BY DONAL FALLON
RORY GALLAGHER REMEMBERED
A new statue to Rory Gallagher has been unveiled outside Belfast’s Ulster Hall, a fitting memorial to the Ballyshannon-born musician who continued to play there regularly during the Troubles, becoming a hero to the youth of the city. In an interview Gallagher insisted that, ‘In an Irish tour, I always try and include Belfast … After all, I lived there for a while and I learned a lot playing in the clubs there, so I have a certain home feeling for it. It’s always a great audience there. Pretty much almost no one else goes to play there.’ The work of Anto Brennan, Jessica Checkley and David O’Brien of Bronze Art Ireland, the monument is a fitting addition to Ireland’s UNESCO City of Music.
CHANGE AT MOUNT MELLERAY
Situated in the foothills of the Knockmealdown Mountains, Mount Melleray Abbey is no longer home to a community of monks, closing its doors in January. It was once described as ‘a poor and numerous community of religious men, located on the side of a barren mountain’, but the decision to move on reflects the falling number of vocations, which has led the Cistercians to consolidate their community in Ireland. The abbey includes a beautiful east window produced by the Harry Clarke Studios. In a county so well served by its museum sector, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for this beautiful building.
HARRY CLARKE ON LOAN
On the subject of Harry Clarke, a recent Museum Eye (HI 32.6, Nov./Dec. 2024) exploring the Hugh Lane Gallery’s exhibition on Sarah Purser touched on the reported Harry Clarke Museum for Dublin. If any indication of public demand in the capital for Clarke’s work was needed, it is surely found in the numbers who have flocked to the Collins Barracks branch of the National Museum of Ireland to see a number of Clarke’s works on loan from the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork. Significantly, these works come from early in Clarke’s career. On display are ‘The Consecration of St Mel, Bishop of Longford, by St Patrick’ (1910); ‘The Godhead Enthroned’ (1911); ‘The Meeting of St Brendan with the Unhappy Judas’ (1911); ‘The Unhappy Judas’ (1913); ‘A Meeting’ (1918); and ‘Richard Mulcahy’ (c. 1925).
THE BUNCRANA BHOY
The connections between Donegal and Glasgow Celtic are strong and varied, reflecting the long tradition of seasonal migration between the county and the Scottish city. Now a plaque to former player Hugh Doherty is to be unveiled in his native Buncrana. Ninety-three years old at the time of his passing in 2014, Doherty was still active in the football community as assistant treasurer of the Inishowen Football League. Doherty lined out for the Hoops in the 1940s, before going on to play with Blackpool in the era of the great Stanley Matthews.
STONE MAD
This year sees the 50th anniversary of the death of Seamus Murphy, the celebrated sculptor and stone-carver from Cork. To mark the occasion, Mercier Press have republished a limited edition run (300 copies) of Murphy’s memoir Stone mad. Murphy spoke in one interview of ‘trying to recreate not alone the physical likeness but the personality’ of a subject, and a fine example of his work is the impressive monumental bust of General Michael Collins on display in the Hugh Lane Gallery.
REPUBLICAN ARCHIVE
The Irish Republican Digital Archive describes itself as a ‘historical project created in 2024 with the aim of digitally preserving Irish Republican documents online for research and educational purposes’. Not affiliated with any political organisation or perspective, the website will prove invaluable to historians researching and writing about various republican movements in the second half of the twentieth century. Scanned documents include copies of Eolas, the international newsletter of Official Sinn Féin in the 1970s, copies of the Wolfe Tone Annual from the 1950s, and rare publications like 1972’s Patriot Graves. The archive can be found online at www.republicanarchive.com.