LOCAL HISTORY: KNOWING THE history of your house, your parish, your townland or your district can be one way of attaining a sense of belonging in times when ordinary social life is becoming more and more fractured. These books are all about that sense of local identification.
Anyone with an interest in the linen trade of Ulster will be fascinated by The Linen Houses of the Bann Valley – The Story of their Families, by Kathleen Rankin (Ulster Historical Foundation, 261pp. £29.99). A companion volume to the earlier Linen Houses of the Lagan Valley, published in 2002, the book is a commentary on the major families associated with the development and maintenance of the linen industry along the Bann, the longest river in Northern Ireland, whose waters, particularly in its upper reaches, were pure enough to be used in the manufacture and bleaching of the linen. The north-east was one of the world's leading linen producing areas, with Ulster manufacturers producing three-quarters of the UK's output. Yet there has been no comprehensive history of the industry over the three centuries of its existence, and especially in the last 100 years. This book, with its family histories and family trees of those involved, will fill that gap, though it is sad that some houses have been demolished and that where this has happened only historical photographs remain to recall their splendour.
The lavishly illustrated book is an invaluable resource for historians of the linen industry, for genealogists, and local historians. But it is also an evocative and nostalgic exercise for the general reader interested in how other people lived and conducted their lives.
The linen industry in Belfast is given 10 pages in George Benn's quirky and delightful A History of the Town of Belfast(Blackstaff Press's facsimile of the original 1877 edition comprises Volume I "from the earliest times to the close of the Eighteenth century" , 755pp, and Volume 11 "from 1799 till 1810", 246pp. Both together in a slipcase, £30). Benn is both informative and amusing – he notes the use of sulphuric acid mixed with buttermilk to bleach the linen after it had been woven, for example. His book is very easy to browse, with the index included in the second volume. His style may be a little prolix in today's terms, but his eye for detail and personality is unerring and the inclusion of maps is an added bonus.
Barry Kennerk's The Railway House – Tales from an Irish Fireside(Appletree Press, 203pp. €11.95) is an exercise in oral history in which the author uses information from his grandmother to tell the story of the eponymous house in Ashfield Crossing, an embankment near the Ballinlough Hills, in Co Offaly. The book is a charming and evocative account of the three generations of the Gaynor family who lived in the house – they had been there since the latter part of the 19th century when Joseph Gaynor was employed by the Great Southern and Western Railway as a "Checker", a position that entitled him and his family to rent-free occupation of the house. A collection of often hilarious or poignant anecdotes about the family who grew up in the house, this is an entertaining reminder of by-gone times.
The Annals of Dublin – A Tale of a City and Its People, by EE O'Donnell (Currach Press, 255pp, €30), takes us from 8,500 BC and the end of the second Ice Age right up to this year. Illustrated with photographs from the Fr Browne collection, the book is an updating of the first 1988 edition. It is a good and thorough year-by-year representation of the city's character. In 1671, for example, it notes that Grafton Street, a lane leading from Hoggen Green to St Stephen's Green was "so foul that people could not walk on it". This is a very useful reference book.
Less reader-friendly perhaps, is Darkest Dublin – a pictorial account of Dublin's notorious slums in 1913 and what came to be known as the Church Street Disaster when two tenement houses collapsed killing seven people. ( Darkest Dublin – The Story of the Church Street Disaster and a Pictorial Account of the Slums of Dublin in 1913by Christiaan Corlett. Wordwell, in association with the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 222pp. €25).
Unfortunately, while the commentary, drawn from the official Dublin Housing Inquiry of 1913, and contemporary reports, is readable and involving, photographer John Cooks pictures, also presented to the Inquiry, although they are dramatic, do not reproduce well – many of the images are dark and cloudy, and some lack focus. Still, they convey the decay and privation which characterised life for many in the inner city at the time.
Both the Balbriggan Farm Diary (The Farm Diary of Lowther Lodge Balbriggan 1803 – 1833by Townley Patten Filgate, edited by Elizabeth Balcombe. Balbriggan and District Historical Society, 115pp. €10. Available in Fax Fiction and McGovern's Bookshop locally) and Dalkey – An Anthology(compiled by Frank Mullen, edited by Padraig Yeates. Published by Frank Mullen, 205pp. €17.95 – all proceeds to Dalkey United Development Fund) are published locally.
Townley Patten Filgate was perhaps better known as the owner of the notorious Wildgoose Lodge near Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, and TP’s son, William Filgate’s description of the outrage in 1816 when eight people were murdered at the house by local Ribbonmen, told to his daughter some 50 years later, is an interesting inclusion in the diary, which is mainly a day-today description of farming at the time.
Dalkey – An Anthologycontains contributions from many famous residents, from Maeve Binchy, Hugh Leonard, John Waters and Tim Pat Coogan to famous non-residents like Con Houlihan. Its a great book for dipping into with a wealth of information on local topography, personalities, sport, fishing, and swimming.
- Noeleen Dowling is a freelance journalist and local historian