Rathkeale Walks

21/02/2024

Happy International Tourist Guide Day!

Have you explored your local area with a tourist guide yet?

19/11/2022

⚠️‼️ WARNING ‼️⚠️

Residents of the Ballingarry and Granagh Areas of West Limerick please keep your pets indoors and safe.

The hunt are out.

15/11/2022

In 1709, some 3,073 Palatines were transported to Ireland.
Some 538 families were settled as agricultural tenants on the estates of Anglo-Irish landlords. However, many of the settlers failed to permanently establish themselves and 352 families were reported to have left their holdings, with many returning to England.[15] By late 1711 only around 1,200 of the Palatines remained in Ireland.

Some contemporary opinion blamed the Palatines for the failure of the settlement. William King, the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, said, "I conceive their design 'tis but to eat and drink at Her Majesty's cost, live idle and complain against those that maintain them." But the real reason for the failure was apparently lack of political support for the settlement from the High Church Tories, who generally opposed foreign involvement and saw the settlers as potential Dissenters rather than buttresses to their own established church.

The Palatine settlement was successful in two areas: County Limerick and County Wexford. In Limerick, 150 families were settled in 1712 on the lands of the Southwell family near Rathkeale. Within a short time, they had made a success of farming h**p, flax, and cattle. In Wexford about the same time, a large Palatine population was settled on the lands of Abel Ram, near Gorey. The distinctive Palatine way of life survived in these areas until well into the nineteenth century. Today, names of Palatine origin, such as Switzer, Hick, Ruttle, Sparling, Tesky, Fitzell, are dispersed throughout Ireland.

03/11/2022

27/10/2022

With more than fifty frightening events taking place all across city and county over this Halloween period there is something for all ghosts, goblins and ghouls to enjoy. 🎃👻

Download our guide here:

https://www.limerick.ie/sites/default/files/media/documents/2022-10/Halloween-in-Limerick-2022-Event-Guide.pdf/

13/10/2022

Are you curious❓

Do you like Limerick❓

If you love ❤️ to hear 👂 wonderful stories then we have a treat for you ❗️

Renowned author ✍️ historian and Limerick legend Sharon Slater is coming to

She will read from her acclaimed book 📕 “The A-Z of curious county Limerick” and she will no doubt have some wonderful stories to tell

This event will be held in the supper room of 📍 Ballingarry Parochial Hall
⏱8pm

There will be a cover charge of €5 on the night

The event is presented by Ballingarry Heritage and Ballingarry Development Association

Directions:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/h2xsAEAh1z7nZcZj6?g_st=ic

BALLINGARRY PAROCHIAL HALL
THE SQUARE, BALLINGARRY
V94 W688

Sharon Slater is an award-winning historian, receiving the National Heritage Hero award for 2017 and a Mayoral reception in 2018. Currently, Sharon is a Historian in Residence at Ormston House.
She has delivered heritage/cultural projects for groups including National Heritage Council, Limerick Chamber, Limerick Archives, Limerick Museum, Mary Immaculate College, The History Press, and Fáilte Ireland.
Her website Limerick’s Life has been focused on the development of the history of Limerick city since 2004. She can be found on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram under the name Limerick’s Life.

www.limerickslife.com
www.twitter.com/limerickslife/
www.facebook.com/limerickslife/
www.instagram.com/limericks_life/

10/10/2022

The Mustard Seed in Ballingarry, Co Limerick, has been named the recipient of the César award for the Best Hotel in Ireland 2023 by the Good Hotel Guide.

Ballingarry is also home to the fairy mountain of Knockfierna and has its very own tour guide.

The Sunday Times called the César awards ‘the Oscars of the hotel industry’ and the award is valued by travel writers, hoteliers and guests because of the Guide’s reputation for independence.

Describing the Mustard Seed, the Good Hotel Guide editors said,

“Warm Irish hospitality and superb food are on offer at this Victorian country mansion, where the restaurant is a destination in its own right. Angel Pirev uses food from the kitchen garden and orchard to help create his well-received menus, served in the deep-blue restaurant with wedding-cake plaster ceiling. Traditional-style bedrooms have fabrics and wallpaper by Zoffany, Jane Churchill, Cole & Son; everywhere there is carefully chosen artwork and furniture, plus vases brimming with flowers.”

The Blue Book property has won countless awards since it opened its doors almost 40 years ago. Commenting on this latest one, proprietor John Edward Joyce said,

“An award of this nature is testimony to the wonderful team here at the Mustard Seed. I am blessed to be surrounded by incredible people who are naturally committed to ensuring that every guest’s visit is a comfortable, relaxed, yet amazing and unforgettable experience.”

The news follows the Mustard Seed’s success at this year’s Irish Restaurant Awards where it received accolades for Best Customer Service in Limerick and Best Restaurant Manager in Munster.

Last week, the Adare Manor Hotel and Golf Resort in nearby Adare was named Best Hotel in the world by the readers of Condé Nast Traveller.

08/10/2022

This is the upcoming list for the history talks. Please feel free to share. Membership is €10 for the year and the talks are free👌

06/10/2022

Ernest Walton was born on 6 October 1903 in Abbeyside, Dungarvan, County Waterford to a Methodist minister father, Rev John Walton (1874–1936) and Anna Sinton (1874–1906).

In those days a general clergyman's family moved once every three years, and this practice carried Ernest and his family, while he was a small child, to Rathkeale, County Limerick (where his mother died) and to County Monaghan.
He attended day schools in counties Down and Tyrone, and at Wesley College Dublin before becoming a boarder at Methodist College Belfast in 1915, where he excelled in science and mathematics.

Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton was an Irish physicist and Nobel laureate.

He is best known for his work with John Cockcroft to construct one of the earliest types of particle accelerator, the Cockcroft–Walton generator.
In experiments performed at Cambridge University in the early 1930s using the generator, Walton and Cockcroft became the first team to use a particle beam to transform one element to another. According to their Nobel Prize citation: "Thus, for the first time, a nuclear transmutation was produced by means entirely under human control."

Although he retired from Trinity College Dublin in 1974, he retained his association with the Physics Department at Trinity up to his final illness. Shortly before his death he marked his lifelong devotion to Trinity by presenting his Nobel medal and citation to the college.
Ernest Walton died in Belfast on 25 June 1995, aged 91.
He is buried in Deansgrange Cemetery, Dublin.

06/10/2022

Limerick town wants Travellers all year round
PICTURE: Skyview Photography
By Donal O'Regan

TRAVELLERS will start returning to Rathkeale soon for the festive period and community groups want them to stay long after Christmas.

Working together, the Rathkeale Community Council, Team Rathkeale and community champion, David Lamont, highlighted how improved occupancy can boost the vibrancy of the town’s consumer economy.

The publication of the proposed Rathkeale Local Area Plan by the council highlighted both opportunities and concerns about occupancy in the town, they say in a statement to Limerick Live.

Unlike other towns, migrant families own an estimated 28% of Rathkeale’s houses. However, their absence for seven of 12 months reduces their contribution to an estimated 6% of the local spending, they say.

“We’ve calculated that the local economy can be improved by up to 66% if new houses are occupied year-round by a typical household of about three people,” said Derek Downes, chairperson of Team Rathkeale, a working group set on boosting the town's economy. Over 50 Rathkeale business owners came together to form the collective in 2020 to spread the town’s good news and to increase footfall," said Mr Downes.

“As such we encourage migrant Travellers to spend more than Christmas at home. We are also highlighting the benefits of Rathkeale and offering to work with developers to plan attractive housing. Rathkeale is a diamond in the rough,” said Pat Neville, chairperson of Rathkeale Community Council.

“The recently approved Adare bypass should shorten drive times to the city. The town has lots of amenities and we have more affordable housing,” he adds.

The PSRA register of residential sale prices indicates that in 2021 property in Rathkeale was 41% to 67% less expensive than towns nearer to the city on the N21; 5% to 67% less expensive than its nearby neighbours and 41% less than all of County Limerick.

27/09/2022

Today is
If you’re booking a guide to see make sure to book a qualified guide
ATGI - Approved Tourist Guides Ireland

See www.Tourguides.ie for more

Since 1980, the United Nations World Tourism Organization has celebrated World Tourism Day as international observances on September 27.
This date was chosen as on that day in 1970, the Statutes of the UNWTO were adopted.
The adoption of these Statutes is considered a milestone in global tourism.
The purpose of this day is to raise awareness on the role of tourism within the international community and to demonstrate how it affects social, cultural, political and economic values worldwide.
At its Twelfth Session in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 1997, the UNWTO General Assembly decided to designate a host country each year to act as the Organization's partner in the celebration of World Tourism Day.

At its Fifteenth Session in Beijing, China, in October 2003, the Assembly decided the following geographic order to be followed for World Tourism Day celebrations:
2006 in Europe; 2007 in South Asia; 2008 in the Americas; 2009 in Africa and 2011 in the Middle East, and so on.

The official World Tourism Day celebration will be held in Bali, Indonesia, on 27 September, highlighting the shift towards tourism being recognized as a crucial pillar of development.

https://www.unwto.org/world-tourism-day-2022/join/

21/09/2022

Barbara Heck (1734, Ballingrane, County Limerick, Ireland – 17 August 1804, Augusta, Ontario) was an early American Methodist, known as the "mother of American Methodism."

Heck was a member of a colony of Germans who came from the Rhine Palatinate and settled in Ballingrane, County Limerick and other parts of the west County Limerick about 1708. She married Paul Heck, a member of the same community. By the preaching of John Wesley many of these Germans, whose descendants were long afterward known as Palatines in Ireland, became converts to Methodism.

The Hecks emigrated from Ireland about 1760, and settled in New York, where other Methodists from Ireland became domiciled about the same time. They had no pastor and grew careless of religious observances. In 1765 they were joined by Philip Embury, who had been a local preacher in Ireland, and another group of immigrants from Ireland which included her brother Paul Ruckle. Soon after their arrival, Mrs. Heck entered a room in which, according to some accounts, Embury was present, and found the emigrants gambling at cards.
She seized the cards and threw them into the fire, expostulated with the players in pathetic language, and then went to Embury and charged him that he should preach to them, or God would require their blood at his hands.

In consequence meetings were shortly afterward begun. The first group included the Hecks and their slave, Betty. Eventually the revival included a large number, mostly Irish immigrants and a number of African Americans. Barbara Heck designed the simple chapel at John Street which represented the group's first permanent location. As a structure, it post-dated another built elsewhere by Robert Strawbridge, also an early Methodist.

In 1770, the Hecks went to Camden Valley.
When the Revolutionary war began, the Hecks moved to Salem, in northern New York, in order to be among loyalists, and founded the first Methodist society in that district. Paul joined the army of Burgoyne, and, while at home on a furlough at the time of the surrender at Saratoga, was arrested by patriot soldiers, but escaped at night while they slept, and made his way through the woods into Canada, where he was joined by his wife. They settled in Augusta, and with others from New York formed the earliest Methodist society in Canada. Paul died several years before his wife, in the late 18th century.

She was honored by the Office of the Manhattan Borough President in March 2008 and was included in a map of historical sites related or dedicated to important women.

21/09/2022

Philip Embury was born on 21 September 1729 in Ballingrane, county Limerick, Ireland.
The Embury and Heck memorial church stands near the spot where he was born.

Philip Embury was a Methodist preacher, a leader of one of the earliest Methodist congregations in the United States.

Embury's parents were members of the colony of Palatine Germans that emigrated from the Palatinate to Ireland early in the eighteenth century, and in which Wesley labored with great success.
The colony had formed from Protestant Germans forced to abandon their farms on the Rhine due to French Catholic raids and a harsh winter.
In 1709 Queen Anne of England accepted the refugees, settling a group of families in Catholic Ireland to boost the Protestant presence.
The Southwell family of Castlematrix in Rathkeale invited the Palatines to settle in the area.

Embury was educated at a school near Ballingrane, County Limerick, Ireland, and learned the carpenter's trade.
He was converted on Christmas day, 1752, became a local preacher at Court-Matrix in 1758, and married Margaret Switzer that fall.
The Switzers are a well known Palatine family in Ireland

In 1760, due to rising rents and scarce land, he came to New York City and worked as a school teacher.
In common with his fellow emigrants, he began to lose interest in religious matters, and did not preach in New York till 1766, when, moved by the reproaches of Barbara Heck, sometimes called the "foundress of American Methodism," he began to hold services first in his own house on Barrack Street, now Park Place, and then in a rigging loft on what is now William Street.
Barbara Heck also was a Palatine Methodist from Ballingrane.

The congregation thus formed was probably the first Methodist congregation in the United States, though it is a disputed question whether precedence should not be given to Robert Strawbridge, who began laboring in Maryland about this time. Before this, he and his cousin Barbara Heck had worshiped along with other Irish Palatines at Trinity Lutheran Church where three of his children had been baptized.

The first Methodist church was built under Embury's charge in 1768, in association with Thomas Webb and others, on the site of the present John Street Church, and he himself worked on the building as a carpenter, and afterward preached there gratuitously. In 1769, preachers sent out by John Wesley arrived in New York City, and Embury went to work in the vicinity of Albany at Camden Valley, New York, where he continued to work at his trade during the week, and preached every Sunday. He and several others had received a grant of 8,000 acres (32 km2) to develop for the manufacture of linen.
He organized among Irish emigrants at Ashgrove, near Camden Valley, the first Methodist society within the bounds of what became the flourishing and influential Troy Conference.

He died suddenly, in consequence of an accident in mowing, and was buried on a neighboring farm, but in 1832 his remains were removed to Ashgrove churchyard, and in 1866 to Woodland cemetery, Cambridge, New York, where in 1873 a monument to him was unveiled, with an address by Bishop Simpson.

From the article, Philip Embury comes a poem that many of the Palatine emigrants shared during their departure for the American Colonies:

Land where the bones of our fathers are sleeping,

Land where our dear ones and fond ones are weeping,

Land where the light of Jehovah is shining,

We leave thee repenting, but not with repining.

Land of our fathers, in grief we forsake thee,

Land of our friends, may Jehovah protect thee,

Land of the Church, may the light shine around thee,

Nor darkness, nor trouble, nor sorrow confound thee.

God is thy God; thou shalt walk in His brightness,

Gird thee with joy, let thy robes be of whiteness;

God is thy God! Let the hills shout with gladness;

But ah! We must leave thee- we leave thee in sadness.

Dark is our path o'er the dark rolling ocean;

Dark is our hearts; but the fire of devotion

Kindles within: - and a far distant nation,

Shall learn from our lips the glad song of salvation.

Hail to the land of our toils and our sorrows!

Land of our rest! –when a few more to-morrows,

Pass o'er our heads, we will seek our cold pillows,

And rest in our graves, far away o'er the billows.

19/09/2022

⚠️⚠️ We are still desperately looking for fosterers for dogs, pups, cats, kittens. ⚠️⚠️

We cannot cope with the amount of animals waiting to or coming into our care at the moment. It is overwhelming. Dogs too sick or broken for kennels, cats and kittens in dire need of somewhere safe.

As always the rescue looks after all medical bills, all bedding, food, leads, collars etc.
Home checks as always apply.

Please PM our page. You will literally be saving lives. 🙏🏻

31/08/2022

Askeaton Castle will remain open throughout Sept & Oct, tours at 10am 11.30am 1.30pm and 3pm daily.

19/08/2022

Racing fans will have a rare opportunity to see some of Ireland’s top trainers and their teams in actions in a series of Trainer Open Mornings over the next couple of months.