Uncovering Shannon’s hidden stories

WORK has been continuing on preparing a social history of Shannon, with long-time and former residents of the town being interviewed.
The Shannon Social History Project got underway in the spring and is being led by Olive Carey.
“It’s going along very well. There are about ten interviews done and there are at least 50 more to do!” she said.
Olive says that she has spoken to a number of people who were in Shannon at the very beginning and many have spoken of the strong community spirit in the new town.
“At the moment I’m focussing on the older residents of Shannon Town, the people who would have come in the initial stages of the set up. I’m getting great memories of those days in the town and the sense of camaraderie that seems to have been here.
“What comes up again and again is that because they were here without their family support systems with them that they had to rely on one another. There was a great sense of community spirit.”
She said that there was a lot of excitement among the people about the creation of the new town.
“It was a completely new set up. I’m hearing a lot about the sense of excitement. The country was just coming out of the 1950s, economic depression and emigration.
“This was a good news story, something happening here on the west coast of Ireland where you’d least expect it. There were jobs being created and houses being built. It was an incentive for a lot of people to return to Ireland.”
She said that she wants to speak to some people who arrived in Ireland to work in companies that opened new operations in Shannon, “With the multi-national companies setting up on the industrial estate a lot of foreign executives would have come over, bringing their families with them.
“I haven’t spoken to any of them yet, but I have got names and addresses. A lot of them would have gone back to their own countries after the initial set up. Hopefully I’ll get some of their memories as well.
“People are being very generous, giving me lots of photographs and other memorabilia. Just as you called I was looking at a cookbook that was produced by the local ICA, which was newly set up in 1965 in Shannon. It’s an international cookbook, because at that time there were so many foreigners that they could put it together. There was an organisation of all the ICA guilds going on at the time and they produced this for it.”
She hopes to have all the interviews done and a report completed by the end of the year, with a book to be completed in 2012.