Hall’s Pictorial Weekly in Oranmore, Co. Galway, Ireland 1978

The people and village of Oranmore in County Galway are the stars of this opening sequence to ‘Hall’s Pictorial Weekly’. The village of Oranmore is situated 9 kilometres east of Galway city. People young and old are out in Oranmore going about their daily business. A woman washes her windows; a man builds a wall, while another four men admire a parked tractor. The limestone Joseph Howley monument on the corner of Main Street and the Dublin Road adjacent to the Boston Arms pub is an Oranmore landmark. Commandant Joe Howley led the local Irish Volunteers in the 1916 Rising. He died while on active service in Dublin during the War of Independence. This episode of ‘Hall’s Pictorial Weekly’ was broadcast on 6 December 1978. Once a week, from June to September, the ‘Hall’s Pictorial Weekly’ film crew would arrive at a town or village in any county in Ireland. They would film the people and the place and return to RTÉ where the footage was edited and put to music. This short film of around one minute’s duration formed part of the opening sequence for that week’s episode. No one knew which location had been chosen, and it was not advertised as part of the programme billings in the RTÉ Guide or newspapers. So with this in mind, people the length and breadth of the country unfailingly tuned in, just in case it was the turn of their town or village to have its few minutes of fame.