A free public lecture entitled ‘Take my advice, go to Mongan’s Hotel: Sport, Charity, and Tourism in Late-Victorian Connemara’ will be held in Galway city on Monday, 11 May at 7 pm. The lecture will be delivered by Dr Kevin James, Associate Professor of History at the University of Guelph, Ontario, and will take place in the Galway City Library in Augustine St, under the auspices of NUI Galway’s Moore Institute.

Mongan's Hotel in Carna, Co. Galway, was an historic site of pilgrimage for the sporting tourist in the nineteenth century, and served as a social, commercial, and cultural hub of the district. In the 1890s, initiatives aimed at alleviating distress and developing the district's economy highlighted the important role of the hotel and its proprietor, Martin Mongan. He forged connections between the locality and organisations and markets farther afield – notably in Manchester. The evidence appears in the hotel's historic visitors' book.

This public lecture will look at how Mongan’s provided a venue for tourism, a magnet for sports enthusiasts, and a site for charitable activity.

Professor Daniel Carey, Director of the Moore Institute at NUI Galway, said: “Kevin James’s work has opened up new vistas on the history of travel to Co. Galway. Visitors’ books offer an intriguing glimpse into a lost world in the nineteenth century.”

Dr Kevin James is author of Tourism, Land and Landscape in Ireland: The Commodification of Culture. In spring 2014, he held a Moore Institute Visiting Research Fellowship to support his research at the James Hardiman Library, NUI Galway.

For more information contact : Dr John Cunningham, Department of History, NUI Galway at john.cunningham@nuigalway.ie or phone 091 493902.

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