Presentation Convent Then and Now, a poem and the Community Centre extension

The 1916 installation in January 2017

It looks great.


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Presentation Convent, then and now

My photographs of the convent  made so many people feel sad that I thought I'd better post a last few nice photographs from the convent in its heyday, the way we all prefer to remember it.

So sad!

When I was writing some convent memories earlier in the week, I included this Facebook comment from Maria Sham


What a waste! Sr Dympna loved the gardens, with the help of a man named Mackassey. I remember walking around the gardens following the Priest with the Blessed Sacrament all of us in our white dresses. It was Corpus Christi. We had another name for it. Does anyone know what it was ?

Seems that lots of people know what it was, Maria. It was the Quadrant Ore Celebration of the Eucharist.

James Kenny did a bit of research on this practice. This is what he wrote;

 "Maria Sham referred to a procession at the Presentation Convent during Corpus Christi and was querying if it had a name. It was called the Quarantore, official name is Quadrant’ Ore. I remember the processions….I  was an altar boy at the time and had the great “honour” of leading out the procession with the other boys and the priests.

The Quarantore was Forty Hours' Devotion; a Roman Catholic exercise of devotion in which continuous prayer is made for forty hours before the Blessed Sacrament in solemn exposition. It commonly occurred in a succession of churches, with one finishing prayers at the same time as the next takes it up

A celebration of such a devotion was begun by a Solemn Mass or "Mass of Exposition", and ended by a "Mass of Deposition". Each of these masses includes a procession and the litany of the saints being chanted.

The word derives from early 17^th century  Italian: quaranta meaning forty and ore meaning  hours.

I don’t recollect if the procession in the convent grounds was the beginning or the end of the forth hours adoration.

Although the precise origin of the Forty Hours' Devotion is wrapped in a good deal of obscurity, the custom of exposing the Blessed Sacrament in one church after another is recorded as having started as a novelty in Milan, in May, 1537."

Margaret Dillon remembers Listowel's Quadrant Ore well. The Eucharist in a monstrance was held aloft by the priest. That year's communicants (girls) in two lines came forward and strewed petals before the Eucharist. This was a carefully choreographed exercise. Sr. Dympna was in charge and she drilled the girls in what to do. At a certain point, the girls who were at the front went to the back and two new girls took over the petal duty at the front of the line.

Vincent Carmody remembers this Corpus Christi procession too. Vincent was an altar boy in the convent chapel and on Corpus Christi he got a day off school to participate in the the procession. The ceremony was part of Quadrant Ore or forty hours of prayer to mark the feast of the Body of Christ. 

As Vincent remembers it the blessed sacrament was taken in the monstrance from the altar where it had stood during the Quarantore exposition and it was carried down the corridor of the convent followed by the nuns and the Children of Mary. It was carried out the front door and around the front lawn following the path, before being returned again to the chapel.

Seán Keane remembers it well. He wrote "No doubt you were there for the "Quarantori" as I think the Corpus Christi procession was called ( forty (Quarenta) days after Easter Sunday?)The girls scattered petals of flowers from baskets,onto the ground in front of the priests at the head of the procession around the convent grounds.

I was one of the young Altar boys who served the priest at all the ceremonies in the convent church.

Sr Aloyius was our taskmaster

The 7.30 am Mass was a bit of a bind but was compensated for by the freedom to roam which we took and the generosity in the kitchens which we availed of while we waited to serve at benediction after retreats for the Children of Mary etc.

I recall seeing a nice photo of the group of us Altar boys taken in front of the convent door

( exactly as in our picture) about 1960.

Others will have more."

Maura McConnell remembers it as well. "The procession through the convent gardens on Corpus Christi was known as Quarant'Ore  . The garden always looked immaculate then and woe betide you if you were caught walking on the grass 😂 Maura"

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A Poem for You

I Like to Walk with Nana

I like to walk with Nana,

Her steps are small  like mine.

She never says "let's hurry-up!

She always takes her time.

I like to walk with Nana,

Her eyes see things like mine.

Shiny stones, a fluffy cloud,

Stars at night that shine.

People rush their whole day through,

They rarely stop to see.

I'm glad that God made Nanas
unrushed and young like me!

Author: unknown

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From the Archives

Kerryman 4 January 1947

South Kerry Domestic Servant's Fatal Injuries. About 6. 10 pm on
Christmas Eve, while seventeen years old Miss Mary Curran a domestic
servant, of  Coomastow, Ahatubrid, was proceeding home from her
employer’s place at Waterville, she was involved in a collision with a
motor lorry at Kinneigh, seven miles from Caherciveen and received
injuries to which she succumbed in about 20 minutes.

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Progress on the Community Centre Extension, January 11 2017

The Cows lawn concluded.; More on Superstorm Sandy

The final installment of Kay Caball's history of Childers' Park.


In 1966, Listowel Urban Council, still striving to finally put the Cows Lawn in public ownership and also to provide a Town Park for the residents, opened negotiations with the ‘Cow Keepers’ to purchase their shares. On 23 August 1965 the following Shareholders were offered £200 per share:

Martin Daly Market St.
Joseph Walsh, Church St., 
Paddy Keane, Church St.,

Joe Scanlon, Bridge Road, 
Gerald Lynch, The Square, 
Mrs. Tadg Brennan, Colbert St., 
Patrick Finucane, Church St 
Mrs. May Quillinan, C/o Miss Stack, The Emporium, Church St., 
Miss N Kelly, Upper William St.,

Mrs Nora Buckley, William St.

Miss Tessie Buckley, William St.,
Michael Woulfe, C/o McKennas, Listowel

All signified their agreement but at that point problems with the legal conveyance arose. A barrister’s opinion supplied by William A. Binchy (father of Maeve Binchy) dated 10.10.1965 spelled out the ‘defect in the title of the land in question’. 
Because the ownership had been vested in so many different titleholders, some now deceased, his opinion was that the best and indeed only way forward was a Compulsory Purchase Order.

The Compulsory Purchase Order was effected on 14 April 1966, the Urban Council borrowed £4,300 from the New Ireland Insurance Co., to pay for the acquisition, which they later recouped by selling a small section of the road frontage. At the same time the very distinctive Danaher’s Lodge, now called the Dandy Lodge, a nineteenth century cottage which had been the gate lodge to the manor and was identified as the first house in Bridge Road in the Ordinance Survey map of 1887,19 was moved stone by stone across the road to the new entrance to the Park. The Town Park, now known as Childers Park is in public ownership, used on a daily basis by the people of the town with pitch & putt, rugby, soccer, a children’s playground and Community Centre.

The highlight of the
 development of the Lawns is the Garden 
of Europe. In the wooded area which had 
formerly been used a town dump, the 
council, with the help of local voluntary
associations initiated the planting of the 
Garden of Europe, now regarded as one of Listowel's hidden treasures. It contains more than 2,500 trees and shrubs from all European countries. It also contains Ireland's only public monument to the memory of the millions who died in the Holocaust. The focal point of the garden is an impressive bust of the poet Schiller. Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy’ set to music by Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony is now the official anthem of the European Union.

Conclusion:

‘Ode to Joy’ expresses Schiller’s idealistic vision of the human race becoming brothers, a vision also shared by Beethoven.  Surely it is a fitting conclusion to the long drawn out struggle of the people of Listowel to be masters of their own destiny, to walk 
their ‘own’ land and enjoy all the facilities 
on offer in their ‘Town Park’. As this research shows, It had taken from the middle of the twelfth century, firstly with the Fitzmaurices, then the Hares as overlords, to reach a conclusion where the tenants and dispossessed were ‘brothers’ rather than serfs.

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I am very grateful to Kay for sharing this with us. She has done us all a great service in documenting this fascinating piece of Listowel history.

Below are some of the facilities available in the Cows' Lawn to the people of Listowel today.

Adult playground

tennis courts

Tee box on Pitch and Putt Course

Artwork and Graffiti

walks

flower bed

pitches

clubhouse

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Beautiful early colour photographs here (mostly Galway)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB0UfT3BJAw&feature=youtu.be

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Did you know there’s an Irish actor in the popular TV soap Home and Away?

Irish actor Alison McGirr, from Co Carlow, landed the role as Molly Brenner and has been appearing in episodes of the show in Australia since August of this year. 

She started appearing in episodes broadcasted in Ireland in recent weeks. 

McGirr, whose great-grandparents were from Ireland, was herself born in Australia but moved back to Ireland with her family 1996 where she attended Tullow Community School in Co Carlow.

McGirr is engaged to fellow actor Sam Atwell, who is best known for his role as Kane Philips in the TV show.

Home and Away is watched by an estimated 150,000 Irish people on RTÉ everyday.

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Do you remember yesterday's first hand pictures from New Jersey? They were shared with us by Marie Shaw and she wrote this account of superstorm Sandy.

Hi Mary,

Fortunately I was not in the thick of it. I live in Manchester, NJ about 13/15 miles inland from the coast. Most of those pictures were taken from the block behind my son's home in Belmar, NJ.

As I am sure you have heard in the media, the devastation on the coastline from lower Manhattan and all through the Jersey shore to Atlantic City is horrendous. A quarter of a million people in lower Manhattan without power which means no water, no heat, no cooking facilities. Over one hundred  homes in Breezy Point NY burned to the ground. Miraculously, nobody perished in the blaze.Rockaway Beach, NY (affectionately known in the old days as Ballybunion USA) just a memory of what it once was.

The entire Jersey shore has been wiped out with hotels, private beachfront homes and miles and miles of boardwalk gone. So many families homeless in the aftermath, so many lives ruined by the wrath of mother nature.

When, as a child back in Listowel, we would experience a storm, the older people would talk about "The night of the big wind" I had no idea what the fuss was about but I certainly do now. I have never heard such gale force winds. Up to 80 miles an hour, windows shaking, trees uprooted and flashing lights in the sky. The flashing lights we found out later were transformers exploding.

Incredibly, only about forty lives were lost and most of those were people who refused to follow orders to "Stay inside your homes" and ending up being struck by falling trees and live electrical wires on the ground.

Most of us (The Irish in partulicar) have always had an ongoing romantic affair with the sea but we are all realizing that the sea and nature in general can turn on us in an instant and many can be left with broken hearts and broken lives.

On a happier note, as the sea grows calm once again, the attached picture shows that everything has it's time and place and tonight we feel that God is still in the heavens and all will be right with the world once again.

Regards,

Marie Shaw

Calm after the storm

And

Still standing in the midst of the devastation ay Breezy Point New York.

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And I saw this next on Facebook. Uplifting!