Annual Review – 2023

Looking Back on 2023: Finola

Roaringwater Journal had our best year ever, thanks to all our readers – we are truly privileged that you invite us on to your phones and desktops year after year. You are what keeps us going – you, and our own abiding fascination with the world around us, in West Cork and further afield. And what’s with the cheesy image above? Well, I’ve been playing around with AI-generated images and it turns out that this is what you get when you ask DALL-E for a picture that looks like an Irish landscape with a thatched cottage, in the style of stained glass. I don’t think we’ll be substituting AI for our own photographs any time soon.

We had over 333,000 views this year – that’s an average of over 900 a day. Many people read more than one post when they drop by, so those views were generated by over 200,000 visitors. We’ve had visitors from 180 countries, although the vast majority come from the English-speaking world of Ireland, the UK, the USA, Canada and Australia, followed by several European countries.

How do you find us? That’s changed over the years. We have about 6500 followers between WordPress and Facebook, so those folks see our posts aa soon as they’ve been published, or put up on Facebook. But after that most people seem to come to us from a search engine query. 

Robert is doing his own post about his personal picks for 2023, so here goes with mine. There are all kinds of reasons for my choices – the ones I have had most fun researching, the ones that resonated most with our readers, the ones that scored highest on views, or just ones that I loved for undefinable reasons. And my top pick is…..!

When Harry Met Edith. This was a three part post involving a deep dive into one window – the Nativity window in Castletownshend, designed and executed entirely by Harry Clarke, and managed for the family by Edith Somerville. Two of the giants of early 20th century Irish culture, and things did not always go smoothly, which makes for a better story. 

I had two other stained glass posts this year that I loved – the one about the Kilbride window, the most mis-described and least known of Harry’s Irish windows (above), and a quest to track down a window from a grainy black and white photo in an ad for Watsons of Youghal in a 1907 catalogue. I got lots of help from my stained glass colleagues on that one. The image below is by photographer John Glynn

Although it wasn’t technically a stained glass post, I illustrated my Brigid: A Bishop in All But Name with stained glass images, some kindly supplied by John Glynn. There are ancient sources for Brigid’s life and conclusive evidence that she was a real, powerful and revered woman, deserving of her place alongside Patrick and Columcille as one of our three patron saints.

Archaeology is one of our passions and anything to do with Castles always draws a big audience. So it’s no surprise that a post about our new Menu Page on castles was popular, but also a two-parter on Dún an Óir, a castle built on an earlier promontory fort. Since it’s hard to get to, I was grateful for a cache of photos, including the one below, from Tash, one of our readers.

I also continued my Mizen Megaliths series, with three wedge tombs and a tribute to Stevie Lynch, one of our Heritage Heroes. Our other hero this year was Leita Camier, who spent so many years delighting us all with her Gortnagrough Folk Museum, now sadly closed.

I love maps – and apparently so do you! A three-part post, A Map of the County of Cork, explored what we could recognise still in a map that was drawn over 400 years ago. In fact, I established to my own satisfaction that the map was the work of Francis Jobson, and probably dates to around 1589.

Two new books were launched this year to great acclaim. Our friends Amanda Clarke, the writer, and Peter Clarke, designer and publisher, brought out the marvellous Holy Wells of Cork in July. Comprehensive, beautifully illustrated, thoroughly researched and engagingly written (there’s a whole section on Saints Behaving Badly!), it’s already into the second printing. 

Then, just in time for Christmas, David Myler published his Walking with Stones. An outgrowth of his popular facebook page of the same name, it’s the first non-academic book on West Cork archaeology since Jack Robert’s classics of the 1980s. 

My discovery of albums of photos by one of Ireland’s earliest photographers, Sir John Joscelyn Coghill, was a big thrill, especially since many of his photos were of West Cork subjects.

And finally, although they aren’t in Cork, I really enjoyed writing the four-part series on Cashels in Kerry. In essence they are an examination of what we can know, and not know, about life in early medieval Ireland.

On this last day of 2023, we wish you all a Happy New Year and thank you for joining us on our ongoing journey.

(We’re heading out to Toe Head, above, in the company of Gormú – if you haven’t already experienced one of his walks, sign up now!)

Looking Back on 2023: Robert

This is my favourite image of the year! I published a post about the architecture of Bantry Library, and it proved to be our most popular . . . This limited edition print, a collaboration between Dermot Harrington of Cook Architects and Robin Foley of Hurrah Hurrah is celebrating the upcoming 50th Anniversary of the completion of Bantry’s Library in 1974, and some refurbishment work is being undertaken for the occasion. For me, the print captures perfectly the iconic graphic of this most unorthodox design.

We both wrote 52 posts this year, each of around 1,000 words, and all fully illustrated. Above is a pic of one of the penstocks which brings the water into the turbine casings at Ardnacrusha Power Station (courtesy of ESB Archives). This incredible engineering feat – well ahead of its time – was constructed between 1925 and 1929, and was integral to the supply of electricity throughout Ireland’s young state by harnessing water power from The Shannon. West Cork benefitted from Rural Electrification, and I thoroughly enjoyed researching and writing a series of posts on the whole subject.

. . . Once a community was connected, or about to be connected, the ESB held public demonstrations of household appliances. These were then sold bringing electric irons, kettles, stoves to homes. The demonstration evening in Glenamaddy was held in January 1951. The handwritten report records that it took place “in the very fine Esker Ballroom”; these events were social occasions that brought communities together. The Glenamaddy evening “was attended by about 90, including 50 women. As is usual, the women appeared to be more keen than the men and more inclined to ask questions (and to argue). After the demonstration, a melodeon player turned up and an impromptu dance got under way” . . . Small towns and rural townlands became brighter and winters less harsh and Christmas more special as the fairy lights began to shine. It also gave rise to a rural Irish icon as every house had the Sacred Heart picture with the (electric) red lamp (below): many didn’t get a kettle and washing machine until later on . . .

ESB Archives

The whole series on Rural Electrification was written during the summer and can be read through this link: https://roaringwaterjournal.com/tag/electrification-of-ireland/

Since 2018 our own Museum in Ballydehob has been showing exhibitions of the work of locally based artists. This year it was the turn of the Verlings – John and Noelle. John died, sadly, in 2009; Noelle is still alive and kicking and assisted Brian Lalor and myself in assembling an excellent collection of the work of these two creative residents of our village, assisted technically and ably by Stephen Canty. BAM is a really valuable resource in setting out the unique history of the artistic community here in West Cork from the 1950s onwards.

A wonderful photograph (courtesy Geoff Greenham with many thanks) of St Bridget’s Catholic Church in Ballydehob. The interior was reordered by John Verling.

. . . The gold fish hand drawn in the background of the altar and the depiction of one fish swimming against the shoal continues to evoke admiration from locals and visitors alike. He also designed the two ‘windswept thorn’ stained glass windows and etched the brass surround of the tabernacle. The Altar slab, composed of a vast monolith like the capstone of a dolmen, is a distinguished piece of sculpture and a tribute to his imaginative capacity . . .

JOHN VERLING WEBSITE: HTTPS://WWW.JOHNVERLING.COM

There was great drama off the coast of Ballydehob on the night of 22 September 1973, and its 50th anniversary was duly celebrated in Roaringwater Journal!

. . . AS an inspector from the aeronautical section of the Department of Transport and Power arrived in Ballydehob to begin an investigation into Saturday night’s plane crash off the Cork coast, it was learned last night that the pilot of the Piper Cherokee almost lost his life in his efforts to save the other three men on board. Michael Murphy (23), of Mercier Park, Curragh Road, Cork, who was sitting next to the pilot, Eric Hutchins of Ballinlough, Cork, said that Mr Hutchins was concentrating so much on getting the plane down that he was knocked unconscious at impact. Mr Murphy, together with Noel O’Halloran, of St Luke’s, Cork, and James McGarry, of Monkstown, Co Cork, had been braced for the crash and scrambled free on to the wing. But then they found that they could not get out Mr Hutchins who was unconscious. Mr O’Halloran then went back into the rapidly sinking plane and between them they pulled Mr Hutchins free and threw him into the water. The three men then swam ashore taking 40 minutes to reach land at Fylemuck, as they had to support the injured man all the way . . .

IRISH PRESS, MONDAY 24 SEPTEMBER 1973

All four crew and passengers on the plane survived the ditching, but the aircraft itself (a photo taken in its good days, above) was a write-off. Those living locally who remembered the event gathered to mark it in Schull, on the anniversary.

That’s Keith Payne, above. He’s one of the many artists who has lived in West Cork for a significant part of his life – at Leamcon, and he was deservedly given an exhibition in The Blue House Gallery, Schull, in September this year. He has always been fascinated by ‘early markings’, including Rock Art: he contributed dramatically to our own Rock Art exhibition at The Public Museum, Cork, in 2015.

That’s a spectacular large canvas by Keith inspired by Rock Art at Derreenaclogh, West Cork (on the right, above). It’s from an earlier exhibition by Keith in County Clare in 2018, at the Burren College of Art Gallery in Ballyvaughan, Co Clare. The work below is titled Cave Entrance.

Throughout the year I continued to publish posts on some of my favourite subjects: Irish signs, advertising and curiosities. I’m always avidly collecting these, and will have some to show in 2024, for sure. In the meantime, let’s hope our general news becomes more positive as we move forward in this disorienting world of ours . . . Have a good new year, everyone!

And here’s a little PS . . . Way back in January, before I had the idea to write about Rural Electrification in Ireland historically, I penned a post about how I saw Ireland very much at the forefront of harnessing wind power – all at sea. Here it is!