The Peter Power Collection.

Some years ago, I was kindly given access to a collection of photographs owned
by Mary and Peter Power, some of which are presented below. 

In the pubs of Dunmore East during the 1980s, one man’s talent rose above all others: Peter Power, widely regarded as the master of the perfect pint of Guinness. Long before fancy pouring techniques or social media tutorials, Peter had already perfected the craft. He understood that a great pint wasn’t just about taste—it was about patience, presentation, and a bit of quiet pride.

He gave every pint its due time to settle, never rushing the process, letting the dark velvet rise slowly beneath the creamy head. And then came the flourish people still talk about: the trademark shamrock Peter would deftly trace on top. It wasn’t for show—at least not entirely. For Peter, a pint should look as good as it tasted, and he refused to hand over anything less.

Regulars would swear you couldn’t find a better pint of Guinness anywhere in Ireland. Some believed the secret was in his steady hand; others said it was the pride he poured into every glass. Whatever the magic was, one thing is certain: when Peter Power pulled your pint, you were getting something special—served with skill, care, and the quiet confidence of a man who truly loved his craft.

A colourised photo of when, in November 1968, the fishermen and fish buyers of Dunmore East donated 150 barrels of salted herring for famine relief in Biafra. This picture showing them preparing the load was featured in national newspapers at the time. The fish was valued at £900, which was a lot of money in 1968. Irish Shipping delivered the shipment. It was a generous gesture, and these men should be remembered for it.

In this photograph we see two familiar figures from Dunmore’s political landscape of the 1980s: Noel McDonagh and Brendan Griffin. Both men carried genuine political ambition in their day. Brendan, of course, went on to hold the distinguished title of directly elected Mayor of Dunmore, a role that earned him the enduring nickname “The Mayor”—a name he proudly carries to this day. Noel, meanwhile, stood as a candidate in the local elections, and was well regarded and widely supported within the local community.

Looking back now, you can’t help but think that if either of them had been propelled onto the national stage, they might have brought a steadier hand and a fairer approach than many of the political leaders who dominated Ireland in the 1980s. Still, as the old saying goes, a country gets and deserves the politicians that the majority votes for.

There were many characters around Dunmore East in years gone by whose names you would know even before you met them. One such man was Connie “Fancy” Power of Portally, a fisherman, harbour man and, in later years, a familiar daily visitor to Bill’s.

Connie belonged to an older generation of Portally people whose lives were closely tied to the sea. Today Portally is a quiet and somewhat exclusive place, but in earlier times it supported a considerable fishing community. Boats were hauled up in the cove, lobster pots were worked along the coast and generations of families made what living they could from the waters between Dunmore, Brownstown and the Hook.

The Power family was very much part of that community. Connie’s son, Buddy “Fancy” Power, recalled that at the beginning of the twentieth century there had been more than a hundred men living around Portally. It gives some idea of how different the place must have been in Connie’s younger days.

Connie himself spent much of his working life around boats and the sea. He fished from Portally and was particularly associated with lobster fishing, an occupation that demanded a good knowledge of the coastline, the tides and the underwater ground where the pots were set.

Lobster fishing from a small boat was no leisurely occupation. Pots had to be hauled by hand, rebaited and returned to exactly the right ground, often with a swell running and the boat rising and falling beneath you. A man working from Portally needed to know every reef, ledge and dangerous patch of water along that coast. Long before electronic navigation, that knowledge was carried in a fisherman’s head, a particular house lined up with a field, a gap between two hills, or some other mark ashore telling him where his pots lay.

Connie also appears to have been equally at home around the Dunmore East Harbour. A photograph from the 1950s showing repair work being carried out there includes Connie among the men assisting during a diving operation. It was fairly typical of the working lives of local men at the time. Fishing might have been their main occupation, but when work was available around the harbour they turned their hands to whatever needed doing.

And there was always something needing doing in Dunmore.

Boats had to be maintained, gear repaired and fish landed. It was physical work, often carried out in conditions that might not appeal to many younger workers today.

Like many of the great village characters, stories accumulated around Connie. One concerns the arrival of colour television. According to local tradition, Connie, who like everyone else at the time had only a black-and-white television, decided to paint the television aerial, presumably believing that this might somehow enable the colour reception.

Whether Connie actually believed this, whether he was pulling somebody’s leg, or whether the story improved somewhat in the telling over the years is probably best left unanswered. In Dunmore East, a good story was never allowed to suffer unnecessarily from too much investigation.

By the time the photograph featured here was taken, Connie was an elderly man and the hard days of hauling lobster pots were behind him. But he still had his routine.

In his later years, Connie went to Bill’s every day before lunch. There he would sit for a while, have his drink and meet whoever happened to come through the door. In those days the Butcher’s Bar was much more than somewhere to buy a pint. It was a meeting place where the news of the harbour and village was exchanged, where stories were told and retold, and where a man could sit quietly without necessarily having to say very much at all.

The photograph captures that world rather well. Connie is sitting at a small table, his cap still on his head and a pint of stout in front of him. Around him are the dark wooden chairs and tables of the old pub interior. There is nothing staged about the picture. Somebody simply pointed a camera in his direction and caught Connie as generations of Dunmore people would have remembered him.

Looking at him there, it is easy to forget the younger man who once worked the lobster pots from Portally Cove, helped with work around the harbour and belonged to a fishing community that has now largely disappeared.

Connie “Fancy” Power belonged to a Dunmore East and Portally where the sea provided both work and danger, where men learned their trade from the generation before them and where much of village life revolved around the harbour.

And after all those years on the water and around the harbour, Connie gradually settled into a rather more comfortable daily appointment.

Each day, sometime before lunch, the door of Bill’s would open and in would come Connie Fancy.

This is Eddie Don and his dog, Dean, posing outside Bill’s, probably sometime in the 1950s. The name on the sign in the window refers to Bill Power Snr., father of Peter, Helen and Billy.

Long before there was a Centra or a Londis in Dunmore East, the Power family were supplying the village with everything anyone could want. If you needed meat for the dinner, it was cut freshly from a carcass right in front of your eyes in the butcher’s shop. If you wanted butter, they supplied that too—made from milk from a herd that grazed on the Shanoon, where the sea mist rolled in over the cliff and gave the butter a salty, sea-air taste. And if that salty butter left you with a thirst, you didn’t have far to go, you could step into Bill’s bar and enjoy a drink or two while catching up on all the local news from other thirsty customers. The Powers have catered to Dunmore’s every need—food, drink and conversation—for as long as anyone can remember.

This colourised photo features Bill and Katie Power, with young Billy and Peter in the front. 

This photo captures a fish auction in Dunmore East during the 1960s, a time when the harbour was at the heart of daily life and the rhythm of the village followed the comings and goings of the fishing fleet. The scene is full of movement—boxes of freshly landed fish, buyers leaning in for a closer look, and the quiet authority of the auctioneer keeping everything flowing.

On the left-hand side of the picture, I can clearly recognise Geoff Power, Maurice Power and John Roche, three well-known figures around the pier in those days. They were men who knew their trade inside out, familiar faces at the auctions where deals were struck quickly and often with nothing more than a nod, a wink or a handshake.

This photograph was taken at Dunmore East on Friday, the 9th of August 1996, on a day that marked the end of an era for the local lifeboat station. After more than twenty years of service, the RNLB St Patrick was preparing to leave Dunmore for the last time.

The St Patrick, seen here in the foreground, was a 44-foot Waveney-class lifeboat. She had arrived at Dunmore East in March 1975 and over the next twenty-one years became as familiar a sight around the harbour as the lighthouse10000. During her time at the station she was launched 252 times and was credited with saving 83 lives.

By 1996, however, the Waveney class was being phased out and Dunmore East was due to receive a new Trent-class lifeboat, the Elizabeth and Ronald. The St Patrick had gone north for her annual refit and, for a time, there was some doubt as to whether she would return to Dunmore before being withdrawn from service. After more than two decades together, it was understandable that her crew wanted the chance to bring her home and give her a proper farewell. In the end, arrangements were made for her to return one last time.

And it was some farewell.

Hundreds of people gathered in Dunmore East, while an impressive air-sea rescue exercise was arranged involving the St Patrick, the relief lifeboat Barham, the Fethard-on-Sea inshore lifeboat, an Irish Air Corps Dauphin helicopter and the Irish Naval Service patrol vessel LÉ Ciara (P42).

That is the scene recorded in this photograph.

The St Patrick is driving through the swell in the foreground, while the Ciara, dressed overall with signal flags, lies behind her. In the top left of the photograph, the Air Corps Dauphin can be seen taking part in the exercise. One of the demonstrations involved six local firemen being airlifted aboard the Ciara, which was playing the part of a vessel with a fire on board. An emergency involving an injured canoeist was also staged as part of the display.

The weather appears to have added a little authenticity of its own. There was a good sea running and no shortage of wind and spray, which somehow seems more appropriate than a flat calm for the farewell of a lifeboat. For more than twenty years the St Patrick had gone to sea in conditions far worse than these, often at times when most sensible people were very glad to be ashore.

There was, of course, a serious purpose to the exercise. Lifeboat crews, the Naval Service and the Air Corps all needed to know how to work together when an emergency arose, and exercises such as this provided valuable experience. But for the people watching from Dunmore that afternoon, the occasion meant something more.

It was a chance to say goodbye to an old friend.

For twenty-one years the St Patrick had been part of the life of the village. She had left the harbour in darkness, in winter gales and in heavy seas, answering calls from fishing boats, yachts and others in difficulty along the coast. There were families who had very good reason to remember the sight of her coming towards them through the sea.

When the time finally came for her departure, the St Patrick left Dunmore East to a 21-gun salute, bringing to a close one of the most memorable chapters in the history of the station.

Her replacement, the Trent-class Elizabeth and Ronald, arrived the following month and officially went on service in October 1996, beginning another chapter in Dunmore East’s long lifeboat story.

But in this photograph it is still the St Patrick that commands the scene. She is caught in her element, pushing through the swell with the Naval Service behind her and the Air Corps overhead.

After twenty-one years of service from Dunmore East, it was a fitting way for an old lifeboat to take her leave.

This photo was taken at a fundraising event for the lifeboat, during which the energetic volunteers raced across the village pushing wheelbarrows. Here they are seen taking on fuel before the race. Neil Whittle looks somewhat less than enthused; I guess it was a hot day to be pushing someone in a barrow up to Aggie’s and back.

Photo 30 - Mary Power presents John Phelan with the 'Best Dressed Gentleman of the Year' award.