A Glimpse of Old Ireland c.1929: Restored to Amazing Life

Time travel back nearly 100 years to the west of Ireland. Silent footage colorized and upscaled to 4K 60fps resolution with added ambient sound. Filmed in Killarney, County Clare and on the wild Aran Islands.

A number of scenes filmed in the town of Killarney. Street scenes of women and a young girl singing Sail Óg Rua in Irish while feeding ducklings. Other shots around the village depict an era when the 19th century was meeting the 1920s, especially in the styles worn by women of that period in Ireland. A common scene around rural Ireland still, a group of men, possibly in the Kerry mountains hills cutting peat turf. The donkey and cart was a common mode of travel in the 19th century and many parts of rural Ireland still used them on the back roads in the 1920s.

Excerpt from our colorized and sound restored footage of two school girls singing an Irish language song about helping their mother bake a cake. It was filmed near St Brigid's well in the village of Liscannor, County Clare. May 28th 1929. Just north of Galway and the Aran islands.

An excerpt from the colorized and sound restored film of the remote Aran islands. By the 1920s, people still lived essentially 19th century lifestyles with 19th century clothing. The spoken language was Gaelic. The artist Sean Keating captured this era perfectly in his paintings.
Here we glimpse scenes on the beaches and boats of Inisheer island shot by Movietone in 1929. A group of islanders, men, women and children still living an ancient lifestyle.

The AI Film Restoration Process:

I take early fragments of silent 16fps footage and restore them to life by a combination of manual frame by frame colorization as well as the use of deep exemplar-based video colorization techniques. The footage is upscaled and the frames interpolated to a higher frame rate ( in most cases 60 frames per second.) Finally I produce a soundtrack which helps build a new immersive experience for the viewer.
Together, these processes revive old fragments of footage, offering audiences a more
vivid and engaging glimpse of lives long since lived in the distant past.

The colorization process used Deep exemplar-based Video colorization.

The wonderful silent Movietone footage is provided with the kind permission of the Moving Image Research Collection at University of South Carolina.

Irish Scenes, 1929--outtakes
Cattle fair--outtakes. (Fox Movietone News Story 2-776.) Fox Movietone News Collection. Moving Image Research Collections. University of South Carolina.

Original BW footage - Irish School Children - outtakes.
University South Carolina.
Fox Movietone News Story 2-919

Watch the full colorized and sound restored film here:

Irish footage outtakes - Shipping Cattle by Boat
Fox Movietone News Story 2-920

See the full restored colorized film here:

I also recommend the books Old Ireland in Colour 1 & 2. A long running project created by John Breslin. They are an excellent resource for colorized photographs of old Ireland.

[ginettechiverton]

These films are very Important, in many ways.

[YvonneMelia-oiqx]

....the little girl singing and hand feeding the ducks...❤ My Mum was born 1929 and we still have her. She was 95 in this August 2024. She talks of her childhood fondly and sometimes says that now these days we have everything and it's still not enough x

[gingerfellah]

My dad was born in 1929, he’s still alive, aged 95. When he talks about the past it sounds like another world. And my 70’s childhood is rapidly becoming the same

[priscillavelazquezs]

So beautiful! The Irish are always blessing others with their singing.

[DChristina]

Donkeys are such sweet creatures. Love these old Irish films! Thank you ❤️🙏🏼🌿

[Edward-jnpl]

The colourization was wonderful and not overdone--and the love that was put into the sound was way above average. Thanks.

[amorgan]

My dad was eight years old in 1929, and growing up in Swinford, County Mayo. When he got a forlorn look on his face, he used to say, "Take me back to the old sod, where I can run with me dog in the heather." Love him and miss him.☘

[WinryRockbellElric]

for my heritage to be lost like this…Hearing Irish spoken so casually, just by children…sung so lively…just makes me cry. My great-grandfather’s language feels like a dream😢 I know the words that were said when I was a child, “slaìnte” “mo chroí” “eírinn go brách” “pog mo thon”, “slan” and things like that.
but we’re not fluent. And I’m estranged from my Irish family…but as a linguist, there will always be a deep longing to know the language of my ancestors. I hope to study seriously it one day, but right now, I’m still focusing on fluency in Japanese and French. But I love whatever I pick up, and I won’t forget the music. Hearing them sing so much is so wonderful. It feels like home. In my family, we just exist to hum and sing with whatever we’re doing, for absolutely no reason at all.

[SibylleLeon]

That's *incredible*. Thank you so much for sharing this gem.

[dip-tree]

Unbelievable restoration ! You seem very passionate about this kind of work. All the best.

[mow]

can’t believe my mother would have been 7 years old when this was filmed. My father too. No doubt they witnessed scenes like these. The changes they witnessed to Ireland I can’t even begin to imagine. My dad left school at 11. He built a life. I remember him buying a brand new BMW every 2 years in the 1970’s 80’s and 90’s and getting such satisfaction from them. I never understood why he needed to. I get now that I see the poverty he came from. He gave us a comfortable upbringing he never had.

[ronaldobrien]

Incredible footage. The sound effects and voices are all real by the way : cameras with microphones had only just become available that year. Nearly everyone is speaking in Irish, not English, including the girls singing their songs.

[CxMinette]

This is amazing! The two girls singing - according to the info, that was filmed the day after my grandfather was born. He's in his mid-90s now.

[Thetimecapsuletx]

This was one of the best! Such nice work restoring this.

[cdl]

"That's all" is an understatement of how good this restored video is.

[bredakearney-orwg]

Thank you. What pleasure you have given.

[sherrystearns]

Wow I feel like I stepped in a time machine! Thank goodness for modern technology. This warms my heart

[pinstripedynasty]

Truly amazing to see. Thank you for sharing this wonderful video!

[stephanieyee]

This footage, both the original and the colourised versions, is an invaluable historical treasure.
This is how my Irish ancestors in Munster would have lived.
Thank you.

[karlkoenen]

Wow, priceless glimpses into the past.