Cara formerly Aontas Ogra
The 60th anniversary of the founding of Cara, since renamed Aontas Ogra, will be marked with a birthday celebration in the club premises which was formally part of the old Dreamland Ballroom on...
View ArticleRosanna Fleming's Orphan Emigration Scheme Travel Box
As conditions slowly began to improve following Ireland’s Great Famine of the 1840s, thirty-four young orphan girls who had been inmates of Athy’s workhouse were sent to Australia as part of the...
View ArticleArticle 10
Death marks our lives, whether as family members or members of a community, by its inevitability and its regularity. As we grow older we cannot but realise the sense of loss as relations, friends and...
View Article17th Annual Shackleton Autumn School 2017
October brings with it a greyness in our morning skies and also unremitting rain. It is also the month that sees the return of the Shackleton Autumn School to the town of Athy. This year marks the...
View ArticleShackleton Autumn Schools of past years
On Friday next, the 17th Shackleton Autumn School will be officially opened. The very first Autumn School was launched with enthusiasm, some little knowledge and lots of ambition but with little...
View ArticleA Shaws shop assistant's story
I was privileged to interview a number of former employees of Shaws over the last two years while working on a history of that firm. One of those interviewed was a lady who started to work in Shaws of...
View ArticleLions Book Shop, a measure of Athy's cultural strength
Books have always interested me. I am the antithesis of the person who when asked if he wanted a book as a birthday present replied ‘no thanks, I have one already’. As a long-forgotten philosopher...
View ArticleTim Harward / Eddie Wall
The English and the Irish nations have had an uneasy relationship for centuries but mercifully the appalling ‘No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs’ boarding house notices of a few decades past are no more....
View ArticleParish Priests of St. Michael's Parish
The light reflected in the window of the parochial house in Stanhope Place which I noticed earlier in the week had all the significance of a beacon of revival. Sadly the parochial house, once one of...
View ArticleErnest Shackleton meets G.B. Shaw and Harry Lauder
Part of the joy in researching and writing local history is making connections between people and places. The re-imagining and re-assessment of historical figures is an important part of this process....
View ArticleMoira Finnegan
Athy was the place to be on Monday of last week. The Taoiseach was in town to open Martin Heydon’s constituency office in Leinster Street and later met some local people in the Clanard Court Hotel....
View ArticleSarah Allen
One of the great pleasures of visiting other countries is the occasional opportunity of meeting people from or in some way connected with Athy. It is almost 30 years since I was first invited to the...
View ArticleLions Club Christmas Food Appeal and poverty in Athy
This coming weekend the Lions Club Christmas Food Appeal will take place in Athy’s local supermarkets. Members of the local Lions Club, helped by friends and family members, will man the collection...
View Article'While Shepherds Watch' and Athy's Musical Heritage
‘While Shepherds Watched’, a musical extravaganza for Christmas, will take place in St. Michael’s Parish Church on Tuesday, 19thDecember starting at 8p.m. This year’s performance will be the 25th year...
View ArticleAthy's Commercial Life of the 1920s
Coming out of the recent recession its instructive to look back at times past and see how previous generations were affected by business closures. At the turn of the last century employment...
View ArticleAdvertisers in the Sisters of Mercy Year Book 1953/'54
The Sisters of Mercy arrived in Athy on 10th October 1852 to take charge of the newly built convent of St. Michael’s. The convent was constructed between 1843 and 1852 on a site adjoining the Parish...
View ArticleDell Kane, Eileen McKenna
His right hand reached out as the coffined remains of his neighbour approached near where he stood at the side of the nave central aisle. He touched the top of the polished oak coffin in a gesture of...
View ArticleKildare Archaeological Society's first outing 3rd September, 1891
Kildare Archaeological Society Journal for 2016/2017 was published recently. The Journal which has now reached Part I of Volume 21 has developed over the last 25 years under the editorship of...
View ArticleJohn Murphy and Nora Walsh
Youthful memories came to mind when I learned of the death last week in Dublin of John Murphy. The Murphy family lived in St. Michael’s Terrace and Sean, as he was then called, attended school in the...
View ArticleAthy#s Historical Society and Seamus Hughes' dissertation on the Grant Canal
The recently formed Athy Historical Society has arranged a spring lecture series to commence with a lecture on Thursday 8thFebruary. The lectures will be held in the Heritage Centre on the second...
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