Skibbereen & District Historical Society

Bishop Kelly Memorial Technical School

We were recently given a photograph of the Bishop Kelly Memorial Technical School at North Street, Skibbereen that got us thinking. That school, known to generations of Skibbereen boys and girls as ‘The Tech’ was the first Vocational School opened in county Cork and is dedicated to the memory of the Most Rev Denis Kelly DD.

The school at No 1 North Street first opened for classes in February 1927, but we can go back some 77 years, to 1850, for the beginning of technical education in Skibbereen.

In 1850 an industrial school was operating in Skibbereen, run by a local group in co-operation with Dublin manufacturers. It produced crochet work and embroidered muslin. One of the early pioneers of that movement in Skibbereen was Fr Richard Beausang, curate in the early 1850s and later administrator. (more…)

A likely bunch. What was the occasion?

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On Thursday April 27 2017, members of Skibbereen and District Historical Society were treated to an outstanding talk, ‘An Irishman’s D-Day’, by Pat Lennon.

Skibbereen man Pat Lennon – we’re sure Pat won’t mind us calling him a Skibbereen man – told the story of his father, Charlie Lennon, who fought in Normandy on D-Day, June 6 1944.

That invasion on June 6 1944 was a turning point and one of the most pivotal engagements in World War II. Some 160,000 Allied troops invaded Northern Europe in what was the largest amphibious invasion in history.

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Here in Ireland we tend to relate the idiosyncrasies of this time of year to the annual reappearance of the cuckoo.

Irish tradition has it that the last few days of April and the early days of May often bring a short snap of unseasonably cold weather, and since this is the period during which the cuckoo is heard for the first time, our forefathers called such a cold snap Scairbhín na gCuac (the rough weather of the cuckoo), which is described as garbh agus guar — hard and cold.

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