Mary Montgomery-McConville: Shandon Street, Peter and Paul's Church, Coal Quay

COC: You’re familiar with our project? So just any memory that was sparked?

MM: Well I remember in the Winter, Lavitt’s Quay was sloped and we’d come out and we’d throw water and we’d have eh skating down across – there was hardly any cars at that time but the footpath was kinda’ high and I don’t know how we weren’t drowned because we’d hit the car when we’d get down, the young fellas and the young girls – but we wouldn’t be out too late. But we’d swing over then across the path and turn around and also on Good Friday there was a crane just over there at the place between Brown Street and Harper’s Lane and they used to tie eh it was supposed to be Judas I think on the crane and they would set fire to him, you know. So.

COC: And tell me, tell me again where where it was that you grew up?

MM: Em I, I was born in Shandon Street and I moved down to – and my born in Shandon Street in 1932, two years after me. And then the next thing I knew I was sitting up in eh there was the hall at the end of Brown Street and they used to have the scouts there and Legion of Mary and they’d be practising their choir singing you know at the weekend. And I was sitting on that step, there’s a bookshop there now called Collins’, and a nurse Ashton put her head out the window and she said I had a lovely baby brother and that was 1935. There was four of us there; two boys and two girls.

COC: Oh wow. So all of that city centre area you’d know very well?

MM: Yes, yes. Going to all the different picture houses, lots of them yeah.

COC: What eh, which ones would you – which was your favourite picture house?

MM: Oh Savoy, Savoy. I used to be there Tuesdays and Mondays down, we used to call it Savoy Lane but that’s probably some other name. And the ones at the end would rush and they’d knock all of the ones that are on top of the – it was eh very popular thing going to the movies.

COC: What was it like inside the Savoy?

MM: Very good, very good yeah. Very comfortable. We’d have Fred, Fred Preachman on the organ. Did you ever hear of him?

COC: I did indeed, yeah.

MM: So I can’t think, the more I go along the more I’m thinking of different things now. I was just reading out there the em one family boiling the potatoes in the pot. We used to do that too. They’d sort the potatoes up in the Coal Quay and they’d throw away the small ones and we’d go up, we weren’t even washing them. We’d run away with the salt out of our houses and we’d eat them but we must have had a – we never got sick you know? [Laugh]

COC: And were they already cooked?

MM: No, no, no just sorted them and only kept the big ones and we’d boil them and eat them.

COC: And where were your parents from?

MM: Em my dad was born in Edenderry and he’s – they went to Dublin then for a little while and they, as far as I know, they came from Dublin to Cork because my grandfather was a woodturner and they were doing the em – there was a French farm did some of the confessional boxes in Peter and Paul’s but they were also Irish. I think they, the workers, the Irish workers were kind of giving out because they weren’t getting work.

COC: Wow. So you … [Interrupted]

MM: And my mother was from Cork

COC: Right. Whereabouts in Cork?

MM: Well it would have been around the laneways there now you know.

COC: So you can go into Peter and Paul’s and see your father’s handywork?

MM: My grandfather

COC: Oh your grandfather. Sorry.

MM: My grandfather.

COC: Yeah, yeah. Fabulous.

MM: Yes. That time they, like, the the work came down through families. Like my grandfather was a woodturner, my dad, my brother and my son. Now like you had to have – the family had to be in the trade to get in.

COC: Yes, yeah. Fabulous. Great well em … [Interrupted]

MM: Em, I, what is it my own name or my….

COC: Your own name. What I’ll do is… [Interrupted]

MM: Yeah because my single name or my married name?

COC: Em, sure you could give me both.

MM: Well em I was Mary Montgomery and I’m Mary McConville now.

COC: And I’ll put a date on this and what I’ll do is I’m going to give you one these blank to take away just so that you have your own copy and that you know how to get in contact with us. And I might get you to sign this.

End of Interview