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.
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.
JCK: Well now, there was a substantial population in a very, very small area. Because of small houses, up a laneway, you could have thirty, forty or fifty houses. So with big families in small houses, you had a sizeable population and taking up very little area. Now, the people that lived there -- you had a variety. The variety in the sense you had poor people, but you had people who would be considered very well off. And the reason for it was -- as an example, Corbett’s Lane. If you walked up Corbett’s Lane, the first four houses would be small houses with ordinary people, working class people, in them. When you came to the fifth house, it would be a two-story farmhouse with a big black gate, tarred gate, above it, and a big yard at the back of the house. Now, at the back of that house, the people who lived in that house had cattle and sheep. Now, you could -- you could have the same thing in another couple of houses and then a big double storey house, and you could continue up the lane at both sides with that situation. So you had poor, and people who would be considered fairly well off for the times, all living in the one lane. Now at the top of the lane, my grandmother, Polly Kelleher, lived, my father’s mother, and across the way from their house was two tripe houses, Welsh’s and Reilly’s, and around the corner, you had another tripe house, Dylan’s. So you had three tripe, drisheen places at the top of Corbett’s lane, at the junction of Corbett’s -- top of Corbett’s Lane and Kearney’s Lane. And at one -- at one o’clock in the day the hooter would go in those places and a lot of women would come out with their rubber aprons and their clogs for their dinner break, and they all lived in the laneways around. So you had plenty -- you had a lot of work going on in those places because you -- as well as tripe and drisheen houses you had slaughter-houses. And to go back to those days, we weren’t far from the countryside, so you could understand that a lot of the men that lived in the area were butchers, and predominantly the butchers came from the north side of the city rather than the south side, because of the area that they were, you had the slaughter-houses. Now, as well as that then, you had families who, their father reared them, and they earned their wages by being cattle-drovers. They’d go up -- the men’d go up Fairhill at two or three o’clock in the morning, round up cattle belonging to the farmers and hunt the cattle from there down to Midleton, or to Carrigaline, or out to Macroom for the fairs at seven o’clock. As a matter of fact, there was one fair held every Saturday morning right over off Anglesea Street, across from the Garda Station, in that little square there across from the Garda Station. Every Saturday morning you had a fair there, and there’d be sheep and pigs on sale there. And those two pubs, one -- the two of them are there but one is idle at the moment -- and eh twas -- they were farmers’ pubs.
L H: So em what's your interest in road bowling, it comes from your youth?
E D: That's right yea.
L H: Em was it due to friends or family?
E D: Due to friends really and ea you know we used to in our time in we had a very good couple of bowl players well they would be seeing us that time in Clohroe village we had two prominent very prominent men there em Paddy Cotter and his son Tony and Syril Horrigan was also a great bowl player. In our village, they were living actually a couple of doors away from me.
L H: Right.
E D: So that's how we grew you know we got to follow the bowling, go out of a Sunday they would be playing scores and I used to go out with my Father watching um and famous roads I remember ea Waterloo and Berrings they were two very famous roads, that’s in my early youth in the 1958/59/60.
L H: To a person who is not that familiar with the game how would you describe it, what's the game of it or how is it carried out?
E D: Ea well it's basically it starts at one particular point a starting point and there's a finishing point and it's aim is to go to that finishing point in the least number of shots to your opponent.
L H: Right what's a score?
E D: The length of a score? Ea
L H: That's the distance between a and b or whatever?
E D: It could consist of a mile and a half it could be a mile and a half usually about 20 shots which would be a mile and a half of road.
L H: Even when you were younger would it have been a similar distance?
E D: Oh it would have been still the same distance as it is now.
L H: And would you have been playing with other kids around the area or would you have been?
E D: No we would have been playing with our own friends in the area you know at the time like.
L H: Would your own Father have played or?
E D: No he never played it, never played it, but followed it all his life yea.
L H: Right he would have gone out.
E D: Oh he would have gone out following it he would yea he would.
L H: And one thing I have come across is that Cork and Armagh seem pretty dominant places in Ireland for it, it's played very little anywhere else is there any reason behind that?
E D: Well no not really it started I suppose with the great famous scores between Armagh and Cork you had Danny Mc Farland and Mick Barry they were two famous names Danny Mc Farland was a famous name in Armagh at the time and ea actually it's not called bowels in Armagh it's called bullets they call it bullets in Armagh and I suppose it stent from there really you know going back to 1960s and early 70s, there was some famous all Irelands between Armagh and Cork but now it's getting into parts of eh, Dundalk. Louth and Dublin there playing a bit of it in Dublin now as well but definitely the two famous places are Armagh and Cork.
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_SR00581_osullivan_2016; CFP_SR00583_johnson_2016; CFP_SR00589_lysaght_2016; CFP_SR00590_varian_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.
File 1 0.00.00 - 0.03.35 |
Early years in Bandon and Cork Dan speaks about his early years. He states that he was born in the Cottage Hospital in Bandon (1931). He says that he was taken to live in Cork at the age of four, where he attended Ss. Peter and Paul School for a year or two, before returning to live in Bandon until the age of sixteen. Dan explains that he feels that the separation of his parents, when he was young, contributed to making him more self-sufficient in life. |
0.03.35 - 0.10.20 |
Early jobs from the age of twelve to sixteen: delivering milk - paper boy - wheelwright’s assistant Dan recalls that while still at school he started his first job, at the age of twelve, delivering milk in a churn each morning and evening for three shillings a week. On leaving school at fourteen, he says that he worked as a paper delivery boy for eight or nine months. He remembers collecting Examiners and Echos’ off the morning and evening trains from Cork city, for twelve shillings a week. Dan is proud that his pay was increased to fifteen shillings after three weeks. He recalls that after this in 1945/46, he went to work for a wheelwright - Louis Fulham - operating the bellows. |
0.10.20 - 0.11.30 |
Move to Cork Dan speaks about how he moved to Cork city with his father - a stonemason - around 1947/48; and explains that he lived ‘in digs’ from about the age of sixteen to twenty-four, while he served his time as an apprentice stonemason. |
0.11.30 - 0.15.00 |
The first return visit to Bandon after nearly thirty years Dan explains that he did not return to Bandon for nearly thirty years as it held too many painful memories for him. He relates how he finally returned by going to sing at an old folks’ concert, on the urging of an old Bandon friend, Delia, and recalls how he met his first girlfriend there again. |
0.15.00 - 0.19.15 |
Parents separation; rift with brother Dan discloses that the reason he stayed away from Bandon so long was due to his parents’ separation. He speaks about his mother with whom he did not get on and he also relates how the separation caused a rift between him and his only sibling, a brother, who went with his mother. He says that the separation meant that they ‘were never really brothers’. |
0.19.15 - 0.20.10 |
Early married life Dan says that he ‘never had a home before he got married’ as he had spent so many years ‘in digs’. He reflects on early married life when he and his wife, Kay lived in a flat in Brown Street - a street which no longer exists. CFP Note: Brown Street was located in the Paul Street area around what is now Rory Gallagher Place; it ran down to the quay at the back of the current Paul Street Shopping Centre Car Park. See photo at: https://www.photosales.eecho.ie/v/photos/74373pks/1351997210?pcp=21 consulted on 04/04/2017. Dan recalls that he went to work in England for a while and he says that when he returned, it was to a home that his wife Kay had set up for them in Mary Aikenhead Place, off Cathedral Road. He says that he still lives in the same house, sixty years on. |
0.20.10 - 0.21.30 |
Dan’s present partner Dan speaks warmly about the very good relationship that he has with his present partner, Sheila. He says that though they lived near each other for many years, they did not meet until about twelve years ago. |
0.21.30 - 0.22.30 |
Dan’s mother-in-law Dan relates that his late wife, Kay came from the Coal Quay. He speaks about her mother, Laurie Collins, known as Laurie Connors, who ran a fruit and vegetable stall there. He recalls that she had a kidney removed at seventy but went on to live to be ninety. It is at this point that he talks about his wife’s early death at forty-four. |
0.22.30 - 0.23.20 |
Dancing days Dan reminisces about when he used to go dancing six to eight times a week - sometimes twice on Sundays - and says that he was one of the top twenty ballroom dancers in Cork. |
0.23.20 - 0.25.30 |
Appreciation of life Dan reveals that the highlight of his life was getting married and having six children. He says that his youngest son, Alan - forty-four, at the time of this interview - lives with him. Dan advices that it is important to make the most of life and says that he and his partner Sheila take a few holidays each year. |
0.25.30 - 0.32.00 |
Bowl-playing; Bol Cumann na hÉireann Dan recalls how he used to go bowl-playing in Blarney and was classed as Junior B grade. He mentions strong bowl-playing areas like Fairhill, Dublin Hill, Ballyvolane, Togher and Waterfall. He then goes on to speak about the establishment of Bol Cumann na hÉireann in 1954, which he says resulted in the sport becoming more formalized. CFP Note: Bol Cumann na hÉireann replaced the All-Ireland Bowl-playing Association. Reflects on the great social aspect of bowl-playing, which Dan feels has been lost due to the greater emphasis on placing high bets nowadays. He also says that pubs no longer sponsor the sport like they did in the past. |
0.32.00 - 0.34.20 |
Rural Electrification Dan says the house in Kilbrogan Street, Bandon where he was born (1931) had electricity. He says that they moved to another house, two hundred yards away, in an area known simply as Kilbrogan, which was without electricity and so he says that they used paraffin oil lamps. Though he reveals that he did not have a happy childhood, Dan expresses the belief that life would have been happier for many people, as he considers that people were generally more helpful and neighbourly to each other in the past. |
0.34.20 - 0.36.00 |
Relationship with mother Dan speaks about the distant relationship that he had with his mother, who he describes as very ‘aloof’. He states that she was nineteen years old when he was born. He says that he did not hear of her death until weeks after and thinks that she was cremated in Wales. Dan says that his relationship with his father was much different and reveals that he ‘idolised’ him. |
0.36.00 - 0.39.30 |
Life after wife’s death Dan reflects on being a widower with six young children, after the death of his wife, Kay. He says that Alan was seven, Frank was eleven, Martin was thirteen, Majella was fifteen, Mary was seventeen and Tim - who later died - was the eldest. He explains that it was about three years after Kay died before life started to improve. He says that when they had got married, he vowed that the family would never be broken up. Dan suggests that it was his own difficult upbringing that made him a very resilient person. He remembers that his grandmother said to him: ‘you get out what you put in’ and he lives his life with this in mind. He expresses his belief that if parents do right by their children, then the children will always respect and like them. |
0.39.30 - 0.42.00 |
Relationship with present partner Dan speaks about his relationship with his present partner, Sheila, saying that they are great friends. He says that they enjoy travelling and going out three nights a week and generally making the most of life. |
0.42.00 - 0.47.42 |
Dan’s grand-uncle - Patrick Jones, poet mason Dan speaks about his grand-uncle, the poet mason, Patrick Jones, who was born in Bandon. Dan refers to Patrick as ‘an enigma, drunk, hero, one of the best bricklayers there ever was . . .’ and ‘a genius with words and stone’. He says that Finbar Wright put one of his poems about Kilbrogan Graveyard to music. He also mentions the two medals that Patrick was awarded for bravery during the Boer War. He remembers visiting him as a child in Gillabbey Rock and describes him wearing a soft hat with ‘a scowl on his face’. He says that Patrick was not a very sociable being and would prefer to go off on his own to write poetry. He also says that it was only later on that he realised that Patrick had a drink problem when he read his own story. CFP Note: Bandon born Patrick Jones (1870-1956) served his apprenticeship as a stonemason before joining the British Army. He was soon seconded to a sapper regiment. Sapper regiments carried out a range of military engineering duties, so Patrick’s masonry skills would have made him an ideal candidate for such a regiment. On returning to Ireland after the Boer War, he combined his work as a stonemason with the writing of poetry. See: CFP researcher Michael Moore’s Stonemasons Project. Note: Interview is suspended temporarily as Dan receives a text message. |
File 2 0.00.00 - 0.03.30 0.03.30 - 0.06.58 |
Family Background Dan resumes talking about his granduncle, Patrick Jones. He says that Patrick must have been in his eighties when he died. He goes on to speak about his father’s four brothers. He says that one was beaten by ‘the Free Staters’ and ended up in an asylum. Three other brothers migrated to the United States. He also mentions his father’s two sisters who he did not know. Dan explains that his grandfather married again after his first wife’s death. He speaks warmly about his grandfather’s second wife, Annie Dalton, describing her as ‘a pure lady’. Family background contd. Dan continues speaking about his grandfather’s family. He says that his grandfather was a bricklayer. As well as his brother Patrick, he states that his grandfather also had a brother, Tommy, who was a headmaster in Passage and another brother, Tim, who was manager of the West Cork Bottling Co. He says that Tim was a father of the Jones Group, who were involved in the oil business. He remembers ships on the quays, which they owned, such as the Mary J and the Eily J - the J being for Jones. |
0.06.58 - 0.07.45 |
Patrick Jones’ children Dan says that Patrick Jones’ two daughters are still alive - one being Mary Jones O’Connor. He speaks about Patrick’s two sons, both now dead. |
0.07.45 - 0.12.45 |
Keeping family together Dan stresses the importance of maintaining a loving, united family life. |
0.12.45 - 0.14.00 |
Patrick Jones Dan’s final thoughts on Patrick. |
0.14.00 - 0.15.00 |
Jones family history; family trade Dan speaks about building being the family trade. He says that his great-great-great grandfather was a Welsh protestant stonemason who came to live in Ireland. Though he continued to adhere to his protestant faith, he married a Roman Catholic and they reared their children in the Roman Catholic faith. Dan notes that he has no Jones’ relations left in Bandon now. |
0.15.00 - 0.20.11 |
Dan’s family links: Jones Group; Gerry Jones and the 1970s arms trial Dan refers to that part of the family known as the Jones Group. He says that two of them were very senior civil servants in the 1930s. Dan’s father’s first cousin Gerry Jones, who Dan describes as a Provo (Provisional IRA member), became famous for his black patch and support of Charlie Haughey, during the gun running scandal of the 1970s. He reveals that the family suspected that Gerry Jones provided financial support for the Provos. CFP Note: The gun running scandal and consequent arms trial saw government ministers accused of supplying arms to the Provisional IRA. See: www.irishtimes.com/news/death-of-gerry-jones-1.243735 Interviews Ends |