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Click on the book for a review of 2005 events to date
Events - September to December 2005
September '05
Launch of
volume 20 of the WHS Journal in Wexford Library, 8.00pm, by County
Librarian, Fionnuala Hanrahan.
Inauguration of the WHS website.
October '05
The Dr
Hadden Memorial Opera Festival Lecture
Venue:
Riverbank Hotel. 8.00pm.
Professor Kevin Whelan, Director of the Keough Notre Dame Centre,
Dublin, ‘The Presence of Absence: ruins in the Irish landscape’.
This
profusely illustrated lecture will use Wexford examples where
possible to explore the meanings of ruins in the Irish landscape.
In more settled countries, ruins are a placid aspect of tradition
in the landscape, their ivy shrouded shells a comforting synthesis
of culture and nature. In the colonial setting of Ireland, ruins
were read differently, as symbols of a traumatic history.
Tradition and custom in Ireland did not seamlessly blend past and
present, but were based on violence, instability and
discontinuity. The poet Medbh McGuckian says: ‘Every inch of this
land has been paid for with the blood of a man.’ The lecture
explores the significance of ruined castles, churches and houses,
drawing especially on the seventeenth century land transfer, the
1798 rebellion and the Famine period.
December '05
WHS annual
Christmas lunch will take place in the Riverbank Hotel on Sunday
18th December at 1pm. More details later.
The after-lunch speaker,
Dr Billy Colfer, will give an illustrated talk entitled ‘Du
Noyer’s Wexford’.
Wednesday 23rd
February
ANNUAL GENERAL
MEETING
After the AGM, Mr
Dermot Meleady gave a lecture on The early political career
of John Edward Redmond.
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Mr Meleady
has undertaken extensive research on John Redmond over
the last number of years and will publish a biography of
Redmond to coincide with the one hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of his birth in 2006. The first two decades
of Redmond’s career ended with his election as Chairman
of the reunited Irish Parliamentary Party. The lecture
will examine his family background in Wexford and his
political
apprenticeship at the House of Commons with his father.
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It
traced his early impressive performance as MP for New Ross
and as an emissary of Parnell in Australia and New Zealand
followed by his role in the Plan of Campaign in the late 1880’s.
His pivotal role in committing himself to the Parnell side in
the party split after the O’Shea divorce trial in 1890 was analysed. Of
particular interest to those whose knowledge of Redmond derives
from this. His later career was examined from his stance on
the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893 as well as his early
attitudes to agrarian and political violence, to the 1798
rebellion, to his Protestant compatriots and to the influence of
clergyman in nationalist politics.
Wexford Historical Conference 2005
1th
March - Sunday 13th March
DIGGING
WEXFORD.
The Wexford
Historical Society’s sixtieth anniversary conference, held in
the Riverbank Hotel, 11–13 May, was a resounding success and is
reviewed in its entirety on the
News page.
Wednesday 27th April
LECTURE:
P.J. McCALL — the man,
his times and his music.
Speaker: Mr Liam
Gaul.
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The April
lecture focused on PJ McCall - the man, his times and
his music- in the political and social context of his
times.Mr Liam Gaul well known in traditional music
circles in County Wexford is current1y completing a
doctoral thesis on PJ McCall with Dr. MIcheál 0
Suilleabháin in the University of Limerick. McCall was a
well known poet and balladeer author of such famous
ballads as 'Boolavogue' and 'Kelly of Killanne.' He
lived in Dublin but was a frequent visitor to Rathangan
where his mother Elizabeth Mary Newport was born.
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He was an elected
member of Dublin Corporation for fifteen years and actually ran
against James Connolly in the election of 1902. He was a close
personal friend of President Sean T. Ó Ceallaigh.
Sunday 15th
May 15th
Outing to
Rathmacknee
Castle and Mayglass.
This
particular Tour departed
from Talbot Hotel car park at 2pm.
The AGM and April lecture on PJ McCall both took place in
the Riverbank House Hotel at 8pm. |
