"You'd go in for the beil fheist, tenpence a pint. The porter was strong and thick, and your glass would stick to the counter as if it were honey."
The words of one regular at St Anthony's Hotel in Kinvara, Co Galway, who relished his beil fheist or "treat" from Miss Agnes Flatley's gallon jar. It was the early 1900s, and porter was becoming popular among boatmen and customers at the pierside inn. One regular visitor to St Anthony's was Oliver St John Gogarty, poet, novelist, friend of W.B. Yeats and owner of nearby Dunguaire Castle.
It is a snapshot, and one of many that evoke memories in a new compilation published this month by the Tir Eolas publishing company. Entitled Kinvara: A Seaport Town on Galway Bay, the publication is the fruit of much labour by Anne Korff of Tir Eolas, who selected a series of images from about 200 negatives, prints and slides. Her work was inspired by several people who had recognised the value of preserving Kinvara's pictorial heritage back in the 1970s, and who gathered images from the 1880s to 1960s which would reflect the area's activity.
In truth, the collection actually began in the early 1900s, when Kinvara photographers Tomas O hEidhin, Christy Greene and others recognised the need for a contemporary pictorial record. O hEidhin, who lived from 1873 to 1943, was a professional photographer, teacher and water diviner. Greene ran a pub and grocery with his brother, and took photographs as a hobby. In the 1950s, a young anthropology student, Robert Cresswell, compiled a photographic record of Kinvara life, which was published by the Paris based Institute d'Ethnologie under the title, Une eammunaute rurale de l'Irlande in 1969.
The photographic record chronicles Kinvara's development as a marketplace and as a port from the 17th century; in 1615, Oliver Martyn, an AngloNorman, had been given licence to hold a Saturday market there. During the 1600s, access was far easier by sea than by road.
By the late 1700s, Huguenot merchants settled there, and it was a busy port for legal and illegal goods. In the early 1800s, a fast growing village came into the possession of Richard Gregory of Coole estate, who enlarged the pier, added a dock, and developed Kinvara into a boom town. Images of the corn market, the wool scales at Winkle's, steamships and schooners on the quay, tell their own story; there is one dramatic shot of a full deck on the emigrant ship.
No book would be complete without Kinvara's turf boats, now commemorated by the annual Cruinniu na mBad festival, but the shore life - selling bonhams, shoeing a wheel, digging for spuds, scalding the sow - is a microcosm of an Ireland no longer with us. Nostalgic? A little, until you read about black pudding, and the best method for "paring" the pig. Kirvara: A Seaport Town on Galway Bay, written by Caoilte Breatnach and compiled by Anne Korff, is published by Tir Eolas, Newtownlynch, Doorus, Kinvara, Co Galway, at £8.99 paperback.
