Pupils at Kiskeam National School ended their summer term on a high note as they sang, played and danced for Minister Norma Foley who dropped in to the school during her visit to Duhallow last week. Minister Foley was accompanied by Fianna Fáil TD Michael Moynihan and Councillor Bernard Moynihan.
The capacity audience in Kiskeam Church for the recent St. Patrick’s night concert was testament to the affection and admiration the late Agnes Cronin was held in by the local community that she was such an integral part of until her untimely passing in January 2022.
IT was 40 years ago this week that one of Scotland’s most famous writers, AJ Cronin, passed away in a nursing home in Glion near Montreux in Switzerland at the age of 84. For one short period Archibald Joseph Cronin was the highest-earning novelist in the world, outselling even Agatha Christie, and he is credited with encouraging the foundation of the National Health Service. Cronin was born in Cardross, then in Dunbartonshire but now in Argyll and Bute, on July 19, 1896. In a mixed marriage that was unusual for the west of Scotland in those times, his mother was a Presbyterian named Jessie, nee Montgomerie, while his father Patrick was the son of Irish immigrants who ran a glass and china shop in Alexandria in the Vale of Leven over the Carman Hill from Cardross. His grandfather Alexander Montgomerie was a well-known hatter in Dumbarton.