Today being Saint Patrick’s Day there’s a surfeit of shamrockery around the web, and I have decided not to post pictures of Guinness glasses.
Yesterday evening, the main evening news in Ireland on RTE at 6pm had a little featurette not on majorettes, but on the National Photographic Archive which now has a significant whack of its collection online. I spent an interesting few hours wandering around it last night, it, and the 1911 Census causing an argument over a mismatch between family recollection of what my great grandfather actually did do in Achill at the time, and what the Census form claimed of him. In between calculating the ages of my grandparents in 1911 and trying work out what addresses in 1911 equated to in today’s terms (given the townland thing in Ireland, this is not unusual), I also wandered around the Photographic Archive out of idle interest. Specifically I looked at photographs for two towns: Charleville, Co Cork and Killarney Co Kerry. Also saw some photographs of Blennerville in Co Kerry.
I know that Ireland has changed immeasurably in my life time, both from how it looks to how it thinks. There’s evidence of major social change every day on the radio at the moment. But it’s easy to forget just what Ireland looked like 100 years ago. When I looked at one of the photographs of the Main Street in Charleville Co Cork, I had some difficulty orienting myself on one photograph because the hotel that was the most obvious feature on the photograph, the Royal Hotel, is long, long gone. I never remember it at all, and I can remember quite a few shops and things that are gone. The Munster & Leinster Bank, for example, is now the AIB – it is painted bright yellow and doesn’t really resemble the stone built building in another photograph. The big one though was the tree planted in front of the Protest Church – you cannot see the church itself but it is now the public library in Charleville. In one photograph, you can see the construction work on the then new Catholic Church – as far as I remember from my local history, it opened in 1902. The photograph is dated 1890-1900. The old Catholic Church which is now a community hall – was hidden down a side street. When I was a child, it was called the Parochial Hall and I was in many concerts there.
It’s worth looking at the photographs from Killarney as well. In one respect, the overwhelming impression I had of the shots I looked at yesterday evening were extraordinarily good photographs given the equipment at the time. In the other respect, my modern mind could not stop complaining about blown out skies. Even then, I guess, Irish skies were frequently unhelpfully covered in white cloud 
Some of the photographs show change – how Ross Castle and Muckross Friary have been cleaned up to some extent – some seem curiously timeless – the jarveys – sort of – and Torc Waterfall.
It’s hard to know where to start with the exploration of the photographs. A cursory glance has revealed some interesting shots from Cashel and Achill Island amongst others. See here for Patrick Street in Cork with the Paris Photographic Studio right on the corner of Patrick Street and the Grand Parade and a tram in front of what I think is now Waterstones Booksellers. Somewhere in the deepest recesses of my mind, another project involving this is starting to crystallise.
John Williams has been showing photographs of Howth recently, including the marina. Here is a photograph of Howth from before the marina was built.
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I recently saw some outstanding photographs of Paris taken in the 1860s. I am delighted that you can get access to some photographs of Ireland at the time. We have a bunch of photographers – Tommie Lehane springs to mind as does Donncha O’Caoimh who are doing sterling work in documenting our now time. In a quiet corner of my mind, I wonder if I do enough to record now compared to other people.
I’d strongly recommend a wander around the archive if you’ve time. It may not always be obvious how to find things (the amount of information in there can be overwhelming) but there are some serious gems to be found.
Edit: St Patrick’s Day Parade 1905 just arrived in my twitterfeed via IrishMuseums and the National Library of Ireland.
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