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Tag Archives: County Wicklow


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Death of Professional Golfer Harry “The Brad” Bradshaw

Harry Bradshaw, a leading Irish professional golfer of the 1940s and 1950s, dies on December 22, 1990, in St. Vincent’s hospital, County Dublin.

Bradshaw is born on October 9, 1913, in Killincarrig, County Wicklow, eldest among four sons and two daughters of Edward ‘Ned’ Bradshaw, golf caddie and later golf professional, and Elizabeth Bradshaw (née Walsh) of Killincarrig. He is educated locally. A golf prodigy, he has a hole-in-one at the age of ten on an 80-yard par three at Delgany Golf Club, County Wicklow. He joins Delgany Golf Club, where he progresses from caddie to assisting his father, who is the club’s professional. As a teenager, he tends to hook the ball wildly, before he develops a grip that allows him to hit with great accuracy. Thereafter, he concentrates on honing his peerless approach play from within 100 yards of the hole. Another feature of his game is what is called his “hit and hark” approach to putting: he never lifts his head to follow the ball until he hears it drop.

Bradshaw plays in his first tournament as a professional in 1932, the same year he shoots a course record 68 at Delgany. In 1938, he wins his first professional tournament, the Bromford-Adgey Cup at Skerries Golf Club, County Dublin. In 1941, he is appointed golf professional at Kilcroney, County Wicklow, and in 1950 he begins his long association with Portmarnock Golf Club, County Dublin, when he is appointed golf professional there. By then he has already made his mark on domestic Irish golf, having won the Irish Open in 1947 and 1949. In Ireland he wins the Irish Dunlop Trophy three times, the Willie Nolan Trophy eleven times, the Moran Cup twelve times and the Irish Professional Championship ten times, the last a record later equaled by Christy O’Connor Snr.

Bradshaw is not well known outside of Ireland prior to the famous “bottle” incident at the 1949 Open Championship at Royal St. George’s Golf Club in Sandwich, Kent, England. Having headed the qualifiers and shooting an opening 68, he continues his good form into the second round when his drive at the par four fifth hole just misses the fairway and lands in a beer bottle that is standing upright with the neck and shoulder broken off. The rules are unclear on whether the bottle constitutes a hazard, and he elects to play the ball where it lay, judging (correctly) that he is not entitled to a free drop. Closing his eyes and turning his head away, he swings, shattering the bottle and advancing the ball about twenty-five yards. He is shaken and records a lacklustre round of 77. Back to his best in the next two rounds, he would win the title had his putt on the last not stopped just short. Instead, he ties with the South African Bobby Locke who defeats him by twelve strokes in the thirty-six-hole play-off with superlative rounds of 67 and 68. As a result of his experience with the broken bottle, the rules are changed to cater for the possibility of such an incident recurring. It is the closest a golfer from the Republic of Ireland comes to winning the Open Championship until Pádraig Harrington’s victory in 2007.

Bradshaw subsequently revenges himself on Locke by narrowly beating him to the Irish Open title the following month. He is then one of four British and Irish golfers to participate in a sixteen-week tour of South Africa from December 1950 to March 1951 during which he engages in further jousts with Locke, deepening their new-found friendship.

Establishing himself on the international golf circuit, Bradshaw goes on to win the Dunlop British Masters on two occasions (1953, 1955), and in 1958 he becomes the first Irishman to win the PGA Close Championship. He had also won the Dunbar Open Tournament in Scotland in 1953 and the Gleneagles Hotel Foursomes Tournament pro-am with Joe Carr in 1955. The highlight of his career comes in Mexico City in 1958, when, in partnership with Christy O’Connor Snr, he wins the Canada Cup, later known as the World Cup, for Ireland, also losing a play-off for the individual title. His performance is particularly impressive, given that he is forty-five and carrying weight while competing at altitude in oppressive heat. He and O’Connor are fêted upon their return home, and their victory is considered to play the determining role in popularising golf in Ireland. He caps a memorable year by receiving the Association of Golf Writers’ Trophy for 1958.

Bradshaw appears on three Ryder Cup teams. At the Wentworth Club in 1953, he wins his foursomes match partnering Fred Daly and his singles match against Fred Haas, but in 1955 he loses both his foursomes and singles matches at the Thunderbird Country Club in California. In 1957, he is a member of the side that defeats the American team 7–4 at Lindrick Golf Club in South Yorkshire, only the third victory by the Britain and Ireland side in the twelve matches played up to that time. He holes a five-footer to tie his match with U.S. Open champion Dick Mayer after a classic encounter. In 1963, he takes on Billy Casper, one of America’s top golfers, in a match at Portmarnock televised as part of the prestigious Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf series. Bradshaw’s three-stroke victory earns him $3,000, which is then considered a bonanza in golfing terms.

Bradshaw remains the golf professional at Portmarnock until 1983, latterly spending most of his day in the club shop. Even after his formal retirement, he remains on the payroll at Portmarnock as an informal ambassador for the club. Nicknamed “the Brad,” he is extremely popular with amateur and professional alike, is a great raconteur and tremendous company, and is noted for his lack of rancor towards, or criticism of, other players.

Bradshaw dies on December 22, 1990, at St. Vincent’s hospital, County Dublin, and is buried in St. Fintan’s Cemetery, Sutton, Dublin.

Bradshaw marries Elizabeth Foley from Carlow in 1944 and they have four children. His three brothers, Eddie, Hughie and Jimmy, are all professional golfers.

(From: “Bradshaw, Harry” by Jim Shanahan, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, November 2022)


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Death of Margaret Clarke, Portrait Painter

Margaret Clarke RHA (née Crilley), Irish portrait painter, dies in Dublin on October 31, 1961.

Crilley is born in Newry, County Down, (present-day Northern Ireland), on August 1, 1884, one of six children of Patrick Crilley. Her date of birth is often given as July 29, 1888, though local records do not support this, suggesting she is born four years earlier. Having initially trained at Newry technical school with her sister Mary, intending to become a teacher, in 1905, she wins a scholarship to attend the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. There she studies under William Orpen, who regards her as one of his most promising students. She completes her studies in 1911 attaining an Art Teacher’s Certificate and begins working as Orpen’s assistant.

In 1914, Crilley marries her fellow student Harry Clarke, much to the surprise of their family and acquaintances. The couple moves into a flat at 33 North Frederick Street. They have three children, Michael, David and Ann. Harry’s brother, Walter, marries Margaret’s sister, Mary, in 1915.

Clarke first exhibits with the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1913 and goes on to exhibit over 60 artworks in the forty years until 1953, the majority being portraits. Among the portrait commissions she receives are ones for Dermod O’Brien, President Éamon de Valera, Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, and Lennox Robinson. She spends a great deal of time on the Aran Islands with fellow artist Seán Keating and her husband, from which she produces a number of landscapes and smaller studies.

Clarke becomes the director of the Harry Clarke Stained Glass Studios following the death of her husband in 1931.

A critic notes in 1939 that Clarke produces “remarkable drawings in which individuality is caught in a few swift economical lines.” Over her lifetime she wins many awards including the Tailteann gold, silver and bronze medals in 1924, and another Tailteann bronze in both 1928 and 1932. She is elected an Associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy (ARHA) in 1926, and a full RHA member in 1927. Upon the founding of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1943, she is appointed a member of the executive committee.

Clarke dies in Dublin on 31 October 31, 1961, and is buried in the Redford Cemetery, Greystones, County Wicklow. She is commemorated with a blue plaque at her birthplace in Newry.

Clarke’s work can be found in the collections of the National Gallery of Ireland, the Hugh Lane Gallery, the Crawford Art Gallery, the Ulster Museum, Limerick City Gallery of Art, The National Self-Portrait Collection of Ireland, and the Pontifical Irish College in Rome.

The exhibition at National Gallery of Ireland in 2017 reevaluates Margaret Clarke’s great artistic reputation.

(Pictured: “Self-portrait,” 1914, by Margaret Clarke, © Artist’s Estate)


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Death of Sculptor Conor Fallon

Irish sculptor Conor Hubert Fallon dies of lung cancer at the Blackrock Clinic, County Dublin, on October 3, 2007.

Fallon is born at Holles Street Hospital, Dublin, on January 30, 1939, the third of six sons of Padraic Fallon, the Irish poet and playwright, and Dorothea Maher. The family moves to Clonard, County Wexford, where he grows up. He has three surviving brothers, Brian, Ivan and Padraic, who have all had journalism careers. His early interest in literature and the arts is nourished by his father and elder brothers, and by contact with the cultured circle of writers, artists, musicians and intellectuals within which his father moves.

Fallon is educated at St. Peter’s College, Wexford, and Trinity College, Dublin. He begins painting in 1957 while at Trinity College, where he is studying natural science but is advised to pay more attention to his art. His interest in painting is probably inspired by the example of Tony O’Malley, a close family friend. As a compromise with his father, who does not see his talent, he also studies accountancy at night.

Largely self-taught in painting, he learns fundamentals of technique from Richard Kingston, to whom he is introduced by O’Malley. He largely paints landscapes in acrylic and gouache, in a manner heavily influenced by that of Jack Butler Yeats.

In 1964, Fallon visits O’Malley in St. Ives, Cornwall, where he had emigrated several years earlier, intending also to meet the Cornish abstract landscape painter Peter Lanyon, the chief creative force in the thriving artists’ colony centred on St. Ives. His arrival, however, coincides with Lanyon’s death from injuries suffered in a gliding accident. A gently sympathetic stranger amid the bereaved artistic community, he finds an immediate empathy and rapport with Nancy Wynne-Jones, a Welsh-born painter sixteen years his senior who had studied under Lanyon. They marry in 1966. They adopt two children in 1970, siblings John and Bridget.

Encouraged to take up sculpture, English sculptor Denis Mitchell becomes Fallon’s mentor in Cornwall, and with Breon O’Casey, he develops his sculpting. He becomes notable for his cast steel and bronze work, especially birds, horses and hares. He has his first solo exhibition in Newlyn in 1972, showing both painting and sculpture.

In May 1972, Fallon moves with his family back to Ireland, settling at Scilly House, on a hillside overlooking the harbour at Kinsale, County Cork. Removed from any centre of artistic activity, he devotes himself fulltime to a solitary development of his sculpture, refining his methodology and technique, and his skills in working various metals, beginning in 1974 to work in steel. In 1975, he first exhibits in Ireland at a solo show at the Emmet Gallery, Dublin, again showing both painting and sculpture, including his first steel sculptures to be exhibited.

Beginning in 1983, Fallon exhibits regularly with the Taylor Galleries, Dublin. Desiring closer proximity to Dublin art activities, and with their children attending university in the city, Fallon and his wife move in 1987 to Ballard House, Ballinaclash, Rathdrum, County Wicklow.

In 1980, Fallon is awarded the Oireachtas gold medal for sculpture. He becomes an honorary associate of the National College of Art and Design in 1993. He is secretary of the Royal Hibernian Academy, becoming a full member in 1989, and on the board of the National Gallery of Ireland. He is also elected to Aosdána in 1984.

In the summer of 2007, some six months after his wife’s death, Fallon wis diagnosed with advanced metastatic lung cancer. He dies on October 3, 2007, at the Blackrock Clinic, County Dublin, and is buried beside his wife in Ballinatone churchyard, Greenan, Rathdrum, County Wicklow.


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Ulster Day

Ulster’s Solemn League and Covenant, commonly known as the Ulster Covenant, is signed by nearly 500,000 people on and before September 28, 1912, in protest against the Third Home Rule Bill introduced by the British Government in the same year.

The Covenant is first drafted by Thomas Sinclair, a prominent unionist and businessman from Belfast. Sir Edward Carson is the first person to sign the Covenant at Belfast City Hall with a silver pen, followed by Charles Stewart Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 6th Marquess of Londonderry (the former Lord Lieutenant of Ireland), representatives of the Protestant churches, and then by Sir James Craig. The signatories, 471,414 in all, are all against the establishment of a Home Rule parliament in Dublin. The Ulster Covenant is immortalised in Rudyard Kipling‘s poem “Ulster 1912.” On September 23, 1912, the Ulster Unionist Council votes in favour of a resolution pledging itself to the Covenant.

The Covenant has two basic parts: the Covenant itself, which is signed by men, and the Declaration, which is signed by women. In total, the Covenant is signed by 237,368 men; the Declaration, by 234,046 women. Both the Covenant and Declaration are held by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI). An online searchable database is available on the PRONI website.

In January 1913, the Ulster Volunteers aim to recruit 100,000 men between the ages of 17 and 65 who had signed the Covenant as a unionist militia. A British Covenant, similar to the Ulster Covenant in opposition to the Home Rule Bill, receives two million signatures in 1914.

The majority of the signatories of the Covenant are from Ulster, although the signing is also attended by several thousand southern unionists. Acknowledging this, Carson pays tribute to “my own fellow citizens from Dublin, from Wicklow, from Clare [and], yes, from Cork, rebel Cork, who are now holding the hand of Ulster,” to cheers from the crowd.

Robert James Stewart, a Presbyterian from Drum, County Monaghan, and the grandfather of Heather Humphreys, the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht (2014-16) in the Republic of Ireland, is one of around 6,000 signatories in County Monaghan, where one quarter of the population is Protestant before the establishment of the Irish Free State. Almost 18,000 people sign either the Covenant or the Declaration in County Donegal.

The signature of Frederick Hugh Crawford is claimed by him to have been written in blood. However, this is disputed. Based on the results of a forensic test that he carries out in September 2012 at PRONI, Dr. Alastair Ruffell of Queen’s University Belfast asserts that he is 90% positive that the signature is not blood. Crawford’s signature is injected with a small amount of luminol. This substance reacts with iron in blood’s hemoglobin to produce a blue-white glow. The test is very sensitive and can detect tiny traces even in old samples. Crawford’s signature is still a rich red colour today which would be unlikely if it had been blood. Nevertheless, some unionists are not convinced by the evidence.

The term “Solemn League and Covenant” recalls a key historic document signed in 1643, by which the Scottish Covenanters make a political and military alliance with the leaders of the English Parliamentarians during the First English Civil War.

The Ulster Covenant is used as a template for the “Natal Covenant,” signed in 1955 by 33,000 British-descended Natalians against the nationalist South African government’s intention of declaring the Union a republic. It is signed in Durban‘s City Hall. Loosely based on Belfast’s Ulster Covenant, the Ulster scene is almost exactly reproduced.

September 28 is today known as “Ulster Day” to unionists.

(Pictured: Sir Edward Carson signing the Solemn League and Covenant)


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Birth of James Whiteside, Politician & Judge

James Whiteside, Irish politician and judge, is born at Delgany, County Wicklow, on August 12, 1804.

Whiteside is the son of William Whiteside, a clergyman of the Church of Ireland. His father is transferred to the parish of Rathmines but dies when his son is only two years old, leaving his widow in straitened circumstances. She schools her son personally in his early years. He is educated at Trinity College Dublin, enters the Middle Temple, and is called to the Irish bar in 1830.

Whiteside very rapidly acquires a large practice, and after taking silk in 1842 he gains a reputation for forensic oratory surpassing that of all his contemporaries and rivalling that of his most famous predecessors of the 18th century. He defends Daniel O’Connell in the state trial of 1843, and William Smith O’Brien in 1848. His greatest triumph is in the Yelverton case in 1861. He is elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Enniskillen in 1851, and in 1859 becomes an MP for Dublin University. In Parliament, he is no less successful as a speaker than at the bar, and in 1852 is appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland in the first administration of Prime Minister Edward Smith-Stanley, becoming Attorney-General for Ireland in 1858, and again in 1866. In the same year he is appointed Lord Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench, having previously turned down offers of a junior judgeship. His reputation as a judge does not equal his reputation as an advocate, although he retains his great popularity. In 1848, after a visit to Italy, he publishes Italy in the Nineteenth Century. In 1870 he collects and republishes some papers contributed many years before to periodicals, under the title Early Sketches of Eminent Persons.

In July 1833, Whiteside marries Rosetta, daughter of William and Rosetta Napier, and sister of Sir Joseph Napier, Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Like his brother-in-law, Joseph, he is devoted to the Church of Ireland and strongly opposes its disestablishment.

Whiteside is universally well-liked, being noted for charm, erudition and a sense of humour. Barristers who practise before him say that his charm, courtesy and constant flow of jokes make appearing in his Court a delightful experience.

Whiteside’s last years on the bench ware affected by ill health. He dies on November 25, 1876, at Brighton, Sussex, England. His brother-in-law, from whom he is estranged in later years, is overcome with grief at his death and collapses at the funeral. He is buried at Mount Jerome Cemetery in Dublin.

(Pictured: Statue of James Whiteside by Albert Bruce-Joy on display in St. Patrick’s Cathedral)


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The Electricity Supply Board (ESB) is Established

The Electricity Supply Board (ESB; Irish: Bord Soláthair an Leictreachais), a state-owned electricity company operating in the Republic of Ireland, is established on August 11, 1927, by the fledgling Irish Free State government under the Electricity (Supply) Act 1927, to manage Ireland’s electricity supply after the successful Shannon hydroelectric scheme at Ardnacrusha and take over all existing projects for the electrification of Ireland. While historically a monopoly, the ESB now operates as a commercial semi-state concern in a “liberalised” and competitive market. It is a statutory corporation whose members are appointed by the government of Ireland.

The Shannon hydroelectric scheme at Ardnacrusha is Ireland’s first large-scale electricity plant and, at the time, it provides 80% of the total energy demands of Ireland. To give an idea of the growth in demand, the output of Ardnacrusha is now approximately two per cent of national peak demand for power.

By 1937, plans are being finalised for the construction of several more hydroelectric plants. The plans called for stations at Poulaphouca, Golden Falls, Leixlip (all in Leinster), Clady, Cliff and Cathaleen’s Fall (between Belleek and Ballyshannon in County Donegal), Carrigadrohid and Inniscarra (in County Cork). All these new plants are completed by 1949 and together harness approximately 75% of Ireland’s inland waterpower potential. Many of these plants are still in operation, however, as can be expected with continuing growth in demand, their combined capacity falls far short of Ireland’s modern needs.

With Ireland’s towns and cities benefiting from electricity, the new government pushes the idea of Rural Electrification. Between 1946 and 1979, the ESB connects in excess of 420,000 customers in rural Ireland. The Rural Electrification Scheme is described as “the Quiet Revolution” because of the major socio-economic change it brings about. The process is greatly helped in 1955 by the Electricity Supply Amendment Act, 1955.

In 1947, the ESB, needing ever more generation capacity, builds the North Wall station on a 7.5-acre site in Dublin‘s industrial port area on the north side of the River Liffey on the site of an old oil refinery. The original station consists of one 12.5 MW steam turbine that is originally purchased for a power station at Portarlington but instead used at North Wall. Other power stations built around this time include the peat fired stations at Portarlington, County Laois, and Allenwood, County Kildare.

Because of the risks of becoming dependent on imported fuel sources and the potential for harvesting and utilising indigenous peat, the ESB – in partnership with Bord na Móna – establishes those stations and ESB also builds Lanesboro power station in 1958. Located in County Longford, the plant burns peat, cut by Bord na Móna in the bogs of the Irish midlands. In 1965, the Shannonbridge station, located in County Offaly, is commissioned. The two stations have been replaced by new peat-fired stations near the same locations, and peat is also used to power the independent Edenderry Power Station in County Offaly.

As in most countries, energy consumption is low at night and high during the day. Aware of the substantial waste of night-time capacity, the ESB commissions the Turlough Hill pumped-storage hydroelectric station in 1968. This station, located in County Wicklow, pumps water uphill at night with the excess energy created by other stations, and releases it downhill during the day to turn turbines. The plant can generate up to 292 MW of power, but output is limited in terms of hours because of the storage capacity of the reservoir.

The 1970s bring about a continued increase in Ireland’s industrialisation and with it, a greater demand for energy. This new demand is to be met by the construction of the country’s two largest power stations – Poolbeg Generating Station in 1971 and Moneypoint Power Station in 1979. The latter, in County Clare, remains Ireland’s only coal-burning plant and can produce 915 MW, just shy of the 1015 MW capacity of Poolbeg. In 2002 and 2003, new independent stations, Huntstown Power (north Dublin) and Dublin Bay Power (Ringsend, Dublin), are constructed.

In 1991, the ESB establishes the ESB Archive to store historical documents relating to the company and its impact on Irish life.

On September 8, 2003, two of the last remaining places in Ireland unconnected to the national grid – Turbot Island and Inishturk Island (off the coast of County Galway)- are finally connected to the main supply. Some islands are still powered by small diesel-run power stations.

Sixty wind farms are currently connected to the power system and have the capacity to generate 590 MW of power, depending on wind conditions. These wind farms are mainly owned by independent companies and landowners.

On March 16, 2005, the ESB announces that it is to sell its ShopElectric (ESB Retail) chain of shops, with the exception of the Dublin Fleet Street and Cork Academy Street outlets, to Bank of Scotland (Ireland), converting them into main street banks. Existing staff are offered positions as bank tellers.

On March 27, 2008, the ESB announces a €22bn capital investment programme in renewable energy technology, with the aim to halve its carbon emissions within 12 years and achieve carbon net-zero by 2035.


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Killing of Frank Brooke, Director of Dublin and South Eastern Railways

Francis Theophilius “Frank” Brooke PC, JP, DL, Anglo-Irish Director of Dublin and South Eastern Railway and a member of the Earl of Ypres‘ Advisory Council, is killed allegedly by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in his Dublin office on July 30, 1920.

Brooke is a cousin of Sir Basil Brooke, the future Prime Minister of Northern Ireland (1943-63) who is later created, in 1952, the 1st Viscount Brookeborough.

Brooke is also Deputy Lieutenant of County Wicklow and County Fermanagh, a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, a Justice of the Peace for County Fermanagh and an Irish Privy Counsellor (1918), thus he is styled The Right Honourable Francis Brooke.

In July 1912 Brooke attends a house party at Wentworth Woodhouse hosted for George V‘s stay there.

On July 30, 1920, Brooke is killed, at the age of 69, at his offices in Dublin, by Paddy Daly, Tom Keogh and Jim Slattery, members of Michael Collins‘s Squad of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). He is killed in view of a colleague, who is spared. He is marked out for his activities as a judge, anti-republican activities, and his friendship with Sir John French. As an Irish Privy Counsellor, he is a signatory of the order proclaiming Dáil Éireann illegal.

The inquest following the assassination finds that Brooke had a pistol in his jacket pocket. His killing has been termed the only outright political assassination of the Irish War of Independence.

(Photo credit: Kevin Lee)


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Birth of Cecil Ffrench Salkeld, Painter, Critic & Writer

Cecil Ffrench Salkeld, Irish painter, printmaker, critic and writer, is born in Assam, India on July 9, 1904.

Salkeld’s parents are Henry Lyde Salkeld, a member of the Indian Civil Service (ICS), and Blanaid Salkeld (née Mullen), a poet. He returns to Ireland with his mother in 1910 following the death of his father in 1909. He attends Mount St. Benedict’s, Gorey, County Wexford, and the Dragon School in Oxford, England. He wins a scholarship to Oundle School in Oundle, North Northhamptonshire, but returns to Dublin where he enters the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art in 1919 to study under Seán Keating and James Sleator. He marries Irma Taesler in Germany in 1922. They have two daughters, Celia and Beatrice. The latter marries Brendan Behan in 1954.

Salkeld works in tempera and oil, as well as etching and wood engraving. In 1921 he travels to Germany to study under Ewald Dulberg at the Kassell Kunstschule. He attends the Union of Progressive International Artists in Düsseldorf in May 1922, and is exhibited at the Internationale Kunstausstellung. Upon his return to Dublin in 1924, he holds his first solo exhibition in the Society of Dublin Painters gallery. He becomes a member of the Dublin Painters in 1927. With Francis Stuart, he co-edits the first two issues of To-morrow in 1924. His studio is in a converted labourer’s cottage at Glencree, County Wicklow. He also exhibits with the New Irish Salon and the Radical Painters’ Group.

Salkeld wins the 1926 Royal Dublin Society‘s Taylor scholarship, and has his first exhibited work with the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in 1929. He lives in Berlin for a year in 1932. He exhibits in Daniel Egan’s Gallery in Dublin in 1935. He has a wide circle of literary friends, including Samuel Beckett and Flann O’Brien. In O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds, the character of Michael Byrne is designed for Salkeld, reflecting his debilitating alcoholism. He also teaches at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, teaching artists such as Reginald Gray.

From 1937 to 1946 Salkeld runs a private press called Gayfield Press. This is co-founded with his mother, and operates from a garden shed at their home, 43 Morehampton Road. The press is a small Adana wooden hand press. He illustrates her 1938 The Engine Left Running, as well as Ewart Milne‘s Forty North Fifty West (1938) and Liam O’Flaherty‘s Red Barbara and Other Stories (1928). In 1951, he loans the press to Liam and Josephine Miller to found the Dolmen Press.

Salkeld’s most famous public work is his 1942 three-part mural in Davy Byrne’s pub. He is a co-founder of the Irish National Ballet School in the 1940s in his capacity as a pianist. In 1946 he is appointed an associate member of the RHA. In 1953 his play Berlin Dusk is staged at 37 Theatre Club, Dublin. During the 1950s he is a broadcaster with Radio Éireann as well as a director of cultural events for An Tóstal. He dies on May 11, 1969, in St. Laurence’s Hospital, Dublin.

The National Gallery of Ireland holds a portrait by Salkeld of his daughter, Celia.

(Pictured: “Figures In Moonlight” by Cecil Ffrench Salkeld, oil on canvas)


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Death of Irish Actor Ray McAnally

Ray McAnally, Irish actor and winner of four BAFTA awards in the late 1980s, dies in County Wicklow on June 15, 1989.

McAnally is born on March 30, 1926, in Buncrana, a seaside town located on the Inishowen peninsula of County Donegal. The son of a bank manager, he is educated at Saint Eunan’s College in Letterkenny where he writes, produces and stages a musical called “Madame Screwball” at the age of sixteen. He enters St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth at the age of 18 but leaves after a short time having decided that the priesthood is not his vocation. He joins the Abbey Theatre in 1947 where he meets and marries actress Ronnie Masterson.

The couple later forms Old Quay Productions and present an assortment of classic plays in the 1960s and 1970s. McAnally makes his theatre debut in 1962 with A Nice Bunch of Cheap Flowers and gives a well-received performance as George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, opposite Constance Cummings, at the Piccadilly Theatre.

On television he is a familiar face, often in glossy thriller series like television series The Avengers, Man in a Suitcase, and Strange Report. In 1968 he takes the title role in Spindoe, a series charting the return to power of an English gangster, Alec Spindoe, after a five-year prison term. This is a spin-off from another series, The Fellows (1967) in which McAnally had appeared in several episodes as the Spindoe character. He could render English accents very convincingly.

McAnally regularly acts in the Abbey Theatre and at Irish festivals, but in the last decade of life he achieves award-winning notice on TV and films. His impressive performance as Cardinal Altamirano in the film The Mission (1986) earns him Evening Standard and BAFTA awards. He earns a second BAFTA award for his role in the BBC’s A Perfect Spy (1987). In 1988 he wins the BAFTA for Best Actor for his performance in A Very British Coup, a role that also brings him a Jacob’s Award. In the last year of his life, he portrays the father of Christy Brown, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, in the Academy Award-winning film, My Left Foot (1989).

McAnally dies suddenly of a heart attack on June 15, 1989, at the age of 63, at his home in County Wicklow which he shares with Irish actress Britta Smith. He remains married to actress Ronnie Masterson until his death, although they reside in different homes. He receives a posthumous BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actor for his last film, My Left Foot, in 1990.

At the time of his death, McAnally is due to play “Bull McCabe” in Jim Sheridan‘s film The Field. The part eventually goes to Richard Harris who receives an Academy Award nomination for his performance. McAnally had also been cast in the lead role of First and Last, a drama about a man who walked from Land’s End to John o’ Groats. Filming is almost a third of the way done when he dies, but the whole play has to be re-filmed, with Joss Ackland taking the role instead.


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Death of Father Michael Murphy

Fr. Michael Murphy, Irish Roman Catholic priest and United Irishmen leader during the Irish Rebellion of 1798, dies at the Battle of Arklow in Arklow, County Wicklow, on June 9, 1798.

Murphy is born in 1767. While his birthplace in Ireland is undetermined, various locations, such as Ballinoulart, Castleannesley or in Kilnew, County Wexford, are documented as possibilities. He is ordained a priest in 1785 at Wexford after completing hedge school in Oulart. His first parish is at Ballycanew, after Theology and Philosophy studies at the Irish College in Bordeaux in France. Murphy joins the Rebellion on May 27, 1798, following the vandalism of his church by Crown yeomen, despite a mostly pacifist stance by the church leadership.

Murphy proceeds toward battle at Gorey, Kilthomas Hill, then Ballyorril Hill where he meets with fellow priest Fr. John Murphy of Boolavogue. He is attacking a gun position on horseback at the Battle of Arklow on June 9, 1798, when he is killed by gunfire. His grave is at Castle Ellis.

(Pictured: Michael Murphy Monument in Arklow, County Wicklow)