nine miles. Previously,  there was no the road  here, there was no road by the coast. T he road would go about 3 miles east of the village , up towards the hills, back Ballinacourty and out that way. So the middle here was not there.

The second  important parts of the development parts of the village is  the main road through the village came in 1831 and that was the mail road, built by the British mail.

3:23

The first  settlement had happened down here in the 1760s onwards  down the back road and up this way  but he middle of the village  started  comeing form the 1830s and 1840s onwards because they had a new road

3:46

This bridge isnt  part of the original 1760 military road there was no bridges here. The river is  still crossed by fort. The river was still crossed by stones

In the 1830s road  saw this bridge being constructed up it forward

So this bridge was the first bridge in west Kerry linking Dingle to the road, to the killarney road and to the Tralee road. later.

4:19

The older road around here, the river walk brings you out at a place we call Sean Droighead  and that bridge predates all of them. But this route  comes from the 1760 building of the road and the 1830 mail road

The other significant things that we can no longer see but that belongs here is that building above there is the village presbytery  but those grounds was where this railway station for Tralee and dingle lie

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There was a rail here until. The railway ran  from the 1890  until 1953

The last passenger service was 1938   but the train on a  freight basis for another 13, 14 years taking fish and cattle from Dingle

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The death knell of it  as a  passenger service was that  was that a bus service has  been established between Dingle and the CIE bus  would beat the train to Tralee. People had  lost faith in the service as  a passenger service. Remember it was a  steam train , It was  a hilly area and it  didn’t have  the power and we  were after coming out of a 1930 early land 40s and we had  economic war in Ireland and coal was not available to power the railway

We were dependant on wet turf for steam for your train and  so the train was  becoming , not a  viable option in  west Kerry

6:05

The railway station proper was still in that field. There are still remnants and stones. Those familiar with the village will know that the water  tower is still up  and the railway cottage is converted to a residence and a  home now. Before we leave. Over there is obviously the South Pole and Tom Crean, as most of you will know Tom Crean as a arctic explorer. He and his wife bought that building. It had been a pub before them and it was ran as a  pub.

His wife was the publican and his wife had come from Foleys pub in the village

She was Nel Herlihy and 4 of the village pubs were Herlihy pubs. There were 10 pubs in the village in the early 20th century

7:11

And where the new building is beside the South Pole that was one of two village  smiths. The forge was there. That forge was run by the Cunningham family. A forge was important in any small agricultural village . The forge was where the horse was shoed and the cart wheel was banded, whatever implement had to be or work had to be done by the agricultural community people came from  Minard, The Maum, Inch to the forge.

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So there were two in the village . We will head up the village. This walk  will be an hour or hour and a half .

8:15

John’s grand uncle We can see the gable of his  house was the same Paddy Kennedy. Paddy Kennedy lost his life as a reprisal for the Ballinclare ambush of the black and tans truck in August 1920. John over the years has been very anxious to commemorate his grand uncle and the Ballinclare ambush

He has  finally donated the site Hannah is standing on for a memorial for an ambush monument so the proposed. The funding for the work and the planning and the everything is secured and most of the money is secured and hopefully work commences in the next few weeks and it  will be there by August 20th , so it is the 102nd anniversary.

9:32

This is a  significant part of the village. This area of the village is called the Strand Road . Now we know it as Ardinane .Where we are now the village courthouse and the village courthouse had a couple of significant events

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Later on we  will be stopping at the Walsh’s house. The Walshes  were IRA volunteer commanders. They put up and anti conscription posters. Conscription came to Ireland during  the first world war and the volunteers opposed conscription.

The Walshes and all the volunteers opposed conscription. There was anti conscription poster on the window. It causes furore in the village and

the Walsh’s  were arrested for displaying the poster and their mother was thrown on the floor and everything. The Walshes were arrested and were tried in this courthouse and sentenced to time in jail in Cork.

10:30

As a result of that. The Garda sergeant in Annascaul at the time was Garda

Maloney was from Tipperary and was hated after that. His brutality on old Mrs Walsh and the fact that he intervened . He had escorted the Walshes to Cork to the jail and on his way back he came back by the rail, um, the railway The barracks was up in the middle of the village where Mary’s house is as  he is walking up to the village and he was shot at from here.

So I’d like to think this was, this was the first shot of the Irish war of Independence. Maloney had a big heavy overcoat on so the shot was from a  shotgun so the pellets dispersed and it didn’t really penetrate so he wasn’t fatally wounded

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He got such a fright  that he applied for a transfer was transferred out of here shortly afterwards.

When Paddy Kennedy was murdered at the foot of Gurteen’s Hill the inquest to his death was held in the court. The courthouse went out of use in the 30s.

Next door to us  there was a  double row of houses that the O’ Briens

They were originally owned by Laides but Tom Crean’s daughters married into those houses. Those houses were then demolished and they went to Tralee . So the Quine  family left the village.

The only part of the truck that was preserved after the ambush were the  wheels axel and the two wheels of the truck.

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For years they were in the front gardens of John Kennedy’s The wheels we have in our possession and the monument is Valentia slate plaque with the details and the wheel will be the piece de resistance of the display will be the wheels

The wheel will be left in the original state they are in now with bits of rust and bits of rubber.

Behind us in the Eircom yard stood the parish church, The church of Ireland church in the village. It was demolished in the 60’s

It was one of the great travesties of the village that that went. The church was like,  any of you are familiar with the area,  most of the church of Ireland churches here are quite small, rectangular buildings,  so the church of Ireland church here was quite similar,  on similar lines to the one in Milltown or St James churches in Dingle.

So just looking at some records this morning and in the 1866, it was the first rateable valuation of this area They recorded 370 families living here in the 1850s , in the 1850’s evaluation there were 17 church of Ireland families

So  this was church of Ireland church. The other significance of

church of Ireland is,  Beside it, it had its own school house  behind that railing. In the 1911 census there are 4 pupils recorded

15:22

Lawrence calculated that there were 60  graves in the cemetery . The  church of Ireland community in Annascaul wouldn’t  have been big enough for  such a  large graveyard but they had to have it.

Dingle was a port at the time and if  people died on board or were lost at sea their remains some of them were buried here. There are strange name and no  bearing to here. They were seamen that were lost at sea. Their remains , some of them are buried here.  The church in Dingle . Those that are  familiar with it

The cemetery was around the church  but was  much smaller as it is in the town and they didn’t  want the valuable space  to be used for burying people that had no connection to the people in the town and so some of them are buried here.

17:04

That church was built in 1820. Further on, a little further on. A little  further in the 1840 , 1850 there was greater  frenzy of evangelicals in the protestant community. It was a  more robust form of Protestantism and it was funded mostly by merchants from Limerick and Cork. And West Kerry was funded by a  group of Limerick merchants

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The reason they funded it was that there would be a tithe charged and tithe levied on the community, on the church of Ireland community. So they would get their investment back. So the church of Ireland west of Dingle were built by the board of first  ???

The church or Ireland bishops . The diocese was Limerick and Ardfert . He  did not want evangelicalism Protestantism to spread throughout the county. So he stopped it in Annascaul

18:03

The house that Zack Phelan is living in  was built by the protestant bishop of Limerick . he sent a clerical diocese man here whose sole purpose was to stop evangelicalism in Annascaul  which was stopped going further East So evangelicalism didn’t get hold in Annascaul.

The Church or Ireland rector who lived in a different house up the strand road. owned by Bill Brosnan. He was the Parson’s Deacon. The protestant community was small it had a  substantial presence. There were only 17 families but it had a church, a  school and probably the two finest buildings in the village.

On the other hand there was no catholic church in the village

There was no parish of Annascaul. That didn’t come till the 1840s

The catholic church. There was one in Ballinacourty in the graveyard and one over in Ballyvoher.

There was no civil parish of Annascaul. There were broken up parishes Ballinacourty, Ballyvoher. Minard and at times were part of Camp. The church or Ireland church was much more organised and unified   than its catholic counterpart.

Roberts grandfather is buried here .When Roberts grandfather was buried in 1964  it  wasn’t  permitted, was  frowned upon  that his catholic neighbours attend the funeral. Some of them said to hell with the restrictions and some did attend the service

There is a famous poem “Burial of an Irish President” Douglas Hyde and all the dignitaries of the time were  hiding and scurrying behind  headstones / grave stones of the protestant cathedral. They were afraid to go in. Those were the times.  In more recent times there is a church of Ireland community in Camp now. Meeting and events are now  held  by  both communities.

21:35

I have stopped here. Alot of these houses. Alot of these parts of the village didn’t start until the 1840s. This is the last part of the old part of the village . Across the road from us . Behind Sean Evan’s house , The first village  hotel was there. That had an interesting history

The  lake at the top of Conor Pass is called the pedlars lake. Because there was a pedlar, a  tin smith, a pedlar   was murdered and his body was disposed of in the lake.  The pedlar was engaged  to a  lady  who was from Inch. They had  sawn their sovereign coins, cut their coins in half and the pedlars sawn cons were found in the possession of the murders and it matched the coins of the fina lady ?

They were arrested and were being transferred to the jail in Tralee. The journey was too long and so they stayed  and were billeted overnight in the guesthouse in the hotel across the road .But they made their escape  through the  night  by cutting a  hole in the thatch and got out and were never seen again

They escaped certain execution.

I  should know the name of the guesthouse and the family  who  owned it

Many  of  you  will know about wind  measurements is called the beaufort scale   

Daniel Beauforts father was John Beaufort. The fathers  didnt like the accommodation being offered and  described it as squalid

24:08

These  buildings, John Brosnan’s building or teach Sean  who as we used call it Sean Evans’s house cousin. That building was built  by the British Navy pensioners . In Annascaul over 100 years ago it was  farming community

The first son have gotten the farm but the subsequent son. Alot would have gone as RIC officers   and here there was a  tradition of joining the British navy  because the navy, the coast guard  had a  presence  at Minard castle  and  you  could, well you couldn’t formally enlist   but  you  could make an official enlistment  at the coast guard  station and they would give you the fare from Annascaul to Cobh  where you formally joined the British navy.

So in the period of  Tom Crean. If you have a look at the records

There are 16 people   who officially  joined the British Navy. So  you served your time in the British navy and when it came to retirement they came back here with a pension  so they had the means and the money  to build  some of the the more modern houses in the Village. So the cut stone house. Most of them follow the same pattern.

The other significant thing here. Annascaul   had, land lord would be the wrong  but they had  two  land owners or  right owners   where rates or a stipend was paid to them.

At the bottom of the village  there was a lady called ???  and the Pierces lived across the road here   and Maggie Pierce and her family got the money  for the rates  from the house owners at  the bottom part of the village.

And when we move to the top  which is now the Leprechaun pub

The Moriarties owned that and then Rory o Shea.  They were the rate owners at the top part of the village .There were 10 village pubs. Most of the pubs were alive 130 or 140 year old

The pubs  I can trace our  pub back to roughly the time of the mail road in 1840

I am the 4th generation of my  family and there were 2 generations, the Herlihy  before . So there were 6 generation in that pub. And most of these house in the village  were the same with 6 generations

Jimmy O Donnel’s shop was  bought by his  father and it  was  a Kavanagh shop before then It was one of  9 general shops in the village. Most of the buildings in the village  have a story to tell. They provided a  service, or a trade or  something  in the general area.

So I am , over the next wile I am anxious  that that history is kept and is preserved. Like all villages , there is a story  to tell and it is important to tell those stories and record it.

28:18

30:15

How  did a village of this  size  support  10  pubs ? The village , Annascaul village  goes  from Minard to the top of the Maum . While the village itself only had 100 families living in it the greater  community  had  500- 600 families

The village, I would know from the pub point of view

My mother was born in the 30’s and was raised in a pub and she would tell me that when growing up was difficult   from financial from every point of view

The village depended. It had  12 fairs. There was a  fair day on the 14th of each month  and it had  2  big fairs, the Ballinclare  fair  that were in October and May. So the pub would have to  make  enough money  on the Ballinclar fair  day  to  last  till the next one  or the fair  day , the 14th of the month. So the farming.  Money was scarce  at the time in Ireland in the 30’s and 40’s. No-one had  money. Most people were self sufficient. . they didn’t need money. Most  , they was alot  of  helping your neighbour. There wasn’t the exchange of money. The farmers would come to the fair and spend what they had. Sell the cow. The woman of the house obviously  got most of the money.

The only  people  that had  regular income were the retired  navy officers, retired  RIC, the people  that had a regular pension. They were the everyday life blood in the village for the publicans anyhow. This  village is a small village but it  had  3 or 4 tailors, 3 or  4  dress makers , a couple of cobblers.  It even has a  lady at the backs of  Dan Foley’s pub  where Marie Kennedy house is now . Marie  calls her house Mary Lane but  Mary Lane made habits for the dead.

The village  had a  bakery down below where Mick Devine’s house is, where we stopped at the protestant church. Just below the protestant show where Denise Brosnan or “Denisheen the Baker” 

“Denisheen the Baker”    had a thriving business

he had vans on the road supplying bread to outlying villages

“Denisheen the Baker”   was a character in the village

I grew up hearing about “Denisheen the Baker”  . “Denisheen the Baker”  died the day I was born. “Denisheen the Baker”    was a good, he kept the pubs  going. He probably  kept the pubs  gong by himself. “Denisheen the Baker”    liked whiskey

Because he liked whiskey  his teeth were all rotten. We had a dentist in the village.

His  rooms at the time at the back of the Moriarty hotel. Up on the wall and at the back there were sets if dentures.

And every time “Denisheen the Baker”   required a  set of  dentures he  would go up and put his hand up. The worst  part of the story apparently “Denisheen the Baker”  and his mother shared a set of dentures. “Denisheen the Baker”    liked the drink so the set if dentures was disappearing regularly.

The  houses behind,  people lived in them but obviously they had to survive . This house now where Patricia is living in . I was telling her last night. This  house was Sheehans  or Shuhan

I don’t even know their back ground but they had some kind of an educations that was beyond the ordinary. they got a secondary schooling.  People here finished primary schooling  and that was a far as it went. And if you wanted to  go any further, you had to  do a  thing called the primary cert and if you wanted to be a clergy man or something  you  had to have a little latin.

So the Sheehans  provided the grind services for the village

So they existed. There was a son, two sons and a father, They were reclusive people . but provided a little bit of extra learning for those going one from the village That is how they made their livelihood.

Across the road  was the village hotel, O’ Donnells hotel, It was one of the village hotels .Dan Foleys pub was there. That was Herlihy’s pub. Below Herlihies  there was a shop.  Scannell’s shop, a  100  odd years ago before it  was  general merchants shop. It was Moriarties I think.

It sold meal and flour. Below that house where  John Broasnan house was Sculleys   and he provided a taxi service but they had a garage

The one below  was a pub. The one above Hannifin’s bar, my pub was  a tailor, Lynch’s. Mary’s house above was the RIC  barracks at the time. That later became Landers garage.

So every house in the village had  something. The cinema . Sunday night  or Friday are two nights. Mary Courtney shop had sweets

37:10

The yard we are standing in now was the RIC Barracks, the remains of the original barracks is the old fireplace

When the Eiri Amach and the War of  Independence happened,  was  declared Michael  Collins  from Dublin decreed  that all RIC barracks and their presence   be  destroyed so the barracks  here was burnt in 1920

The RIC building had  already been vacated. All RIC  at the time were under threat and so all activity  was concentrated in Dingle

So the barracks in camp, Castlegregory  they were all burnt out in 1920

So this building then became Landers  garage and it  then became the cinema

It was Connors  Across the road  was Connie  Courtney shop and Tea room

Connie Courtney’s shop would supply sweets for the cinema on Fridays. Connie  would supply  penny sweets or  ice-cream

He  died  in 1979. and Mary lived on until 1993.

Liam Shanahan  would come on a Tuesday and Thursday with cameo cakes

40:26

The building across the road  is  Brendan  Falvey’s bar  and next door is  Murphys. They all came  from a  guy  called Bowler and his estate. He  owned the building next  door to Aidan’s cafe. It was  a  pub. But  Bowler, in the very early  1900’s Bowler sold, carried a  horse to Dingle and he sold the horse at Dingle fair  but he didn’t get paid  for his horse. He went into a rage over it.

People from Tralee bought the horse. He intercepted them here at the village as he hadn’t  got his money for the horse . But he had a  big knob of a  stick and he knocked the man off the horse and beat him within an inch of his life.

But he didn’t die. But the RIC  were here at the time and because Bowler was known to them. They told Bowler. “If  your man dies  you will be”….

They advised him to leave.

Bowler  left his business in the village and he went to America

So the site of your pub and Murphys  was parts of Bowlers estate  and the Pierces came and built.

The Pierces came from America. He had made money out of the railways in America  and he knew the importance of providing facilities for the railway

The railway was coming to Annascaul or was coming through Annascaul at the time.

The railway  station was to be around the middle end of the village  and he identified this area  as a place to build his hotel  or his guest house, his accommodation for the railway. He built the building and his daughter ( You have a photograph inside in the bar ) and his  daughter was put in charge

he went back to America.

The railway  was at the bottom end of the village opposite the bridge

So the traveller that as likely to  come wasn’t walking up here . He was  staying below or  in Moriarty’s hotel. So it didn’t work quite as well  as he had hoped

( Near Falveys Bar ) You have the Creans before Callaghans came into it . Both building were owned by a dingle man called Daniel o Connell. Daniel o Connell was a horse trader  and he traded in horses.

The currency of the first world war was horses  because they were needed for soldiers . He  bought horses but he paid  dear for them and after the war ended.  The market for horses  collapsed and he went basically bankrupt

He was Mikeys grandfather and he needed a bail out.

He  had  married an old lady from Camp,   (not an old  lady )  but a  lady  Ellen Moynihan. He needed cash so he decided, he made the wife move . He brought his sister in law also.   She was in her 40s  back to the village  and he divided the house in two. She was in the second part of the house. He assumed that she was not  going to marry. She was a spinster woman.

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When she  came to the village  she  was in her 40s  and the house  would revert back to him  when she passed on. Unfortunately she met a cobbler next door, Edmund Crean. She married  Crean and they had 2  children.  Unfortunately  O Connell’s plans to  consolidate did not go to plans

Crean was one of several cobblers in the village. Do you remember Paddy Houlihan. ? Crean the cobbler, his apprentices , he was an altruistic man, maybe a clever man as well. He adopted , He would bring kids , mutes  from orphanages to the village. So  that is how Paddy Houlihan  arrived to the village. He was Edmund Crean’s apprentice

Paddy was one of the original volunteers   in the 1916 brigade in the village

He was the village postman and character.

We will stop outside the community centre. The community centre is  interesting in that there was a butter buying family from Cork called the Holland.

Holland for a period the building behind it and it  was  a used for butter, barrelling and selling butter.  So my great grand father was a cooper by trade

There were two coopers in the village and my great grand father would have come from west Minard and he needed to be near the Hollands as  he provided the barrels for the butter. He bought a  pub by a foreclosure auction. It had  ran into rent arrears from the Herlihy  family that owned the pub.

The pub was auctioned off  and they got a part of the proceeds to go to Van Diemen’s Land in Australia

So  that is  how Charles Devane  originated and how  my great great grand father  came to the village  as a barrel maker. He wasn’t interested in the pub and he built a  workshop at the back of the pub making barrels  and he  gave the licence to his wife as the licensee for the pub   because women were exempt  from paying rates and he provided the barrels for Mrs Holland’s butter  making business here.

Butter  from Annascaul and west Kerry went  to the British army. Most of the butter  from West Kerry ended up in South Africa. It took 6 weeks from the butter in Annascaul   to reach South Africa.

48:18

It took 6 days by horse for the butter from Annascaul to reach the port in Cork  and 5 weeks  from the port in Cork to  go to South Africa.

So the butter needed to be heavily salted. And the barrel  he  made. Not  like the barrels you see nowadays  with the 40 gallon barrels

The barrel  was a  small 5 gallon barrel and it  weighted roughly about 15 kilos / 30 pounds weight

The building just below  was  just one of 2 joiners in the village.Workshops in the village was Sullivan’s and Egans married into.  the Dinny Dans

And the one beside us, the second one. This was the Welshes’  house

They used say that the Welsh’s  were the better crafts men     and  better  carp enders  but the Dinny Dans had the better timber.

The Walshes  didnt have the money  or the …

The quality of the timber is very dependent  on its age

The Walshes  would wait for the timber  to age whereas the Dinny Dans were clever and would .   And the Dinny Dans. I  dont know was it a  brother in law  was involved in McCowens timber yard in Tralee. So the better parts of  timber were put aside for them.

49:55

If we were talking before about the wheel the carts , the wheels were timber . The banded wheels that were on the carts .The Walshes would make the better wheel but the wheel from the Dinny Dan’s would last longer.

And you can see that above us  is the banding where the wheel was laid

The metal band by the black smith  was put on the wheel.

You can see on the side walk above here. We will just  stop in front of Walshes work shop

50:47

Do  you remember below  when I was talking below about the first shot of the war of Independence about Sergeant Maloney,  this was the house  the Walshes

lived in.

Pat Walsh was a captain of the volunteer regiment of Annascaul  and his brother was also involved. They very republican in orientation  so it was on these windows anti conscription  notice that caused the uproar and the furore.

An RIC barracks  had a  sergeant and usually 4 policemen  so in a  small community there was plenty of policemen, not alot to do  but they made their presence , under order felt.

51:40

So Sergeant Maloney barged in the door to  take down the  conscription and Mrs Walsh  inside the door opposed  him  and Maloney  threw here on the floor and her sons were subsequently arrested .Patrick Walsh spent 4 months in Cork jail  on account of it.  and existed on a diet of blighted rotten potatoes  while he was there.

So  you can imagine the feeling towards Maloney. You can imagine why he was shot at

Next door here was their workshop.

This was once a workshop. It wasnt quite as good when the IRA in were in 1916, when they were…

This was their meeting point. This was the drill hall.

When they began  in 1914. In 1914 the volunteer column was established here.  they were laughed at. The toy soldiers in the village.  In the subsequent event with the executions of the 1916  leaders and the fact that they had spent time in jail  and all that, changed peoples opinion.  So over a period of time  instead of being seen as amadáns wasting their time on a useless cause  it became an important part of the village.

So before the Creamery Board was established in Ireland. The people around here were farmers   so the milk, ( was it the company from Tralee or who was  it  bought  originally from. ) There is a platform here to collect the milk and a truck came to collect the milk. It was separated like . It was the cream

The butter maker  had   gone   for 30-40  years . She didn’t exist any more

The war… My great grandfather’s business was fecked  by the first war  because timber was gone. Metal  came during the 1914-1918  war . So  you had metal barrels . So my grandfather, Johnny the cooper was down in the 1911 census as a as an apprentice cooper and his brother Tadgh is an apprentice cooper as well but by the 1921 census he is a publican and Tadgh  was a postman.

He messed around a little as my mother would say. There were still cooper  implements  out the back of the pub when she was a young one. He was able to  make a barrel  but there was no demand for it.

55:00

There was no demand  for it, things had change, village had changed

The police .., remember he RIC barracks is  burnt down, we are at the crest of getting Independence  so when the Garda Síochána came into being  the Garda  building  Barracks in the village was also built in the  1930s

For a while at the first stages of independence the Garda barracks , Garda Síochána barracks  moved around , a while up at the arch deacons, a while below in the building next to the court house.  But they needed their own building so that was a residential. So the sergeant had his own quarters and was billeted in this side of the building and the barracks was in the upper part of the building.  

Ashes  shop. Ashes  black pudding shop can trace it shop back a hundred odd years as a butchers and a general grocer

As we go up these buildings become new and newer. There were very few buildings a  100 years odd at the turn of the century,  1900s. There were very few building up at this side of the village. These date from there on

Frankie Nashes  house, The red house behind us was village guest house, tea room. The interesting thing about this house is a stone built house and every stone in this house.   Frank Keen, the Ashes and the O Donnells. It was originally built  by O Donnells , They  came from Dromabhalla  adn every stone was quarried in Droma bhalla  and  came to the village  by a  horse and cart. So  it was a stone house and it  was plastered and the block  work was cut out of it.  It was a  substantial house for its time

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The house a cross the road  was Kennedys,  known as the house of the priests. ( were there 4 of them ) where the other houses were missing at this end of the village but that house was always there. There were no  houses in the spaces  in between. The Moriarties house and  that house was always there.

This was another one of the tailors , the Ferriters . This was the Ferriter’s , The building above . There was one of three or 4 tailors, three dress makers , Spillane , Edmund Crean and a couple of cobblers,. 100 odd years ago. It was well served. It is hard to imagine  where the trade  would be  for that supply of suits , clothing in the locality.

And  behind  us, When we  saw the original parts of the railway, up at the presbytery. The railway ran behind the village and ran up to that fence and emerged at the front of, at  ( O Shea’s )  Moriarty’  hotel  and it  went over parallel on the main road

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He, Pierce   envisioned the rail station being  here. So tht was his purpose of buying the site below where Brendan’s pub is from Bowler, . So he would be 50yards from where the railway station was. So he misjudged it. imagines the site of the hotel being here and

Next stop we stop at the church.

The  pump reminds  me. We  always had good doctors in Annascaul.  We  had a  Dr  Kane. He  recognized the significance of  having proper water  scheme in the village . Dr Kane campaigned  for water and there were 4  water pumps  put in by the council, into the village  in the 20s so this was one,  there’s one down below at  John Brosnan. There is one at the top of this  road and there is one at the bottom of Annagap. Prior to that the water supply in the village  came  from a  few wells.

Mairead’s  grand father built this  house  for £100, possibly  100 years ago

The original site of these house at the top end of the village , the Curtains and the O Briens. They came to Annascaul as general labourers  for the railway. The railways was built in the 1890s. They were the labourers maintaining  and laying the line for the railway

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So that is what bought Maireads great great father to Annascaul

So  across the way  to Moriartys  hotel or  O Sheas hotel

It was always a fine building in the village

It belonged to the landlord of the area, it was connected with the Hicksons and the O Sheas who  collected the land  rents for the upper parts of the village

It  has always  played an important part of  history and the history of the village and village life

Behinds us the church. As I was saying to you. Annascaul didnt even have a parish. The parish came in the 40s. It had 2 churches. A church in Ballyvoher  which dates  from the 13 century. Church in Ballyvoher collapsed . The church in Ballynacourty had partially collapsed and was taken down in the early 1800s. So  for 50  years Annascaul parish didnt have a church. And  so they had a  mad notion they would buy, it still wasn’t  a civil parish so they started  building 2 churches in the village. There is a church here and a church at the bottom end of the village.  One for Ballyvoher  which  is this one and  one for the Ballynacourty side of the town

The bishop in Killarney  got wind  of this and was told of the village  building 2 churches . The church here was at a more advanced stage  and so he decreed that this  church become the village church. The church below  on the back road which was in Pats Fitz’s field. That was taken down and the stone in that was  used to build a ball alley at the bottom end of the village.

So  this church, Fr Carroll  dates  him in the 1830s., The land was donated  by the Hickson, the landlord across the road.  The civil union of the Annascaul parishes  of what we know today happened in the amazing 1840s

So Camp, Lack  and Annascaul became a union of parishes. They had a parish priest  and they had an organised structure and record.

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So  we no longer  had the in fighting of  different parishes or different churches.

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This  building was the village casino

Upstairs they would play card and get up to  devilment. Any one who had a  bit of money would play cards. It wasn’t a licensed premises . It had a colourful period

The palace ball room is the second last stop. For those if you not familiar with Ireland.  In the 30’s 40s’ 50’s  the big past time in Ireland on a Sunday night or Friday night was the village dance hall.  So this was Annascaul’s village dance hall.  This was the Palace Ball Room.

This was built  by  2 brothers. The McCarthy brothers

It was a busy ball room.  It served the entire peninsula , from  Castlemaine, Castlegregory, Dingle and beyond.

They would say, the pay, I don’t know  what it would have cost to go into the ball room . I  often hear that Mike  McKenna, He was the security and he would go down to Eugene Mccarthy, to  his  house with 2 buckets, Tin buckets of money.

The dances stopped in the 60s. The night of the bad storm. They were sheltering  at the side of the gable . They were lucky there wasnt injuries

They would put on plays there also and the youth club went on there too.

It was  a central part of village life

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Tommy’s mother  had the house just above the dance hall.

Bridgie  had a  shop and  she provided the mutton pies She was also well known for feeding the dancers.

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The last  port of call s the school. This new school was built in 1914. This is the village school. It celebrated the centenary a few years ago now.  It  had  been a school before that. In the building of the new school. We will call this the new school. Most of the supplies came by railway. There was a brown dray  horse spent a couple of years down to the railway

It was build by Kennedy. They were the contractors.

The time the slate  had to  come to the school, it  came by the railway that passed outside the school. The railway carriage stopped outside the school. There was a chain of  kids that brought the slate in. So it is still the village school. In fact in the last few days we are  delighted to welcome 5 or  6 Ukrainians to the school. We  hope their stay in Annascaul is rewarding and happy.

Behind us is the sports pitch. The field as we now  know  it was established in the 50s. The previous field was back in Ballinclare

Brendan has a photo  of the field  from 1929

So  delighted  that you cam and hope you enjoyed.