Aerial photos of Carrick-on-Suir taken 93 years ago show how town has grown and changed

Pictured above: Carrick Men’s Shed members pictured during a visit to Brewery Lane Theatre on January 23 to view the Aerofilms aerial photo of the town displayed in the tearoom. Men’s Shed members framed the photograph. Standing: Wattie Dunphy of Brewery Lane Theatre, Carrick Men’s Shed members Terry Flynn, Pat Callanan, Tom Burke, Stephen O’Grady and Tom Coleman. Seated: Patsy Travers-Mullins, who discovered the photograph on the Aerofilms archive, James Hogan, Johnny Kelly and Michael Dineen.

Panoramic aerial photos of Carrick-on-Suir taken almost a century ago show how the town has changed and grown in the intervening years and captures long lost landmarks like the Workhouse ruins for posterity.

Three stunning black and white photographs of Carrick taken by the fearless aerial photographers of the pioneering Aerofilms company in 1933 were discovered by Patsy Travers Mullins when she was looking through the company’s online archive some years ago.

READ ALSO: Carrick-on-Suir Musical Society announces date tickets for Man of La Mancha go on sale

She has worked, with the help of Cllr Kieran Bourke, to ensure the people of Carrick can appreciate them in all their glory by obtaining large prints of the photos and getting them publicly displayed in Brewery Lane Theatre and three schools in the town.

“About seven years ago I was scrolling through the Aerofilms images online and decided to check out Carrick-on-Suir,” Patsy recalled.

“I found three lovely images taken in 1933 from different angles but I did a double take when I spotted a building on the outskirts on the Clonmel Road. It was the Workhouse or the Poorhouse as it was called locally.”

The ruins of the Workhouse that was burned during the Civil War a decade earlier are visible in two of the photographs, and one in particular. The photos were taken before the ruins were demolished and the site cleared for the building of Treacy Park housing estate.

Patsy said she phoned the late writer, poet and local historian Michael Coady to tell him of her discovery.

“He was as excited as I was when I showed him. The building had been there since 1839 and the first occupants were received in 1842.

“In 1922, the Workhouse was being used as a barracks by Free State troops, who had taken control of the town. Republican forces captured it and set fire to it before retreating.

“The photos show the entire concrete structure and we can see how big the building was.”

Patsy’s interest in the aerial photography of Aerofilms Ltd was piqued when she watched a BBC documentary series presented by Andrew Marr about the four-year Britain from Above project.

This project involved conserving 95,000 of Aerofilm’s oldest and most valuable photos dating from 1919 to 1953 by digitising them on an online archive.

Aerofilms, founded shortly after World War I, built up the largest and most historically significant record of aerial photography in private ownership.

Patsy said the company’s clients were often manufacturers and their aerial photography crews flew anywhere in Britain and Ireland to meet their clients’ needs.

The flying photographers took the photos by leaning out of open cockpit biplanes with large bulky cameras.

She was drawn to watch the BBC series as it covered the aerial photographs taken by Aerofilms during World War 11. Her father fought in the war while her mother lived through the Nazi occupation of France.

“My dad Paddy Travers was in Monty’s (General Montgomery’s) 8th Army and we grew up listening to history through stories of their exploits and learned geography from our family atlas pointing out the places they had been in North Africa and Europe. My mam lived in Paris throughout the war and was there for the liberation of the city in 1944.”

Patsy was a member of the local committee that organised an exhibition at Carrick Heritage Centre in 2016 of the photographs of Robert ‘Sonny’ Cash, who chronicled the life and times of the people of Carrick-on-Suir and its hinterland in the late 19th century and early years of the 20th century on his camera. The exhibition marked the 100th anniversary of Mr Cash’s death in a fire at his home and studio on Carrick’s Main Street.

As with Sonny Cash’s photographic collection, Patsy wanted to share the Aerofilm images of her hometown with its people.

Patsy said the Sonny Cash Committee raised money locally through donations and a fundraiser and she received permission from her fellow Committee members to put the money left over from that fund towards purchasing high resolutions prints of the aerial photos from the Historic England site. The large poster size prints of the three photos were printed in Dublin and cost €120.

“It was money well spent,” Patsy told The Nationalist.

One of the prints is displayed in Brewery Lane Theatre's tea room and others are exhibited in St. Mary’s CBS Green School and the new Gaelscoil Charraig na Siúire.

Cllr Kieran Bourke purchased a separate set of prints of the three photographs in the hope Tipperary County Council would agree to display them in Carrick-on-Suir Town Hall.

This didn’t come to pass and he instead donated them to Comeragh College Community School where they now hang as an unique visual record of what Carrick-on-Suir once looked like from a birds eye view. 

The framed aerial photo of Carrick-on-Suir on display in Brewery Lane Theatre

The other two Aerofilms photograph of Carrick-on-Suir taken in in 1933. 

This feature is also published in the latest edition of The Nationalist on sale in local shops.

READ NEXT:Tipperary GAA club's weekly lotto jackpot prize has reached €11,250