Daoine agus Áit Project.

Postcards connecting our diaspora to their home place.

Jimmy Laffey

Postcard Project.

Skehana & District Heritage Group is delighted to introduce you to our new postcard depicting some of the important built heritage of our area. It has been designed and produced by Marian Hardiman in conjunction with Lorna Elms, Project Development Officer at the Irish Community Archive Network & National Museum of Ireland. We congratulate Marian on her efforts and thank Lorna for her continuous support to us on this and so many other initiatives.

Four complimentary postcards will be delivered to each house in the area over the coming days and it is hoped that these will be sent to relatives and friends at home and away. All of the photographs were taken by Marian and she wishes to express her sincere gratitude to the guardians of these sites for their support. The poem extract on the reverse side was taken from the publication Light and Shade by James Arthur Henry Jameson at Windfield House in 1890. This particular poem describes the landscape of Windfield and makes a particular reference to The Curraghaun. We are fortunate to have been presented with the only known copy of the publication which was printed by Browne & Nolan, Dublin in the early 1900s.

If you live away from the Skehana area and would like a few copies of the postcards please email us at skehanaheritage@gmail.com or message us on this page and we will endeavour to get them to you.

This page was added on 12/08/2021.

Comments about this page

  • Most interesting poetry! Was not James Arthur Henry Jameson mainly an artist? There’s a bit about him here: https://www.sulisfineart.com/james-arthur-henry-jameson-1855-1930-1914-oil-winter-donegal-highland-kj799.html. Seems he was descended from the second son, William, of James Jameson (1781-1847) who “succeeded to the fortune of his immediate elder brother, William, of Merrion Square, Dublin, and purchased the estate of Windfield, County Galway, and the demesne of Montrose, County Dublin.” William and his wife, Emily, produced two children, James, the artist/poet, and secondly another Emily. There’s a list, from 1905, of Browne & Nolan’s publications here: https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000258131 – no scanned copy to be had online, unfortunately. James’s references to “wilds of weary wastelands”, a “bog river winking” and “the bark of the fox [being] heard through the gorse and the dark” are wonderfully evocative! It was those extracts which caused me to pick up the postcard from Aoife Reilly’s clinic in Mountbellew; and I am glad that I did so. The artist (1855-1930) apparently was born and died in Dublin. But, being the nephew of the Rev’d John Jameson (1816-72), who inherited Windfield from the first James (1781-1847, above, whom the artist could not have known), and therefore first cousin of another, third James (1848-96, a soldier – the two James’s of a similar age if not necessarily interests), who inherited in turn from the reverend, no doubt he would have known and stayed at Windfield. It was left to Maurice (1888-1950), son of the soldier, and James the artist to witness the demise of Windfield in 1921.

    By William Lambton (22/12/2022)
  • Thanks for checking in with us William. I have the complete book of poems and many are connected to Windfield. I will scan and mail the relevant poems to you via email. Jimmy.

    By jlaffey (22/12/2022)

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