Croke Park in Dublin, the national stadium and headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), is one of the finest sports stadia in Europe, with a capacity of 82,300. The GAA was founded on November1, 1884, in Thurles, County Tipperary, by Michael Cusack (1847-1906), a Dublin-based teacher from County Clare, and six other men. It was founded as part of the Gaelic cultural nationalism of the time to foster an Irish identity, and promote athletics for all classes of people as well as to revive and promote the traditional sports of hurling, Gaelic football, handball, and rounders. It works closely with sister organisations to promote camogie and ladies Gaelic football. The GAA grew to become perhaps the greatest amateur sports organisation in the world, now with a presence in all five continents.

  The first All-Ireland finals were played in a ground on Jones’s Road in 1896 that was purchased by a GAA supporter, Frank Dineen, in 1908. In 1913, this ground was purchased from him by the GAA. and called after Archbishop Thomas Croke of Cashel, one of its three inaugural patrons (the other two were the big nationalist leaders of the time, Charles Stewart Parnell and Michael Davitt). The first stand there in 1913 was replaced by a new one in 1924, and later named in honour of Michael Hogan, a Tipperary player who was shot during a game in November 2020 during the Irish War of Independence. This was replaced by a new stand in 1959. The second stand was named in honour of Michael Cusack in 1938. There was a small stand near the Hogan called after Patrick Nally, a Mayo man and an exceptional athlete who influenced Cusack to found the GAA. Big developments took place in Croke Park from the 1990s to 2005, with a full reconstruction and the provision of modern amenities. The new Cusack Stand was completed in 1995, followed by a new stand at the canal end called after Maurice Davin, the first President of the GAA. The new Hogan Stand was completed in 2002. The Nally Stand was removed and the area is now a terrace. The best-known standing terrace at Hill 16 is now also named in honour of Frank Dineen. A GAA Museum was established, and it is now one of the big tourist attractions in Dublin. The GAA Club Wall at the entrance to the museum, unveiled in 2009, displays the crests of all clubs in the association. The National Handball Centre is also there.

  Croke Park hosted numerous great games in Gaelic football and hurling down through the years, as well as a Muhammad Ali fight in 1972, several concerts with artists like Neil Diamond, U2, One Direction, Celine Dion, Ed Sheeran, and Taylor Swift, the closing ceremony of the 50^th international Eucharistic Congress in 2012, American football, and several other major events. However, for many the two most memorable events were the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2003 Special Olympics, with a world-wide audience, the first time the event was held outside the USA, and a historic rugby game on February 24, 2006. This game was between England and Ireland in the Six Nations Championship (when the Aviva Stadium was under construction). The playing of God Save the Queen, without interruption, in an arena where fourteen innocent people (thirteen spectators and a player) were killed by British auxiliaries on November 21, 1920, was a statement to the world that there was now a new mature relationship between the two countries. It was a huge occasion for the GAA, for Irish rugby football, and for the maturity of a new confident modern Ireland to embrace inclusiveness, but also for the great stadium that is Croke Park.

 After the reform of the Irish Church in the twelfth century from a monastic to a diocesan structure, religious orders were encouraged to set up houses in Ireland to facilitate this process. A number of early monastic sites in Mayo, including Cong, Ballintober, Mayo, Inishmaine and Errew, were occupied and developed as abbeys for Canons Regular of Saint Augustine under the patronage of Gaelic families such as the O’Connors in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The best-known abbey in Mayo, and one of the most famous in Ireland, is Ballintober, where Mass has been said without a break since its foundation in 1216. These Canons Regular of St Augustine were distinct from the later order of Augustinian friars (OSA). Their Canons’ regulations were introduced to Ireland by St Malachy of Armagh about 1140, who wanted to end the isolationism of the Irish church and link it with the universal church in Rome. He was also responsible for the Cistercians establishing their first Irish foundation at Mellifont, County Louth, in 1142. They established an abbey at Knockmoy in County Galway in 1189, with a subordinate foundation on Clare Island at the entrance to Clew Bay in County Mayo in 1224. The Cistercians were supported by benefactors.

  Most new religious communities established in Ireland from the early thirteenth century onwards were mendicant friars, who begged for alms to supplement their incomes. Friaries were established in County Mayo by the four main mendicant orders, Dominicans, Carmelites, Franciscans and Augustinians, with the support of both Anglo-Norman and Irish families. The Dominicans started in Ireland in 1224, and were thus the first of the mendicant orders to be established here. The first Mayo friary was established at Straide for the Franciscans between 1240 and 1250, but it was transferred to the Dominicans in 1252. The Dominicans also established a friary at Rathfran, near Killala, around 1274. Around 1434, the Mac Costellos established the Dominicans at Urlaur in the parish of Kilmovee, with another house founded at Burrishoole, near Newport, around 1486. The Carmelite order, was instituted in Ballinsmaula, near Claremorris, around 1288 under the patronage of the Prendergasts. The Carmelites established a foundation at Burriscarra, near Ballinrobe, in 1298 with the support of the Stauntons, but it was abandoned after about eighty years, and later taken over by the Augustinian Friars.

  The First Order of Franciscans was for friars, the Second Order for nuns, with the Third Order for lay men and women. The Franciscans started in Ireland around 1230. After establishing a friary at Straide in the 1240s, which (as mentioned above) was transferred to the Dominicans in 1252, they had no presence in Mayo until the fifteenth century. Rosserk Friary, beside Killala Bay, was founded about 1441 for the Franciscan Third Order, and Moyne Friary, nearby, for regular Franciscan friars around 1455.

  The Augustinian Friary in Ballinrobe, established about 1312, was the first of their nine foundations in Connacht, including four others in County Mayo: Ardnaree, Ballyhaunis, Burriscarra (after its abandonment by the Carmelites) and Murrisk. The Augustinians developed a friary at Ardnaree about 1400 with the support of the O’Dowds, and the Mac Costellos established them in Ballyhaunis around 1430. Murrisk Friary, overlooking Clew Bay, was started about 1456 by the O’Malleys. After the dissolution of the abbeys and friaries in Mayo during the Reformation in the sixteenth century, many of the new owners of confiscated religious property allowed the friars to return and continue their work. The foundations just mentioned were all attractive buildings, with the surviving structures still impressive archaeological monuments on the landscape of County Mayo.

Michael Davitt (1846-1906), ‘the Father of the Irish Land League’, social reformer, Member of Parliament, international humanitarian, and author, was a great champion of education for the empowerment of men and women. In his book Leaves from a Prison Diary (1885), he deplored the limited educational opportunities for girls and strongly recommended that the system should provide equal opportunities for both genders at all levels.

  Highly intelligent and self-educated to a great extent, Michael Davitt’s reading embraced English literature, history, politics, economics, biographies, and the Bible. His intellectual curiosity turned every experience into a learning opportunity, especially his numerous journeys abroad. Shortly after his arrival in Philadelphia in July 1878, on his first visit abroad following, he explored the historic sites of the city, recording the experience in his diary. He visited Independence Hall, where the American founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, and where the US Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787, Congress Hall, where Congress met from 1790 to 1800 when the city was the first capital of the US, as well as Christ Church, where he saw in the adjacent burial-ground the grave of Benjamin Franklin, who helped draft the US Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Amongst other sites and places, he also saw the Liberty Bell, which rang out on July 4, 1776, the Free Library, Fairmount Park, and of course, the local prison. Thereafter, he really enjoyed travelling and loved exploring different places, always learning and eager to see how things could be improved in Ireland. He loved reading, writing and when the opportunities arose attending theatres, concerts and operas. According to Dr T. W. Moody, Davitt had some knowledge of French, Spanish, German, Italian and Latin, which is amazing in view of his limited learning opportunities

  Davitt’s biggest intellectual accomplishment was the publication of six books, an enormous achievement having regard to his life and disability (he had to learn to write with his left hand following the amputation of the right one). His six books encapsulate his enormous ability, concentration, dedication and work-rate as well as his desire to disseminate knowledge and ideas for the betterment of society. No other Irish political figure has bequeathed to posterity such a valuable record of contemporary affairs.

  Appreciating the role of education as a source of empowerment for individuals, families, society and the economy, he made several recommendations in his writings for widening access to everyone able and willing to avail of it. After his own experience of the Mechanics’ Institute in Haslingden, England, he had a big interest in the provision of suitable evening courses for working people, and supported the establishment of similar Institutes in Ireland. Michael Davitt believed strongly in the transformative role of education in developing the talents of people, in enhancing their opportunities to earn their livelihoods, in improving their living conditions, as well as enabling them to enjoy social and cultural activities. He deplored the limited educational opportunities then available, and really campaigned all his life for their improvement.

The film Mrs Robinson, directed by Aoife Kelleher and produced by Cormac Hargaden and Trisha Canning for Loosehorse went on general release at the end of August 2024. The film tells the life story of Ireland’s first female Head of State, and of her battles over fifty years for gender equality, human rights, and social justice for all humankind, and in later years for climate justice.

  On December 3, 1990, Mary Robinson, a constitutional lawyer, caused a national and international sensation with her election as the seventh President of Ireland. Born Mary Bourke in Ballina, County Mayo, on May 21, 1944, she was the only daughter in a family of five born to Aubrey Bourke and his wife Tessa, née O’Donnell from Carndonagh, County Donegal, both medical doctors. Mary was educated at Ms Ruddy’s private school in Ballina before going to Mount Anville Secondary School in Dublin, then to a ‘finishing school’ for a year in Paris, before going on to become a distinguished law student at Trinity College, Dublin, the King’s Inns, and Harvard Law School. After qualifying as a barrister, she was appointed Reid professor of constitutional and criminal law in Trinity College, Dublin, at the age of twenty-five. Later, she took a number of high-profile constitutional cases in Ireland as well as to the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice on issues like women’s right to sit on juries, access to legal aid, the concept of ‘illegitimacy’, decriminalisation of homosexual acts, and discrimination against married women under the social welfare acts, which led to many changes in the law. After her election to Seanad Éireann as a representative of the University of Dublin in November 1969 (a seat she held until July 5, 1989), she promoted the liberalisation of Irish law, and used the chamber to support reform in women’s rights, gender equality, human rights, and social issues in general.

  Following her election as President of Ireland, she paid a special tribute to the women of Ireland, mná na hÉireann. In her inaugural address, she spoke about her ambition to represent ‘a new Ireland: open, tolerant, inclusive’. A very successful and popular president, she completely transformed the conservative nature of the office, using her position to promote inclusiveness and empowerment, especially with voluntary community organisations and minority groups. She reached out to the Irish diaspora, placing a light in the window of the family kitchen in Áras an Uachtaráin as a symbol of her concern for those who had left Ireland, and she made numerous visits to Irish communities around the world. One of her major achievements was to bring the suffering of the people of Rwanda to world attention in October 1995 after a terrible civil war in that part of central Africa. In May 1993, Mary Robinson visited Queen Elizabeth in Buckingham Palace, the first official meeting between the Irish and British Heads of State since Irish independence in 1922. She insisted on being addressed by her correct constitutional title, President of Ireland. Her single presidential term ended on September 12, 1997, when she resigned to become United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, a position she held until September 12, 2002. In her United Nations’ role, she visited numerous countries promoting human rights, including China, and was courageous in ‘speaking truth to power’, wherever she saw abuse.

  For eight years after leaving the United Nations post, Mary Robinson led ‘Realizing’, an organisation pioneering the implementation of economic and social rights, especially in African countries. She established the Mary Robinson Foundation — Climate Justice in 2010, addressing how people are affected by climate change, and became a world champion for climate justice. In 2014, she was appointed as the United Nations special envoy on climate change and later to a number of other posts. Mary Robinson has served as Chancellor of the University of Dublin and as honorary President of Oxfam. She received numerous honorary degrees, awards and honours, including, in July 2009, the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama, the highest civilian honour awarded by the USA. In 2007, she was invited to join a group to be known as The Elders, a small number of independent world leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela to foster reconciliation, respect for human rights, and hope wherever there is conflict in the world, and she is now its influential moral leader. In the film, she recalls these battles over her lifetime in her own words. Bono and Irish songwriters Gemma Doherty and Morgan Mac Intyre contributed a special song for the film’s soundtrack ‘Women of the World’.

  Dr Gay Corr, who died at the age of 85 on July 1, 2024, was the Founding Father of the Regional Technical College (RTC), Galway, which became Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology in January 1998 (GMIT, now part of Atlantic Technological University since March 1, 2022), serving as its inspirational and visionary leader for thirty years. He made an inestimable contribution to the promotion of higher education in the West of Ireland, and across the country. One of his achievements on the national stage was serving for three terms on the Higher Education Authority (HEA), and as its chairperson from 1990 to 1993. A gentleman, with great integrity and decency, he had a deep sense of public service, and was held in the highest of esteem by staff and students.

  Gay Corr was born on November 22, 1938, the only son of James Corr and his wife, May, née Concannon near Irishtown, close to the Mayo Galway border. After completing his primary education at Logboy National School, he won a scholarship to St Jarlath’s College, Tuam, from 1952 to 1957. He then went to University College, Galway, to study science. After graduating with a first-class honours degree in 1961, he secured employment as a chemist with the Central Laboratory of the Irish Flour Millers’ Association until 1964, before moving to the Dublin Health Authority, and later to An Forás Talúntáis. During that time, he lectured part-time at Bolton Street College of Technology. He was appointed Head of Science at the new Regional Technical College in Athlone in September 1970.

  After a public competition, Gay Corr, was appointed as Principal of the new Regional Technical College, Galway, early in 1972 (the title was changed to Director in 1993 and to President in 2007). On April I, 1972, he started in RTC Galway, and did Trojan work to have staff and students in the new college in September that year. He established a college of high morale and a wonderful atmosphere.

  On December 16, 1974, Richard Burke, Minister for Education, caused consternation when he made a major announcement in relation to higher education, including a decision to remove degree-awarding powers from the National Council for Educational Awards (NCEA), which then had legal responsibility for validating all higher education programmes outside the universities. The first submission for a degree in a RTC came from Galway for a programme in Hotel and Catering Management, which had been evaluated before the December 1974 decision, and was approved shortly afterwards. When the NCEA was re-constituted in February 1976, its powers to grant and confer awards applied to National Certificates and Diplomas only. When the Galway students were to be conferred with ‘Advanced Diplomas in Hotel and Catering Management’, they refused to accept then on November 15 1976. Gay Corr, in a firm and courageous public address, fully supported the students in their actions. It was the finest hour of Gay Corr’s distinguished career, for which he received deserved praise far and wide, including editorials in local and national newspapers. Within a few days of becoming Minister for Education on December 2, 1976, Peter Barry informed the NCEA that it could award degrees to the 1976 class, which happened on May 9, 1977.

  From the late 1980s, RTC Galway established other campuses in the region, including the Agricultural College in Mountbellew (1986), Connemara West in Letterfrack (1987), a Mayo Campus in Castlebar (1994), and the Cluain Mhuire in Galway City (1994). The new Learning Resource Centre at the main campus was completed in 2002.

  Gay Corr had a big role in getting research established as an integral part of the work of RTCs. As Chairperson of the Association of Principals of the RTCs from 1987 to 1990, he had a pivotal role in the deliberations that preceded the enactment of the Regional Technical Colleges’ Act of 1992, under which each college became an autonomous institution of higher education, and enabled each to engage ‘in research, consultancy, and development work’. He served as a council member and later as vice-chairperson and chairperson of HEDCO, the Higher Education for Development Co-operation, and of EURASHE, the European Association of Higher Education Institutions outside the universities, serving for two years as its president.

  In recognition of his outstanding contribution to RTC Galway and to higher education in Ireland, he was conferred with the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa by the NCEA on November 30, 1992. Nominated by the Students’ Union, he was selected as one of the Rehab Galway People of the Year in 2002. After directing the affairs of the college for thirty years with intelligence, shrewd judgment, energy, humane management, and respect for everyone, he retired on October 4, 2002. Dr Gay Corr deserves to be remembered as a pioneer in Irish Higher education from 1970 until his retirement in 2002.

The inhabitants of the parish of Kilfian, between Crossmolina and Ballycastle, in North Mayo, Ireland, have honoured a daughter of the parish, Sarah McElroy (1881-1949) and her Scottish-born husband, Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955), by erecting a stone monument and bronze busts of the couple on August 6, 2001, beside Kincon Church. After going to London, she qualified as a nurse. She met Alexander Fleming and they were married on 23 December 1915. Their only child, Robert 1924-2015, became a doctor.

  Alexander Fleming was the physician and microbiologist who discovered penicillin in 1928, for which he shared the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine in 1945, (with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, who devised procedures for its large-scale production). His discovery has saved millions of lives around the world. He was knighted for his discovery in 1944. There is a museum in his honour in St Mary’s Hospital, London, where he made his famous discovery. In 1999, Sir Alexander Fleming was named in Time magazine as one of the 100 most important people of the twentieth century. He was also named one the 100 Great Britons in a BBC nationwide vote in 2002.

  Sarah was one of twelve children born on May 28, 1881, to Bernard McElroy, who came to Mayo from County Tyrone, and his wife, Maria, née Flynn, a native of the adjoining parish of Lackan. In London, Sarah ran a nursing home for a number of years, which she sold to help support her husband’s research. After her death on October 28, 1949, she was buried in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, and where his cremated remains of Alexander were buried in 1955.

  Michael Davitt, ‘the Father of the Irish Land League’, was born at the height of the Great Irish Famine, on March 25, 1846, in Straide, County Mayo, the son of Martin and Catherine. His father, Martin Davitt, who was born in or around 1814, was a yearly tenant farmer on the estate of John Knox in Straide. Martin, who probably attended a local hedge-school in his youth, was literate, bi-lingual, and a good reader, with a big interest in Irish and American history.  He had a reputation as a good seanchaí, or storyteller, and these stories were to nurture strong patriotic feelings in Michael as well as a big dislike of the landlord system. As a young person, Martin was involved in a local agrarian secret society during the 1830s and, arising from these activities, he went to England for a period before returning home to farm a small holding of land.  Martin married Catherine Kielty from the nearby parish of Turlough in or around 1840. Four children were born to Martin and Catherine Davitt in Straide: Mary (1841), Michael (1846), Anne (1848) and Sabina (1850); a fifth child, a boy named James, was later born in England but he did not survive.

  The late 1840s was a difficult period in which to rear a young family in County Mayo.  With the frugal subsistence of most families deteriorating each year, it was a major struggle to survive.  Despite securing work on a local relief scheme and going to England as a migratory labourer for the summer of 1849, Martin Davitt was unable to pay off the arrears of rent which had accumulated during the Great Famine.  After being served with an ejectment notice in 1849, the Davitt family were evicted as part of the “Great Clearances” at the end of the Great Famine, an unforgettable experience for any family. The Davitt family went to the workhouse in Swinford, Co. Mayo, but when Catherine Davitt was told that male children over three years of age had to be separated from their mothers, she promptly took her family away. Sharing the fate of many thousands of Irish dispossessed by the famine, the Davitt family emigrated to Haslingden, a small textile town in Lancashire, north of Manchester, where Martin undertook a variety of jobs.

  Michael Davitt’s eldest sister, Mary, married a Mayo-man Neil Padden in May 1863 in Haslingden. Shortly afterwards, Neil emigrated to the United States and ended up in Scranton, an industrial town in the north-east of Pennsylvania, where Mary joined him in 1865. Five years later, having regard to his involvement in Fenian activities, Michael persuaded his parents and other sisters, Anne and Sabina, to emigrate to Mary and Neil Padden in the United States.  It was their wish to return to Ireland if they could make a living there, but acceding to Michael’s pressure they decided to emigrate to America.  Preceded by Anne and Sabina, Martin and Catherine Davitt sailed from Liverpool and arrived in New York in April 1870, from where they went to Scranton. They were never to see Ireland or England again, which was the experience of almost all emigrants to America at that time. Michael was arrested and sentenced on to fifteen years’ penal servitude on July 18, 1870, most of which was served in Dartmoor prison in Devon.

  Of all the hardships Michael endured in prison, his most depressing experience was when he learned of his father’s death in December 1871, at the age of about fifty-seven.

Michael had great love and respect for his father and agonised about his role in persuading his parents to emigrate to the USA. Martin was buried in the Padden family plot at number 24, section D1, at the Cathedral Cemetery, Oram Boulevard, Scranton, Pennsylvania. After Martin’s death, Catherine Davitt and two of her daughters, Anne and Sabina, moved to Manayunk, Philadelphia, in search of better employment opportunities. After her death there on July 18, 1880, she was buried in the grounds of the Church of Saint John the Baptist in Manayunk.

  The National Museum of Ireland-Country Life, located just off the N5 at Turlough, 8 km east of Castlebar in County Mayo, is now one of the main tourist attractions in the west of Ireland, and it is free. It was opened in September 2001 to house the Irish folklore collection, most of which was in storage until then. However, with a collection of over 50,000 items, and constantly growing with donations, only a fraction of it is on public display. Mayo County Council purchased Turlough Park House and estate for the state in 1991, and were successful in having the National Museum of Ireland locate its country life collection there, their only branch outside Dublin.

  The Museum of Country Life is designed with modern exhibition galleries on four floors in the spectacular grounds of Turlough Park. Here you travel back in time and experience a vanished civilisation incorporating artefacts from rural Ireland, chiefly from about 1850 to the 1950s, with displays using archival video material and interactive screens. These include farming and fishing activities, the homes in which people dwelt, examples of furniture, dress and footwear, items relating to religion, education, emigration, politics, games, past-times, customs, festivals, as well as a wide variety of trades and crafts, like the blacksmith, tinsmith, thatcher, carpenter and cooper. The Education Room is fully equipped to offer a range of educational programmes for schools and groups.

  Surrounded by landscaped parklands of 29 acres, beautiful gardens, a modern freestanding glasshouse, and an artificial lake (known as a turlough), visitors can also see Turlough Park House, which was extensively restored by the Office of Public Works. The house was built in 1865 by the Fitzgerald family, who received the estate under the Cromwellian settlement in the seventeenth century. Turlough House and adjoining courtyards were designed by Thomas Newenham Deane, who was also responsible for the Church of Ireland in Westport and the National Museum in Kildare Street, Dublin.

  There is a 2.9m high sculpture by Ballintober-born artist, Brother Joseph McNally, in the grounds of the National Museum of Country Life. The Portal sculpture by Barry Linnane symbolises a link between past and present.

(www.museum.ie/en/intro/country-life)

 Mark Rode (born 1965) is a distinguished figurative sculptor, whose work can be seen in several Irish counties, especially in County Mayo. His speciality is creating a perfectly modelled figure in bronze, with empathy, subtlety, and a desire to connect with viewers. After studying art, anatomy, proportion, and bronze-casting in his native Australia, he moved to Europe in 1998, and gained experience in England, France, Italy, and Germany before settling in Ireland with his Irish wife, Jacinta Guinan. They eventually took up residence in Killasser, Swinford, County Mayo where his business is located.

  One of his early Irish figures was the Brother Walfrid sculpture in Ballymote, County Sligo. It was unveiled on October 24, 2004, to honour Andrew Kerins (1840-1915), a native of Cartron Phibbs, Ballymote, who emigrated to Glasgow and later joined the Marist order, taking the name Brother Walfrid. He became the founder of Glasgow Celtic Football Club on November 6, 1888, which became the most successful sporting institution of the Irish diaspora, winning the European Cup in 1967. Mark’s other early public work include the Mayo County Crest, Castlebar (2005), Leaping Salmon, Foxford (2005), as well as Man Reading Newspaper and Man with Suitcase, Kiltimagh (2006), both with artist Sally McKenna, the Jim McPadden Memorial in Leitrim (2006) In co-operation with Tim Morris, Mark Rode was the sculptor of a woman and child from the 1950s entitled Strength of a Woman, donated to Swinford in 2007 to remember the women who looked after their homes and families while their men worked in England.

  One of his best known Irish public sculptures is the Champions in Tralee, County Kerry. Four metres in height, it depicts four footballers jumping for a ball, and was commissioned by Kerry County Council to celebrate the county’s long and proud tradition in Gaelic footballa Over a tonne of bronze was used in this spectacular sculpture, which was unveiled in Tralee on May 14, 2007. He did the Tour de France Memorial in Enniscorthy, County Wexford (2008), and the All-Ireland hurler in Birr, County Offaly, in 2009. The bronze statues and ship bow in the Addergoole Titanic Memorial Park in Lahardaun, County Mayo, are the work of Mark Rode. The park was opened on April 12, 2012, to remember the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic on April 14, 1912, with twelve local people on board, eleven of whom perished. Mark did the Marish Brother in Athlone in 2012.

  Mark’s sculpture of John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, who played the roles of Sean Thornton and the feisty Mary Kate Danaher in The Quiet Man film in 1951, was unveiled in Cong, County Mayo in October 2013. He did the Thomas McDonagh Sculpture in Cloughjordan, County Tipperary (2016), one of the seven leaders of the Easter 1916 Rising, who was born there. In 2018, Mark’s sculptures of President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama were unveiled at the Barack Obama Plaza, a popular service station at Moneygall, County Offaly, at junction 23 on the M7 Dublin to Limerick Motorway. Moneygall was the ancestral home of a maternal great-great-great grandfather of the forty-fourth President of the United States, who visited the village in 2011.

  Mark’s most recent work was a sculpture of Grace Kelly (1929-1982), who won an Oscar for her role The Country Girl in 1954 and a year later married Prince Rainier of Monaco, was unveiled in Newport, County Mayo, in 2023. Her paternal grandfather, John Kelly, came from near Newport. In January 2024, his sculpture of Grace O’Malley, was also unveiled in Newport. She was the pirate queen along the wild Atlantic coast of Connacht during the second half of the sixteenth-century, and lived for some time in Rockfleet Castle, near Newport. In addition to his public sculptures, Mark Rode has exhibited his work in galleries in Australia, England and several venues around Ireland. His sculptures are held in many public and private collections in Ireland, Australia and the United Kingdom.

Saint Patrick was a fifth-century British-born missionary bishop, who is chiefly credited with the conversion of the then pagan Irish to Christianity. Several holy people in early Christian Ireland who devoted their lives to spreading the faith and founding churches were often described as saints (it was many centuries later before the formal church process of canonization was introduced). Nevertheless, Patrick is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church, the Church of Ireland, and other churches. Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17, the date on which he is believed to have died (but the year in uncertain), is celebrated by Irish people at home and around the world in honour of Ireland’s patron saint. It is believed that the first St Patrick’s day parade was held in Boston in 1779, now a big feature of the day everywhere, with the biggest every year in New York City. It is now customary for the Irish taoiseach to visit Washington DC on St Patrick’s Day and present a bowl of shamrock to the President of the United States. March 17 became a Catholic Church holiday in Ireland in the seventeenth century, and a public holiday in 1900.

Christianity was introduced to Ireland at the start of the fifth century, if not earlier, and Pope Celestine appointed Palladius as first bishop to the Irish Christians, but it is Saint Patrick who is credited with the spread of Christianity in Ireland. According to his own writings, he came from an ecclesiastical family in Britain and that his father was named Calpurnius, a deacon in the church. After capture by Irish raiders at the age of sixteen, Patrick was sold into captivity herding sheep on the slopes of Slemish mountain in County Antrim. There, he spent many hours in prayer, which was critical to his spiritual development. After six years, he escaped and returned home. He later said that in a dream he heard ‘the voices of the Irish’ asking him to return. After ordination at Auxerre in France he was appointed as bishop of the Irish and returned to Ireland. His early years in Ireland as a missionary bishop were in the north and, according to various accounts written in the seventh century, as first bishop he made Armagh the capital of his Irish church (to this day it is the capital of both Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland in the country, with both cathedrals there named in his honour). He appears to have spent some time in County Mayo in the west of Ireland, including, according to legend, forty days and nights on the summit of Croagh Patrick, fasting and praying for the people of Ireland. Other Patrician sites recorded for the county include Aghagower near Westport, Ballintober, Kilmoremoy, near Ballina, and various parts of north Mayo as far west as Ballycastle.

Saint Patrick is said to have baptised thousands, ordained many priests, and became the chief evangelizer of the natives, bringing Ireland within the See of Rome and part of universal Christendom. Saint Patrick is associated with the shamrock, because it is said that he used a three-leafed shamrock to explain the concept of The Holy Trinity (three persons in one God, The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit). The shamrock became an Irish symbol. He also lit a paschal fire on the hill of Slane in County Meath in defiance of the local high king. The legend that he drove all the snakes from Ireland is a fallacy, as there were never snakes in the country.

St Patrick wrote two concise documents in Latin, his autobiographical Confessio and his Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus. These were the earliest writings to be penned in Ireland, and they are preserved in manuscripts that are kept in Continental libraries, although an abbreviated version of the Confessio is found in the Book of Armagh, an early ninth-century manuscript, now in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. A text written in the late seventh century by Bishop Tírechán, from Tirawley in north Mayo, suggested that the area west of Killala was the location of Silva Vocluti, ‘the wood of Fochluth beside the western sea’ mentioned by Patrick in his Confessio.

  It is believed that St Patrick died at Saul, in County Down, and that he was buried nearby in the grounds of Down Cathedral at Downpatrick.

Peadar (Peter) O’Dowd, who died on January 3, 2024, at the age of 82, will be remembered as a lecturer, a newspaper columnist, a great Galway historian, and a prolific author. Born in Bohermore, Galway City, on June 29, 1941, Peadar was the eldest of four children. His formal education started at St Brendan’s Primary School in Woodquay, Galway, where he developed a life-long interest in nature, especially birds, trees, and shrubs. After his secondary education as a day pupil in St Mary’s College from 1954 to 1959, he attended University College Galway, graduating in 1962, and with a Higher Diploma in Education the following year. His first teaching post was in Abbeyknockmoy Vocational School in County Galway before going to Glenamaddy for eight happy years until the end of 1972. In January 1973, he was appointed as a lecturer in business studies, and later in heritage studies, in the newly established Regional Technical College in Galway, giving outstanding service until his retirement on August 31, 2006. There, Peadar gravitated towards the Archaeological, Historical, and Folklore Society, which organised an annual programme of lectures and outings. Peadar became hooked on all aspects of heritage, and in effect developed a parallel career in that field.

  Peadar became a gifted communicator with the ability to convey his wide knowledge of Galway’s heritage with clarity, precision, and language, always stating that he was writing for the general reader and not the specialist. His books include Galway City Waterways: A Walking Guide (1985), Old and New Galway (1985), Vanishing Galway (1987), Galway: Heart of the West (1991), Touring Galway: A Guide to County Galway (1993), Down by the Claddagh (1993), The Great Famine and the West (1996), Galway on the Bay (2002, with Derek Biddulph and Dick Byrne), In From the West-the McDonagh Dynasty (2002), Galway in Old Photographs (2003), A History of County Galway (2004), Galway Lawn Tennis Club (2005), Christmas Tales of Galway (2006), More Tales of Galway (2007), Final Tales of Galway (2008), Tracing Your Galway Ancestors (2011), The Diocese of Galway, Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora: An Illustrated History (2011), St Mary’s College Galway Centenary 1912-2012 (2012), and editing his last book in 2018, Glenamaddy Boyouragh: Our People-Our Heritage.

  He became a weekly columnist with the Connacht Sentinel from 1992 until November 2014, and thereafter with the Connacht and Galway City Tribune to his last article on December 29, 2023. He also contributed articles to various publications like Galway Life, Galway Now, Galway Roots, Ireland’s Own, New Horizon, and the Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society.

  Peadar gave numerous public lectures on various aspects of Galway’s heritage, conducted innumerable tours, broadcast on radio and television, as well as serving for 13 years as secretary of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society and five as president. He was also a member of the Old Galway Society, the Royal Society of Antiquaries, and a director of Galway Civic Trust. One of the people Peadar impressed during a walking tour of Galway was the wife of Richard Daley, Mayor of Chicago. This led to her nominating Peadar and his wife, Mary, to be invited to Chicago as the Irish representatives for a big celebration on December 31, 1999 to inaugurate the new millennium with two representatives from every country in the world. One of the Rehab Galway People of the Year in 2003, he received a mayoral award in 2007, an honorary MA degree from the National University Galway in 2011, and was honoured by Galway City Council for their huge contribution to local heritage in 2013. Galway has lost a great champion.