Search Results for 'Kathleen Villiers-Tuthill'

As the eagerly anticipated 46th Clifden Arts Festival approaches, it continues to uphold its tradition of nurturing artistic passion and fostering creative expression.

This year's 46th Clifden Arts Festival is set to uphold its tradition of nurturing artistic passion and fostering creative expression.

As a direct consequence of the death of three National Army soldiers during a botched raid on the barracks in Headford on Sunday April 8 1923, six anti-Treaty young men, already in Galway jail, were selected for immediate execution. They had been arrested during a raid on their training camp in the Currandulla area six weeks earlier.

In the immediate aftermath of the recapture of Clifden by the anti-Treaty forces on Sunday 29 October 1922, the town was in a mess. Every house on Main Street had its windows and doors shattered. The streets were littered with glass as a result of explosions. In the houses opposite the barracks ‘not a picture remained on the walls, nor a piece of furniture unscathed’. Porter and spirits ‘flowed out the door’ of Lavelle’s pub. The ‘armoured car’, which had caused so much surprise, and gave cover to allow bombs to be placed, was removed and abandoned at Killery. It was noted that for the first time in living memory there were no church services in Clifden that Sunday.

On Saturday night, October 28 1922, a large force of anti-Treatyites made their way carefully and with as little noise as possible, into the silent streets of Clifden. They had already ‘taken’ Clifden the previous July, but were unceremoniously driven out by the National Army who approached Clifden by sea achieving total surprise.

Even though the National Army ousted the anti-Treaty forces from Clifden in August 1922, they had not gone away. They still remained a threatening force, well armed and determined. Ever since the Black and Tan war the so called Connemara Flying Column, still under the leadership of Peter McDonnell, Gerald Bartley and others, were firmly on the anti-Treaty side. They were familiar with the path-ways and mountain hide-outs, which made them virtually invisible in times of pursuit.

After sporadic fighting in Galway during the summer of 1922, and the occupation of some buildings in the town, including the old RIC barracks in Eglington Street, and the former Connaught Ranger barracks at Renmore, the anti-Treaty forces withdrew into Connermara, and into the east Galway countryside.

Week IV

When Mitchell Henry entered Westminster parliament in 1871 he went with hope in his heart and a mission to tell the British people the precarious circumstances of the Irish tenant farmer. In many ways he resembled Jefferson Smith in the Frank Cappa film ‘Mr Smith Goes to Washington’ where a naive, idealistic young man has plans to change America.* Mitchell Henry, a liberal, kindly man, had plans to be a voice for the Irish tenant farmer within, what he believed, was a paternalistic landlord system, but he walked into a political cauldron, waiting to explode.

It must have been an extraordinary sight in the 1860s to see Kylemore castle rise from a bog in the heart of Connemara’s Twelve Pins, barely a decade following the devastation of the Great Famine. More than 100 men were employed, some coming from as far away as Renvyle and further, at a handsome wage of seven to 10 shillings a week, turning rough, soggy land, only good for shooting wild fowl and for fishing in its nearby lakes, into a magnificent building. Today it stands more like a palace than a castle, and is still a show-stopper on the Letterfrack road.