Local Interest

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An Irish Civil War Dugout Tormore Cave, County Sligo
€48.00
A brutal Civil War erupted across Ireland in June 1922. The IRA, in opposition to the development of a pro-Treaty government, returned to the familiar guerrilla tactics of the War of Independence. Hundreds of dugouts constructed in rural settings were key to the IRA campaign.

These secret places offered safe shelter to men on the run, while also allowing for supplies and arms to be stored and prisoners held. Tormore Cave, high in the mountains of County Sligo, in the northwest of Ireland, was one such dugout. Over 30 Republican men sought refuge there for six weeks in September and October 1922.

Like most dugouts, Tormore Cave was never mentioned in historical accounts or documentary sources, but its significance was remembered locally. Archaeological excavations conducted on the centenary of its occupation revealed the extensive modifications that had transformed this natural limestone cave into a habitable military dugout, a crucial refuge for combatants whose comrades had been executed or arrested by Government forces. The historical artefacts and environmental material recovered during the excavations, combined with detailed archaeological surveys and analyses, provide a fascinating insight into the conditions endured by those billeted there.

The lives of the men and women directly associated with the cave dugout are explored, including an in-depth study of IRA General Officer Commanding Billy Pilkington – a key figure during the Irish revolutionary period who has, until now, been largely overlooked. An Irish Civil War Dugout: Tormore Cave, County Sligo adopts a multidisciplinary approach, the first of its kind in an Irish context, combining archaeology, local and military histories, family memories, community recollections, and landscape studies. This groundbreaking study – the first archaeological excavation of a Civil War site in Ireland, facilitates a wider discussion of the role of dugouts in guerrilla warfare.

By focussing in detail on one site at a local level, this book provides a unique and valuable contribution to the Irish revolutionary period on a regional and national scale.

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Sligo History and Society
€60.00
Available Now

Featuring essays from:

Mary Gilmartin, Martin Timoney, Noel McCarthy, Carleton Jones, John Waddell, Rachel Moss and Tamyln McHugh, Kieran O’Connor, Yvonne McDermott, Nollaig Ó’Muraíle, Jack Johnston, Brendan Scott, Pádraig Lenihan, Conchubar Ó Crualaoich, David A. Fleming, David Dickson, Ciarán Mac Murchaidh, Tom Bartlett, Marie Boran and Brigid Clesham, Perry McIntyre and Richard Reid, Gerard Moran, Thomas Power, Jonathan Cherry, Fiona Gallagher, Aideen Ireland, Miriam Moffitt, Mary Timoney, R.F. Foster, Charles Travis, Gregory Daly, Patrick E. O’Brien, Michael Farry, Anne O’Dowd, Proinnsias Breathnach, and Mary Cawley.

Further information coming soon.

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The Great Irish Bucket List
€12.95
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Finding Fairy Mysteries In Donegal
€20.00
CORCORAN, KEITH

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In My Own Words
€24.95
Born in Sligo into a family of travelling entertainers, Sandy Kelly has become one of the top musical performers in Ireland. Sandy was co-opted into the family variety show from an early age. As a teenager she sang on the social club circuit in the UK, playing an ever more prominent role.

When she returned to Ireland, she developed initially as a pop performer before following her instincts and concentrating on a music career. Her landmark 1989 recording of the Patsy Cline hit ‘Crazy’ led her to perform on stages all over the world, including the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and the lead role in Patsy – The Musical in London’s West End. But the music industry can be a tough place.

Sandy has dealt with prejudice and financial pressures. Alongside the glamour of show business, she has experienced the heartaches of divorce, family illness and death, and faced the challenges of raising a daughter with special needs. Sandy has stood strong at the heart of Ireland’s music scene for over four decades.

Here, for the first time, she recounts the highs – and lows – of a lifetime in music, in her own words.

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Love These Days
€16.95

Only love will save us … Tara Leonard returns after seven years abroad as a humanitarian aid worker to the island where she grew up on the northwest coast of Sligo. Having fled Creevy Island after a wounding marital breakup, she is back only to finalise her divorce. But as her stay on Creevy unexpectedly lengthens, events build to a dangerous reckoning where every ounce of her resourcefulness is tested.

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LISTOGHIL A SEASONAL ALIGNMENT? (Revised 2023)
€10.00
Listoghil, the central monument and focal point of the Carrowmore passage tomb complex close to Sligo in north-west Ireland, has been ruined, excavated and eventually partially restored. However, the chamber is preserved in its original position. The author examines the hypothesis that Listoghil was deliberately aligned to mark seasonal transitions equivalent to astronomical cross-quarter days. The methods include a horizon survey, the isolation of directional features in the monument, and computer modelling of the monument and skyscape. Folklore and legends around seasonal transits, locally, in Ireland, and in many and varied (and independently arising) contexts at temperate latitudes of the world, are seen as information sources complementary to data gathering and observation.

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The Tide Is Coming
€50.00
The Tide is Coming – a book of Coney Island in Sligo Bay by Maura Gilligan –
is a beautiful limited-edition publication containing prose, poetry, interviews, photographs
and artwork.
As the title of this book suggests, the rhythm of the tides has, for centuries, dictated the
rhythm of life on Coney Island. During his lifetime, Islander John McGowan called out the
warning “the tide is coming” countless times, ensuring that visitors would cross the causeway
safely before channels at either side closed the strand passage and made an island of his
shores.
This little island is said to have given its name to Coney Island in New York! Its ancient
name, Inismulclohy, can be found in maps, records and annals.

Contents
Insightful poetry and prose reflect the author’s thoughts as she moves across the Island in
space and time.
Author-transcribed interviews with Island elder John McGowan form an integral part of this
book, illuminating eight decades of life in a place inhabited by John’s ancestors since 1789.
There are echoes here of life on other offshore Irish islands, now uninhabited.
Photographer James Fraher’s haunting black and white images, together with Catherine
Fanning’s remarkable paintings, prints and line drawings, add visual depth and magic.

Special Features
The book itself is a work of art; a striking hardback cover collage is enhanced by timeless
quarter binding, head and tail bands, marker ribbon and rich-coloured endpapers. Sumptuous
Munken paper provides the perfect backdrop for superb illustrations and exceptional writing.
Folded within the pages of this book is a surprise – an A3 loose-leaf ‘Map of Coney Island in
Sligo Bay’, which can be framed. Created from an old and fragile line-drawn original, the
current version of this map illustrates locations on and around the Island, some of which still
carry their original Irish names.
The Tide is Coming is a wonderful history of an Irish island and a perfect gift.

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Boatman for Mountbatten
€24.95

In ‘Boatman for Mountbatten’, O’Connor’s main focus is on the ordinary lives of the young boatmen and staff who worked in and around Classiebawn Castle. However, the impact of the shocking murder – and subsequent allegations that have emerged since then – cannot be ignored he said.

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Mr. Attention To Detail
€12.95
KELLY, JOE

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Memory

The Sligo Rape Crisis Centre deals with some of the most
difficult things that can happen to anyone. The trauma of
intimate violence can shake a person’s experience of being
to the core. The work of exploring this experience with a
view to living in a more comfortable way is a deeply healing
process. The therapist is there, present, as an authentic
witness. They can offer reflections on thoughts, feeling and
sensations, observed behaviours, expressions, and help
access the journey towards recovery.

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Sligo Field Club Vol 8
€25.00
The Sligo Field Club Volume 8, 2022 is the latest issue of the hugely popular Sligo Field Club Journal.

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Local Heroes
€22.95
Infused with the authors’ abiding love of their native Sligo and their lifelong infatuation with the world of sport, Local Heroes: A Celebration of Sligo Sport offers a fascinating and vivid insight into what it takes to be a bona fide local hero. Featuring the most comprehensive collection of Sligo sports stars ever assembled between the covers of a book, award-winning journalists Jim and Leo Gray tell the gripping stories of more than 60 sportsmen and sportswomen whose exploits have earned them an exalted place in any pantheon of all-time greats.

Unlikely as it may seem, Sligo’s fingerprints are to be found at some of the world’s iconic sporting events, from the Olympic Games to the Aintree Grand National; the FA Cup final to the Tour de France; major golf tournaments to the Premier League. Those stories are related here with deep insights from the participants, history-makers who proudly put Sligo on the sporting map. But the pages are laced, too, with heroic endeavours of sportsmen and sportswomen who may not be so well known outside their native county, but whose achievements have marked them as immortal local legends.

In more than 70 essays across a vast range of sports, the veteran reporters cast a new spotlight on the county’s big occasions at venues such as Croke Park, the Aviva Stadium, Cheltenham and Olympic Games stadia, as well as taking a deep dive into the local cauldron of sporting activity, highlighting events and characters who have illuminated the county’s rich sporting heritage.

Local Heroes is intended as a permanent monument to those whose sporting greatness has enriched the lives of generations of Sligonians.

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The Six
€30.00
It is September, 1922. As the National Army closes in on the anti-Treaty stronghold of Rahelly House in North Sligo, 120 Republicans of the 3rd Western Division abandon their headquarters and retreat to the mountains. En route to a cave hideout in the uplands, six of the men are surrounded and captured. They would not survive one of the most brutal advances of the new Free State Army. Their deaths caused outrage and bewilderment across the county and essentially marked the end of the Civil War in Sligo. These men came to be memorialised as Sligo’s Noble Six.

This book looks beyone the well-documented accounts of the execution of Sligo’s Noble Six and explores the interwoven stories of their lives, their communities, their families, and their descendants. The men’s lives are illustrated through military archives, IRA dispatches, contemporary media coverage, and previously unpublished photos. Their memorialisation through poetry and prose, monuments and gatherings, has ensured that these six men live beyond the tragedy of their deaths.

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In the Shadow of Benbulben
€19.95
Description

In January 1939, just months after hanging up his boots and a few weeks into his new career as a talent scout, William Ralph ‘Dixie’ Dean, the former Everton and England legend, received a surprise request for assistance from the far west of Ireland. Could he find a goalscorer for Sligo Rovers – the beating heart of a small, provincial town – to drive their dreams of a lucrative cup run and help protect the club’s very existence? Dean set about finding the right man, but unable to locate candidates willing to make the move across the Irish Sea, he had an idea. What if he were to answer Sligo’s call? And so began the unlikely story of how one of the greatest centre-forwards ever to grace the game added an unexpected and ultimately uplifting chapter to his storied football career.

In the Shadow of Benbulben is a romantic tale of divine intervention, uncanny timing and drama on and off the pitch. It’s the tale of ‘Dixie’ Dean’s four months with the Bit O’Red that was to leave an indelible mark on the player, the club and the town.

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A Dedication to Drowning
€9.50
36 pages 9781913211738

In this raw and moving debut chapbook, Maeve McKenna dives into the multitudes of womanhood: a mother, unmothered; a lover, alone; a child, now aged. She flings the cover off pain that would otherwise remain hidden and unspoken, exposing the most intimate parts of herself. In doing so, she invites the reader to embrace their own vulnerabilities, calling, “Let’s assemble our bodies, limb to limb against/the walls of unoccupied margins, hope pointed/like the scope of a firing squad…I am writing it for you. For me.”

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Liber