March 2004 Edition

The Archives Department, University College Dublin, has recently produced its first online exhibition. It mirrors a physical display in the lobby of the department and features photographs from a small collection (P168) that was deposited in the department in 1999 by George and Sandra Holland. The collection in question is a photograph album that once belonged to Harold Barbour, a relative of the Hollands.

Harold Adrian Barbour (1874–1938) was a leading member of the co-operative movement in Ireland. He came from a family of industrialists, his grandfather being the founder of a famous thread-linen works, Barbour & Sons. His father, John Barbour, was instrumental in helping a group of workers set up a consumer co-operative in Lisburn in 1881. Harold, himself, became President of the Lisburn Co-operative Society in 1900. He was very active in IAOS (Irish Agricultural Organisation Society) and was a good friend of its founder, Sir Horace Plunkett. He was also active in IAWS (Irish Agricultural Wholesale Society) and UAOS (Ulster Agricultural Organisation Society) and helped set up many co-operative societies throughout Ireland.

The photographs in the album range in date from 1909 to 1913 and are of exceptional quality both in terms of subject matter and their physical state. In fact, the Audio Visual Centre in UCD, who carried out the digitisation, commented that Barbour must have had access to the very best photographic equipment of his day, such is the clarity of the photographs contained in the album.

There is a common theme throughout, as Barbour took the majority of the photographs on his trips throughout the north and west of Ireland promoting the co-operative movement. They capture the conditions in rural Ireland in 1909–13, and the importance of co-operative societies to farming and fishing communities at this time. Barbour also annotated the album with interesting captions about the success of these co-operatives.

A selection of twenty-five of the 146 photographs were selected for exhibition and grouped into geographical themes, as laid out in the album. The regions represented by the exhibition are Sligo/Leitrim; Kerry; Iar-Connacht; Donegal; and Down, and portray farming and fishing communities at work; vernacular architecture and dress; living conditions; and also a folklore collecting expedition by Dr Douglas Hyde, who, apart from being the first President of Ireland, was also an eminent Irish scholar and folklorist, a founding member of Conradh na Gaeilge, and author of the seminal Love Songs of Connacht. The photographs show him at work collecting folklore in Iar-Connacht with Alice Stopford-Green, another famous Irish historian.

The exhibition can be accessed at <www.ucd.ie/archives/html/exhibition.htm>.

Lisa Collins
Archives Department, University College Dublin

Exhibitions List