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March 23, 2009

Book Launch: The Annals of Ballitore

Athy Heritage Centre & Museum & Kildare Library and Arts Services present:

Book Launch: ‘The Annals of Ballitore’

On Tuesday, 31 March 2009 At  8 pm  in Athy Heritage Centre & Museum

To be Officially  launched By John MacKenna

A diary and social commentary of life in Ireland and the village of Ballitore 1799-1824

This modern edition of ‘The Annals of Ballitore’ by Mary Leadbeater (1758-1826) is a compilation of the original two editions of the ‘Annals’ published in 1862 with the  addition of a description of the village of Ballitore in 1766, from the manuscript, never before published. The little-known recollection of ‘Ballitore & Its Inhabitants Seventy Years Ago,’ by Betsy Shackleton (1783-1843), Mary Leadbeater’s niece, has been included, together with the full list of over 1800 pupils enrolled through the 110 years (1726-1836) of the famous school at Ballitore.

Read about:    

  • the wars with America and France 
  • the bone –setters and shoe-maker surgeons 
  • blacksmiths masquerading as dentists 
  • great houses, nobility and gentry; of poverty, scarcity and hardship
  • the Rebellion of 1798 -day by day-blow by blow

 A world made interesting by ‘news’ brought by mail coaches, messengers and all manner of visitors, high and low to the village of Ballitore. It is a world of love and romance, of Faith and hope but also a hard reactive world of crime and punishment: of cruelty, imprisonment and death; of civil strife and the day-by-day unfolding of the Rebellion of 1798; of intrigue, military excesses, rebellion and reaction. The accounts are poignant, moving, humorous, charming and sad, sometimes intensely so.

Contact: Margaret Walsh. Manager, Athy Heritage Centre & Museum, The Town Hall, Emily  Square, Athy Co. Kildare.

Phone:- 00353 (0)598633075     Email:-    athyheritage@eircom.net

Web:-    http://www.athyheritagecentre-museum.ie/