Tag Archives: barefield

EVERY day many dogs are walked on the Tulla Road in Ennis but if you are in the vicinity, you might also be lucky enough to see Lucy, a micro Vietnamese Pot Bellied Pig, as she is brought on her regular treks. Lucy is the pet of local couple Mark Greene and Sarah Jane Germaine, who live just off the main road in Gort na Habhna. When The Clare Champion visited their house on Tuesday, Lucy was relaxing comfortably in the sitting room, alongside one of the couple’s two dogs. Just two-years-old now, Lucy weighs an estimated 160 pounds and is surely one of the biggest and most unusual pets in Ennis. “I wouldn’t say there’s another one in the town. Not one that gets walked around the place and definitely not one that lives in the sitting room!” says Mark. Sarah has a lifelong love of animals and always wanted to have a pet pig, so two years ago, …

People are being urged to dig deep and support the inaugural Clare Relay event, which involves 70 charity runners travelling 140 kilometres across the county this Saturday. As part of its efforts to raise more than €240,000 this year, the Clare Crusaders Children’s Clinic is organising a sponsored relay from Loop Head to Killaloe. The relay will involve teams completing the 140km route in groups of between six and 10, each running 10km. The proposed route includes points at Loop Head, Cross, Carrigaholt, Kilkee, Kilrush, Cooraclare, Kilmihil, Lissycasey, Ennis, Barefield, Spancilhill, Tulla, Bodyke, Tuamgraney, Ogonnelloe and ending in Killaloe. Starting from Loop Head at 6.30am, it will finish in Killaloe at 8.30pm. Along the way, people will have the opportunity to make a donation to the bucket collectors. The time allocated to each leg is about one hour and teams can complete more than one leg during the day and one member of the team has to carry a phone. The relay …

CLARE-born journalist, Ann O’Loughlin has seen her debut novel, The Ballroom Café, go to number four on the Amazon Kindle bestseller list, even before its official launch in the UK and Ireland last Thursday. The Ballroom Café is set at the height of the recession in Ireland in a crumbling mansion, where two elderly sisters, Ella and Roberta O’Callaghan, live alone with their secrets, memories and mutual hatred. Long estranged by a dark family tragedy, they communicate only by terse notes. But when the sisters are threatened with bankruptcy, Ella defies Roberta’s wishes and takes matters into her own hands, converting the mansion’s old ballroom into a café. Much to Roberta’s displeasure, the café is a hit and the sisters are reluctantly drawn back into village life. But Ella finds herself reliving painful memories, when Debbie, an American woman searching for her birth mother, begins working at the café. The sisters find themselves caught up in an adoption scandal that …

SEVERE and sudden hailstorms are affecting the M18 more than most other roads, are all but impossible to forecast and have led to accidents on the route, according to the National Roads Authority (NRA). Clare TD Joe Carey raised concerns about the Crusheen-Gort section of the route in the Dáil and he subsequently received a letter from programme and regulatory manager of the NRA, Gary Carey. The NRA official stated, “There would appear to be a particular problem associated with hailstorms along the M18, which seem to be more frequent along this route than at other locations throughout the national road motorway network. “It was such a hailstorm on January 13, 2015, which resulted in skidding accidents and the closure of the road for a time by An Garda Síochána. “It is worth noting that some of the hailstorms recorded had such intensity that at one point they caused the road surface temperature to drop by approximately 5oC in a …

A BAREFIELD man jailed for life for the murder of a young man over three years ago has moved to appeal his conviction, claiming the prosecution ought to have proved that he did not have diminished responsibility at the time. Joe Heffernan (aged 35), of Cappagh Beg, Barefield pleaded not guilty to the murder of Eoin Ryan (21) at Cappagh Beg on June 7, 2011. He was found guilty by a jury at the Central Criminal Court and was given the mandatory life sentence by Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy on July 3, 2013. During the trial two 999 calls were played to the jury, who were also given transcripts of the calls. “Hello. This is Joe Heffernan. I’m after killing a man,” the caller told Garda Claire O’Shaughnessy, who identified her voice on the first recording. “He came onto me and I killed him. I’m not gay or nothing you know,” he said. “I’m going to kill myself. I’m not …

ALTHOUGH born and bred in The Bronx, New York, Michael Waugh feels a deep attachment to his late grandmothers home in Trinaderry, Barefield. In practical terms he is using his emotional link to Clare to help further develop US based Wild West Irish Tours which he operates with his wife Trish. Now living in Richmond, Virginia, Michael called Sligo home for five years but is hoping to spend a sizeable portion of 2015 in Clare in the company of his various tour groups. “We have tours from April right up to November 1. Around this time of the year I’m normally over in the US promoting our tours and going to Irish festivals. Then around April 1, I’ll be in Ireland and the tours start. We’ll pick up the people, who signed up over the winter, at Shannon or Dublin. Then we show them the real, authentic Ireland that I know from living here. The thing is while I do …

THE rich history and heritage of two well-known landmarks on the outskirts of Ennis were graphically illustrated during a recent outing as part of National Heritage Week. Last Friday evening, more than 40 people gathered for an outing organised by heritage officer, Congella McGuire and the Clare Archaeological and Historical Society. Society secretary, Edel Greene, and Ms McGuire led the group around the old church and graveyard at Templemaley and the adjacent Ballyhee Cut. Templemaley Church dates back to around the 10th or 11th century and very little is known about its founding saint, Maley, although his name lives on in Kilmaley and was previously associated with a spring well at Fountain, known as Tobermaley. In the 1830s, locals believed the church was founded by St Finghin of Quin and his feast day had previously been celebrated there. According to Ms Greene, Templemaley may have been a small monastic site that became a parish church after the church reforms of …