The Corran Herald COMPILED AND PUBLISHED BY BALLYMOTE HERITAGE GROUP ISSUE No.45 2012/2013 PRICE €8.00 The Corran Herald Annual Publication of Ballymote Heritage Group Compiled and Published by Ballymote Heritage Group Editor: Stephen Flanagan Design, Typesetting and Printing: Orbicon Print, Collooney. Cover Design and Artwork: Brenda Friel Issue No 45 2012/2013 ––––––––––––––– The Corran Herald wishes to sincerely thank all those who have written articles or contributed photographs or other material for this Issue 2 THE CORRAN HERALD • 2012/2013 Contents Page Remembering James Flanagan (Stephen Flanagan) 4 James Flanagan R.I.P (Ballymote Heritage Group) 6 Rural Post Offices in Mid-20th Century Ireland (Tommy Kilcoyne) 7 Owen Wynne VI and Hazelwood: The Twilight of an Era (Padraig Deignan) 8 Douglas Hyde in Ballymote 13 Under Two Flags (Eugene Benson) 14 The Antonine Wall (Niamh Conlon) 16 Brigid Billings (nee O’Hara) 17 Bank Raid in Ballymote! (Pat Leyden) 18 Take me up to Monto! (Jack Gilligan) 19 Winters Now And Then (Joan Gleeson) 20 The Fallen (Pat Leyden) 20 Ireland’s Neutrality: Sacred Cow or Pious Wish? (Joe McGowan) 21 Notes on Toomour Ancient Ecclesiastical Site, Keash, Co. Sligo(Martin A. Timoney) 24 Treasured Memories (John Mc Donagh) 27 Madam Felicity MacDermot (Frank Tivnan) 28 From Heapstown to New South Wales: A Family Saga in Famine Times (John McTernan) 29 John Taaffe of Kingsfort, Drumrane and The Windy Gap (Neal Farry) 30 Carbide Story (James P Kilcoyne) 33 Joseph Myles McDonnell of Doocastle (John Mc Ternan) 34 Some important discoveries that came about by accident (PJ Duffy) 35 School Through The Years in Meenmore (John J. Higgins) 36 1932 Eucharistic Congress 37 Lost with The Titanic (John McTernan) 38 Snowdrops (Bernie Gilbride) 38 The life and times of Rev Owen Feeney(John Mc Ternan) 39 Guarding the North-West (Padraig Feehily) 41 The Hartes of Ballinspor (John McDonagh) 48 Ballymote and its Surroundings (Submitted by Padraig Doddy) 49 The Keenan Family 50 Musings (Bernie Gilbride) 50 Ancient Stones (Lynda Hart) 50 The Barytes Mines (Paddy Cooney) 51 Juan-Les-Pins (Bernie Gilbride) 54 Childhood Memories (Brigid Healy) 55 A night with the winos (Mary Kelly-White) 57 A Charming Sight (Lynda Hart) 60 Bartholomew Joseph Healy (Eamonn Stafford) 61 The Miracle of Nature (Bernie Gilbride) 62 Books (Bernie Gilbride) 62 Ballymote Memories (Submitted by Gerry Cassidy) 63 The Bell of Aghanagh Church (Kathleen Fairbanks) 64 From Scythe to Set-aside (Pat Hughes) 65 The Bunninadden Murder (Submitted by Padraig McDermott) 69 1930s Bunninadden 70 From Pathways to Highways (P.J. Duffy) 71 Auction of Farm at Larkhill, 1900 (Submitted by Padraig Doddy) 72 Whistle while you work 73 A Ballymote Business in a Time of Change, 1915-1922 (John Coleman) 74 Sligo Lights (Eugene Gillan) 76 Mary Fleming O’Gara in pursuit of her marriage settlement (Maura O’Gara-O’Riordan) 78 Wheeling and Dealing (Anne Maguire) 82 The Closure of Ballymote Franciscan Friary Graveyard in 1948 (Mary B. Timoney) 84 First Communion in Days Gone By 85 Confirmation and First Communion 2012 86 Ballymote Heritage Group 88 Sponsors 88 3 THE CORRAN HERALD • 2012/2013 Remembering James Flanagan Stephen Flanagan As many readers of The Corran as I was when we first managed to theology, and looking through his Herald will already be aware, successfully connect to the internet bookshelves now I see books on James Flanagan passed away and understood that the information how science and religion combine, peacefully on May 21, 2012, at we were seeing was coming to us and on theology and the history of Sligo General Hospital, surrounded across the phone network from a the church, among the many other by his family. computer in another country. Near volumes. When I was a teenager I We miss him dearly. He was a the end of his life we talked about sometimes pointed out places in the husband, a father, a grandfather, a the latest innovation from Google readings at Mass where there were friend, a teacher and a scholar. From - a pair of glasses that allow you contradictions or implausibilities, the hundreds who attended his to see information projected and he would smile his wry smile, funeral the word I heard over and into space in front of you - and point out a few more that I had over was ‘gentleman’. Mourners wondered what it might mean for missed, and steer me back towards came from all strands of his life - the world. the broader truths. former pupils and colleagues from Throughout his life he was Dad loved to teach. After he left his days in St Nathy’s College, constantly questioning and Maynooth, he studied for a Higher from the Heritage Group, from the learning and observing. He often Diploma in Education at UCD. He Credit Union, from his student days told me that his own father used to gave some maths grinds on the in Maynooth, from his decades- say ‘Keep your eye on what you’re side and taught a few hours a week long work with the Church, from doing,’ and Dad took that almost in a school in Maynooth and one Ballymote and all over Ireland. He as a philosophy. If he was working on Synge Street in Dublin. Those loved Sligo and Ardconnell and on a mathematical problem, he were his first tentative steps on his felt a deep connection with the concentrated on it totally. If he own in the world, finding his way area, and he would have been very was cutting the hedge, he thought into what would turn out to be his pleased to see all those who turned about cutting the hedge. He was true vocation. He loved the city and out. always present in the moment. the subject, and he said later that He was born in 1940, and I Benjamin Franklin once said that that year was one of the happiest often spoke to him about the you should ‘give time to all your of his life. changes he had seen in his life: businesses’, and Dad lived that His gift was to be able to the introduction of running water, idea. He was interested in a wide understand how the person he was electricity, television, telephones, range of things, from mathematics teaching saw the world, to see the personal computers, the internet and science to politics and history, limits of their knowledge and then and much else. Dad embraced and he immersed himself in them explain things in a way they could each phase. He had one of the first all. understand. He never forgot how commercially available ‘pocket’ But as much as he was a man difficult he had found it himself in calculators in the early 1970s, a of science, he was a man of God. the first place to learn the concepts brick-sized device that needed to He studied at Maynooth with the of mathematics and science. be plugged in to work. In the 1980s intention of becoming a priest, and He once described his early he brought home a computer from his faith never left him. He attended introduction to mathematics as St Nathy’s each summer so he daily Mass for much of his life. He being exposed to the ‘doubtful joys could better understand it, and of believed in tolerance and love, and of Algebra and Geometry’. But for course teach his children to use abhorred violence. I never once most of his life they were as dear it. In 1996, he and I made a deal heard him swear, but when he read to him as old friends. In the mid whereby I would use some of the stories of violence and atrocity in 1960s the ‘new maths’ syllabus was proceeds of my first summer job to the newspaper, it was as close as introduced to secondary schools, purchase a modem and an internet he came. and because of his third-level subscription, and he would make From his studies and reading background he became one of the up the shortfall. He was as excited he had a broad knowledge of people who taught other teachers 4 THE CORRAN HERALD • 2012/2013 the new course. He travelled all He was a ‘content’ person, as my for the edition he was putting over Ireland doing it for more than mother has said, happy with his together, carefully checking and a decade, and it gave him some of life. Of her, he once wrote of their editing and refining, working on his happiest times. first meeting that they had been his labour of love. Maybe above all else, though, introduced on ‘the afternoon of Dad’s faith was strong and deep, he was a family man. He was May 30, 1970’, and that it was an and we prayed with him to the very always there for his wife, Anne, his ‘earth-shakingly fateful afternoon.’ end. At his funeral there were fifteen three children, six grandchildren Their relationship was and is an priests, and when they stood on the and his extended family, a wise, example and an inspiration. altar together they were arrayed supportive, loving presence, part This is the first issue of The like the messengers of God come of the bedrock of our existence. Corran Herald produced without to see him on his way. I can think Throughout our lives his children Dad’s guidance since it began of no more fitting tribute. Though turned to him for guidance on all publication in 1985. One way or we mourn his passing and miss the aspects and stages of growing another we will continue what he him dreadfully, we are thankful up – school, college, career, started – of all the many things that he was his lucid, loving self to friends, relationships, children and he did, working on The Corran the very end, and he slipped away family of our own, decisions large Herald was one he loved most.