A guiding hand through the generations

LOCAL HISTORY:WHEN I WAS a girl nothing would have pleased me more than to be a Brownie or a Girl Guide. I'm obviously not alone.

Eminent Irishwomen who have belonged to the movement include Sonia O'Sullivan, Myrtle Allen, Sr Stanislaus Kennedy and Mrs Justice Catherine McGuinness. Today, according to A Hundred Years A-growing: A History of the Irish Girl Guides, by Gillian Finan (Liberties Press €25), about 250 million women have worked through the Girl Guide programme worldwide since the movement was founded, in 1909. In Ireland, where falling membership was of concern a decade or so ago, more than 10,000 girls and young women are now in the Irish Guides.

Rob Goodbody has produced a comprehensive look at The Metals from Dalkey to Dún Laoghaire(Dún Laoghaire- Rathdown County Council and the Heritage Council, €10). As a history it will appeal not only to transport fans but also to local residents curious about the railway line that runs from Dalkey hill to the piers at Dún Laoghaire and was used for carrying huge stones from the local quarries for the piers' foundations.

The story in Rails to Rosslare: The GWR Mail Route to Ireland,by Mike Hitches (Amberley Publishing, £16.99) is that of how the English-based company attempted a takeover of the railways of Ireland in the late 19th century. It was acting on the advice of the great engineer Brunel, who came to Ireland in the 1840s to examine the atmospheric railway. The plan did not succeed, but one thing the company did succeed at was reducing the journey time from Fishguard to Rosslare. This in 1908 took just three hours. In 1990 Sealink Stena was doing it in three hours and 40 minutes.

Nostalgia abounds in CIÉ Buses in the 1970s and 80s: Double Deckers, by Ed O'Neill, and its companion volume, Single Deckers, by Ed O'Neill (PRC Publications, €25 each). In the economically dire 1970s and 1980s, when little money was around, a make-do-and-mend attitude at CIÉ meant the company took an innovative approach to spare parts made by people other than the original manufacturers.

Nothing evokes nostalgia like the history of local places, and Slieve Aughty Rambles: Musings on the Folklore, History, Landscapes and Literature of the Slieve Aughty Region,by Ger Madden (East Clare Heritage, €20) bears this out. It comes with a pull-out map and is obviously aimed at hillwalkers and ramblers. Written in diary form, it covers a full year, with snippets of local news from local and national newspapers, poems and literary excerpts.

Next is Chronicles of Cork: An Oral Record, edited by Jane O'Hea O'Keefe (Irish Life and Lore, €15). Having spent more than a decade working for what is now the Irish Examiner(though in the Dublin office, which considerably diluted the effect), I know how important Cork is. It's good to see Ted Crosbie is the first interviewee in this book. Crosbie is an entertaining guide to the history of the paper, founded in 1841, and to life in Cork.

A welcome, too, to the new historical journal of Chapelizod Heritage Society, Adsiltia.The name reflects its serious aims: it's the Brittonic rendering of Isold or Iseult. (Chaplizod is, of course, from the Norman French Chapple Iseult.) The journal itself is scholarly and aims to publish primary historical material relating to Chapelizod.

Noeleen Dowling is a freelance journalist and local historian