On song for Women’s Refuge
TALENTED musicians from the Fethard-on-Sea area performed a concert recently in St Mogues Church, raising €1,450 for Wexford Women’s Refuge.
Among the performers were The McCrackens, Joy and Seán McComish, Harry Doran, Erica Hanton, Liam Doyle, Derek O’Reilly, Domini Codd, Bríd Casey and Mandy O’Leary.
The concert was addressed by Dan Redmond, President of Wexford Lions Club, which is a supporter of Wexford Women’s Refuge and Josephine Gleeson who explained why she had chosen this charity to benefit from her charity concert.
Ms Gleeson said she met a woman last year who stayed at the four-bedroom centre and who received great help there, adding that she decided at the time to organise a concert to raise money for the refuge.
Ms Gleeson said: ‘ We have a wonderful community spirit here. The beautiful church was packed with an appreciative and receptive audience. It was a wonderful, relaxed and sociable evening for everyone in the parish.’
The singers and musicians performed an ecletic mix of songs, from traditional Irish ballads to church music, in front of a crowd of around 140 people in the church, which is renowned for its fine acoustics.
At the end of the concert Ms Gleeson invited all of the performers onto the altar for a moving rendition of Home From The Sea, which she dedicated to the crew of the Helen Blake Fethard lifeboat and the four RNLI casualties of the Rescue 116 helicopter. Members of the audience joined in on the vocal performance, which filled the church.
Following the concert, the audience retired to Neville’s pub in Fethard-on-Sea for tea, coffee and sandwiches provided by the venue, and cakes baked freshly by some of Ms Gleeson’s neighbours and family.
Ms Gleeson thanked everyone for supporting Wexford Women’s Refuge, which, she said, depends on fundraising events like this to help support victims of domestic abuse in the county throughout the year.