Photograph of nurses and doctors from Fanad Health Club
TWO Donegal County Archive collections have been digitised and are now available online. The collections include information on Fanad Health Club, 1931 – 1935 and the Social and Cultural Study of Crofter Life on the West Donegal Seaboard, a thesis by Patrick O’Neill in 1940.
The Fanad Life Club collection includes a sheet outlining the cost of Queen’s Jubilee Nurses, including salary and uniforms, notes relating to the history of the setting up of the Club and correspondence between members of the Club.
There is also hand-written minutes of meetings and notes of events from January 17th 1932 to July 24th 1935 along with photographs. There is hand-written correspondence between Father McCaul, Frosses, and Mrs Barton, Portsalon Hotel, concerning fundraising for the association.
The 1935 Annual Report and other correspondence from Donegal County Committee of District Nursing Association and Donegal County Nursing Association is also included. There is a list of collectors of funds and posters, sketches, cuttings from newspapers, invitation cards, tickets etc concerning fundraising activities, such as garden fetes, dances and carnivals for the Club.
Sketch of the types of houses along the Western Seaboard
The second collection, the thesis by Patrick O’Neill, includes hand drawn statistical maps of Donegal, including of structural features of a sea curragh. It also includes a sketch of ‘crofter’s lime kiln’, drawings of spools and pot for holding yarn and house types along western seaboard plus older types of ‘crofter dwelling’.
There are black and white photographs of Upper Finn Valley, and houses and cottages in Knockfola, Traweenagh Bay, Gibbstown, Co Meath, Ballyroarty, Stranocloc (Owenea Valley), Sthraboy, Teelin, Altnagoire (Ranafast), Drumeen, Rann na Gille, Teelin- Seamus, Bunbeg, and also Norway.
The thesis was submitted to Queens University Belfast and is also available in the college library.
The collections are available online at: http://www.donegalcoco.ie/culture/archives/selected%20digitised%20archives/