Summmer Holidays In Ballybunion, Co. Kerry, Ireland 1963

A visit to the seaside town of Ballybunion, County Kerry.
‘Radharc: Holidays in Ireland’ provides a unique picture of Irish life in 1963. During a visit to Ballybunion on the August bank holiday week Fr. Peter Lemass talks to local people and visitors about what Ballybunion has to offer.
The local doctor describes Ballybunion as,
A cross between Miami beach and Piccadilly.
This episode of ‘Radharc’ was broadcast on 24 October 1963. The presenter is Father Peter Lemass.

[@peterphosphate5436]

Not long after this film was made my parents used to take me to Ballybunion during the summer holidays and I would be clambering up and down the cliff face. The place holds childhood memories for me so it was interesting to see this clip from more or less the time of my childhood days.

[@noelledwith777]

Fell off a cliff in nuns beach in 1982 ,spent two weeks in tralee hospital, THANKS to all who supported me and my family

[@nicholaswarrington9090]

I go there at least once a year to see family. My grandparents live there. It’s lovely.

[@tiakore7524]

I remember lovely big waves and a long beach, great fun, roller disco, candy floss and always running to someone you knew there.

[@dearg_doom]

We used to go there in the early '90s. Thirty years after this video and thirty before now...

[@Lar308]

I was a Garda in Ballybunion back then - godforsaken spot in the winter though - was glad to see the back of it.

[@jonikelly3905]

Love Ballybunion🥰

[@maescreeney8307]

Such Happy Memories of spending Sunday's in Ballybunnion with my Family. Visit every year when I return home to Abbeyfeale. Best place in The World.x

[@alsw7792]

Fascinating look back.

[@michaellynch8457]

To see and hear Old Dr Hannon! Wow, after all this time. A lovely man whose dedicated son took over from him a few years later only to die tragically young. So many childhood memories wrapped up in this.

[@elizabethburns-rj3qy]

Thanks for sharing your footage of yesterday's ❤from Ireland 1:48 🇮🇪 x ⚘🌈🌍

[@breakingewes1316]

Do you know who the priest was please?

[@michaellynch8457]

@@breakingewes1316According to the details it is Fr Peter Lamass. I can't say I remember him.

[@230919600]

Flashbacks lol beautiful country Ireland thank you

[@sula1529]

Where are you from?

[@brianingarfill1773]

Thanks for the enjoyable memories. I had to visit my "awfully strict" grandmother each year in the '60s. I still have several photos from "Frank snaps" and learnt to swim at the black rocks.

[@seandelap6268]

I love my trips to Ballybunion.

[@brendadrumm9451]

Well I would have did years ago if my ex hubby yrs ago took me to meet his family after he came to England we went back all he did was get peed up ended up ln a garda car got rid of him a few yrs after waste of space

[@judymanning2538]

Thank you 🍀

[@markalexwhite]

We had the use of our uncle's mobile home above the beach in the 70s and 80s! Ryan O'Brian's Cave down on the beach was a favourite visit - when the tide was out :-)

[@Lar308]

Poor father and son were drowned there when I was a Garda there in 1992 - tide came in and trapped them. Saddest day in my career that day. RIP.

[@clairesullivan3868]

My husband’s cousins ran the amusements ( the bumper cars) in Ballybunion!

[@sula1529]

My local beach ⛱ 😎 💕

[@kevinfitzsimons41]

Ah the pre little boy racer days in Ballybunion! It was a lovely place then.

[@jamesbradshaw3389]

Why was I not born and brought up in Ballybunion, I had to live in a place Connemara, looking at the many mountains, valleys, lakes, rivers and out along the wind Atlantic seashore. Some people live a hard life but I refuse to complain.

[@donnydonnybrook8131]

The sand, The Sun, The sea.... Ballybunion

[@Scotia6261]

William Bonan was the last retainer of the castle but his overlord Fitzmaurice destroyed it lest it get into English hands .. ..Bonan was resident in nearby Kilahenny in the late 1580s

[@eringobreathtiocfaidharla1446]

Ballabunnin by the sea

[@paddyo3841]

Oh sweet Ireland … don’t let your history be destroyed ☘️

[@petermgruhn]

Hot seaweed baths!

[@thelastdetail1]

" a cross between Miami beach and Piccadilly wouldn´t you say......"

[@dellhell8842]

2:50 The old doctor lamenting Irish culture was going in 1963. Just shows, regardless of the era, when some people get a bit older, they want the country frozen in the time of their youth. It doesn't happen of course, change is continuous.

[@adrianc1264]

The doctor was lamenting how easy it is to lose your culture. He was right

[@cigh7445]

Yes change is continuous. 1900 - 1990, that doctors century lets say, was a time of dramatic change. From the back end of a famine, a newly formed culture of emigration, depopulation, continuing language shift, a popular revolution and independence, a failed State/school led language revival project in which 55% of the schools from the late 1920s to 1940s were Irish medium (collapsed to something like less than 5% after that), economic war with Britain, the Emergency years during WW2, huge uncertainty about what was going to happen, Spanish Flu outbreak. Ireland's vision during those years was self-sufficiency, cultural revival/decolonisation, standing up for the rights of small nations on the world stage even if it meant speaking out against superpowers like the US. Ireland's weakness during those years were economic difficulties, emigration and too much power at the Church (an understandable development given Ireland's history). What is Ireland's vision today? If it were not for the success of the GAA and for the Gaeltacht Irish speakers who are hanging on by a thread to their language and their homes then Ireland would be just another Anglosphere country by now. 'Modernity' and globalisation, the free market economy taken to the extreme with neoliberal policies, American multinationals creating the Celtic Tiger by taking advantage of Ireland's generous tax incentives. 40% of Irish people are wealthier today because of these policies, the top 10% and the top 1% - those who were affluent already before the Celtic Tiger - really took advantage of the opportunities and became insanely wealthy. But what is the price of 'modernity'? The affluent Dublin elites who before the Celtic Tiger were talking like posh English people are talking like Americans now. Ireland has almost no self sufficiency, it is completely reliant on imports for most things, one economist described Ireland as no different to an American region or State in economic terms, modern Ireland wouldn't dare speak out against American colonialism in places like Hawaii. Modern Ireland's vision is narrow, short sighted, economists are worshipped as Gods despite the fact that modern western economic growth and development are destroying the planet, they are finite, leaving a mess for the future. I suppose the question is, what is Irish culture? What was Irish culture? What will Irish culture be? That's up to Irish people, will they develop vision again or have they finally been assimilated mentally to the Greater Anglosphere? In a rambling way, the point I'm making is that Irish culture has been in a state of flux and change for a long time now in a way that others haven't. Sure Sweden has changed a lot, but the Swedes can still draw an unquestioning line from now back to 1600 and say that 'we are changed but we are still these people'. Most Irish people can't unquestioningly do so, that is what colonisation did to us.

[@trishsullivan9261]

Parents from Ballyheigue

[@robbiebanks9182]

Used to fish the black rock near ballyheigue