New volume of the Sligo Field Club Journal is brimming with fascinating items of interest
THERE is a wide range of themes covering sites, objects, documents, people and nature, from the Mesolithic to the present in the new volume of the Sligo Field Club Journal.
There are articles in this ninth edition by Michael Bell, Dr Susann Stolze, James McKee, Dr Conchobhair Ó Crualaoich, Dr Alison Sheridan, Ruth Rhynas Brown, Jim Foran, Dr Mara Tesorieri, Eoin Halpin, Dr Jim Higgins, Dr John McKeon, Sandy Perceval, Dr Fiona Gallagher, Keville Burns, Damien Brennan, James Kearns, Martin A Timoney, Dr Thomas Monecke, David O'Brien and Ivan Sullivan.
The volume opens with a recent research article on the spread of dragonflies which has some intriguing close-up images of these creatures.
A submerged tree stump in Lough Arrow suggests a Mesolithic age for that tree and a greater depth of that lake now than circa 7,000 years ago.
Sligo's earliest known house, Lugatober 4, found near the entrance to the Glencar Valley during roadworks dates to within what has been considered the ‘house horizon' of 3720/3680– 3640/3620 BC of the Early Neolithic period.
The five-millimeter diameter shale beads found there are significant because beads are not a very common find in Early Neolithic contexts in Ireland, with only around 430 known from fewer than 30 findspots.
The O'Crean monument of 1506 in Sligo Abbey, which can be seen from Abbey Street, is described and explained at a national level and it was not always in this position but was moved sometime about 1634-1636 when the Eleanor Butler chantry chapel was built across the east end on the south aisle. Several similar wall tombs are illustrated.
The changing ownership of Sligo lands from Catholic to Protestant is detailed in part one of a very important article on the 1687 Tripartite Deed of Partition of Co. Sligo.
The article goes into detail on the shenanigans between those who got their hands on those lands and then wrangled the lands among themselves.
It explores the complex web of property transactions involved in the claiming and surrender of the lands of a significant Gaelic family, the O'Connor Sligo, in the 1640s. This was convoluted and involved questionable actions from several parties.
English laws could be abused for selfish gains. Names that show are Wentworth, Radcliff and Trapps, the 2nd Earl of Strafford, Dr John Leslie, Joshua Wilson, Cooper, Fibbs, Gore, Jones, Nicholson, Ormsby, Parke and Wood.
Missing is the 1780s map of the Temple House demesne, last seen at a Sligo Field Club lecture about 30 years ago which the owner would like back.
Found, on the other hand, is an 18th century howitzer cannon gun that was taken by the English at the destruction of Copenhagen in 1807 and was dumped in Limerick harbour, but was in Co. Sligo for some years.
Staying military, is the record of a mid/ late 19th century cap pistol found on a wall in Drumaskibbole.
The O’Crean Monument in Sligo Abbey.
The use of metal for a more gentile purpose is seen in the article on Later Bronze Age pins with rings on their stems that date to about eight centuries BC.
William Bourke Cockran, born in 1854 in Claragh Irish near Knocknashee, was a lawyer, a senator, an American Congressman and an orator of international status. His style of oratory was founded in the art of persuasion and the use of imagination.
A house in Bunduff known as Grove View was built in 1904 – the account book of that work is published here.
Other themes were floated in the editorial and the tail pieces.
2025 will mark 80 years of the Sligo Field Club. The addition of a badly needed Museum for Sligo would be something for the county to celebrate.
A chart of those who served SFC since 1974; the chart of those who served from 1945 to 2002 is in
Celebration of Sligo, 2002.
Past landscapes can be reconstructed from the names of field and local names.
It is frightening to think what post codes are doing to our placenames – it is not “What townland do you live in?” – it is “What is your Post Code?” Dr Aengus Finnegan, University of Limerick, records the names of individual fields in his native Westmeath.
After many false starts, the N17 Knock to Collooney development road seemed to be about to happen. The N17 passes through the Barony of Leyney, a Barony crying out for research – it cannot be as silent, as empty, as it seems. Archaeological investigations should begin immediately.
There are obituaries for Stella Mew, Dr Peter Harbison and Dr Göran Burenhult.
Individually, effectively, we talk to people in the street, shops, cafes. It gives me as honorary editor, great comfort to have somebody in the street starting a discussion with me on a theme in an article. Never stop talking archaeology and local history. For outside public lectures, an arranged warm and darkened venue, publicity ensuring a sizeable audience, a large screen, a digital projector and a modest fee suffices.
Sligo Field Club Journal is becoming the place to publish north Connacht. Jewels get tucked into many articles – another very good reason for a badly needed index.
The comments from authors and outsiders of standing, and ordinary Sligo people with an interest in their county, are “SFC must keep this going! It has to! Sligo deserves it!!”
There are several articles in preparation that follow on topics in this and in previous volumes. There must be a SFCJ Vol. 10, and it must come out in 2024, with others to follow each year.
The volume has 208 pages and 204 illustrations. It was edited by Martin A. Timoney, his last one, with help from Jim Foran and Fiona Doherty. It was printed by KPS Knock, Co. Mayo, and is available directly from Sligo Field Club, or Liber or Eason's in O'Connell Street for €25.
Sligo Field Club, Volume 9, for 2023, is ready for purchase at €25 each.