B S: Sean, when you were standing at your front door, could you describe to me your street, you know what was opposite you, what was maybe your view?
S L: I certainly can, I certainly can. Outside my door eh of one-eight-five was the blank wall with the background of Mount Saint Joseph’s eh brothers college. It was the mother house of the Presentation Brothers of the world so to speak and that was truly the mother house which is today -- in, in today’s terms is used as Share accommodation. Eh the Brothers are out of it as such but eh there were dozens of brothers there and you’d see them marching in and there was a lovely big driveway and majestic-looking steps going up into that beautiful building off Blarney Street. It’s eh -- the the steps are done away with, the driveway is still there. Some local people are actually working up there with the, the older folks there now that are accommodated above there and em the -- I’d say it’s lovely inside there because it was a beautiful building. But right across the road from me was the eh derelict site so to speak. There were ten or twelve houses there for the last I’d say about ten years right across the road at this point now so that side was totally occupied at this point but em. When we’d lose a ball playing outside our doors now so to speak -- because there was very little traffic in the forties right up long the whole lot of the fifties. We’d have steering cars out in the middle of the road. There wouldn’t be a car on the road and we’d oil em up in such a way like -- who was going to be the fastest coming down to the Brothers’ gate you know and em all of that and we spent hours oiling them up and the old ball bearings from the garages we, we’d go to a garage and say, ‘Have you any old ball bearings?’ and we’d get a set, they’d be delighted to give them. And eh then we’re out the country then, to make another bob then -- was eh picking the blackberries and bringing them in to the market or bringing them down to Ogilvie and Moore’s and we’d actually pick bucket-loads of them but you’d have to get the down before the day’s end because if you left them over for the next day there was a kind of a fur, they weren’t as fresh looking as the day before, and you’re going to lose money by saying -- ah they’re yesterday’s fruit. But they’d still take them but if you can get down there and run yourself back down into the city and get, get them sold you get a nice couple of bob then and we’d do that for days, for as long as the season would last and em they were all little bits and then we, we’d have our little bits gamble then with our bowl playing and whatever. And all of the friends and the friends that were there that time are my friends today. S- Anywhere in town or going out the road, you’re friends forever with them. And they’d be literally hundreds and hundreds of people of at those bowl-playing scores at the time. My dad was very involved as well on the -- for the -- bringing senior players on the Clogheen Road and we’d play out then to the, the laneway running down to the Curraghk-- Curraghkippane em graveyard which is two or three miles I’d say in length in the score. ‘Twould take hours to get there. Trying to push out the amount of people at the time but they were -- you’d never think of home you know or food or anything you’d just be out there. You’re part and parcel of the scene that was in it. ‘Twas a lovely social scene you know. I think the kids today you know eh -- there’s a different direction today but the minute the television came there in -- what? ’60, '61, '2 whatever time around that -- when you were renting a television at the, at the time and it just sucked the children in off of the streets literally overnight, and ‘twas never the same after.
J E: Em how would you think the the kids of today’s lives would be different to yours and what kind of message might you give to younger generations.
P K: To young children, to young generations. Oh my Goodness em you know well there times are so different for them now that the thing I suppose to try and make them realise that the simplest things can be most enjoyable and most entertaining. That they don’t have to have everything they see advertised you know? That family and friends are much more important than material things. It would be hard for them maybe to understand that now. Em certainly eh there’s such a gap there I suppose there are two generations now between when I was a child and the little children growing up now and there’s such a gap in in experience and em oh you know that the computer age having come in and the television age having come in that it got terribly hard to explain to children the happiness that the children of my age had in the simplest things of life and what gave them the biggest thrills in life would be just not understood by the children nowadays. I suppose if the Grannies of nowadays talked one to one with the little children of nowadays they’d be absolutely fascinated but it would be as it is actually a different age they’d be talking about because no more than my age group would understand what the Victorian age was like and what children had then as compared to what I had, growing up. So it would be very difficult only to tell them to keep simple and to keep, have a great regard for for people rather than things. That people are what matter, I would say. That the kindnesses and the neighbourliness that we had as as children em should be kept going with the children nowadays. I think that’s really as I say it would be very hard to make them understand you know that the things that they can buy aren’t as important as the things that they have and the things that they are themselves because they’re very precious and every person is precious, you know?
J E: Em.
P K: So that’s that’s really all I could say about it and about those little ones.
BS: Would there be any stories now, connected, say with any part of Blackpool, that you’d know of? Say for example now, you know - - scary stories or ghost stories or any - -
PS: Oh yeah. Long ago we used go to the October Devotions in the convent. We used be afraid of our life going down there. There was a narrow bank - - the river and then the bank and there was a big, big wall and nobody wanted to walk in front ‘cause there was kind of - - dark corners and there was kind of nooks and crannies on the way down and then they’d be always saying ‘Oh there’s someone standing there. We’re not going down there at all.’ And then there was another one of the houses in Welsh’s Avenue, there was an old, old lady lived in there and we used to be afraid to pass her house. I’d go around Bird’s Quay, I could go up Bird’s Quay and come back into my place ‘cause Bird’s Quay goes into the quarry also, where the Harrier Club was. So instead of going up my lane, if I thought that she was around, I’d go up Bird’s Quay and come back down the other end. But eh, going to the October Devotions we used to have good laughs, but we also had scary moments, like a fella would jump out in front of ya - - he might have moved away before you, and he’d hear you coming and he’d stand in the nook and he’d - - just as you’d come up to him, he’d jump out in front of you. There was many a young fella fell into the river over it. Our parents would [be with us] sometimes. But there was many a young fella fell into the water over it. He got such a fright he’d fall off the bank into the water. But that - - this old lady that was - - she was a lovely old lady in the end, once I got older and we kinda - - we weren’t afraid of her any more. She was a lovely old lady and she wouldn’t do no harm to anybody, you know? It was just that we had - - someone would come up with a story, ‘oh, the house is haunted’ or something like that, you know.
T.D: You mentioned Peacock Lane there. Is that lane still there?
N.M: It is indeed and as a matter of fact, it’s amazing how many of the old lanes are still there right in this part of the city that I’m speaking about which is the Northside and specifically alright in Gerald Griffin Street which as I said commences above in, by the North Cathedral junction and goes down to the junction at O’Connell Street. But there is a myriad of lanes there as a matter of fact when they, the film Angela’s Ashes was being made alright, I mean like the filmmakers came up there to Peacock Lane and to surrounding lanes there, Patrick’s Arch and so forth to film because Limerick had been modernised if you like and where the writer of Angela’s Ashes was grown up sort of no longer existed so they came up here to Gerald Griffin Street and Peacock Lane and Patrick's Arch in particular. So I guess there’s a lot of those lanes still left.
TD: We might talk a bit about what you remember about Kyle Street and the Coal Quay and the people you remember.
MS: Oh my God. I’m telling ye boy. You go down there of a Saturday. It’d be a lovely sunny day, some Saturday’s anyway. And, you know if you’re mother made a good few pound, she’d say to me. “Go over there to the corner shop, and get a wafer”. Now you’d get two wafers maybe that time for tuppence and we’d be standing at the wall eating our wafers, the ice cream. And she’d say to me “In’t that lovely?” and I’d say “sure Jaysus, that’s gorgeous”. And then this Farmer then might come around, and Jaysus she used to make me laugh. This farmer would come around and she would have two pairs of 11 size boots and the farmer would say to her - always of a Tuesday it was farmer’s day - and the farmer would say to her, “How much are the boots missus?” and she’d turn round, she’d say “Seven pound for one pair boy, but I’ll tell ye what now look. I’ll give you the two pair for nine”, that kind of way and the bloody well stupid eejit would hand her a tenner. He’d say to her “Sure that’s grand now missus”. Now it was seven pound for the two pair. And she’d say to him “But I’ll give you the two for nine”. He’d hand her a tenner. Now ten pound that time was a lot, a lot of money and you’d be saying to yourself, “Oh my God, me day’s made anyway”. Y’know. That’s it. And she’d say to me “’Mere, G’wan bundle up all the stuff there now girl. We’re finished. We’re going. That’s it.” And I’d be saying. “Nah, mam, sure today’s Farmer’s Day now, there’ll be another crowd coming round now in a minute” - and there would be another crowd coming around. And God help us, this woman, she was a lovely woman now, I can’t bring up her name now a’tall. But there was this lovely woman. She used to the train up from Cobh. You’d see her running up Kyle Street, beautiful woman. And she’d say “Oh my God, Thank God Mary is here. Have you any stuff left?” Because my mam used to keep the stuff for her. She’d sell that down in Cobh. But God she was killed by the train so. Not sure I should say that or not, like. But, y’know, but me mam always used to give to her and she used to say “Erra for God’s sake, I’ve made enough now, that’s it”. And she’d go off. And I’d take the pram then off up Blarney Street, and she’d give me five shillings.
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
B S: I only want you to think about this now but is there any chance that you could sing that song for me, because I’d say your father is the only person that would have passed down that song to our generation and the generation coming after us who’d have never heard of it, and your father memorised that ballad about Scoura Hill. You don’t have to do it. You can do it later.
M M: Well, Scoura Hill now was the old Ballyvolane Road and when I was a child there were a couple of houses still there. Quinna now lived in one and his brother. The rest would have been ruins and they’d have been at the side of what were known as the Glen and he used to sing that on a Sunday night, Scoura Hill, and we’d have great fun singing it. If I can remember it Breda, I might get mixed up.
B S: It doesn’t matter if you get it mixed up, you know. It’ll just give a general idea.
M M: Oh the Jew and plough, a lively trade up in Scoura Hill
For all have bought but few have paid up in Scoura Hill
And when the Jew men come each day
They’re paid their debts in the quickest way
There’ll be a couple of the houses burned each day up in Scoura Hill
A policeman he came up last night up to Scoura Hill
He swore to teach us to do what’s right up in Scoura Hill
But when the officer began to roar
The officer shouted ‘Get inside doors’
He was struck on the nose with a stale back bone up in Scoura Hill
Oh the military they came up last night up to Scoura Hill
They swore -- Oh I’m wrong -- to teach us to do what’s right up in Scoura Hill
But when the officer began to -- I’m mixed up Breda. I have to go back to when the policeman came up. [Pause] I’ll sing it another time for ya.
B S: Polly Riordan and the rent
M M: Oh Polly Riordan never gets her rent up in Scoura Hill
For when she calls, the money is spent up in Scoura Hill
Polly Riordan says she won’t call again
She’ll fetch the military tonight at ten
There’ll be a couple of the houses burned down then up in Scoura Hill
Oh the military they came up last night up to Scoura Hill
They swore to teach us to do what’s right up in Scoura Hill
But when the officer began to roar --
He was struck on the nose with a stale back bone up in Scoura Hill
CFP_SR00565_osullivan_2015; CFP_SR00566_fahy_2015; CFP_SR00569_fahy_2016; CFP_SR00570_steele_2016; CFP_SR00574_jones_2016; CFP_SR00577_fahy_2016; CFP_SR00583_johnson_2016; CFP_SR00589_lysaght_2016; CFP_SR00590_varian_2016; CFP_SR00595_Jones_2016; CFP_SR00609_Cooney_2017; CFP_SR00610_McCarthy_2017; CFP_SR00611_Buckley_2017:
Published material related to the collection:
Moore, Michael (2016) ‘A Tale of Two Masons’, The Archive Journal, Vol 20: 8-10.
G O’D: Thinking back to the street you grew up on, are there, are there any kind -- are there many kind of major landmarks or streets and lanes nearby, that have since been demolished or got rid of?
M C: Well, I suppose there was Jackson’s Terrace which is now gone. It was off Langford Row. That’s the one that sticks out. I remember as a child saying when I was bigger I’d cross Langford Row and go over and see the -- I thought they were spectacular houses. Sure the poor people probably didn’t think -- they were two-storey houses and a narrow kind of entrance to them and obviously like, the distance between their front doors was very little and I think there was a toilet down at the end, a communal. But they used to say it was beautifully kept, you know. The people kept the place very well. But there was -- like you couldn’t -- you’d only get a bicycle in between the, the houses but I thought it was -- you know, as a child. And I was going to cross the road and see those houses, and by the time I was ready to cross the road, Jackson’s Terrace was knocked and ‘tis the apartments there in, in -- it was a garage afterwards and then ‘tis an apartment in Langford now. And I suppose like, that whole community at the end of High Street, like there was about seven houses, like cottages in Langford Row, which was, you know, whole families. And then there was Mrs Donnelly and Curtin the bookie, and Fitzgibbon’s and Cosgrave’s and Curtin’s and Dorgan’s shop, all taken, and at the other side of the road then, there was Houston’s pub and all the houses in Summer Hill South, their gardens were shortened to make the road wide. So ‘twas a -- and then there was a whole -- there was as many more, there was about five or six houses in Summer Hill South taken as well, small houses. So ‘twas like a whole community just for progress but it was a whole community removed, you know.
G O’D: Mm, and where were they -- would they have -- where were they re-settled then?
M C: Well it -- if the people owneded the houses they just were compensated and they bought houses elsewhere, and if they didn’t they were housed in different places, mostly in Ballyphehane.
Interviews with Margaret Newman:
CFP00407; CFP00411; CFP00412:
M N: My husband's uncle married us because he was a priest. He was in Rome all the time and eh he came home. He was belong to the Rosminian’s order, and he came home and he married us in the Lough Church. And the only thing that we never thought of was my husband, as I told ya was a painter and he was working on houses that were on eh were being built excuse me and were suppose to be getting one of the new houses. Where were we going to stay because we had no apartment to stay. We couldn’t stay with his mother his mother had a shop and then eh my mother had no room for an extra person coming in. So my mother in law had a first cousin living in Thomas Davis Avenue in Blackpool, and he had three bedrooms and then like a kitchen you know and a hall to go out to the back garden. An eh she said wouldn’t ye go down and stay there until em until the ,the your houses that are ready like there only on the plan now like when you go out. But eh ten months after I had my oldest son. I got married on the 3rd of August and he got married eh or sorry he was born on the last day of May the following year. So and so when he saved my name by fours weeks so all my children were born in my mother's house they were all born on the Southside of the city. I wouldn’t go in didn’t go into any hospital or anything. I had a doctor and I had a nurse. I had the nurses from the lying in they used to call it in western road ‘tis closed now. Twas a maternity hospital so they shifted it all them up to the CUH.
Interviews with Margaret Newman:
CFP00407; CFP00408; CFP00412:
MN: Now I remember long go when we were young Woolworths now there em it was the five an ten time I in America t’was in England too we had it here too Woolworths. T’was between Marlboro street, on Cook's street and Patrick's eh sorry and my mother, would say nothing but she’d take us in. Now she had three of us and she we’d go in an I loved the black dolls. And she’d we’d go into Woolworths an they’d be all there and she’d say ye have to tell eh Santa Claus now what ye want for Christmas because he’ll come in here like and he’ll order them he’ll order em whatever he can and Mary use ta say but how do you know mam well she said ye can shout it up the chimney. Tell Santa what ye want an I used to like the black dolls with the big earrings an then I started getting ones where their eyes could open an shut. If I had them today I have made a load of money and em my brother might say he’d want a train an that was grand and she my mother just we write it in a bit of paper and we’d put it into the fire and we’d leave it burn and t’would go up the chimney an he’d know. But I mean to say we were we were nine and ten years of age that time and we knew what was right an what was wrong. We, we, we, knew when, when our mothers had
Interviews with Margaret Newman:
CFP00408; CFP00411; CFP00411:
G MC G: O right.
M N: A we’ll have to do something about that now that’s corporation property do you understand. We own the, the, I own the ground now like that the house is built on, but the young one came up there yesterday sorry now about this
G MC G: You're grand. Ya.
M N: But anyway I'm going off what I wanted to say to you. I was always fascinated by the old women that used to be down in the Coal Quay as we knew it em they’d have the shawls but they’d have the shawls crossed over in the front and they’d bring the ends of the shawls to the back and tie them in the back so as their hands was free. But it ‘twas for there chest then as well if the weather was anyway cold so it was crossed over on there chest an the two ends then were going to there back and they were tying at the back. Do you understand and then they might if they might have their purse then as well inside there like because ‘twas my most of them had their shawls tied behind there back.
G MC G: An these were working on the market?
M N: These were people on the Coal Quay
M N: That’s Daly’s bridge yes. But it was the Shaky Bridge when it was – ya right. Then my other used to kill us because if we went up farther and went over Sunday’s Well Bridge you were looking at the mental hospital. But we never knew it as the mental hospital. Twas the madhouse and me mother said ‘Where did ye go for a walk?’ Now there’d be four of us together like. Eh, we were out in the madhouse road. ‘Where’s that?’ And we’d tell her and she’d say ‘ye, that’s very, don’t be saying them things. That’s the mental home’ she said ‘that’s for unfortunate’ she said, that’s you know she’d be telling us all that stuff. And we, we used to call it the madhouse. ‘And where’d ye go for a walk?’ ‘The madhouse road.’ And then you’d see couples and normally they’d be inside in a ditch and there was a load of em on the side of the road and we used to call em confession boxes. [Laughter] That’s what we used to call ‘em, confession boxes. The fellas’ and the girls would be sitting on the on the – the edge and they might be leaning back and you could see the, the print of the two and we used to call them confessions. Honest to god, we were a terror. But then again we never done any wrong to anybody. You know, we didn’t – we just didn’t and you didn’t curse or anything. That was all. Or if you took the double holy name you’d get a smack into the mouth if you did that.