A superb documentary just released by Ardmore sailor and fisherman Tony Gallagher will charm anyone with an affinity for the picturesque village, or for local history in general. Ardmore Now and Then is a 20-minute journey through both time and territory, led by the precise, lilting brogue of one of its own. Report Christy Parker Photo: Michael Hussey www.youghalonline.com

Tony, renowned for his informative and entertaining Blackwater cruises, turns his attention to his native village with enthralling effect. The footage, shot over four years, beautifully unfolds the tapestry of history, from early pre-Christian inscriptions, to the sandal-footed narrator himself signing off from Goat Island to the backing voice of Cara O’Sullivan’s poignant and profound ‘Last Rose of Summer.’

Most importantly, weaving wistfully through time, are the people that have shaped and shape the place named by St. Declan as Ard Mhor –‘High Place.’ For like a beckoning smile that pauses the traveller, Ardmore has always drawn the interested and the interesting; doffing their hats here are such as St Declan, Irish College co-founder and principal, Micheal O’Foghlu, artist John Lavery, Michael Collins,. playwright Mollie Keane, Collins, the Cockburns Claude, Patricia and sons and broadcaster Fergal Keane.

Vintage film from Irish film historian Kevin Brownlow is seamlessly tied to the narrator’s adroit and perceptive camera-work. We see Ardmore in its flamboyant summer attire, dinning at street-side tables or basking in its green-rich beauty along the cliff tops and aside its commanding tower. Then we witness the doom-grey skirts of tragedy as towering, ferocious seas don the mantle of lost boats and crews from two Nellie Fleming’s, the Fe de Zondes from Brittany and others forever held in memory by this coastal community.

Tony palms information like seashells plucked from Ardmore’s expansive shore. Much of his knowledge is memorised from the works of local historian Siobhan Lincoln.  He intercepts the music of piper David Power and traditional musicians Danu that spans the story to tell us that, “In August 1672, during the height of the Confederate wars, the Lords Broghill and Dungarvan laid siege to Ardmore. The people of the area took refuge in the round tower. With the arrival of the artillery, the fate of the defenders was sealed. A hundred and seventeen were hanged in one day and had their bodies displayed on the hill overlooking the village as a deterrent to further resistance.”

In 1875 Tony proceeds, the round tower was damaged in a thunderstorm as our eyes alight on a stark still photograph of the subsequent repair work in progress. Other such photos intersperse the footage, many drawn from the legacy left by the famous Horgan brothers of Youghal, cinematic pioneers extraordinaire.

We are taken to Dysart, St. Declan’s Well and to his grave, from which people departing the area took soil as a curative, to the cliff tops, to an outdoor, night time adoration service, to the resting places of the unfortunate Polis and Estonian sailors from the SS Ary, who perished off the south coast in 1943, to a local bar and ballad session, to farmland and, poignantly, onto a boat that traverses a river where “a government indifferent to a traditional way of living” effectively outlawed salmon fishing in 2006.

Tony first fashioned the notion of producing this documentary on a trip to Malta several decades ago. It would rekindle in his heart on subsequent foreign forays. “I always wanted to be able to hand it to anyone who they asked about where I come from,” he smiles, “so I could have my pint in peace!” Ardmore can be proud of his answer.

Ardmore Now and Then is available from Youghal Card Shop, Ardmore Pottery, Quinn’s Ardmore and from Tony Gallagher (087-9889076). Price: €20.
Click on image to see the launch of ‘Ardmore Now and Then’