Reconnecting in Ireland - May 2024
It was a very enjoyable eight days in Ireland at the end of May, with generally lovely weather and some lovely surprises along the way. The talks at EPIC The Irish Museum of Emigration on the banks of the Liffey then down in Charleville, close to the Cork-Limerick border went well, with good questions from the audiences. The second talk gave me the opportunity to be back in Newmarket. In fact, I stayed with some friends who live in Barnacurra, the same townland as my family come from. Waking up just a mile from the old family farmhouse was a lovely moment. Before I headed north, I took an hour out to visit Clonfert - the cemetery for the area, and the depository, if you will, of so much of the Newmarket history. After paying my respects to Murty Ned and Dan O'Sullivan, my cousins who were so instrumental in starting me on my HK journey, I reminded myself of the many families involved in the bigger story. I was impressed at how well the hillside cemetery was kept - and I saw it before one of the regular community 'clean-ups' the great people of Newmarket organise.
Before I gave the talks, though, I spent a day with the relatives of HK PCs John and Billy Delahunty and Inspector Edward Browne in Inistioge, Co. Kilkenny. The discovery, in recent months, that this is another village that supplied more than its fair share of HK policemen has been very exciting. Three more names should be added to that list - Robert, Richard and Patrick Lanigan, all of who served in the HKP in the first decades of the twentieth century. Most exciting of all was that the family of Insp. Browne have kept the collection of letters he had, received from his colleagues, both serving and retired, dating from c. 1920 to 1940. They have very generously let me photograph and use them and they provide a fascinating picture of the lives of police in HK at this time, and the reminiscences of men recently returned.
Driving 1,000 miles round Ireland was a joy - clear roads and the absence of potholes!
