Somewhere 100 years from now in an office full of yet undreamed of computer gadgetry, a historian will take a break from work, look into the middle distance and marvel at Sean Radley. Sean Radley, probably even as you read this, is busy recording the life and times of an entire community, his beloved home town of Millstreet in north Cork. Thanks to Sean, almost every minute detail of Millstreet life - social, sporting, political, business, religious and much more - has been captured over 30 years, first on cine film, then in photographs, on audio tape, and, more recently again, on video.
The result is an astonishing archive of material - almost 30,000 photographs, over 2,500 audio tapes, 500 video tapes and thousands of newspaper cuttings and other documents - enough to keep our 21st century historian busy well past 2100.
"I suppose my first inspiration came when I was around 12," said Sean, a remedial teacher. "I remember going down to Mill View here in town to visit an old lady living there and she had a photograph of the west end of the town from 1910.
"I later discovered it was from the Lawrence Collection - it was taken by a photographer called Robert French - but I was amazed that we could have an insight into a part of our town there right in front of us from that particular period.
"I thought what a fascinating record to have, showing how people lived, and I thought if we could continue to take photographs of how life was lived as I was living it in Millstreet, maybe in time to come that would be of benefit."
Sean's first attempts at chronicling life in Millstreet were in 1970 when, with a cine camera he bought for a fiver while studying in Dublin, he made a short film of the west end - shot from the back of a pony and trap.
From cine he moved to stills photography, and when local radio began he started to use a tape recorder to capture the recollections of some older members of the community. His travels on tape took him far beyond Millstreet, as, for example, in his interview with Dan Creedon, who joined the Royal Navy in the 1930s, was torpedoed off Crete in 1942, escorted Allied troops to Normandy and was decorated for bravery when he saved his destroyer from blowing up off Norway.
They have also taken him back in time, as when he interviewed sheepfarmer, Thade Mullane, who discovered a 1,000-year-old dugout canoe while dredging a lake behind his farm in the beautiful townland of Cumtroosh. Not of course that it is just the distant past that interests Sean: "I remember when the county librarian, the late Padraig O'Maidin, opened the Millstreet library in 1980, he said: `Record today because it's history tomorrow.' "
A glance around Millstreet Museum confirms that Sean has heeded Mr O'Maidin's advice. Posters for a Van Morrison concert and the Eubank v Collins fight flank one for Millstreet Carnival in 1941, where among the enticements, during that wartime period, is a promise of white flour. Newspapers too are a rich source.
Witness a picture of local man, Padraig O'Driscoll, complete in his Irish jersey, playing the bagpipes beneath a banner declaring his Millstreet allegiances on the terraces at Palermo during the 1990 World Cup.
The archive has helped Millstreet make many friends around the world - like American actor, Brian Dennehy, who came to Millstreet to try and trace the house where his grandfather was born.
Brian was introduced to Sean, who promptly showed him the house as it currently is, produced a photo from the Lawrence Collection to show it as it was when his grandfather was born and introduced the actor to cousins who knew his emigrant ancestor.
When Dennehy invited his Millstreet cousins to the Abbey to see him in Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, Sean was invited too.
He snapped away with his camera until Dennehy snapped back at him: "Give someone else the camera and stand in yourself for a picture!" Apres Dennehy there was Eurovision, and hundreds of newspaper references. "We got cuttings from as far away as Singapore - mainly through the kindness of emigrants - people saying `God, I never thought I'd see a reference to Millstreet in the New York Times.' "
Of course, not all references to the town have been understood.
Among the many cuttings are several from Scandinavian papers. "We still haven't a clue what they're saying. We can only hope it's positive," he smiles.
Sean's latest project is one inspired by Padraig Tyers, formerly of UCC - to publish a pictorial record of Millstreet from 1880 to 1980. A public appeal for pictures resulted in a deluge of 2,000 photos, now whittled down to 600.
"While the book will include several former Taoisigh, the real stars of this will be the ordinary people," says Sean. Not that they are always doing ordinary things. Among the gems is one of a local Sweeps winner in the 1930s being congratulated.
But does this recorder of life ever wonder how he himself will be remembered?
"Ah, I won't be remembered at all," he says waving his hand with a genuinely dismissive modesty. "Any small community in Ireland could be doing this and some already are.
"Maybe in time to come it will be of benefit to people here. I suppose it's only now after 30 years that we're seeing the value of what we're attempting to do, because every year shows a change."
Millstreet Museum - which is run and staffed with the assistance of FAS - is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday to Friday.
It also opens at weekends during major events in the town, as well as on request.
