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Irish Independent
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Wexford fun day will raise funds for Union of Parishes
The Parish Fete and Family Fun Day is designed to raise funds for the Union of Parishes and as it will be the organisers only major fundraising initiative this year it's hoped there will be a large crowd in attendance. The Enniscorthy and Monart Union of Parishes comprises Clone, Clonmore, Monart, St. Mary's and Templescobin. The launch of the Enniscorthy and Monart Union of Parishes event took place recently at St Mary's Church in Enniscorthy, where members showed off food, toys, and games that will be on offer on the day. Taking place on Saturday, June 7 in the Enniscorthy Showgrounds, will have a range of activities including, face painting, lucky dips, afternoon tea, a number of stalls, and food including BBQ burgers. A big highlight of the day is always the dog show, which will be taking place from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Organisers have added a number of additional categories over the years including the 'dog with the wiggliest tail' and the 'dog the judges would most like to bring home.' It is important to note that the Fete and Family fun day is not confined to members of the Church of Ireland with the Canon Nicola Halford of St Mary's Church encouraging people of all denominations to attend what promises to be a great family day out. There is free admission on the day, with a large number of free parking available.
Irish Examiner
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Michael Quane and Johanna Connor: Cork husband and wife artists unite for joint exhibition
The fact that Michael Quane and Johanna Connor work in different, but complementary, media is reflected in the title of their new exhibition at the Lavit Gallery in Cork. Pencil – Paper – Chisel – Stone features Connor's pencil drawings of objects and landscapes alongside Quane's limestone and marble sculptures of people, beasts and inflatables. The two are not just collaborators, they are also a couple, having connected during the Covid pandemic. 'We were following each other on Instagram for a while,' says Connor. 'At the time, I was working with horses, and I was really mesmerised by Michael's sculptures. I wanted to know what the connection was, so I asked him. And Michael said that he'd need my email for that, it was such a long answer.' 'We emailed each other for a week after that,' says Quane, 'and then we met.' Horses, he explains, have preoccupied him since his student days at the Crawford College of Art & Design in the 1980s. 'At that time, I had a group of very good friends who were all very strong feminists,' he says. 'I encoded an awful lot of what I was trying to say through animals, and the horse, for me, represented male energy and power. But it's since become invested with all kinds of other meanings, to do with human progress, for instance.' Quane's interest in horses found expression in the public art commissions he began winning not long after he graduated. The fees for his Horses and Riders sculpture at Mallow Roundabout and Fallen Horse and Rider at Midleton helped pay for the former Church of Ireland church in Coachford, Co Cork he acquired for £24,000 in 1994. Michael Quane with one of his pieces at the Lavit. Refurbishing the building has been a long-term project, which Connor helped complete when she moved in in November 2020. As well as being their home, the former church houses their two studios and an exhibition space. 'It's not a commercial enterprise,' says Quane of the latter. 'We show our own work, and sometimes work by other artists. We open for Culture Night in September every year. Three years ago, we had one of our neighbours come in. The second year, we had maybe twenty. But last year, we had scores of local people. It's getting bigger every year.' They also open by appointment. 'One day last week, we had 100 school children come in. It was fantastic. They're just so curious, you know?' While Quane has worked full-time as a studio artist for over 40 years, Connor – a native of Schull, Co Cork – explored other avenues after graduating from the Limerick School of Art & Design. 'I studied painting initially,' she says. 'But after my diploma, I took some time out and worked with the Bedrock theatre company in Dublin. Then I applied for the Motley Theatre Design Course in London. I was very fortunate to get in; they only take ten people every year.' She returned to Dublin, working as a freelance designer. 'But then the scene kind of changed,' she says. 'So I went back to London. I'd met someone, and I discovered I was pregnant. Things changed for me then. I was born with a twisted intestine and the pregnancy didn't work out. I lost the baby, and I nearly died. Then I went right, what next? I ended up moving back to Schull.' For the next twelve years, Connor worked with horses. She maintained her interest in art, exhibiting at the West Cork Art Centre and producing a children's book with her friend Gabrielle Byrne. Eventually, she returned to study, completing an MA: Art and Practice at the Crawford College of Art & Design in Cork in 2018. Thereafter, she began making art in earnest. One of Johanna Connor's pieces at the Lavit. Picture: Ros Kavanagh 'In 2020, I was heading off to New York on a residency when Covid happened. And that's when I met Mike.' The two married in 2023, and now spend most of their time at their respective practices. 'We work separately,' says Quane. 'But we check in on each other throughout the day. I might help Johanna out of a hole, or she might help me. It's a lovely partnership.' Seeing their work put together in the Lavit has been inspiring. 'It's a really quiet space to show in,' says Connor, 'and the work just sits so beautifully.' She can't wait to get back in the studio, she adds. 'I want to develop the drawing more. I'm starting to introduce a little bit of colour lately, and maybe the scale will change, or I'll start using other materials. We'll see.' Quane, meanwhile, is looking forward to a break. 'Between doing up the church and making work,' he says, 'I've been going flat-out for five years. After this exhibition, I feel a really strong urge to step back and get some perspective on where I want to go next. I'm 63 now, so this is my time to do it. You will probably see more of Johanna, and less of me.' Michael Quane and Johanna Connor, Pencil – Paper – Chisel – Stone runs at the Lavit Gallery, Cork until June 14. Further information:
Irish Independent
28-05-2025
- General
- Irish Independent
1860s Wicklow church fears closure as N11 bus lane plans threaten access
Saint Brigid's Church at the bottom of Herbert Road has served families since the 1860s, but churchwarden Gordon Lennox warns that compulsory purchase orders for the N11 bus lane will make access impossible for hearses, wedding cars, and anyone with mobility needs Bray People As the opposition to the closure of an exit at Bray to make way for the Wicklow N11/M11 Bus Priority Interim Scheme (N11/M11 BPIS) continues to grow, worshippers at a small, single-storey Church of Ireland, built in the 1860s, fear there is a very real threat to its future. While the peaceful protests so far have centred on the concerns of the thousands of residents who have backed the campaign to 'Stop the Closure of Herbert Road', should the road close, this historical building could be consigned to history forever more and with it, not only the spiritual needs of those who attend its services, but the memory of the dead who are buried there.
Irish Examiner
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
Clodagh Finn: An unflinching study of a warts-and-all ‘hero'
'I've been singing Bob Hilliard's name for 40 years, and now we finally have his story,' Christy Moore writes on the back of a new biography of a man who packed several lifetimes into one. Robert Hilliard was — and this is not an exhaustive list — a member of the prosperous Hilliard family in Killarney, a Protestant, a fierce republican, a skilled debater, an Olympian boxer, a journalist, a Church of Ireland priest, and a courageous member of the International Brigades who died fighting Franco when he was just 32. It was his death after the battle of Jarama during the Spanish Civil war in 1937 that inspired the honorary mention in Christy Moore's song, 'Viva la Quinta Brigada', although Robert Hilliard made an impression wherever he went. At Trinity College, one student journal noted that 'he sometimes appeared as a cross between a hornpipe and a fugue, often of a wild nature.' HISTORY HUB If you are interested in this article then no doubt you will enjoy exploring the various history collections and content in our history hub. Check it out HERE and happy reading Editor of The Irish Times Bertie Smyllie recalled his wild, unconforming nature when he wrote how Robert once boasted to him that he had voted 17 times before breakfast on the day of polling in the 1922 general election. Robert Hilliard did not coin the phrase 'Vote early and vote often' but, while working as a copywriter in London a few years later, he said he came up with the advertising slogan, 'Great Stuff This Bass'. My generation will be more familiar with the 1970s slogan, 'Ah, That's Bass', made famous by The Dubliners. It entered the vernacular as a playful phrase that meant something hit the spot, but none of the descriptions outlined so far go anywhere near unravelling the myth that grew up around Robert Hilliard. His granddaughter, Lin Rose Clark, for instance, was acquainted with a very different version of the exuberant man who made his fellow International Brigade members laugh. For her, he was the man who walked out on his wife and their four children, first to go to London and then to fight in Spain. 'There has always been a Robert Martin Hilliard-shaped gap in our family,' she writes. She discovered it, aged eight, after her teacher showed slides of Spain, lighting up the white screen in the classroom with palm trees, blue sea and vivid sunshine. When Lin asked her mother, Deirdre Davey, if the family could visit Spain, her mother flinched and said they would not be going to Spain, because her father had died there when she was aged eight. Lin Rose Clark didn't quite understand it at the time but, in that moment, she sensed the inconsolable grief that accompanied her mother throughout her life. What tormented her mother was that her father had been loving and hands-on, yet he left his family. Many years later, Lin set out to find out why. The result of her excavation — that's the word for it because her deep research has that quality to it — is Swift Blaze of Fire, a beautifully written biography that offers us a complete and compassionate portrait of the man himself. As she puts it: 'My grandfather was no icon, either of heroism or shiftless betrayal, but a flesh and blood human being, an everyman shaped by his times … trying to chart a course through an extraordinary period.' It is refreshing to read an account that reaches beyond the myths and shows that history with its big 'H' also inveigles its way into the lives and loves of the people who live through it. While she teases out the political and historical, what really stands out for me is their combined effect on the personal. Lin Rose Clark does something else too — she writes the women back into the story. Ellen Hilliard who walked from Killarney to Cork, during the Famine years, to buy stock for her shop in Killarney. Picture: courtesy of Lin Rose Clark She starts with the family account of the redoubtable Ellen (née Martin), who married into the Hilliard family in 1846, and regularly walked across the Derrynasaggart mountains from Killarney to Cork and back, during the Famine years, to buy stock for the small shop she ran with her husband Richard. That shop, R Hilliard and Sons on Main Street, Killarney, went on to become a booming commercial success. It traded as a department store — 'the Brown Thomas of Killarney ladies', some called it — for a century and half. The building is now owned by a different family and it is a bar and restaurant, but the name is still above the door, and its history is remembered — and celebrated. But back to the beginning, if Ellen Hilliard's business acumen and grit are outlined in admirable detail so too is the fact that she disapproved of her son William's Catholic wife Frances, forcing both of them to sail for New Zealand. William never saw his parents again. Lin Rose Clark does not shy away from telling the whole family story, warts and all. Too often, in the accounts of men's wartime heroics in particular, the impact on those left behind is omitted, or overlooked. Not here. As a pastor, Robert Hilliard earned just £25 a year but it was his family who bore the brunt when he left for London in 1935. His daughter Deirdre remembers the milkman calling to be paid but being turned away. She overheard him saying that he thought the money would be safe as he was dealing with 'a man of the cloth'. 'I was only six and a half, but I felt most ashamed and guilty and what my mother felt I can only imagine,' she said. There's a heart-wrenching letter from Robert's young son Tim, too, appealing to him to come home: 'You ot [ought] to kum back to us… why dont you kum and hav fun with us. Love From Timothy Hilliard.' And there is a photograph showing both children, looking miserable, keeping a daily vigil in the doorway of their rented cabin hoping to hear their father approach on the motorbike that he bought on credit. Rosemary Hilliard, Robert's wife, with her two samoyeds. Their mother, Rosemary, meanwhile, moved from one ill-equipped rented place to another. She had come to motherhood very young and, as her granddaughter writes, 'for the most part unwillingly. Now she was trapped inside the oppressive expectations which society imposes on wives and mothers, expectations that ground her down although she never challenged them.' Yet, willing or not, nobody could thrive in some of the places she found herself, such as in the damp cottage near Lisburn which had no running water, no bathroom and no kitchen. Cooking was done on a paraffin stove or using a hook hung over the fire. But there are no pointing fingers or sense of blame in this unsentimental yet compassionate account. It simply tells the story in the round, and in doing so offers a template on how to write women into history. To end on an uplifting note, Robert Hilliard's last postcard to his wife includes this line: 'If fascism is not defeated in Spain and in the world, it will be war, and hell for our kids.' As his granddaughter says: 'Perhaps the best tribute we can pay to him and those, like him, who went to fight fascism in Spain is to stand up against these things in our own day and say 'No pasarán!"
Irish Independent
22-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Independent
Fancy living in a church? Here's four houses of worship on the market ready for family living
The prediction comes as housing construction efforts are now materialising and will eventually take pressure off the housing market according to the BPFI's latest Housing Market Monitor report. With that in mind, those looking for an unconventional dwelling to call home may be in luck as these four renovated churches on the housing market may become slightly more in reach in the months ahead. St. Catherine's, Church Lane, Newport, Co. Mayo (€950,000): The first property was retired from use as a church around 1990 and was architecturally converted into a residence after. Built of limestone, the property blends the old and new to create a comfortable and atmospheric residence intact with its roots. Some of St Catherine's exceptional features still remain including Egyptian sandstone flagstone tiling throughout the ground floor, an original stained glass window in the kitchen/ dining room which was sensitively restored by local artist Linda Grieve/Mulloy as well as some of the original flagstone flooring. The Old Church, Caherconlish, Co. Limerick (€675,000): The second property "The Old Church", is a former Church of Ireland building which was designed by Dublin architect Edward Henry Carson. It was converted to a private residence in 1997 and later refurbished, extended and redecorated in 2015. This unconventional family home is a limestone building with buttresses, a vestry, a belfry, Gothic doorways, pointed arches, and a multitude of stained glass windows. The windows are both high pointed and multifoil rose-shaped. The extension added a sunroom at ground level and a master bedroom on the first floor. The extension is an architect-designed steel structure which integrates with the original church roof design. The accommodation includes entrance porch, hall, four reception rooms, five bedrooms, utility, four bathrooms. The Old Church, Kilotteran, Waterford City Centre (€775,000): The renovated church makes for unique home in Waterford city. Its origins date back to 612 AD and its current structure was built in 1858. The property lay derelict until its transformation into a private residence in 1997 by the current owners. In 2008, they expanded it with a modern zinc-clad extension, enhancing the living and entertaining space. Many of the original features have been preserved throughout the house such as the mosaic floors, exposed oak A-frames, and some of the original diamond fenestration on the interior. New purlins were crafted from local Douglas Fir and the floors are made of pitch pine salvaged from the old Graves Hardware building, as well as the fireplace beam. The kitchen is also constructed from pitch pine that was repurposed from the salvaged staircase of Graves Ltd. while the upstairs floors are Irish larch, while the kitchen and new extension floors are Indonesian merbau. Farnham Street, Cavan, Co. Cavan (€950,000): Built circa 1875, the property is a detached three-bay two-storey former Methodist manse, with a projecting central entrance bay and two-storey return to rear which is currently in use as a private residence. The owners have consciously retained many of its original features which make it well known and attractive to Cavan's architecture, with cut limestone walls, pitched slate roof and original stained glass feature window to the front facade. The house also retains the original bell tower with the steeple believed to have been removed in the 1960's which also adds to its historical charm. The location leaves the property within close proximity to all of Cavan's landmark buildings and amenities with Cavan's Main Street only a short walk away.
