Greetings from Roscommon

Roscommon County Library Postcard Collection

The postcard collection of Roscommon County Library, part of which features in this presentation, is only a snippet from the large photographic archive garnered by successive librarians, over the seventy five years existence of the library service in Roscommon.

Fortuitously for the Irish nation, William Lawrence and John Valentine Dublin, along with some British and Scottish publishers developed a keen interest in the newest art form to sweep the country in the late 1800's - photography.

Photographers were dispatched the length and breadth of Ireland to capture on glass plate negatives, the visual records of towns and villages. The early decades of the nineteenth century saw an improvement in communications by river, road and rail. This had a consequential effect in the rise of trade and the middle classes.


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