This talk will discuss the development of the annual Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireannin the 1950s, with particular emphasis on when the Fleadh came to Loughrea, CountyGalway in 1955 and the subsequent year 1956, when it was hosted in neighbouringCounty Clare, in Ennis. The Fleadh was first established by Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann(CCÉ) in 1951, when the inaugural festival was held in Mullingar. That first Fleadh wasthe initial action of CCÉ, the nascent music revival organisation, itself as yet unnamed.Over the course of the 1950s, the annual Fleadh (and the developing structures ofcounty and provincial Fleadh) became the most important calendar event for the Irishtraditional music community of practice. In the 1950s, Loughrea and Ennis as locationswere key building blocks in Fleadh growth, but were not without tensions which spilledover into the performance space.  The Fleadh remains central to Irish traditional musicculture, now attracting over half a million people annually, however, it is these earlyfestivals which created many of the structures and patterns of festivalisation that arecentral the contemporary Fleadh model. Dr Méabh Ní Fhuartháin (Head of Irish Studies, Centre for Irish Studies, University ofGalway) lectures and researches in the field of Irish music and dance studies. Widelypublished, Méabh’s current research projects… Read the rest

Cover of “Queen of Codes: The Secret Life of Emily Anderson, Britain’s Greatest Female Code Breaker” Galway woman Emily Anderson may have appeared to the world as the epitome of ordinary,yet was in truth anything but. Born in 1891 as the daughter of the President of Queen’sCollege Galway, during World War I she was recruited to British intelligence to work as acodebreaker. So exceptional were her skills that she was one of the few women retained towork in intelligence during the interwar period, and subsequently served as a codebreaker atBletchley Park and later Cairo, winning an OBE in the process. Though widelyacknowledged as an exceptional musicologist – her translations of the Letters of Mozart andthe Letters of Beethoven are classics to this day – her professional life as Britain’s greatestfemale codebreaker remained secret until the recent publication of her biography by JackieUí Chionna. In this lecture Dr. Uí Chionna will recall the remarkable life of the woman whoearned herself the title “Queen of Codes”. Dr. Jackie Uí Chionna teaches History at the University of Galway. Her biography of EmilyAnderson, Queen of Codes: The Secret Life of Emily Anderson, Britain’s Greatest FemaleCodebreaker, was published by Headline UK in 2023. Her previous… Read the rest

River-Ford at Clarinbridge River-fords are a common but half-forgotten feature of the Irish countryside, their positions recalled only by ‘áth’ placenames, historic maps and local memory. Being gifts of nature, they are distinctly un-monumental and liminal locations. As a result, river-fords have featured only intermittently in academic research: their existence often overlooked by archaeologists; their presence a mere backdrop for historians; their orthographies a mere sidebar for philologists. Yet fords offer great potential for historic geography and landscape archaeology. As places where topography and geology intersect, river-fords offer key insights into travel, community interaction, and settlement patterns. In this lecture, Paul Gosling will explore the characteristics of historic fords and offer a methodology for their identification. Paul Gosling is a former lecturer in Built Heritage in the Department of Heritage and Tourism at the Atlantic Technological University. He is a professional archaeologist and a member of the Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland. His research interests are focused on archaeological survey and his published work includes reports and papers on the field monuments of Co. Galway and Clare Island, Co. Mayo, as well as the topography of a number of towns. He is also a member of the Committee of the Galway Archaeological & Historical Society. Date: Monday 12 February 2024Time:… Read the rest

‘Keeping your head down’: Border Protestant experiences during the Troubles The Northern Irish ‘Troubles’, which claimed almost 4,000 lives, was the longest-running ethnic conflict in post-War Europe. Histories of the Troubles tend to focus on political elites or political groupings – in particular, nationalist and loyalist paramilitaries. One under-researched and under-appreciated dimension of the conflict has been the experiences of the border Protestant community.   Whilst infamous incidents, such as the murder of Senator Billy Fox in 1973 or the Remembrance Day bombing of 1987, remain well-known (in parts of the public consciousness at least), other experiences have perhaps been less considered. For many border Protestants in geographically isolated areas, daily life remained one of threat, vigilance, and ‘keeping your head down’.In this talk, Dr. Cillian McGrattan will draw primarily on interview and newspaper material, and shall posit that the case study of border Protestants is not only worthy of greater attention in its own right as an under-studied dimension of the Troubles, but also that it acts as a lens through which to view the changing collective memory of the conflict as living memory passes to received wisdoms. Dr Cillian McGrattan lectures in politics at Ulster University. Among other books,… Read the rest

In the last 30 years excellent progress has been made in analysing the royal and ritual sites of Ireland: Newgrange and the Boyne Valley, the hill of Uisneach – known as the navel of Ireland, Emain Macha in Armagh, and Tara, among others. The westernmost royal and ritual site is considered to be Cruachan in County Roscommon, which nonetheless lies by the Shannon River along the centre of the island. In the most ancient records, however, another site is named further west, that of the hill of Knockma in County Galway, which bears all the hallmarks of a royal and ritual landscape: literary, genealogical, archaeological and archaeo-astronomical. This talk will discuss Knockma as a prehistoric landscape, an early Christian cult centre, and as the forgotten birthplace of the ancestors of the Uí Briúin medieval kings of Connacht. Dr. Jessica Cooke is a graduate of the University of Dublin and the University of Cambridge. She is an affiliate member of the Centre of Ancient, Medieval and Pre-modern Studies at the Moore Institute in the University of Galway. Her current research interests include an examination of Knockma’s significance in West Connacht from prehistory up until the middle ages, an area which has… Read the rest

The Commission for the Sale of Encumbered Estates, often referred to as “the Encumbered Estates Court” was established in 1849. It’s purpose was to expedite the sale of landed estates “encumbered” by debt. In a parallel with our more recent history it has sometimes been likened to a “19th century NAMA”!  This talk will briefly look at the origins and development of this major player in the history of Irish landed estates between the Famine and the Land War. It will then focus on some of the physical evidence of the courts’ activities, namely the actual Sale Notices, sometimes, though slightly erroneously, referred to as “rentals”. Examples of Sale Notices for some Galway estates will be examined in order to highlight the usefulness of these documents in providing information for economic history, genealogical and topographical research. Finally we will discover various routes of access to the actual documents. Marie Boran has been Special Collections Librarian at the James Hardiman Library, University of Galway for over 20 years. Her research interests include Irish family and local studies and the history of landed estates in Ireland. Marie is one of the researchers who developed the Irish Landed Estates database, www.landedestates.ie She holds an MA in History… Read the rest

‘Terrible things were done by both sides…I’d prefer not to talk about it’. Uttered in 1969, Séan Lemass’ words on the Irish Civil War encapsulated views of the conflict half a century later. This bitter ‘War of the Brothers’ had lasted eleven months, ended with a cessation of hostilities but no negotiated settlement, and provided a legacy that poisoned Irish political life for decades. And yet, within twelve weeks of the ceasefire, both warring parties contested an open general election, and the basis of democratic governance was strengthened. In this lecture, Dr. Mel Farrell offered a centenary reflection on the immediate post-Civil War period, and the new Irish state’s emergence as a stable democracy. A graduate of Maynooth University, where he undertook doctoral and post-doctoral studies in Irish political history, Dr. Farrell currently lectures in history at Carlow College St. Patricks. Widely published on topics relating to Irish political history, he is the author of Party Politics in a New Democracy: The Irish Free State, 1922-37, and is the co-editor of A Formative Decade: Ireland in the 1920s.… Read the rest