infomatique

WATERFORD DISTILLERY PHOTOGRAPHED MAY 2016

March 3, 2023 by infomatique

PRODUCTION BEGAN IN JANUARY 2016

Waterford Distillery, Waterford (est. 2016) – a craft distillery established in a converted Diageo facility. Production of spirit began in January 2016. The distillery will produce a single malt.

Irish whiskey is whiskey made on the island of Ireland. The word ‘whiskey’ (or whisky) comes from the Irish uisce beatha, meaning water of life.

Irish whiskey was once the most popular spirit in the world, though a long period of decline from the late 19th century onwards greatly damaged the industry, so much so that although Ireland boasted at least 28 distilleries in the 1890s, by 1966 this number had fallen to just two, and by 1972 the remaining distilleries, Bushmills Distillery and Old Midleton Distillery (replaced by New Midleton Distillery), were owned by just one company, Irish Distillers.

The monopoly situation was ended by an academically-conceived launch of the first new distillery in decades, Cooley Distillery, in 1987. Since the 1990s, Irish whiskey has seen a resurgence in popularity and has been the fastest-growing spirit in the world every year since 1990. With exports growing by over 15% per annum, existing distilleries have been expanded and a number of new distilleries constructed. As of December 2019, Ireland has 32 distilleries in operation, with more either planned or under development.

STREET ART AT ONE END OF COLLEGE STREET

March 2, 2023 by infomatique

NEAR THE OLD ASYLUM WATERFORD 2016

During my 2016 visit I discovered that Waterford City hosted an amazing collection of street are and it gets better every year because of the Waterford Walls street art festival. I could not visit last year and unfortunately I cannot find a suitable hotel this room [late August/ early September].

STREET ART AT ONE END OF COLLEGE STREET NEAR THE OLD ASYLUM 001

STREET ART AT ONE END OF COLLEGE STREET NEAR THE OLD ASYLUM 002

IN-VISIBLE BY TINA O’CONNELL

March 1, 2023 by infomatique

AN INTERESTING WATER FEATURE IN THE WATERFORD PEOPLES PARK

One thing that I have noticed in Ireland is that water features are never properly maintained and eventually they become non-water features. Unfortunately, when I photographed this a year later it was in very poor condition … hardly any water and lots of litter and branches within the pool area. But to be fair in 2017 it was in excellent condition and the water in the ball was clear.

In 1999, artist Tina O’Connell was commissioned to re-create a fountain on the same site as where there had been a Victorian style tiered fountain which had fallen into disrepair. Thus Tina’s contemporary sculpture is also a fully functioning fountain. After an extended period of research into the materials and of development ‘In-Visible’ was finally sited and fully installed in 2002.

‘In-Visible’ (2001) is a contemporary sculpture incorporating a water feature. Inspired by the connection between Waterford City and the world famous Waterford Glass industry, O’Connell’s work consists of a very large transparent acrylic sphere (2 metres in diameter), over which clear running water continuously flows, and which is positioned on a large, circular platform made from black Kilkenny marble. The work has been referred to locally as the ‘Orb Fountain’.

WOULD IT BE BETTER IF CANNONS WERE ONLY CREATED FOR CHILDREN TO PLAY UPON

March 1, 2023 by infomatique

THE PEOPLE’S PARK IN WATERFORD MAY 2016

During this visit I noticed that the two cannons attracted more dogs than children.

This park is not as attractive as either the People’s Park in Limerick or the People’s Park in Dun Laoghaire but it is still worth a visit especially as it has two cannons.

About twenty cannons captured from the Russians during the Crimean War are on display in Irish towns and cities. Seven are in the grounds of Army barracks, but the remainder are in public parks or in town centres. Galway, Limerick and Waterford each have two Crimean cannons, and others are in Birr, Bunratty, Cobh, Dún Laoghaire, Ennis, Newry, Tralee and Trim.

I noticed that some descriptions of these old guns used the spelling canon rather canon so I decided to check: “Cannon, with two n’s, is a long heavy gun on wheels. Lose an n and the word canon is a set of rules or traditions. If you thought these words were spelled the same, you’re not wrong: they used to be.”

ROSAMOND JACOB 1888-1960 BLUE PLAQUE SOUTH PARADE WATERFORD

March 1, 2023 by infomatique

WRITER AND POLITICAL ACTIVIST

Rosamond Jacob (13 October 1888 – 11 October 1960) was an Irish writer and political activist. She was a lifelong activist for suffragist, republican and socialist causes and a writer of fiction.

She was born to lapsed Quaker parents, Lewis Jacob and Henrietta Harvey, in Waterford, where she lived until 1920. Her parents’ support for Irish Nationalism placed them at odds with the majority of the Quaker community in Waterford and resulted in isolation. Rosamond was educated in Quaker schools in Waterford and amongst other things through this became proficient in languages such as French and German.

As a young adult Jacob become involved in organisations such as the Gaelic League, the Irish National League, and Inghinidhe na hÉireann, a dedicated women’s radical nationalist organisation. She, along with her brother Tom, was a member of Sinn Féin from 1905, and it was Rosamond who opened the first branch of Sinn Féin in Waterford in 1906. It was that same year Rosamond became an Irish language speaker and writer, a language she’d go on to become fluent in. Jacob’s time in the Gaelic League over time began to grate, however, as she began to find the Catholic atmosphere there stifling to her developing feminist and agonist beliefs. In 1908 she joined the Irish Women’s Franchise League, created by her friend and fellow feminist Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington.

She lived in the Rathmines area of Dublin from at least 1942, firstly in Belgrave Square. From 1950 she shared a house with her friend Lucy Kingston at 17 Charleville Road. She died in 1960 after a road traffic accident in which she was struck down. Rosamond Jacob kept a diary almost all of her life, and there are 171 of these diaries among her literary and political papers held in the National Library of Ireland.