Jackie’s legacy lives on in his beloved Ballina

Asked if he wanted to be remembered as a historian or a Republican, Jackie Clarke replied: "I could not profess myself to be a historian, but I love my town and I love finding things out about it. I want to be remembered as a Republican." 

This latter was in reference to the universal description of one of his heroes, Wolfe Tone, the founder of Irish Nationalism.

Clarke was born in Ballina in 1927. Wolfe Tone and his French troops formed part of a failed Irish attempt to drive the British out of Ireland in 1798. Skirmishes were fought in and around the streets of Ballina, playing a major role in Clarke’s, and all of County Mayo’s, family lore. 

In Jackie's youth, people were still living in the lanes of Ballina as they had done during the Great Famine (1845-1852) when the population was decimated through hunger and emigration. Added to this were the legacies of the invading Cromwellian settlers, the mass evictions by landlords, and the struggles of the Land League during the Land War.

As a successful local fishmonger, Clarke pioneered the smoked salmon international industry. It has been proposed that, like the mythical hunter/warrior Finn McCool, Clarke himself tasted the Salmon of Knowledge as he judiciously purchased what he called “signposts” - 100,000 uncatalogued items - each one known only to himself - to be used as guides on a journey through the centuries of Ireland’s history: rare books, manuscripts, legal papers, photographs, pamphlets, hand-bills, newspapers, autograph books, news-sheets, circulars, reports, letters, 1916 Rising memos, periodicals, political cartoons, maps, minute books, thesis, articles, and various proclamations. In the 1950s, his father brought him a cine-camera from America. He began documenting local happenings as living history.

In 1965, Jackie married Anastasia Smyth (known as Anne). Clarke’s great friend Gerry Ginty, a former town councillor whose sister Frankie introduced Jackie and Anne, explains in a Memory Box interview shown on the first floor: In his whole life, three things were important to Jackie: his family, his business, and Republicanism in that order. 

Only Anne was aware of her husband’s collection and just how vast it truly was, stored as it had been in boxes, on tabletops, in bookcases and presses, framed on the walls, and stacked from floor to ceiling all over the house - even on the roof in a purposely built shed to amass the newspapers.

In 1996, Clarke first pledged his entire collection to the people of Ballina. Gertrude MacHale, a founding member of the North Mayo Historical and Architectural Society, recalls in her Memory Box interview how Jackie Clarke, a founder of the group in the 1960s, nursed a dream that his collection would be housed in the former Provincial Bank building designed by renowned architect Thomas Manly Deane, and constructed in 1881. Other examples of Deane creations include Government Buildings in Merrion Street, and the 1937 Reading Room at Trinity College.

Jackie Clarke died in 2000, but his dream was realised when Mayo County Council bought this landmark bank building in 2007, completely refurbished it, and finally officially opened the Jackie Clarke Collection in 2013 when it won the prestigious IDI Design Award for Exhibitions. This spectacular multi-media museum also unquestioningly embraces the heart of Jackie Clarke - a lifelong passionate collector of Irish history.

In the past 10 years, the Jackie Clarke Collection has welcomed over 250,000 visitors through its doors from the 32 counties of our country to every corner of the globe and what 10 years it has been and continues to be. However, each year has only been made possible by the continued support of Mayo County Council delivering this wonderful Collection and walled heritage garden, complemented by the community, volunteer and education departments. Mayo County Council’s Jackie Clarke Collection visitors continues year in and year out to support the local economy of Ballina and its surrounding hinterlands.

The Jackie Clarke Collection would also like to acknowledge the continued support of the Kilmoremoy Parish Development Project and their supervisor Sandra O’Neill along with Mayo North East and supervisor Michael Rowland for their sponsorship of staff over the last number of years, staff who have supported the Collection in meeting and greeting the many visitors yearly who come to visit this vast array of Irish history collected by the remarkable collector that was the late Jackie Clarke and his late wife Anne who generously gifted her husband’s lifelong collection to the people of Ballina the people of Mayo and the country of Ireland.

The Jackie Clarke Collection, Pearse Street, Ballina. Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday, from 10am to 5pm. Free admission. Telephone 096-73508 or email clarkecollection@mayococo.ie.