Search Results for 'Union Jack'

The arrival of British royalty on Irish shores in recent times, is usually greeted with genuine interest and curiosity, and a sense of welcome and respect, while extreme nationalists have to grin and bear it.

In the latest of our articles focusing on the War of Independence and Civil War in and around Athlone, we follow the declining fortunes of the Athlone Brigade’s flying column between October 1920 and February 1921.

Just before 6am on St Patrick's Day 1921, Monsignor McAlpine, the Catholic parish priest of Clifden, Co Galway, was woken by loud banging on his door. “For God's sake, Canon, come down - the town is ablaze.”

AS ELECTION placards leer at us from every lamp-post, and vote-wheedling leaflets are daily stuffed through our letterboxes, The Kenny Gallery’s new exhibition of Irish political posters, flyers, and assorted ephemera from down the years, could hardly be more topical.

Despite Fr Peter Conway’s row with the Protestant rector of Headford, the Rev Dean Plunkett (and there were some appalling battles against Protestants to come), he got on surprisingly well with the landlord of the whole area, the impressively named Richard Mensergh St George, Esq, also the High Sheriff. Initially, when Conway asked him if he would donate land for a church for his Catholic tenants, the request was turned down flat. But out of the blue, St George invited Conway to his house one day and offered him an acre of ground ‘anywhere on his estate’, rent free forever;  furthermore, he gave an additional seven acres of land for a priest’s house, and a subscription of £20 for a school.

Peter Greene was born in Galway city in 1895, the youngest child of Colman Greene from Carna and Julia McGrath from Newcastle. He was educated in the ‘Pres’ and the ‘Mon’, where his teacher Brother Ambrose was a major influence; “Boys, I hope none of you will ever wear the red coat.”