WEST Belfast’s newest tourist exhibition Áras Uí Chonghaile/James Connolly Visitor Centre is an impressive sight upon arrival and takes up a prominent space on the Falls Road, not far from where Connolly lived in Belfast.
As we arrived at 2pm the café was still busy from the lunch-time trade as we were greeted at reception and entered the ground floor exhibition chronicling Connolly’s life, from his travels, pioneering work with trade unions and ultimately his death as a revolutionary in 1916. First impressions are that the exhibition is extremely well laid out and accessible to all.
It starts from Connolly’s execution in the Stonebreaker’s Yard in Kilmainham Gaol after his exploits leading the Irish Citizen Army into battle on the streets of Dublin in Easter Week, and works its way back to Connolly’s early life, beginning with his birth in Edinburgh in 1868.
The exhibition explains Connolly’s humble origins and how he was no stranger to poverty throughout his life. Despite having left school at a very early age, he was driven to learn and to understand the world around him. The exhibition charts how Connolly was determined to make working conditions better for the poor and details his relationship with his wife Lillie.
Throughout the exhibition there are audio and visual aids to the Connolly story to help you along the way. You can listen to an actor read some of Connolly’s best known speeches and pamphlets. A stand-out of the exhibition is the RTÉ archive interviews, many of which were recorded in 1966, the fiftieth anniversary of the Rising. Included in the interviews are Connolly’s daughter Nora and son Roddy. The interview with Nora is particularly poignant. Even though there was a distance of half a century between her speaking and events she was recalling, she described in detail her final two meetings with her father in Dublin Castle, accompanied by her mother, as her father lay wounded in his bed. As she travelled back in time she recalled British soldiers lying in mattresses in the corridors outside his make-shift cell, and her mother’s reaction when Connolly finally broke the news to her that he was to be executed.
The exhibition designers behind Áras Uí Chonghaile were also taking in the tour during our visit. On show in the exhibition is an authentic 1916 Proclamation, a confiscated bayonet taken by a British soldier from an Irish Volunteer outside the GPO, an Irish Citizen Army pistol that was used to guard Liberty Hall in the weeks leading up to the Rising, the GPO door handle, a whistle used by the Postmaster of the GPO to evacuate the post office after the Volunteers had entered the building, as well as some of the original printing blocks of the 1916 Proclamation. Many of these items are on loan from West Belfast historian Pat O’Hagan. Infact many of the visual aids on the walls are designed using the fonts of the original Proclamation printing blocks.
There is also an opportunity for the visitor to be photographed in the audience as Connolly addresses a large union rally in the United States.
Upstairs, paintings of James Connolly and Winifred Carney, his secretary in the GPO during those historic events, can be viewed, painted by Tony Bell, and Robert Ballagh’s ‘A Terrible Beauty’ frames the entrance to the second floor’s Connolly Library. The library, developed with the help and support of Conor Kenny of the world famous Kenny’s bookshop based in Galway, has a formidable collection of writings from Coiste na n-Iarchimí and Tar Anall as well as donations from individual collectors. The library is built to offer a quiet space to understand James Connolly and offers papers for researchers and academics.
And it doesn’t end there. On the third floor there is an event space that opens up onto a balcony that overlooks the Falls Road
Also taking in the exhibition during this reporter’s visit was Desmond Cassidy, a direct descendant of Winifred Carney.
“The exhibition is really first class,” said a delighted Desmond. “The building is beautiful and I hope it will go on for years, it’s a beautiful layout.”
To book tickets visit https://arasuichonghaile.com/
