In Ringsend, the historical society is building an archive of photos and more

Ger Siggins measures his father Brian’s collection of documents about Ringsend through the ages in rooms.

“It’s several rooms now,” he said in early June.

Brian Siggins was a local historian, and the author of The Great White Fair, a book detailing the Irish International Exhibition of 1907 in Herbert Park.

He passed away in November 2020, leaving behind boxes stuffed with history and the evolution of Ringsend, Sandymount, and Irishtown, he says. 

“It was right back to the first settlements. He dug really deep into the ancient history of the area,” he says.

Old newspaper clippings were in there, from the Irish Times to copies of the Freeman’s Journal from the 19th century, he says. “Photographs as well. He had a fantastic collection of maps.”

It was extensive and it kept growing, he said. “People would bring pictures along to exhibitions or lectures, and he would copy them.”

Siggins tried to donate many of the photos to the National Photographic Archive, he said. “They just told me they wouldn’t accept them unless they were catalogued and captioned.”

He didn’t have the time. So instead, he started to donate boxes to places like St Matthew’s Church of Ireland and St Patrick’s Church, he said. “Ringsend Tech got a couple, because he worked there for his career.”

Siggins divided it out among every relevant place and person, including Eddie Bohan, a local historian in the Ringsend District and Historical Society, he says. “If Eddie wants any more, he’s welcome to it.”

Donations like those have been steadily building since the society was set up in 2022, said Bohan, in a corner of The Merry Cobbler in Irishtown on the first Wednesday in June. “We’d go, ‘No, don’t throw these out. We’ll take them.’”

There wasn’t really a grand plan to all this, Bohan said. But eventually, he and other members of the society started to put their heads together and started thinking about creating an archive to celebrate the town’s local history.

Everything is there. It isn’t catalogued yet, he says. “It’s time and resources now.”

Boxes and boxes

Bohan sipped a glass in a booth at the front of The Merry Cobbler, while “The Air That I Breathe” by the Hollies played over the speakers on Wednesday afternoon.

It was a rare moment of calm as the Ringsend District and Historical Society were preparing for Bloomsday once more, he said. “Because we’re such a small society, when we’re concentrating on Bloomsday…”

He pauses and whispers: “We are concentrating on Bloomsday.”

But, in the midst of the chaos of getting it all ready, he decided to test the area’s enthusiasm for something like an archive.

In May, he had been going through Brian Siggins’ photographs, doing some research on Canon Joseph Mooney, the Ringsend parish priest who helped to rebuild St Patrick’s Church. 

“And I came across pictures of the old church before it was redeveloped to what it is today. A one-storey building,” he says.

He found photos of outside and inside, says Bohan. “Most unusual, because it was knocked in 1913. So this was amazing to see.”

He scanned the pictures and posted them to the society’s social media pages, he said. “And the reaction was massive. The reach we got, engagements was nearly 2,000 between Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.”

He followed this up with a poll, asking society members if they would like to see and support the creation of an archive, be it online or physical. 

Ninety-nine people got back: 33 percent said they wanted to see an online archive with public access, 38 percent said they’d love a physical museum, and 26 percent offered to help.  

They are going to start simple by first focusing on an online archive, Bohan says.

Now, it’s getting down to the essential work, he says. “We are in the process of buying a couple of computers. Laptops. A scanner. We’ll start the work ourselves.”

They are engaging with archivists over in Trinity College to get some real expertise, he says. “It’s to have a teaching tool or platform, because in fairness, there’s an opportunity to give someone a job here. There’s work in it if we get the funding.”

Once their five-day Bloomsday festival had concluded, that’s the next project, he says. “It’s getting that up and running, put it on a website.”

It’s small steps, he says. But the ultimate plan would be to have a heritage shop in Ringsend, with a rotation of items from the archive put on display. “You know, to celebrate the area, and help self-fund the society.”

Thinking long into the future

All of this, from the scanning to cataloguing, is a three- to five-year project, Bohan says. “That’s just what we’ve collected so far. But once it’s done, that is a rich reserve.”

It would be ideal if the state could provide funding for local history archives like this, he says. “It would have an impact if they could set aside a certain fund for archives, so that societies like ours, such as Killester’s, Donnybrook’s or Tullamore’s, all their collections could be put together.”

That’s tricky though. 

Seeking funding is always the big task, says Sian Muldowney, the co-ordinator of the Inner City Organisations Network Dublin, which since 2022 has been developing an archive devoted to community development in the inner-city.

The Fergus McCabe Community Development Archive, 1970 to 2010, was able to source funding, and create a partnership with Dublin City Library Archive, Muldowney says. “That work has now just started a month ago.”

But their stream of funding is through the North-East Inner City Initiative, she says. “And that’s very particular to this area. So I can understand how other projects in other areas would have difficulty sourcing funding.”

The Fergus McCabe project is unique, says Lorraine McLoughlin, the city archivist at Dublin City Council. “It’s basically the first processing of a community archive within the city council, or anywhere in the city, that is housed by the city.”

A local historic archive like that proposed in Ringsend is a community archive. But gaining support from state or local authorities is challenging, says McLoughlin.

“The fundamental organisation of these collections is dependent on where it is sourced, rather than who pays for it,” she says.

The National Archives wouldn’t be in a position to support a local historic group, she says. “They look after departmental records and any sorts of initiatives that are nationwide.”

A local authority’s archive focuses on corporate matters, she says. “We have to make sure we have the archive that pertain to the services provided by the city.”

But the first step would be for anyone in a historical group to come into the City Archive and discuss what they have preserved, she says. 

“And what I’d say is, think long into the future, and if you can’t guarantee your buildings can sustain these standards over a century, then consider donating to us so we can offer access back across generations,” she says.

There needs to be a new type of municipal archive established that is focused on community archives, says Bohan, the local historian in the Ringsend District and Historical Society. 

“Somewhere to allow communities like us to be able to input into it our stories, because we’re losing our history. If we don’t do anything now, it’s going to be lost,” he says. “That’s my concern.”