Welcome to another Throwback Thursday post! We are a little obsessed with vintage photos of weddings gone by. It’s amazing to see the progress of a particular hotel and often, photos are our best way of connecting with the past.
In the 1970’s, the hotel was yet to become Ballygarry House Hotel and was still known as The Manhattan. Just two years before the decade began, Owen McGillicuddy had returned from Switzerland to take over the hotel (where Owen’s son, Padraig is now running).
The 1970’s were a very mixed time for the county of Kerry. While in 1970, Kerry defeated Meath and beat Dublin in 1975, many of the county’s farmers suffered great financial losses with Foot and Mouth disease affecting cattle in the late sixties. Much of Kerry’s agricultural sector found it the rest of the decade a struggle to come back from such a huge loss but could find a little release from their stresses and fun in a local social.
The Manhattan in the 1970’s provided a major hot spot of Tralee and the surrounding villages. Widely famous for hosting fantastic evenings and events, people would often travel far and wide just to enjoy some of their free time at the venue.
Personally, my obsession with vintage photos may come from the big mix of photos that can be found in my grandmother’s old Afternoon Tea tin boxes. Every shape and style photo can be found in these boxes, stacked up high in her prayer room. Much of my childhood has been spent flicking through and organizing the photos, many of which you might find a photo of her and my grandfather at a social.
Maybe it’s the colour of the photos, the fashion, or the expressions on their faces… But all of these photos can leave you with a yearning to know what it was like in that time. Plus, it can be wonderful to see what your parents and grandparents looked like in their more youthful days!
Eileen and Patrick Scannell at The Manhattan
A special thank you to the team at Ballygarry House Hotel (and my grandmother) for sourcing this imagery for us.
