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The Candlemaker

No 6: Rathbourne's No. 9 Piano and factory candles

 

An interesting Company which was established in 1488, the oldest continuously trading company in the world, Rathborne Candles has endured everything from plagues to the coming of electricity, gas street lamps to the Second Vatican Council, which decreed that Catholic churches should be stripped of much of their previous ornamentation -- including elaborate candles.

 

We also learned about a robbery at the premises which resulted in an execution which was the first hanging in the history of the Irish Free State.

 

And finally we discovered that servants' bedroom candles (that only lasted 30 minutes) actually existed.

 

Collection: The Mason Photographic Collection

 

Date: 1890-1910

 

NLI Ref: M11/8

 

You can also view this image, and many thousands of others, on the NLI’s catalogue at catalogue.nli.ie

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Uploaded on March 30, 2015
Taken circa 1900