Female
Accountant ; Embroiderer
Agnes Heron was born in Glasgow, Scotland and moved to Dublin, Ireland with her family where she lived and worked for much of her life. Heron was a chartered accountant, as well as a partner in an electrical contract firm on Abbey Street in Dublin until the 1970’s. She was an avid maker of home movies and travelogues, as well as a skilled embroiderer. She is said to have learned the craft of embroidery from former Irish Taoiseach Charles Haughey’s mother, Sarah McWilliams Haughey, though Heron’s connection to the family remains unknown.
While little is known about Heron’s life and filmmaking history, the collection of her films held by the Irish Film Archive does give a sense of her interests, style of filmmaking and some details of her life. For example, Heron travelled extensively with her church congregation to places like Lourdes, Rome, Bombay, Paris, Jerusalem, and Goa, she also made local pilgrimages to Knock and Croagh Patrick, all of which she filmed. Twice she attended the International Eucharistic Conference, first in 1964 and again in 1972, taking her camera to Egypt, India and Israel. She also filmed holidays and family gatherings at home in Dublin and around the West of Ireland, along with numerous community and religious events. Indeed, Heron often appears to have been given, or to have requested, access to community events from the vantage point of a documentarian.
Heron died in Dublin in her 80’s in 2002. Her films were left with a brother-in-law who willed them to a friend upon the suggestion of Heron’s neighbour. The collection is housed in the Irish Film Archive and is comprised of 38 Standard and Super 8mm films, a Fujica Single 8mm splicer and an LPL 8/16mm splicer.
Irish Film Archive, 2022. Agnes Heron Collection, Detailed Filmographic. Dublin, Ireland.
Irish Film Archive, 2022. Agnes Heron Collection, Deposit Record. Dublin, Ireland.
Irish Film Archive, 2022. Agnes Heron Collection, Artefacts. Dublin, Ireland.
Irish Film Archive, 2022. Agnes Heron Collection, Reels 1-38. Dublin, Ireland.
The Irish Times. Obituary for Agnes Heron, “Births, Marriages, Deaths,” Apr 2, 2002, p. 27.
This research was funded by UKRI-AHRC and the Irish Research Council under the ‘UK-Ireland Collaboration in the Digital Humanities Networking Call’ grant numbers IRC/W001756/1 and AH/W001756/1
Amateur Cinema