Ireland Private Tour

01/02/2024

Lā Féile Bríde, Happy St Bridget's day from St Bridget's well Liscannor Co Clare

01/02/2024

Happy St Bridget's day

28/07/2023

Annaghdown
Brendan and Briga - The Benedict and Scholastica of Ireland

Abbey of St Mary de Portu Patrum & Annaghdown Cathedral

The first monastery at Annaghdown was founded by St Brendan who is believed to have founded a convent in Annaghdown for his sister Saint Briga The present Abbey was built c.1195.

17/07/2023

A very dark sky over the Mall in Waterford where Thomas Francis Meagher first flew the Irish Tricolour

29/05/2023

What a beautiful day in Killarney

28/05/2023

Heavy traffic in Connemara.

28/03/2023

Look who has returned to the cliffs of Moher this week for another breeding season.

22/03/2023

The beautiful Co Sligo in the Spring sunshine and a wonderland of snow for a back drop.

02/11/2022

A beautiful sunset over the Burren.

19/07/2022

Coffee with the lovely wife.

18/07/2022

O what a beautiful day for touring around Ireland

22/06/2022

What a beautiful visit today to see the Gaia Earth Exhibition at St Colmans cathedral

16/02/2022

Happy Birthday to the Boss

Sir Ernest Shackleton, sat centre here between Frank Worsley, left and Tom Crean, all looking rather dapper after the historic rescue of their colleagues.

Born this day, February 15th, 1874

08/02/2022

Gallarus Oratory in last August sunshine

31/01/2022

30/01/2022

Meeting these two amazing irish Wolfhound's at Ashford Castle

07/12/2021

The Night Of
The Big Wind

The calm before the Big Wind of 1839 was particularly eerie
4,846 chimneys fell, and waves topped the Cliffs of Moher on the Night of the Big Wind

Estimates of how many died vary from 300 to 800, a remarkably low figure given the ferocity of the storm


The Night of the Big Wind was the most devastating storm ever recorded in Irish history. Known as Gaeilge as “Oíche na Gaoithe Móire”, the hurricane of 6th and 7th January 1839 made more people homeless in a single night than all the sorry decades of eviction that followed it.
The calm before the Big Wind struck was particularly eerie. Most of the eight million people living in Ireland at the time were preparing themselves for Little Christmas, the Feast of the Epiphany.
The previous day had seen the first snowfall of the year; heavy enough for some to build snowmen. By contrast, Sunday morning was unusually warm, almost clammy, and yet the air was so still that, along the west coast, voices could be heard floating on the air between houses more than a mile apart
At approximately 3pm, the rain began to fall and the wind picked up. Nobody could possibly have predicted that those first soft raindrops signified an advance assault from the most terrifying hurricane in human memory.
By 6pm, the winds had become strong and the raindrops were heavier, sleet-like, with occasional bursts of hail. Farmers grimaced as their hay-ricks and thatched roofs took a pounding. In the towns and villages, fires flickered and doors slammed. Church bells chimed and dogs began to whine. Fishermen turned their ears west; a distant, increasingly loud rumble could be heard upon the frothy horizon.
At Glenosheen in Co Cork, a well-to-do German farmer called Jacob Stuffle began to cry.
At Moydrum Castle in Co Westmeath, 78-year-old Lord Castlemaine decided to turn in early and go to bed.
In the Wicklow Mountains, a team of geographic surveyors headed up by John O’Donovan, finally made it to their hotel in Glendalough; they had been walking all day, often knee-deep in snow.
Sailing upon the Irish Sea, Captain Smyth of the Pennsylvania studied his instruments and tried to make sense of the fluctuating pressures.
By 10pm, Ireland was in the throes of a ferocious cyclone that would continue unabated until 6am. The hurricane had roared across 3,000 miles of unbroken, island-free Atlantic Ocean, gathering momentum every second.
It hit Ireland’s west coast with such power that the waves actually broke over the top of the Cliffs of Moher.
Reading contemporary accounts, the impression is that if Ireland did not have such magnificent cliffs forming a barrier along our west coast, the entire country would simply have been engulfed by water.
The noise of the sea crashing against the rocks could be heard for miles inland, above the roar and din of the storm itself. The earth trembled under the assault; the ocean tossed huge boulders onto the cliff-tops of the Aran Islands.
Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the hurricane was that it took place in utter darkness. People cannot have known what was going on. The wind churned its way across the land, extinguishing every candle and lantern it encountered. The darkness was relieved only by the lightning streaks that accompanied the storm and the occasional blood-red flicker of the aurora borealis burning in the northern sky.
All across the country, hundreds of thousands of people awoke to the sound of the furious tempest, their windows shattered by hailstones, their brick-walls rattling, their rain-sodden thatched roofs sinking fast.
As the wind grew stronger, it began to rip the roofs off houses. Chimney pots, broken slates, sheets of lead and shards of glass were hurtled to the ground. Rather astonishingly, someone later produced a statistic that 4,846 chimneys were knocked off their perches during the Night of the Big Wind.
Many of those who died that night were killed by falling masonry. Norman tower houses and old churches collapsed. Factories and barracks were destroyed. Fires erupted in the streets of Castlebar, Athlone and Dublin.
The wind blew all the water out of the canal at Tuam.
It knocked a pinnacle off Carlow Cathedral and a tower off Carlow Castle.
It stripped the earth alongside the River Boyne, exposing the bones of soldiers killed in the famous battle 150 years earlier.
Roads in every parish became impassable. All along the Grand Canal, trees were pulled up by the roots and hurled across the water to the opposite bank.
Thousands of timber cabins were destroyed by the storm. Surviving inhabitants had no choice but to flee into the pitch-black night in clothes that were presumably soon utterly drenched by the intense rains and snows which accompanied that cruel, piercing wind. Many sought shelter amid the hollows and hedges of the land.
Farmers were hit particularly hard. Hay-ricks in fields across Ireland were blown to pieces. Wooden fences and dry-stone walls collapsed, allowing fearful livestock to run away. Sheep were blown off mountains or killed by tumbling rocks. Cattle were reported to have simply frozen to death in the fields.
Day of Judgment
The next morning, one of Jacob Stuffle’s neighbour recalled seeing the distraught German standing high up on a hillock looking with dismay at his haggard farm, his comfortable well-thatched stacks swept out of existence.
Suddenly, he raised his two hands, palms open, high over his head, and looking up at the sky he cried out in the bitterness of his heart, in a voice that was heard all over the village “Oh, God Almighty, what did I ever do to You and You should thrate (treat) me in that way!”
Stuffle was not the only man who believed the hurricane, occurring on the night of the Epiphany, was of Divine origin. Many saw it as a warning that the Day of Judgment would soon be here. Some believed the Freemasons had unleashed the Devil from the Gates of Hell and failed to get him back in again.
Others maintained this was simply the night the English fairies invaded Ireland and forced our indigenous Little People to disappear amid a ferocious whirlwind. (Irish fairies, of course, are wingless and can only fly by calling up the sidhe chora - the magic whirlwinds).
The well-to-do did not escape; many mansions had their roofs stripped off.
Lord Castlemaine was fastening his bedroom window when the storm blew the windows open and hurled him “so violently upon his back that he instantly expired”.
His brother-in-law, the Earl of Clancarty, later reported the loss of nearly 20,000 trees on his estate at Ballinasloe. Similar figures came in from other landed estates in every Co; one landlord declared his woods were now “as bald as the palm of my hand”. At the Seaforde estate in Co Down, an estimated 60,000 trees were lost.
On January 6th 1839, timber was a valuable commodity. 24 hours later, so many trees had fallen that timber was virtually worthless. Millions of wild birds were killed, their nesting places smashed and there was no birdsong that spring. Even crows and jackdaws were on the verge of extinction.
In his hotel room in Glendalough, John O’Donovan was fortunate not to share Lord Castlemaine’s fate. He was struggling with the shutters when “a squall mighty as a thunderbolt” propelled him across the room. When he viewed the damage next morning, he described it as if “the entire country had been swept clean by some gigantic broom”.
A sacked city
Dublin resembled “a sacked city …the whirlwind of desolation spared neither building, tree nor shrub”. The Liffey rose by several feet and overflowed the quay walls.
The elms that graced the main thoroughfare of the Phoenix Park were completely levelled, as were the elms at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. The trees on Leinster Lawn outside the present-day Dail were uprooted and scattered “like prostrate giants on their mother earth”.
The back wall of the Guinness Brewery collapsed killing “nine fine horses”. A witness next morning described how “the noble animals [were] stretched everywhere as if sleeping, but with every bone crushed by the ponderous weight of the wall”. Military sentry boxes were blown off their stands and “scattered like atoms”.
A glass shop on Nassau Street became “a heap of ruins”. On Clare Street, a chimney collapsed on a woman who had only just got into her bed, killing her instantly.
Police stations and churches opened their doors for thousands of terrified citizens who brought their young and frail in for protection. Even churches could not be trusted on this night of Lucifer. The steeple of Irishtown chapel caved in and the bell from the spire of St Patrick’s Cathedral came down like a meteorite; mercifully nobody died in either instance.
Phibsborough Road was a bombsite of exploded windows and fallen chimneys “as if by shot and shell”.
One of the 40 female inmates at the Bethesda Penitentiary on the north-side (where the National Wax Museum formerly stood) took the opportunity to ignite a fire that destroyed the building as well as the surrounding houses, school-house and chapel. Two firemen died trying to extinguish the flames.
The hurricane did not stop in Dublin. It pounded its way across the Irish Sea, killing hundreds of luckless souls caught at sea.
It killed nearly 100 fishermen off the coast of Skerries.
It killed Captain Smyth and the 30 people on board the packet-ship Pennsylvania. Ships all along the west coast of England were wrecked; dead bodies continued to wash up onshore for weeks afterwards.
At Everton, the same wind unroofed a cotton factory that whitened all the space for miles around, “as if there had been a heavy fall of snow”.
Bankrupted by the disaster
Estimates as to just how many died that night vary from 300 to 800, a remarkably low figure given the ferocity of the storm. Many more must have succumbed to pneumonia, frostbite or plain old depression in its wake. Those bankrupted by the disaster included hundreds who had stashed their life savings up chimneys and in thatched roofs that disappeared in the night.
Even in those days it was “an ill wind that turned none to good” and among those to benefit were the builders, carpenters, slaters and thatchers who subsequently rebuilt the fallen buildings.
The Big Wind also inspired the Rev Romney Robinson of the Armagh Observatory to invent his world-famous Robinson Cup-anemometer, the standard instrument for gauging wind speed for the rest of the 19th century.
But perhaps the most unlikely beneficiaries of the Night of the Big Wind were those old enough to remember it when the Old Age Pensions Act was enacted in January 1909, 70 years after the event. The Act, which offered the first ever weekly pension to those over 70, was likened to the opening of a new factory on the outskirts of every town and village in Britain and Ireland.
By March 1909, over 80,000 “British” pensioners were registered of whom 70,000 were Irish. When a committee was sent to investigate this imbalance, it transpired that few births in Ireland were registered before 1865. As such, the Irish Pensions Committee decreed that if someone’s age had “gone astray” on them, they would be eligible for a pension if they could state that they were “fine and hardy” on the Night of the Big Wind.
One such applicant was Tim Joyce of Co Limerick. “I always thought I was 60,” he explained. “But my friends came to me and told me they were certain sure I was 70 and as there were three or four of them against me, the evidence was too strong for me. I put in for the pension and got it.”

06/12/2021

Muriel MacSwiney, widow of Terence MacSwiney who died on hunger strike during the War of Independence, visited the US in December 1920 to generate awareness of the Irish cause - leading to supportive protests such as this one.

06/12/2021

This day 100 years ago – 6 December 1921 – the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed.

It offered the Irish Free State “the same constitutional status” as Canada or Australia, but allowed Northern Ireland to opt out of its jurisdiction.

It was later passed in the Dáil by 64-57 votes.

(Pictured, from left – Arthur Griffith, Eamonn Duggan, Erskine Childers, Michael Collins, George Gavan Duffy, Robert Barton and John Chartres)

26/09/2021

A very special day for Kathleen Talty in Querrin in 1966. She got to meet President Éamon de Valera, who she had helped escape from Lincoln Jail in England in 1919. Also in the photo is Dr Paddy Hillery, who was the Minister for Labour at the time and later served as the sixth president of Ireland.
De Valera was incarcerated in Lincoln Jail after he had been arrested in May 1918. While there, he acted as a server in the prison chapel and was able to make a wax impression from the chaplain's set of keys. One of de Valera's fellow prisoners, Seán Milroy, drew a cartoon drawing of the key on a Christmas card (see comments below). Two cakes containing keys, cut to match the drawing, were delivered to the prison but failed to open the cell doors. Then on 03 February 1919 a third cake was delivered, with a blank key and files baked into it. Another prisoner, Peter de Loughry, used these tools to fashion a master key which allowed de Valera, Seán Milroy and a third man, Seán McGarry to escape.
That third cake had been baked by Susan McMahon, née Talty, and brought to the prison by her sister Kathleen. The sisters, who were originally from Rahaniska, Carrigaholt, were teaching in Manchester at the time. Susan was married to Liam McMahon from Kildimo, Limerick, who was one of the leaders of the IRB in Manchester. Kathleen was a captain in the local Cumann na mBan there. When de Valera escaped, Kathleen was one of those who accompanied him to several safe houses in Manchester.
Susan died in 1945. Kathleen returned to Ireland and lived with her niece in Co Wicklow for a time before finally moving back to Co Clare. She died in 1972 at the age of 88.
This is an account from Liam McMahon's statement in the Military Archives of Ireland, BMH.WS0274:
'Next we got instructions from the same source to get a blank key, of certain dimensions, to put it in a cake, together with some files necessary for cutting it out. This made the cake rather heavy, of course. My wife baked the cake. It was an oblong fruit cake. There was no icing or plaster of paris covering it, as Frank Kelly has stated in his "Reminiscences of Escapes". As a matter of fact, Frank Kelly never saw this cake, as Kathleen Talty took it from my house and handed it in at the prison.'

17/09/2021

This day 73 years ago – 17 September 1948 – the body of W.B. Yeats was taken from Roquebrune, France, where he was buried in 1939, and moved to Drumcliffe, Co Sligo.‬

‪His epitaph is taken from the poem, Under Ben Bulben.‬

‪“Cast a cold Eye‬
‪On Life, on Death.‬
‪Horseman, pass by!”‬

To read more about reinterment of W.B. Yeats, pick up a copy of This Day in Irish History. Out now.

11/09/2021

The Mayo Curse

The Mayo mens Senior Football Team have not won an All Ireland since 1951, despite reaching the final eleven times since then. They have produced some of the finest footballers ever to play the game, and been so close over the years, but seem to be plagued with bad luck. In one recent final, they looked to be storming to victory, and accidentally scored two goals for the opposition.

The story of the curse goes, that in September 1951, the Mayo Gaelic Football team were returning home, victorious after beating Meath in the All Ireland football final. Whilst travelling through the town of Foxford, some of the celebrating players saw a crowd gathered, and thinking it was supporters welcoming them home, they cheered and waved as they passed by. However, unbeknownst to the Mayo team, the crowd they had passed were mourners gathered for a funeral.

Irish tradition to this very day demands respect for a funeral cortege, we stop the car if we are driving by a funeral, turn off the engine, bless ourselves and bow our heads as we wait for the mourners to pass before proceeding, likewise if we are walking.

The priest in 1951 is said to have been so outraged by the cheering players, that he cursed the team, and swore that because of the disrespect shown to the deceased and mourners, Mayo would not win another All Ireland while any member of that team remained alive.

One of the team remains to this day.

10/09/2021

The Sam Maguire Cup will be won this weekend by either county Tyrone or Mayo in the All-Ireland Football Final.

This cup was made in 1927 by Matthew Staunton. It was commissioned by friends of Sam Maguire from Cork, who had played a vital role in the GAA in London. It was first awarded in 1928 and last presented in 1987. It is now housed for safekeeping in the GAA Museum, Croke Park .

The original cup was won three times by Mayo in the years 1936, 1950, 1951.

Tyrone also won the Sam Maguire cup three times and have brought back the 1988 replica cup to Tyrone in 2003, 2005, 2008. This cup was crafted by silversmith, Desmond Byrne and is the one which will be presented on Saturday night.

The original cup was based on the Ardagh Chalice which is held in the treasury of the National Museum of Ireland in Kildare Street. Learn more about this object - https://www.museum.ie/en-IE/Collections-Research/Collection/The-Treasury/Artefact/The-Ardagh-Chalice/ac53e68e-76a4-4560-a624-c87647c57a00

30/08/2021

On this day back in 1849, 172 years ago Margaret Vaughan and Mitchell Henry were married at St. Peter's Church in Dublin.

After their wedding, they headed to the West of Ireland for their honeymoon where they fell madly in love with the beauty of the Irish countryside. When Mitchell's father passed away in 1862 and he inherited his wealth, Mitchell decided it was time to purchase the estate of Kylemore and began building what is known today as Kylemore Abbey.

Unfortunately, their happiness was short-lived as Margaret passed away in 1875 of a fever contracted in Egypt. Heartbroken, Mitchell built the neo-Gothic Church in her memory, and that building like the castle and the grounds is a testament to their love for each other and their love of their adopted home. When visiting Kylemore we encourage Visitors to take a moment in the neo-Gothic Church to embrace the romantic features that make it such a beautiful, feminine space, a fitting tribute to a much-loved woman from her dedicated husband.

06/07/2021

Irish Crown Jewels were stolen from Dublin Castle on the 6th July 1907. Valuing about $20 million today, the stolen gems have never been found. The crime remains one of Ireland’s greatest mysteries.
The Jewels were not linked to the monarchy, but to the Order of St Patrick, an elite aristocratic order founded in 1783 in the mold of the Order of the Garter in England or the Order of the Thistle in Scotland."

"The last knight of the Order of St Patrick died in 1974. The regalia were worn by the Grand Master of the Order – who was the Viceroy, the representative of British power in Ireland."

"At the time of the theft, the Viceroy was Joseph Gordon Campbell, Earl of Aberdeen. The jewels were housed in the Bedford Tower, in the Upper Castle Yard, where the Office of Arms was located. This office was responsible for genealogy and heraldry, as well as the safekeeping and care of the state regalia. The Ulster King of Arms, Sir Arthur Vicars, was the one responsible for the office."

The Irish Crown Jewels were kept in Dublin Castle where they were guarded by the Ulster King of Arms and his staff as well a 24-hour outdoor patrol of policemen and soldiers. In 1903, a safe room was installed in the castle, but it was only after it was built that it was discovered the safe which held the jewels was too large to fit in the doorway. Because of this, the safe would remain outside the strongroom in the library.

Seven latch keys to the door of the Office of Arms were held by its staff, but the two keys to the safe were kept by Sir Arthur Vicars, the Ulster King of Arms who was charged with protecting the jewels. He carried one of the keys on his person, while the other was kept in a locked drawer in a desk at his home.

However, Vicars was rather lax in his security. One story has it that after a night of drinking, he handed his keys over to his friends. The next morning he woke up draped in the country’s most valuable ornaments. And in May 1907, Vicars mistakenly left the first key to the safe attached to a key ring with his other office keys. The keys were discovered by a maid, who sent them to the Chief Herald’s office by way of a male servant.

On the morning of July 6, 1907, a cleaning woman assigned to Bedford Tower found the door to the safe-room standing wide open. The inner security door was bolted, but the keys, which also opened the library, had been left dangling in the lock.

Vicars was not alarmed at first. It wasn’t until later that afternoon when Vicars sent a messenger to the library to deposit the collar of a deceased knight in the safe that it was discovered the safe had been emptied and the Irish Crown Jewels were gone.

The jewels went missing just four days before King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra were expected to arrive for the Irish International Exhibition, at which it was planned to invest Bernard FitzPatrick, 2nd Baron Castletown into the Order. The king was furious about the theft, and the ceremony, which required the crown jewels, was canceled.

The Dublin Metropolitan Police conducted an investigation into the theft, but the crime has never been solved. There were strong indications that it was an inside job.

One of the first suspects was Sir Arthur Vicars, who was in possession of the keys to the safe. He denied that he committed the crime to his dying day and no hard evidence could be found to link him with the crime. However, he was still fired from his position at the behest of King Edward. In 1921, he was killed by members of the Irish Republican Army for being a royal informer.

Vicars’ assistant, Pierce O’Mahony, was also seen as a possible suspect, but most believe he was innocent of the crime. He would also meet with an unfortunate end — he was killed in 1914 in an accidental shooting.

Vicars’ second-in-command at the castle was Francis Shackleton, brother to the great explorer Ernest Shackleton. The young Shackleton was accused by several people, including Vicars, and is the man who most still believes was the true culprit.

An article appeared in The Irish Times in 1968 that suggested that Shackleton, working in conjunction with Captain Richard Gorges, stole Vicars’ keys one night after Vicars had gotten drunk, removed the jewels, put everything back in its place, and returned the keys as if nothing had happened. However, Shackleton was never formally accused of the crime.

He was thrown in jail after being convicted of banking fraud in 1913. He changed his name and disappeared without a trace when he was released several years later.

A final suspect, who only came to light many years after the theft, was Francis Bennett Goldney.

Goldney was appointed Athlone Pursuivant at the Dublin Castle, something of a junior position to the Ulster King of Arms, just a few months before the crime. Although he had an opportunity to steal the jewels, many thought Goldney, an English gentleman, lacked motive. It wasn’t until after he died in 1918, in a car accident in France, that it was discovered he had a trove of stolen goods in his home. Still, there was no evidence that could connect him to the stolen crown jewels.

There is a belief that the investigation was unceremoniously dropped a few years after it started due to a deeper scandal that was uncovered and then hastily covered back up.

It has been suggested that the investigation found a ring of debauchery at work in Dublin Castle, including wild, drunken parties, or**es, and homosexual affairs. The rumor was that when Edward VII heard about the scandal, he shut down the inquiry, fearing the consequences of public revelation.

As for the jewels, they have most likely been broken apart and sold as individual pieces, sold to a wealthy collector, or hidden away somewhere that have long been forgotten.

29/04/2021

American astronaut Michael Collins who died earlier this week.

Collins, who stayed behind in the command module of Apollo 11 on July 20th, 1969, while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin travelled to the lunar surface to become the first humans to walk on the moon, died at the age of 90.

“Michael Collins was a great-grandson of a Cunniffe family that had been evicted by Lord Ashtown during the infamous Funchinagh evictions in 1851 (north-east of Four Roads). His grandmother, Mary, was two years old. Relatives in Corrocot, Mount Talbot, took in the family and they stayed there for a number of years.
when Mary was 16, she emigrated to the US where she became a sheep farmer in the mid-west. She married a fellow Irish emigrant and they had a daughter who went on to marry an Irish-American soldier called Collins. Their son was Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins.

Collins later received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Force Command Pilot Astronaut Wings, Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal. Together with Armstrong and Aldrin he received the Collier Trophy, the Hubbard Medal and the Langley Gold Medal. He has had an asteroid and a lunar crater named after him.

“This family had gone from sitting huddled together and starving after eviction in Funshinagh to being part of one of the greatest achievements in human history. RIP to a remarkable man,” the post concluded.

14/04/2021