Nick Maxwell By Martin Morris Have you ever wondered what it cost to buy chocolate or sugar 300 years ago? Or the cost of dinner, or a servant’s wages? You will find the answers to these questions, and others, in two account books held in Longford County Library and Archives Services. They were kept by Richard Edgeworth … Read more
By Stephen Kelly Ownership of the Falkland Islands, an archipelago of an estimated 200 islands scattered in the South Atlantic, 300 miles off the coast of Argentina and approximately 8,000 miles south of the United Kingdom, was bitterly disputed between the two states. At the time approximately 1,900 people lived there. Most of these inhabitants … Read more
By Jack Hepworth In April 1972 it was estimated that there were some 32,000 living veterans of the ‘Old IRA’, Cumann na mBan and Na Fianna Éireann. Through the 1970s and 1980s, these veterans of Ireland’s revolutionary decade entered old age. When they died, local newspapers published reverential obituaries. These heroic narratives sat uneasily with … Read more
By Conor English Distilling has been an important part of Cork’s economy since the late eighteenth century. Four of the largest distilleries amalgamated in 1867 to form the Cork Distilleries Company (CDC), joined by Midleton Distillery in 1868. The largest plant was based in North Mall, on an island on the north bank of the … Read more
By Simon Topping The sign in Bessbrook, Co. Armagh, was clear—‘Dance for the Blackmen’—yet when some African-American troops arrived they were refused entry, to their dismay. This seeming importation of American ‘Jim Crow’ racial segregation was, in fact, an encounter with Northern Ireland’s particular idiosyncrasies, as, unknown to the soldiers, the Blackmen were a Protestant … Read more