A study of the sleepy village of Ennis, Co. Clare, in the 1940s and how Shannon Airport affected daily life in the locality.
While Pathé’s lens focuses on primitive thatched cottages, a narrator describes how Ennis ‘clings to the old ways of life’. A young boy fills a bucket from a street pump and the voiceover tells how ‘water for a wash or a drink still means a long walk for someone’. Shannon Airport is only sixteen miles away and the locals have noticed a change. Cars, once a rare sight in the village, now ‘disturb the peace and quiet’ and hold up traffic on narrow country lanes. 23-year-old hotelier Josette O’Regan, however, anticipated the rise of footfall and marketed The Old Ground Hotel to tourists and airlines.
This film is part of The Irish Independence Film Collection – The Early Irish Free State that explores facets of Irish society after the War of Independence and up to the birth of the Irish Republic.
