The Story of the Court Laundry. By Robert Tweedy. Wolfhound Press, £14.99
When Henry Cecil Watson founded the Court Laundry in Harcourt Street, Dublin, in 1907 he surely never dreamed that it would one day become the subject of a book. Most laundries are undeserving of such honour - the Court was different, and well worth the 160 affectionate pages devoted to it by a man who worked there for 28 years, eventually becoming its manager. Robert Tweedy's history is more than the story of a particular laundry - it is also the chronicle of almost 70 years of social change in Dublin and a record of workers' struggle to better their lot.
Happily, in the case of the Court Laundry, they were pushing an open door. Henry Cecil Watson was an enlightened employer and was among the first industrialists in Dublin to introduce a second week's paid holidays, a profit-sharing scheme and other progressive measures. In turn, his employees were loyal and happy, as is evident from the book and the photographs included. The Dublin laundry scene has changed utterly, with "laundrettes" taking the place of the 18 big laundries that were there in 1933. The book, as Margaret McCurtain says in her foreword, is a valuable record of how a large commercial laundry worked in the first half of the 20th century.
Displaying Faith - Orange, Green and Trade Union Banners in Northern Ireland. By Neil Jarman. Institute of Irish Studies, Queen's University, Belfast; £8.50 in UK
Parading with banners in this country has a long and colourful history - images of Adam and Eve appeared on a banner in a Corpus Christi procession in Dublin in 1498. More recently parade-banners have taken on a more political hue, as exemplified in the 116 full-colour plates of Orange Order, Ancient Order of Hibernians, Irish National Foresters, Trade Union and Republican banners in this short history of the parading tradition in Northern Ireland. The area's commemorative culture is highly visual and the making of banners is apparently a skilled industry. From an examination of the banners shown here, the Orangemen make use of a greater range of colours than any other group, the Hibernians and Republicans preferring green and orange. This attractive book claims to be the first such publication to focus on the practice of carrying banners, and for its colour photographs alone is worth its price.
Northside of the Mizen. By Patrick McCarthy and Richard Hawkes. Mizen Productions, £9.95
Ten years of research have been put into the publication of this collection of tales, customs and history from the south-west of Co Cork - to be exact, the north-facing townlands in the parish of Goleen on the Mizen Peninsula. The father of one of the editors, Patrick McCarthy, happened to be a seannachai and many of his stories feature in the book, which deals with parish life in chronological fashion from January through to December. There is little left unrecorded in this 235-page compendium which is liberally illustrated with photographs and drawings, all redolent of the rich rural culture of the area. It also has a glossary of local dialect words and lists of topographical placenames (fields, roads, shore features, etc). If every parish had a history such as this, we would be all the richer. Patrick McCarthy and Richard Hawkes deserve the thanks of everyone living in Goleen.
An Anglo-Norman Monastery. By Tadhg O'Keeffe. Cork County Council and Gandon Editions; £25.00
The medieval archaeology lecturer Dr Tadhg O'Keeffe has taken Bridgetown Priory in Co Cork as his subject for this study of an Augustinian house, one of the finest Anglo-Norman monasteries in Ireland, and combined it with an investigation of the general architecture of the Augustinians and their monastic rule. There are many illustrations, some in colour, but this is more a specialist's book than a layman's guide. Of its genre it must be rated as an exemplary monograph which adds immeasurably to knowledge of its subject.
The Famine in Mayo 1845-1850. Compiled and edited by Ivor Hamrock. Mayo County Library, £7
A bit late in the day, this "portrait from contemporary sources" will nevertheless be welcomed as a comprehensive record of the famine and its dire effects on one county, derived from eyewitness accounts in local newspapers, official publications and books of the period. Originally presented in exhibition form, the material has been skilfully edited by senior library assistant, Ivor Hamrock, who also uses contemporary illustrations to make this a visually pleasing and rewarding publication. Still in time to mark the 150th anniversary of the official end of the Famine.
Church Organisation in Ireland AD 650 to 1000. By Colman Etchingham. Laighin Publications, £36
This is a tome that "grew out of a Ph.D. thesis" and has all the hallmarks of its genesis - dense, scholarly text, profuse footnotes and a lengthy bibliography. As an academic exercise it undoubtedly has its place - a foremost one at that - but, apart from dedicated scholars, I wonder who will pay such a price to peruse 538 pages of erudite research and reassessment of its esoteric subject? This is not to deny the vast amount of work that has patently been undertaken here, making use of ancient Irish canon law texts, penitential literature, the Irish annals and sundry hagiographical material to postulate a reappraisal of the widely accepted view of the early Irish Church as a largely monastic institution. This is not just a synthesis of previous findings by other historians in this area, but a well-argued and heavily annotated thesis that sheds much new light on the role of the Church in early medieval Ireland. Definitely a book for scholars.
Richard Roche is an author, journalist and local historian