Photographic exhibition at Clare Museum

AN exhibition of photographs taken from the 1890s to the early 1900s, amassed in a collection by Dr George Unthank Macnamara (1849-1919), will take place from August 19 to September 11 in the Clare Museum.
George Unthank was the son of Dr Michael Macnamara and his wife Elizabeth Macnamara of Baunkyle, Corofin. Dr George Unthank Macnamara, as his father before him, served as a medical doctor in the Corofin district. He was also known to have worked closely with his friend Thomas Johnson Westropp, a highly regarded antiquary who wrote extensively on the history of a number of counties in Ireland, including Clare, during the 19th century.
George himself became a member of the Royal Society of Antiquaries in 1894 and was elected fellow and vice-president of the Royal Society of Antiquities in 1917.
In 1894, George is renowned for having the previously disappeared Tau Cross recovered and reinstated into its original socket, at his own personal expense.
He practised photography with his friend TJ Westropp and thus assembled a large collection of glass plate negatives, which, by kind permission of George Macnamara and his wife, of Baunkyle House and the Macnamara family, were recently digitised in a preservation project by Clare County Archives. The collection will be on public display during Heritage Week due to the Heritage Council’s provision of partial funding for the project.
“The collection contains a wide variation of images containing social, archaeological and historical witness to the late 19th and early 20th century Clare but indeed also to Burma, where George’s brothers, Lieutenant Colonel John William Unthank and Lieutenant Robert Joseph, served in the Indian and Bengal Medical Services from the years 1879-1908. The British Library has noted it as a ‘fascinating series’ and have expressed great interest this collection,” Rene Franklin, Clare county archivist said.
Family portraits, including the Macnamara family and other local families, form part of the collection, as well as images of school children and local sites in Clare, some of which have not as yet been identified.
If any members of the public can provide such information, the county archivist can be contacted at archivesrecords@clarecoco.ie or on 065 6846414.
In total, 177 plates were conserved and digitised by a professional photographic conservator and subsequently digitised to ensure the permanent preservation of the collection.
The exhibition is open to the public from 9.30am to 5.30pm each day in the museum’s foyer area and entry is free.
This event is being organised for National Heritage Week.