I usually try to complete my Christmas shopping before the 8th of December the day that old Dubliners once referred to as ‘Culchie Shopping Day’. It was, and may still be, the day when country cousins came to Dublin to shop for Christmas. When, as a student, I worked in retail back in the 1960s it was crucial to Dublin retailers, as the traditional shopping day for people from outside the capital to journey to the city. It is also the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and a holiday very much observed by farmers.
The boom in online shopping and Black Friday means special December 8th deals are a thing of the past but there is still an influx of visitors into the city centre.
Note: Culchie is a pejorative term in Hiberno-English for someone from rural Ireland. The term usually has a pejorative meaning directed by urban Irish against rural Irish, but since the late 20th century, the term has also been reclaimed by some who are proud of their rural or small town origin. In Dublin, the term culchie is often used to describe someone from outside County Dublin, including commuter towns such as Maynooth. In Belfast, Northern Ireland, the term is used to refer to persons from outside of the city proper but not necessarily outside the Greater Belfast area.
St. Mary’s Abbey was a former Cistercian abbey located near the junction of Abbey Street and Capel Street in Dublin. Its territory stretched from the district known as Oxmanstown down along the River Liffey until it met the sea. It also owned large estates in other parts of Ireland. It was one of several liberties that existed in Dublin since the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in the 12th century, which gave it jurisdiction over its lands.
The images did not turn out as well as I had hoped as the light passing through the stained glass was overpowering.
Kilkenny Dominican church, now known as Black Abbey, is the only one of the medieval houses still in the possession of the Dominican Order. Its most impressive feature is the magnificent five-light window, the largest of its kind in Ireland, filling practically the entire south gable of the fourteenth-century transept.
I am still working on the interior shots but will publish them within a few days.
In the 13th century William Marshall, the younger, was Lord of Leinster. He founded a monastery for the Dominicans, known as the Black Friars, or the Order of Preachers. The Order was founded by St. Dominic and its first house in Ireland was built in 1224, in Dublin. In the following year The Black Abbey was built in Kilkenny. Kilkenny was a walled town in the middle ages, and the Black Abbey was built outside the town wall in what is now known as Abbey Street.
Kilkenny Dominican church, now known as Black Abbey, is the only one of the medieval houses still in the possession of the Dominican Order. Its most impressive feature is the magnificent five-light window, the largest of its kind in Ireland, filling practically the entire south gable of the fourteenth-century transept.
THIS NO LONGER EXISTS – SWEENEY ASTRAY BY DESMOND KINNEY
I had believed that this was named Sweeney’s Ashtray.
The photographs date from 2011 so the quality is not as good as I would like. This mural was located at the Irish Life Center [now the Talbot Mall] on Lower Abbey Street.
I photographed this in March 2011 but in July 2013 it was removed. According to one report ” A historical mural was ripped off Irish Life building and put in black bags”.
My understanding is that such murals have a limited life expectancy especially if they are not well maintained.
Derry artist Desmond Kinney, who completed the work 26 more than thirty years ago, had 29 other works around the city including on Nassau Street and on the AIB centre.
The art work – Sweeney Astray – was a glass mosaic consisting of twelve panels depicting the story of Sweeney’s wanderings through forests and hills, from prose and poems dating back to the 1600s and updated by Seamus Heaney in the early 1980s.
Desmond Kinney (1934-2014) was born in Portstewart, Co. Derry in 1934 and studied at the Belfast College of Art where his contemporaries included Basil Blackshaw, T.P. Flanagan and Cherith McKinstry. In the 1960’s, Kinney established the innovative graphic design studio Kinney/Dobson, the first of its kind in Ireland to achieve International recognition. Kinney is also well-known for his very large-scale murals, mainly in mosaic.
In 1971 Desmond Kinney designed the The Song of Wandering Aengus mosaic for AIB bank inD ublin. He was influenced by Seamus Heaney to use the poem by WB Yeats and this interior mosaic symbolises the last lines of the poem:
I will find out where she has gone…. And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon The golden applies of the sun.
The AIB mosaic was removed from Dublin in the 80s and found a home in the Glucksman Library Board Room foyer some time later. The University of Limerick has further links with this poem as the crèche is called Silver Apples after the poem and the last 3 lines of the poem are carved on the foundation stone of the University.
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