28/03/2026
The Mealagh Valley Heritage Keepers, UCC School of History and UCC History Society warmly invite you to attend the screening of an oral history film focusing on the memories of the Mealagh Valley, a rural community in west Cork.
Voices of the Valley
Tuesday 31 March, 7pm
Boole 1
The film was produced as part of the Mealagh Valley Oral History Project. The project was generously funded by The Heritage Council and Cork County Council and is part of the Cork Folklore Project.
The Mealagh Valley in West Cork is a unique place in Europe, where a time before cars, before tractors, before electricity, and running water – is still living memory for the people who grew up here and who live here now.
In Voices of the Valley, twelve local elders share their stories – from All-Ireland singing champion Vincent Crowley to telephonist Mary Hurley, from flax farmer Mary O’Sullivan to Tom Conway, who helped bring electricity to Ireland’s remote islands with the ESB. Their recollections are funny, poignant, and deeply evocative, painting a portrait of a rural Ireland almost unimaginable today.
What emerges is not nostalgia, but an exploration of generational environmental change and communal spirit. Once, children searched for birds’ nests for fun – now the ditches are gone, and with them the birds. Everyone recalls the corncrake, once called the “sound of summer,” yet absent for over fifty years. Without judgment, the film invites us to reflect on what has vanished – not only from our natural environment, but from our communities – the neighbourliness, the meitheals, and the shared resilience of a different time.
