Tag Archives: Kilkishen Cultural Centre

CYCLISTS across the Mid-West have been invited on a picturesque tour through towns and villages in East Clare to help raise funds for a community group, writes Dan Danaher. The seventh annual Tour Through East Clare cycle will take place on Saturday, September 25, to raise badly needed funds for Kilkishen Development Association (KDA). All routes will start and finish at the Kilkishen Cultural Centre and cyclists can choose between 100km or 50km routes. The 100km route travels via Sixmilebridge, Broadford, Bodyke, Scarriff and into Mountshannon for a food stop. From Mountshannon, the cycle continues to Scarriff, Feakle, Glendree and on to Tulla before returning to Kilkishen. The 50km route travels via Sixmilebridge, Broadford, Bodyke and returns via Tulla. The cycle is organised by the Kilkishen Development Association, and all funds raised from this cycle will support the Kilkishen Cultural Centre. Secretary and treasurer of the Kilishen Cultural Centre, Olivia King recalled the former protestant church hosted exercise classes, yoga, …

A CALL has gone out for funding and other support for Kilkishen Development Association after it was forced to curtail all community activities due to a lack of money. For the last five yeas, the association has been at the heart of efforts to provide essential maintenance in public areas and to keep Kilkishen Cultural Centre going, as a focal point for community events. In a statement, the association said that, “Closure of our cultural centre because of the Covid Pandemic has taken its toll on our financial position”. The association said last week that it had been unable to buy petrol for FÁS and Tús workers to continue grass-cutting in areas like Clonlea Cemetery, the amenity park, the grounds of the cultural centre and church, or to support Kilkishen Tidy Town by maintaining the grass margins on the approach roads to the village. “We hope you understand our current position until we organise a fundraising event later when the …

WHILE there may be no national Tidy Towns competition this year, that doesn’t mean that local groups around the county are sitting on their laurels. Quite the contrary. Since lockdown ended, most groups have never been busier and many have seen a bump in membership, because people have been spending more time closer to home. In Kilkishen, the Tidy Towns group is close to ticking another project off its ‘To Do’ list. That is the renovation of the old forge building, which dates back some centuries. “The forge building goes back to the 1700s, but we don’t officially know the date it was built,” Elizabeth Brady of Kilkishen Tidy Towns outlined. “It was built without plaster. It’s across the road from the old blacksmith’s house, which is in private ownership. That’s very quaint and Éamon de Valera visited it in the 1960s. It was a spontaneous thing. He saw it and asked his driver to stop. The locals who had …

MEMORIES of cultural contests of years gone by will be rekindled at the West County on November 21. Settling Old Scórs is being organised by Kilkishen’s John Torpey. He said he wanted to revisit the heyday of Scór in Clare. “I’m organising a celebratory concert of Scór from the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s and the millennium. Scór was a huge thing, probably one of the greatest social items that the GAA ever came up with,” he said. In the early days of the competition, there was incredible interest in it, not least in his own part of the county. “Christy Curtin from Miltown Malbay came up with a notion that there should be a social aspect to the GAA. Coming out of that, all of the clubs in the county were contacted, including myself and Robert Frost in O’Callaghan’s Mills. A few of us met in Kilkishen on a Saturday night and we said ‘you sing a song, you do this, …

By Carol Byrne SIXMILEBRIDGE Folk Club will host two concerts this month; the first on Wednesday next at the Mill Bar, and the second in the soon-to-be opened Kilkishen Cultural Centre. The new centre will be the venue for a folk club concert with the Mulcahy’s traditional music family  on May 16. Now in its 16th year, the folk club has changed venues many times, starting with McGregor’s in Sixmilebridge, then the parochial hall, followed by the Courthouse. They are now firmly established in Gallagher’s, Kilkishen, and also return on a regular basis to both Gleeson’s and the Mill Bar, in Sixmilebridge. However, with the opening of the new Cultural Centre in Kilkishen, Brendan Walsh, said this will mark a new beginning for the club, as they aim to promote it as a top-class acoustic music venue. “It will be a huge asset to the folk club, as it is a state-of-the-art heritage venue with a capacity of 80. As …

By Carol Byrne THE former Protestant church in Kilkishen hosted its last wedding more than half a century ago but now, under the ownership of the Kilkishen Cultural Centre Committee, it is likely the venue will host weddings once more. The church building, whose only occupants over the past 50 years have been a family of lesser horseshoe bats, has undergone a facelift and is due to open to the public this week. Now known as the Kilkishen Cultural Centre, the venue has been transformed from a derelict building and will be re-invigorated under plans to make it a busy community hub. The centre is to be made available for community, educational and drama groups and for concerts. Further to this, plans are underway to obtain a licence to hold civil marriages there. Committee chairman Mike Hogan says he is looking forward to holding a viewing day for the community, to finally get a glimpse of the great work that …