Celebrating Queen Victoria on the Green in Mayo

A CONTRIBUTOR to The Connaught Telegraph in 1897 had little time for the royal family ‘living in the lap of luxury in their grandiose mansion in the heart of London’, he wrote.

And he had even less time for the few local ‘creatures’ who held a picnic on the Green to celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday.

Queen’s Vic’s birthday party was attended by Lord and Lady Lucan, dressed in their Sunday best. The partygoers unfurled the Union Jack to loud applause and sang ‘God Save the Queen’ with great gusto.

However the writer in the Telegraph was only warming up and said the unfurling of the English flag on the sacred soil of Castlebar was silly and stupid, and made the flag wavers look ridiculous.

With a few small exceptions, the event was treated with utter contempt by the decent people of Castlebar, he added.

Castlebar was a garrison town at the time with close on one thousand British soldiers based in the local Military Barracks.

The soldiers were a great boost to the local economy from the point of view of public houses, grocery shops, farmers supplying vegetables to the army and the big number of local men and women employed in the barracks.

The Irish people have a deep interest in the goings-on of members of the royal family. Over 20,000 of Prince Harry’s book have been sold in the Irish Republic.

I wonder what the author of the article in The Connaught Telegraph in the late 1800s would think of the recent shenanigans of the royal family?

No much, I imagine.