Lismore – Autobiography of an Irish Town 1937-1954
By James Ballantyne
Book design by Nicky Barneby of Barneby Ltd.
isbn 978 0 9558221 0 0
Publication: June 2008
This culmination of twenty years’ work is an evocation of life in the town of Lismore, County Waterford, Ireland during the writer’s childhood and formative years, using his family as a study example. Anyone interested in the social history of Ireland will find it of value because many of the features of rural life in the County Waterford were common to the whole of Éire/Ireland during the period.
It will hold special interest for the people of Lismore and West Waterford and also Carrick-on-Suir to which town, having Morrissey ties, the Ballantyne family went on holiday every summer.
Read the reviews for Lismore
Below is a map of Lismore as James knew it in the period of the book and Lismore today Lismore, Ireland
Photos from the book
West Street Lismore, looking east. Ormonde’s corner on the right.
The Villa beeches on the left. Note unmade road. Turn of 19th/early 20th century postcard.
(Courtesy of Tom Feeney)
My maternal grandmother, Anastasia Morrissey, holding me in her arms in the back garden of the Morrissey family home in Greystone Street, Carrick-on-Suir, 1937.
Note the outside lavatory shed in the background.
My father Joseph Albert Ballantyne, aged 30.
Studio portrait taken on 12 July 1927.
c. 1948/49
A meitheal poses at a threshing at the Denn family farm at Castlejohn, Co.Tipperary, in the late Forties.
A mound of chaff is seen in the foreground. This may well be the chaff that Eddie Denn threw me into.
Eddie, wearing cap, is standing second to the right of my other cousin Phyllis Grant who is sitting down.
Please click on the pictures to see slides
Download a sample page PDF here
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