The school book for Newtown in County Tipperary contains the tale of Petticoat Loose, a woman spirit or revenant thought to haunt certain places across the southern half of Ireland. The tales, although diverse, detail her evil deeds, confrontation…

Billy lived in Holyhead in the nineteenth century. He was a young man affected by paraplegia in a time when society still operated under conventional notions of ‘perfection,’ and of the many important stories presented in the invaluable Holyhead:…

Kay Foran sat down with Ports, Past and Present and shared the story of how at 16 years old, she started working in the Odlum's flour silos in Dublin port, although the manager was looking for a boy.

“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.”―Rudyard Kipling. I love visiting Museums. You’ll always hear Writers and Storytellers say that stories, in whatever form, bind us and that we can only really learn how…

The tragic torpedo attack of RMS Leinster on the 10th October, 1918, is recorded as the biggest loss of life in the Irish Sea. Out of 813 souls, 569 souls lost their lives. Many of the crew were made up of residents from Holyhead, including Captain…

Virginia Woolf travelled widely in Britain and Europe throughout her life, but visited Ireland only once. On 27 April 1934, she sailed out from Fishguard to Cork for a motoring tour with her husband Leonard, visiting the novelist Elizabeth Bowen at…

There are a number of memorial plaques on view at the museum. These were made of bronze and issued to the next of kin in remembrance of those lost during the Great War of 1914-18. Each one is inscribed with the name of the person who died. Over one…

A local story in Pembroke Dock concerns the launch of HMS Caesar, planned for July 21, 1853. The ship was a wooden two decker, screw propelled ship of ninety-one guns. As was the custom on launch days all the residents of Pembroke Dock would flock…

When Mary Wollstonecraft crossed from Holyhead to Dublin – ‘the best and shortest passage’, she noted – in October 1786, she was lucky. ‘[T]he weather was fine the prospects delightful’, she wrote in a letter to Eliza Bishop, looking back on the…