RECENT NEWS STORIES
English Art Gallery has Drumkeeran Connection
We have recently discovered that an art gallery in Darlington, Co Durham,
has an unusual connection with our parish.
Darlington Arts Centre
Housed within the Darlington Arts Centre is an art gallery known as
the Myles Meehan
Gallery.
Myles Meehan (Self portrait, 1960)
Myles Meehan, born in 1904, was a noted artist in England,
especially from from the
1940’s onward.
Much of his work depicts the social and industrial life of England
during the 1950’s.
He made a bequest of a number of artworks to Darlington Borough
Collection
and provision was made for a Trust Fund to promote the development
of the
visual arts in the Darlington area.
The Darlington Arts Centre now offers a Myles
Meehan Fellowship award
for artists in residence.
The Myles Meehan Gallery
Today the gallery hosts innovative and contemporary exhibitions
of
local and national importance.
Myles died in 1974.
The artist Myles Meehan was the grandson of Myles (or Miles) Meehan
who as born in
the townland of Lugnabana, Drumkeeran.
Lugnabana was a townland situated between Greaghnagloch and Lisnanerris.
Miles was
born around 1828, the oldest of the three sons
and two daughters born to Martin and
Ann Meehan.
Miles emigrated to England in his mid-
Having worked briefly in Liverpool
and in Glasgow,
he moved to north Yorkshire, where he became a farm worker.
He later
became farm steward at Aske Hall, Richmond and, later again,
joined the household
staff, first as a footman and then as an assistant butler.
It was there that he met Jane Yorke and, when the couple married,
they settled for
a while at Barton, near Darlington.
Miles then quit farm work to go working in the
Durham coal mines.
He was a miner at the time of his death in 1902.
Among the family of Myles and Jane was a son, also called Myles (or Miles).
Born in
1872, he too worked in the mines for a while before becoming a policeman.
He died
in 1911.
Myles Meehan, the artist, was his son.
Some of the paintings of Myles Meehan
North Country (1949)
Croydon Gasworks (1950’s)
Mine Shaft (1950)
Storm in the Pyrenees (1959)
St Cuthbert’s, Darlington (1970)
Pease’s Mill, Darlington (1972)
We acknowledge and thank the BBC web site page, Your Paintings, for the above images.
We thank James Collins, a great-
for telling us about Myles
Meehan and about his Drumkeeran roots.