At about 8:10 PM on a busy Saturday night, owner Pat Cronin smells gas in the restaurant and moves swiftly to evacuate all 30 guests. The people are moved out but, while standing on the pavement outside the restaurant, the restaurant explodes and twelve people are injured by flying debris and broken glass. They are transported to Tralee Hospital with four being detained overnight.
Gardaí and fire officers at the time believe that the explosion resulted from a domestic propane gas supply. The gas is piped from cylinders in a small, open backyard into the restaurant kitchen. The tank itself fails to explode and, had it done so, fire officers say that it would have taken out the whole building. The site is described by witnesses “for all the world like the aftermath of a bomb blast.”
Plates and cutlery remain undamaged on the tables in the aftermath of the explosion, while the downstairs glass and wood front of the building is blown onto the street. Locks are blown off the back doors of the adjoining Corcoran’s Tours shop and glass is shattered. A ceiling of an upstairs room in the nearby Fáilte Hotel partly collapses. The sides of two parked cars are damaged by the force of the explosion and by flying wood. Four ambulances and two units of the Killarney fire brigade are called to the scene. Nearby houses, hotels and pubs are evacuated for up to an hour and most of College Street is cordoned off for several hours.
Sergeant Ray Walsh, who attends the scene along with six gardaí, says, “They expected the worst themselves and, in fairness, they got the place evacuated.” Owner Pat Cronin receives deserved praise for showing the initiative and quick thinking in clearing the restaurant and saving people from serious injury or worse.
Petrie is born and grows up in Dublin, living at 21 Great Charles Street, just off Mountjoy Square. He is the son of the portrait and miniature painter James Petrie, a native of Aberdeen, Scotland, who had settled in Dublin. He is interested in art from an early age. He is sent to the Royal Dublin Society‘s schools, being educated as an artist, where he wins the silver medal in 1805 at the age of fourteen.
In the late 1820s and 1830s, Petrie significantly revitalises the Royal Irish Academy‘s antiquities committee. He is responsible for their acquisition of many important Irish manuscripts, including an autograph copy of the Annals of the Four Masters, as well as examples of insular metalwork, including the Cross of Cong. His writings on early Irish archaeology and architecture are of great significance, especially his essay on the Round Towers of Ireland, which appear in his 1845 book titled The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland. He is often called “the father of Irish archaeology.” His survey of the tombs at Carrowmore still informs study of the site today.
From 1833 to 1843 Petrie is employed by Thomas Frederick Colby and Thomas Larcom as head of the Topographical Department of the Irish Ordnance Survey. Amongst his staff are John O’Donovan, one of Ireland’s greatest ever scholars, and Eugene O’Curry. A prizewinning essay submitted to the Royal Irish Academy in 1834 on Irish military architecture is never published, but his seminal essay On the History and Antiquities of Tara Hill is published by the Academy in 1839. During this period Petrie is himself the editor of two popular antiquarian magazines, the Dublin Penny Journal and, later, the Irish Penny Journal.
Another major contribution of Petrie’s to Irish culture is the collection of Irish traditional airs and melodies which he records. William Stokes’s contemporary biography includes detailed accounts of Petrie’s working methods in his collecting of traditional music: “The song having been given, O’Curry wrote the Irish words, when Petrie’s work began. The singer recommenced, stopping at a signal from him at every two or three bars of the melody to permit the writing of the notes, and often repeating the passage until it was correctly taken down …”
As an artist, Petrie’s favourite medium is watercolour which, due to the prejudices of the age, is considered inferior to oil painting. Nonetheless, he can be considered as one of the finest Irish Romantic painters of his era. Some of his best work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Ireland, such as his watercolour painting Gougane Barra Lake with the Hermitage of St. Finbarr, County Cork (1831).
Petrie is awarded the Royal Irish Academy’s prestigious Cunningham Medal three times: firstly in 1831 for his essay on the round towers, secondly in 1834 for the now lost essay on Irish military architecture, and thirdly in 1839 for his essay on the antiquities of Tara Hill.
The closing years of Petrie’s life are devoted to the publication of a portion of his collection of Irish music. He dies at the age of 77 at Rathmines, Dublin, on January 17, 1866. He is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery.
seamus dubhghaill 