Dorans Then and Now, Patrick Keough walks the Kerry Way and a Station Cat

1916 commemorative Garden, July 2018

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Crowley's Corner now Doran's Pharmacy

Photo: The John Hannon Archive

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Hiking The Kerry Way

A friend recently sent me a link to this blog post

Trecking The Kerry Way

Read this account of Patrick Keough's walk and you will want to "arise and go there"

Here are just a few snippets.

The Kerry Way Trail takes you over some of Ireland’s highest mountains, majestic coastlines, remote valleys, native forests and breathtaking scenic vistas.

The terrain along the Kerry Way is much more extreme and remote than the Camino to Santiago, however the scenic views are magnificent and awe inspiring. I also got myself lost a few times hiking the mountain ridges in dense fog. It was a frightening experience not being able to find the trail markers then looking at my phone and realizing I had no service. Luckily after about 4 km of searching and some praying I found my way back to the trail. It was an introspective trek, in addition to a great personal challenge.

After a week of hiking over rugged deserted terrain I started thinking what it must have been like for the Irish people 200 years ago. No creature comforts, no cars, phones or electricity. I can’t even imagine how hard life must have been just traveling from town to town by foot or horse cart.

It’s difficult doing justice with words describing the majestic beauty of the Kerry landscape. It’s the same as it was thousands of years ago. Towering rocky hillsides, flowing dark rivers and miles and miles of wet boggy grass and yellow gorse. I feel very blessed and a little overwhelmed hiking in this timeless unspoiled environment. Looking upon my surroundings this morning bathed in crisp dawn light I feel Gods presence in nature.

This is just a small taste of this marvellous blogpost. Here is the link again. Read it all and look at Patrick's marvellous photos. If you don't have the energy to undertake it, this is the next best thing to being there.

The Kerry Way

All photos and text are copyright  to Patrick Keough

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Summer Visitors

When I called in to Listowel Writers' Week office last week, I found Máire and Eilish entertaining Jim and Liz Dunn and their visiting grandchildren.

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This Cat is going nowhere

Member of staff at Tralee railway station

Ballydonoghue, A Doctor in Spite of Himself twice, Doran's Then and Now

The Cross at Lisselton in glorious June sunshine in 2018

Photo; Ballydonoghue Parish Magazine

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A Doctor in Spite of Himself X2

Remember I told you about this open air performance of Moliére's play in Listowel Town Square during an early Writers' Week. Mike Moriarty who is  in the white coat on the left of the stage remembered that they were all delighted when their performance made The Irish Times. David O'Sullivan did a bit of delving for us and here is what he found.

The above is an extract from the 1978 programme. What a feast of drama they had!
Two other performances aroused my interest. They are  The Life of O"Reilly with Brendan O'Reilly. Was this the late great high jumper and later sports commentator?
And what was The Ball on the Hop by Eamon Keane?

I'll have to go back to the oracle.

 I hope you can enlarge this to read it. It reminds me of accounts of early performances of Shakespeare and miracle plays in courtyards of inns and town squares when people would drop by to see a play on their way home with the shopping and maybe shy a tomato or two at the villain.

Seems like the evergreen Mickey McConnell was the highlight of the ballad competition. No surprise there then.

This is the 1991 production. Mike Moriarty is on the right, playing the part he first played in 1978. Danny Hannon, who founded the Lartigue Players was also involved in the acquiring and refurbishing of St. John's decided to reprise a successful play for the opening performance.

The "smallest theatre in Ireland and England" had been closed down for 9 years when the lease ran out. Gerard Lynch, who owned the building, had given the Lartigue the use of the theatre rent free for ten years.  Now drama had found a new home in St. John's and the Lartigue company was just one of the many local drama groups who used it as their home for many years and some still do today.

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Then and Now on a Corner of Church St.

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Evening Stroll by The Feale

Knockanure, Charles Street friends, Fr. Roger and Doran's Pharmacy, Church Street

Photo: Chris Grayson

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Knockanure parish church in May 2018

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First Communion, Knockanure May 2018

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Boyhood Friends

Martin Griffin gave me this old photo to share with you.
In front;  Billy Dore, Dominick Scanlon and Richie Chute R.I.P.
Back Buddy Jones and Frank Chute

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Convent Chapel May 2018

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R.I.P.   Fr. Roger Duggan

Last week I attended the funeral mass of Fr. Roger Duggan in St. Mary's Listowel. It was a small funeral, because, in the words of Fr. John Fitzgerald who celebrated the mass, Roger had become a Kerryman only recently.


Fr. Roger was far from "unknown" and during his life he had travelled and served and sang and had many adventures.


As was fitting for a man who loved music his funeral mass featured some of the most heavenly music I have heard in St. Mary's, Listowel.


So who was this gentle holy man?


Fr. Roger Duggan was the only brother of Una Hayes, whom I have come to know through our both belonging to the  Knitwits knitting group.


Una and Roger were born in Wales to Irish parents. They moved to Birmingham and it is here that Roger and Una grew up.


Roger worked in Wales, in England and eventually in Australia. His cv is very diverse. He worked in taxation, in sheep shearing, in the hospitality industry and in railway building.


Eventually this very intelligent and well read man decided on a life in the religious order of Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.  He was ordained in 1993 and spent his life in ministry in Australia.


When he retired, he relocated to Cork. He took up a new role as chaplain to the local convent and he helped out with the work of the parish.


When he fell into ill health it was decided that he would be happiest nearer to his beloved Una and her husband Liam and so he spent his last years being well looked after in Oaklands Nursing Home.


May he rest in peace

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Doran's Pharmacy, Listowel opening

I disturbed Norma and staff as they put the finishing touches to her new shop. Outside, the final brush was being put to the paint.

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Things ar Hotting up in the Writers' Week office

All hands on deck, shoulders to the wheel and noses to the grindstone. Writers Week 2018 is 2 days away.

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Nathan Carter meets a Star and her husband

St. John's, old Limerick, a Ballymacelligott memoir and a street céilí

Moon over St. John's in February 2018

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Limerick 1940's

Photo from a site called European Beauty on the internet

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Being a Teenager in Kerry in the 1950s

This is an extract from a great memoir by Jerry Savage R.I.P.. You can read the whole memoir on

Find My Kerry Ancestors

Growing up at home in our school days we helped at home on the farm.  We were never bored.  In winter time we helped tend the cows and horse and clean out the stalls.  We also learned to milk the cows.  In the springtime we helped to set the potatoes and sow the oats and other crops.  In summer time we helped to save the hay and then draw it to the shed.  The oats and wheat were cut and saved in August and threshed in September.  That was the day we loved the most and a lot of the neighbours, called a ‘meitheal’ came to help on the day and we had a day off school.  We also cut and saved the turf.  It was hard work and we travelled eight miles on a horse and cart to do it. We also drew it home on a horse and cart.  There were no oil fires then but all these jobs prepared us for our experiences later in life.

Starting school in Tralee Technical School was an experience.  We had to cycle five miles to and from school, in winter and summer, rain or shine but we got used to it.   We made new friends and we took on new lessons to learn new subjects.  After two years I was selected as an apprentice to a garage in Rock Street in Tralee in 1942.  Motor cars were scarce then. There were only lorries and tractors.  The hackney men, teachers, doctors and parish priests had cars.

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Seachtain na Gaeilge 2018

I happened to be in Tralee during SnaG 2018 and there was a street céilí in full swing in the square.

Providing the music was that great Kanturk balladeer and musician Tim Browne. I taught Tim a cúpla focal many moons ago

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Doran's Corner?

There is a tradition in Listowel of calling a corner after the shop that stands there. I wonder will this corner come to be named after the new pharmacy.

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Looking for Flavin Family

I have been contacted by Stephen Flavin who is looking to make contact with any of the Irish side of his family, particularly anyone who may remember his late father.

"My name is Stephen Flavin. My father (deceased) was Michael Joseph Flavin who was possibly named (or even related to ) Michael Joseph Flavin Nationalist MP. 

My father was born in Listowel Dhirah West in 1917. I am trying to find anyone who may have known him when he was a boy/young man before he emigrated around 1946 to Corsham in Wiltshire. I would love to find a (school) photograph of him. He attended a local national school in the area around Listowel. He may have been mentioned in the school register/log book. 

Anyone from your group who can help in anyway would be fantastic.  

I realise that my father's name was fairly common. I have seen a picture of Michael Joseph Flavin related and connected to FLAVINS book shop but this is a different man and family. 

My grandfather was Patrick Flavin and he married Julia nee Quirk and they lived with their children 4 sons (my father was the eldest) and 1 daughter called Sheila who married Frank Galvin who continued to live in the family cottage in the middle of a peat bog in an area called Dihra  West which is off the Ballybunion Road. You probably know that area well. "

Garden of Europe, a poem and Eamon Keane remembered the Carnegie Library when it was playhouse

Carrigafoyle castle near Ballylongford, Co. Kerry

Photo by Ita Hannon

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A Poem to raise a smile

The optimist fell ten stories

And at each window bar

He shouted to the folks inside;

"I'm doing all right so far."

(Author unknown)

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Path to the river

This path runs beside the Garden of Europe and leads to the River Feale.

This stand of trees is relatively recent, certainly within the last 20 years.

This seat will be surrounded by wild garlic in a few weeks.

The Garden of Europe is looking very bare these days.

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When is a Library not a Library?

This building at Upper Church Street, Listowel was at one time used as a classroom. But Vincent Carmody reminds us that it was also once used as a playhouse.

Here is a quotation from Eamon Keane's introduction to Vincent's Not Kerry Camera;

"I looked across at the old Library Hall last week and saw again, in my minds eye, Horatio, the old yellow poster on the billboard outside:  

For one week only- Anew McMaster and Full Supporting Company, In a Season of Plays Mostly by William Shakespeare'

As an entranced fifteen year old I had seen Mac as Oedipus (by Euripides) along with Patrick Magee and Donal Wherry playing in the same hall to a spellbound audience of locals, mountainy men and well- read countrymen. Some even sat on the window -sills, so packed was the auditorium"

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Weren't Healyracing a credit to Listowel on the telly?

I took this photo a few years ago of Cathy Healy and her beloved dad, Liam.
He would have been so so proud of her and of all his family on Nationwide.
In case you missed it, here's the link to the programme on RTE player

Nationwide from Castleisland and Listowel

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Cranes as Symbols of Recovery

Upper Church Street late February 2018

Doran's Pharmacy is getting there.

The view from Courthouse Road