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 Memorials to those who died in World war II are not at all common in Catholic Churches. I was surprised to find this memorial in the church at Pallaskenry, Co. Limerick. It is not listed on the Irish War Memorials website so will have to complete the form and submit.
Many thanks to the Hunt Museum Garden for the chill out time. This too, shall pass.
The bicycles go by in twos and threes. She believed she could, so she did. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. The past can hurt but the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it. It always seems impossible until it’s done. How many ’F’s are on the back of a box of Major? Image from Ebay Many years before the government health warnings and standardised tobacco branding with the graphic images, this was a question often asked. It was asked of me on the way home from school. The vast majority of people answer ‘2’. In two separate cemeteries over the past few weeks, I nearly missed a fewe stone carving spelling issues. Maybe I am getting less observant – I would have expected to spot these at a distance. Or maybe it is like the pack of Major and letters being close together get hiiden in plain sight.
 St Nicholas Cemetery, Adare The skating duck. The crescent moon. The rough hewn stone. The champagne. James Griffin is definitely rebelling against standardisation – well done that man.
 Kildimo Cemetery, Co. Limerick I am very partial to the work of stone carvers. The abundance of modern machine-carver headstones heightens the joy of hand cut stone. There are many blog posts here appreciating the work of Seamus Murphy; Ken Thompson; TG; the craftsman spotted at Montmartre; and others P.N. is now on that list and possibly the earliest that I have come across. I am not confident that I will ever find out who P. N. was but iot doesn’t make my appreciation any less.  St Nicholas cemetery, Adare John Corbett was not just very good.
Some might consider ‘excellent’ to be the pinnacle. Others might prefer ‘brilliant’ or ‘world-class’ as the optimum adjective. To me, ‘gifted’ could exceed them all.  Extracts from poems and songs are a very pleasant diversion on my rambles through cemeteries. Some lyrics I recognise. Others are discovered, or rediscovered, through the nearest search engine. In Ballinure Cemetery, in county Limerick, in early January, I stopped and took a photo of the words on the back of the Martin family memorial. They sounder familiar but could I place them?!? In my defence, the Mountain Dew had not been filed in my brain with any associateion with funerals, graves or death. It is now….
 I think it was from James Dillon on twitter that I learn of a design for gates used by railways company/companies Last Saturday, I was on the wrong side of the tracks for the Knocklong Rescue plaque but was very happy to be rewarded with a meeting with a railway gate.
 Sometimes entering or walking through a cemetery, I will notice a headstone from a distance and be immediately drawn to it. In Abington Cemetery, near Murroe in County Limerick, at six o’clocklast Wednesday morning, the beautifully carved memorial to Catríona Kiely was the magnet that immediately drew me. If a headstone is erected to ensure that the name of the deceased is spoken and remembered, this unique piece of craftsmanship worked. “When there was a death in a small village, everyone knew about it. But with mass migration to the city, the old assumptions didn’t hold true. In a city, there were deaths every day. Here, a person could live unknown and die unnoticed, even by neighbours in the same district. In response to this bewildering new reality the memorial became more important and, for those who could afford it, more elaborate. It announced and recorded the loss; it was a way of keeping the memory alive, of fixing it in a place which would otherwise all too quickly forget. It was a statement of belonging, and an affirmation of individual significance. The city was always restless, shifting, reinventing itself, and a stone represented stillness and permanence. To publish a person’s name and dates there was a bid for posterity. The life might be extinguished, but the firmness of stone, and the work of the mason’s chisel, would testify forever that they had lived.” I cannot recall ever seeing a message like this carved on a headstone. It definitely resonated with this reader. 
This morning, at early o’clock, in Abington Cemetery, near Murroe, I read that Winifred Frances Barrington experienced the first of the three deaths in May 1921.
A while back, I mentioned the carved correction on the headstone in Crosshaven. I have spotted some more corrections – so have put them together.
Even with people living longer in current times, it is not very common to read of people reaching 100 years of age. In the last year or so, I have encountered the graves of a few centurions. Reaching 100 years is remarkable in itself but to do so in 1868, 1853 or even 1762 would, I expect, have been not very common at all.
 During the past day, I have seen images of the statue of Winston Churchill in London’s Parliament Square boarded up to protect it ahead of a planned protest. It reminded me of a different statue in Co. Limerick. A few weeks back, I spotted similar protection was offered to the statue of the Sacred Heart at Croom Hospital to avoid damage….
….. from building activities. For some time, I have been photographing specially made house numbers. They are generally of tiles or moulded plaster. Some tile-types have been used at a number of developments but many of these developments have a numbering system that is bespoke and unique to them – a record of a time when it was nice to be different. A while back, I spotted some buildings on College, generally owned by U.C.C. where the numbers were stuck to the glass fanlight which I had not previously spotted on my search. But U.C.C.’s numbers paled into into total insignificance when I spotted the fanlights at University Square in Belfast – the gold standard in unique door numbers has been set. |
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