Before
Chris Maguire's untimely passing on 22nd February 2007
he lived with his daughter Aideen in Galway. While there he had
on several occasions been shown the Bawnboy.com
web site and as he was always one who wished to pass on knowledge
he indicated it would be lovely to have his book, Bawnboy
and Templeport History Heritage Folklore available on
the web site for everyone because it was no longer available
in print.
Chris had often helped me and given me material
for various projects and web sites I was making while he still
lived in Bawnboy. I felt honoured to be asked to make some
of his knowledge and research available to a wider group of scholars.
While I have tried to maintain the exact words
there have been some situations where it would have been inappropriate
to do so. Some words and phrases have had to be changed to maintain
the integrity of Chris Maguire's work.
It should be remembered that Chris's book Bawnboy and
Templeport History Heritage Folklore was published in
1999 and that dates refer to that time unless otherwise indicated.
I have optimised these pages for display at a
resolution of 1024 X 768 pixels. They should display reasonably
well at other screen resolutions above 600 X 800 pixels. In most
browsers you may adjust your display to full screen size by clicking
the 'F11' button. (Click 'F 11' again to revert to previous size.)
This icon
at the top of most pages will take you back to the previous numbered page you visited and is not necessarily the same as the previous page, it behaves the same way as the 'Back' button of your browser.
A picture with a green border indicates that
it has a larger version which may be downloaded by clicking on
it. Un-visited linked pages have green links and visited ones
have blue links.
Regrettably, as many of the photographs were scanned from the printed
book they are of poor quality particularly when enlarged.
When I asked if there were any better or original photographs
Chris' daughter Aideen wrote: "Some photos were of good
quality but many reflected the camera quality back in those days
and indeed there were many houses he approached who had neither
photos nor camera!
Unfortunately the house fire which my father had some time
later, destroyed much of his archival research, writings and material
for further publications together with valuable photographs. It
also destroyed his spirit which had worked so hard on such matters
and all his academic efforts, notes, papers, references, books
etc. were suddenly wiped."
The colour photographs on this web site (other than the Artist's impression of a "Bawn" by M. Cullivan on the next page were made available by Ciaran Maguire from his own and his Father's collection.
I trust you'll find at least some of the information
in this book useful and hope that if you haven't already visited
Bawnboy you will soon.
NR 2008
Post Script
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Ciaran, Fidelma and Aideen Maguire for their adivice, suggestions and help in making the conversion from the original book to web site. I would also like to thank Catherine Frendo in Sydney, Australia and Ciaran Maguire, in Bawnboy who extracted a very large number of meta tags from the text to use on individual Bawnboy village pages as well as the index page.
NR 2011