We have enlisted three superb speakers who will share their knowledge on various aspects of the period. Ger Browne on Thursday 22nd September with Stories from The Emergency/WW1 in Co Clare;
Darlene Meskell on Friday 23rd September with the story of John Meskell whose home was burned down by the Auxiliaries in 1920;
and Darren O’Connell on Saturday 24th September on John Charlesworth, a young British soldier, who is buried in St. Flannan’s Cathedral graveyard.

ALL ARE WELCOME AND ITS FREE!

Arlene gave a similar talk to the Arra Society in January of last year, this year we are getting to attend in person, and in St. Flannan’s Cathedral.

Since January 2021 Arlene has continued to research the Spaight’s and Derry Castle. She has made contact with a descendant of the family, and as you can see from the poster she has obtained a much longed for photo of the original house.

Arlene has also contributed to an RTÉ radio documentary on Francis Spaight, not yet broadcast but we will let you know when it is aired.

You can listen to his full interview here through Sound Cloud.

You can listen to the his full interview here through Soundcloud.

The Journal is full of local history, stories and poems from times past in our beautiful twin towns.

There are fabulous stories from some local people who are sadly no longer with us, including Pa Carey, Birdhill; Jerry Gough, Killaloe; Tom Grimes, Killaloe; Billy Mills, Ballina, Jack O’Sullivan, Kilmastulla and Maureen Scanlan, Killaloe.
Also included are some fantastic articles contributed by Joe Coleman; Joachim Fischer; Sandra Lefroy; Tomás Mac Conmara; Kathleen Hickey McGinnis; Darren O’Connaill; John & Mark Scanlan

If that’s not enough to tempt you, The Journal also includes lots of photos, some paintings and sketches and old newspaper adverts!

And all for only €20!

We would like to say a huge thank you to all those who helped us put this publication together – Fifth Gear Design, the Nenagh Guardian Print and all those who contributed stories, articles and photos.

The Journal will be available for sale from the following local shops: 
Ballina: Larkin’s Gala & T.J.’s Angling Centre
Killaloe: Heaney’s Costcutter & The Forge (John Daly’s)

You can also buy a copy of The Journal HERE and we can post it to you – please add an extra €4 for postage in Ireland or €6 for postage abroad.

In line with COVID-19 restrictions, we are limited to direct sale through shops (as above) or by An Post (local, national and international post). Unfortunately we cannot arrange home delivery or collection.
However, if you have any queries, drop us an email – killaloeballinalhs@gmail.com

You can listen to Tommy’s full interview here through Soundcloud!

Tommy was a Postman in the area for, how many years Tom? 41 years.

Now Tommy, would you like to continue and tell me about when you first came to Killaloe, where you lived and what post district you had?
When I came to Killaloe first, was in 1951, and my first place I stopped was in Hogan’s in Ballina, he was a bus-driver.

Where exactly was that?
Tis there where Freda Whelan is living now, Wards lived in it one time, and Hogan’s lived in it afterwards. And then I was in hospital in Raheen for eight months, with a belt I got in the shin.

From Hurling?
No, but I skidded and the doctor told me, this fella, ah he was a regular, he was a terrible nice doctor, up there in Raheen anyway for eight months. And after that I came home, back to my work again, and I stopped in Mulcahy’s in St. Flannan’s Road, I stopped in Guerin’s, that’s Danny Guerin’s now in St. Flannan’s Road, they have new houses there now, remember the American fella.
And where else – I stopped with Byrne’s, abroad in Newtown. I had no place to go, I was often out on the road at six o’clock thinking to where I was going to sleep the next morning. I stopped in, the best digs I ever got in Killaloe, I enjoyed every bit of it, was Mrs. Doyle, Mary Ann Doyle, in the Green, do you know Alice, her mother, you had heat, you had everything, good food, good everything, and that’s the only place that I ever could say that I enjoyed myself, between the old man talking about Australia, snakes and things. He was very interesting.

What year did you come to Killaloe? ‘51

And where was the post office then?
The Post Office was Miss Hehir. I got some terrible great yarns about Miss. Hehir, she was tough. Only in regards to her, in my mind she was one of the most honest people that I ever worked for. She may have a big mouth and give out to you but that’s all it’ll ever go, you know. That’s a woman in that kind now.

Was she an old woman?
Fairly old yes, she must have been a beautiful looking woman in her day because she had beautiful features and things like that.

How many Postmen were there when you first started?
I could nearly name the postmen – there was Tommy Grimes R.I.P., you had John Collins, he lived in New Street, his daughter is married to Fitzgerald now here, and there was Tommy Cassidy, which afterwards met with an accident out in Ryninch and I think was treated very bad by the Post Office. I was in Mass one day and I asked him to know how he was getting on, you know. Well says he “Tommy put down you hand there and feel the calf of my leg” and I did. Oh God I don’t know how he stuck it, the bone was coming out there, you could feel the bone coming out through the flesh. Sure, he didn’t last long after, sure you couldn’t! He was a good Postman, a very good Postman, Tommy Cassidy, I must admit that.

How many of you were there altogether Tommy? Tommy Grimes, Joe Kissane, myself, Cassidy, ah, about five postmen.

And what route did you do? I done Ogonnelloe, the first one.

And my first time, I was going up along the street there, just at Jimmy Minogue’s, now where Sullivan’s is, the first shop there, near the Kiosk, and this woman ran out and she hit me a crack, you know, and I didn’t know says I, what’s this at all, this isn’t a nice thing at all, what in the name of God is wrong with this woman and poor old Maggie Gleeson, a nice one and I was her best friend after and all this sort of business.

Then Tommy Walsh, the bicycle man lived where Tom Cooney lives, and then the Barracks was next, Sergeant Mc Guinness lived in that street too, also Superintendent Lavin lived in it, next-door where Minogue’s is now, and then you had Doyle’s, and Joe you had a Supermarket there for a while, and then you went down and you had Martin Edmonds, and ah…after that you had Connors, and then there was a pub there, across where the Fire Station is, there was a pub there, Josie Hogan’s, whether it was there or down a little bit further, I don’t know. And then there was a Shoe-maker there, which was a great character, Jack Kissane, you’d go into him and you’d say “have you me shoes done” and he’d say “I’ll have ‘em done next week”. He was a great character and a good man on the stage, I believe.

Well I knew the rest of them and ould Mickey Brien’s father, he was always meeting me at the top of the street and of course, he came from Newport, and he’d always meet me and ask me to know who won the match yesterday. I’d say “Tipperary won”, “when you go down town to Paddy Gissane’s, say he, “will you tell him that I had £2 on them”.

So that’s the way. So, from there down you had Lynch, Superintendent Lynch, and you had Edmonds, Eddie Edmonds lived in one of those houses where Hogan’s live now, the other one Pat Reddan and Mrs. Lynch, the Schoolteacher. Then you went down further, you had Mrs. Nihill, they were stonecutters, they lived where the little wall is now, I don’t know who lived in Mrs. Doyle’s place, whether it was her, I think it was. An then you had Prendergast, he was a Cashier in the Bank, where that woman is living now, do you know that big house there, then you had Frank Keogh, the Vet, then you had Le Froy, that lived up there, you know where the Parish Priest is living, up there, Le Froy.

That wasn’t the Parish House then?
No, they lived up there. I don’t know now, I think that woman is there a long time, I can’t remember anyone else there anyway.

Where, in the Lodge House? Mrs. Bosworth. I think she’s here a long time.
Yea, I can’t remember anyone else there, she’s here a long time.

Now Tommy, we’ll keep on the Post Office. You cycled! Oh I cycled, yea.

The Post Office supplied your bikes, did they? They did, yea.

And they paid for all the maintenance and repair? Who did all maintenance and repair on them?
I don’t know about doing them, you had to send them into Limerick and they’d send you out a reserve one.

Did you ever have to manage without your bike?  Oh, I did.

You had to walk?
Oh I did. I often had to in my time, tie it with twine and you’d be waiting for a part for months, pedals and everything. One place I used to go out to, Mick Vaughan, he used to have a little bicycle place, with clocks and everything, do you know where Keogh’s of Ballyvalley live, there was a little house over there before you go to Ryan’s, I think it’s there yet, but there’s all trees around it and bushes.

You mean on the left-hand side?
On the right as you go out. Do you know before you go to Ryan’s? Whether it’s there or not now, I think Mick Keogh owned that. He makes out that he owns it anyway, I suppose he does. Across the road from Varley’s, I think it’s right in. But he used to be tricking with ould watches and clocks and everything, but there’s where I used mend my bike, when I’d be broke down there. Mick was a great character.

And did you go out Tommy right into Ogonnelloe village?
Well they had no village there. I went out for miles around, I went over in to Eoin Hayes’s, as you go down the Blacksmith’s shop there, Nora Bodkinson. I went cross fields into places. And I used to have to go up to Paddy Conway’s, Sonny Grant has a Garage there, before that there is a lane there leading up to Johnny Curtin’s and McKenna’s, she’d be a relation to the Gavin’s and they lived off up on top of the mountains. I can’t remember his name now……Paddy Jim Curtin, they lived up there. And then there was Paddy Conway.

Would you have post for everybody every day? Well not every day but mostly that time.

And if you had only one letter for that area out in Ogonnelloe would you still have to go?
Oh, you’d still have to go. Oh, there’s no doubt about that.
You’d have to go up as far as May O’Brien’s, I think she died and a fellow of the Guilfoyles’ used to live there, and Sonny Brien. And then you had a great old friend of mine, he died, he was in America, he worked in McKeogh’s in Ballina years ago, then he went to America and joined the American army, Willie Stritch. He worked in McKeogh’s, I don’t remember him working in McKeogh’s but that’s what he told me before he went in the Army. But he was one decent fellow, you know. You had to come back then and you had to go down Ballyhurley, that’s Costelloe’s.
You had Pakie Lynch, the School teacher there, I was always very great there, I always got the tea there, he’d always say “look under the mat and you’ll get the key and go in and make your own tea”. Ah she very nice, a very nice woman, Eileen Meade was her daughter, she was only married for a very short time. And she’d be Mooney, Mick Mooney and all, they lived down the lane too and they’d be relations of Callaghans.

And how did you come to hurl for Ogonnelloe?
Well I left Killaloe and I was asked then. I was forty-five years of age you know, and I said I would but I was feeling in good health and good form and I hurled for Ogonnelloe. Everything was going good for me and the funny part about it, I had the Gael Linn one day I used to back Gael Linn, you know put a shilling on Gael Linn, back the teams and I had Ogonnelloe and I had the team I was playing with and I didn’t know it.
The score was ten three to nothing, that’s what we won the County Championship, ten three.

And you got a medal for that?
I gave my medal to Dominic Stewart, Dan Stewart’s son, he got Polio, himself and Noel, they got Polio years ago, you know. Dominic had a little limp, he was an engineer in America I think for a long time. A beautiful family, there’s no doubt about it, every one of the Stewarts were wonderful people.

And then that was up Ballybrogan, little Mick, I used to deliver to him, Mick McKenna, did you know him? He lived up that road. And then you a fella by the name of honest Mike, that lived above passed Stewarts all together!

Do you want to know anything else?

What year did you win that medal? 1960.

And I was coming out the door after going up to work and I was met by Fr. Woods. “What did you win? I heard your name on the wireless”. “I think you’re codding Fr. you must be mistaken” says I. “Oh no” says he “I heard your name”.

I don’t know whether t’was £200 or £100, I can’t remember any and I couldn’t make out who I bought the ticket off or who was in the game even, but sure, t’was Mrs. Costelloe abroad, the Post Office, that’s who I bought it off, Margaret Costelloe, she was the post mistress that time.

And you were still living in Killaloe then and you were allowed hurl with Ogonnelloe?
Well…..they claimed me as their own anyway to tell you the truth.

And was that the only Championship you ever played?
I played in the semi-final of the Senior Championship here. I was just after coming from Roscrea, and I was here two years before I was asked to know would I play. One day Joe Doyle and a man by the name of Danny Blake asked me to know would I play with the Junior B Team, they were going Senior. They were playing, I think it was Kilkishen they were playing. “God” says I “I will”, and I played in Kilkishen and I played on Dan McInerney, he used to play against Tipperary one time. And I took on Dan anyway, fine big man.

They had a great team, there’s no use mentioning because people might be annoyed if you said it…Tommy O’Brien was playing with us that time, you know from Ballina.
They had Ogonnelloe on the run, a Junior B team, they had them beaten and they had to stay on the field, they walked off of the field, I even insisted that they shouldn’t walk off because they automatically suspend themselves. So, I was very annoyed over it but I still kept on playing, I used to enjoy myself going up to the field there, the Canon’s field they called it. If we had the same field now, I’d never be out of it.

Where was that Tommy? Up here.

Up where Peter Egan’s house is?
Oh yea, that’s where the Canon’s field was that time. I think he sold it, was it Egan bought that then.

Hurling must have been great in those days?
Ah t’was good, it was and it was interesting to go to that time. Larky Flynn, you had Micéal Flynn, they were all a good crowd, you know, you’d go in to Bridgie Slattery’s then and have a few drinks and a sing-song, it was enjoyable, you know. And you had to be good.

Then we played against Newmarket, we were getting better as a team, we had Jim Devitt-Moloney, and his son played, Mattie Maloney and he was a lovely hurler, and he played on Des Carroll, he was a Butcher above in Scariff, still is, and you had all the stars that time, Paddy Welsh that played for Scariff, sure they were after winning the Championship three or four times, but anyway we played against Newmarket-on-Fergus, good old game you know, but you see what was wrong with Killaloe – if they went out and played as a team, they’d beat anybody. They had a beautiful team that time but they never played as a team. They’d never pass you, if a person was in a better position, they’d never pass it over to you. I don’t know the reason why? But I suppose least said, as easy mended.

Well I think that’s more or less all I have to say!

I remember leaving Killaloe………..

The post was late coming in? Oh, every time, it was never early! But this time it was.……

What time would it come in? It came at six o’clock.

In the evening?
Yea, and it milling rain, and that’s the only time I ever remember – I went to Ogonnolloe, and down in to Gleeson’s, the water was just the same – it was running out of me now the same as you were after swimming the Shannon. And the clothes…….
I went up Farrell’s lane, before you go to Dan Sheridan’s, the lane leading up after passing Mary Bugler’s there, there’s a lane leading up and says I “there’s no use in stepping over stones, walk through water”, right up to the house.

I think Paddy, what would you call him, was living in it at the time; I’m not sure whether it was Farrell now or Annie Guilfoyle; she married Paddy Welsh, Tom Guilfoyle.
And I kept going. Next thing I had to go down that time into John Barton’s, now they have a house on the side of the road built now, but you had to go down into the fields, and now when I was coming back, I didn’t know whether I was going to walk into a river, I could hear the river going but still and all every time I’d go close, I’d have to move back.
So, a car happened to be passing and I just got a glimpse of where it was and I made for that place. Only for that………

You could have been drowned! I could yea, I could have, yea.

That was dangerous conditions you had to work in.

Once I wanted to get up as far as Bugler’s, not for the drink or anything but just to meet my people, so I got up there and I was like the same as a drowned rat and I was trying to keep my letters dry and things like that but it was an impossibility. So, this person, I gave all my letters then and I got them there and I had a few drinks then and I said “I’d go to midnight mass”
Well Fr. Burke was saying mass anyway and I’ve heard a lot of midnight masses, I never heard anything like it, beautiful.
He was absolutely a Saint on the altar. Although I was ringing wet, ringing now to the skin, I still could listen to him and I had to stay at the door because I was so badly wet. But he used to give the sermon – t’was beautiful. Of course, he was a Missionary in his day.
And he gave Benediction then and t’was the same as the Almighty was giving it. He was out on his own. So, t’was an hour and a half, a good hour and a half anyway. And then I had to cycle back then six and a half miles to Killaloe and I got inside my house, I took off my clothes and they fell on the ground the same as they were ringing and I got a towel and I dried myself and I said to myself “t’will be a miracle” says I “if I get out of this”. And I can’t believe it, but I never as much as got one cold out of it.

You were healthy.
I never got a cold, I could never understand it because I was so wet and cold but I got the few drinks, I suppose.

They put the warmth in you… I suppose.

And normally what time would you set off on your post trips?
Sometimes eight o’clock, or half eight, now when it was half eight, it’d give me great time to be up and I’d go to morning mass, I used to get a great chance to go to mass and then I’d go straight over to me work. Sometimes I’d go in then about seven o’clock to give them a hand sorting.

You had to help with the sorting, did you?
Well I did but I always used to go in maybe half an hour, bring in the old bags and give them a hand like. I wasn’t supposed to.

And what time would you finish? I’d finish about three o’clock, sometimes three.

And how much did you earn in the beginning Tommy?
My first wage here when I came here in 1951, two pounds, ten.

For a forty-hour week? I think it was more that time.

I’d say it probably was. You had to work Saturdays then, didn’t you?
Oh you had! I had two pounds, ten and every year you’d get five shillings.

Bonus?
No, a rise, we called it the increment you see. And you were waiting for this increment, and you’d think it was a big thing. So, you had to pay I think thirty shillings or thirty-five for your digs, and that’s all you’d have left.

I remember one time that I was on the bridge and Chris McGrath was passing over the bridge, he owned the pub there now where the Seanchaoí is, he owned there. She was a great woman. I’ll tell you and I’m not saying a wrong word in them years gone by, she fed a lot, and I often used to get my dinner there. She was a very good woman.
She was out in the morning at six o’clock and she scrubbing, in the winter’s morning, and sleeves up to there and then she’d go off in the back of the trailer to milk the cows with Chris, he was driving.

Was that Andy McGrath’s mother?
Andy McGrath’s mother. That’s the woman. She was one great woman.
There used to be a fellow there, Jaz Moore, Pakie Moore’s father, he used to always go in there, he used to be a great character, and Clohessy, there was more people in this town, they were all characters. You won’t see anything like that now. But they were good at the back of it, you know.

Do you think it has changed an awful lot now? Oh, changed an awful lot.

Not for the better?
Not for the better. When I came here in 1951, I was often frightened, I wouldn’t see a sinner. I often came up back after my work, especially of a Wednesday, I wouldn’t see a sinner and you’d say is this a ghost town or something?
And then as the years pass on a few people, they all had to go away, there was no work here. Only for the Benson Factory, I don’t know what they’d do, that’s there for years, it never gave up.

It’s going over 50 years.
He was a great man to keep that factory going. And there was nothing said about him, you’d never hear anything about him, that he done this, sure, he kept it going, sure he’s still there.

That’s what the older people say.
He’s still there, now. And I’d often say to him, “any chance of a lend of the car”, you know the big car he had. “T’wouldn’t go up the lanes” he’d say to me.

Tommy, what did you do with big packages that you’d have?
I had to put them on the bicycle.

On the carrier?
Yes, any parcels. But parcels, that time, you were loaded up with parcels. And Christmas, you’d have to get an ass and car and you didn’t know where you were. And you had to do the town before you went out.

Oh, did you?
Sure, I had to do from Minogue’s. There was no houses on the road from here out along, you had to go up to Ballyvalley, the Hotel, all these places you see. Of course, the place where you’re living now, that wasn’t there. But you had…I think the longest one on that road would be Michael Keoghs, you know up that lane. Mary Ryan abroad, t’was there in my time, alright. And Gleeson’s took over that place down there.

Tommy you must have seen a big change in the roads from when you first started – the condition of the roads? They must have been terrible.
Oh yes. Sure, they were terrible that time, rocks. I tell you I used to dread, now the weather that’s after passing with the wind, because you could be killed going under Ballyvalley trees that time.

Apparently, there was a lot of trees.
If one of them fell down and hit you, you were finished.

I was coming out of my own house one day after burying my brother George, and I stepped out and I stepped back in again and the chute came down and split, one inch more and I was a second one. I was just lucky in that line.

And of course, your relation…the famous George Cunningham from Roscrea.
He is, I don’t have much to do with him. He does a lot of writing.

He’s your brother, is he? Or your uncle?
No, he’s only a second cousin. His uncle was Manager of the Baking Factory, Paddy Cunningham and Paddy Cunningham was a brother of my fathers. I think actually my father’s people came from Galway, it is a great Galway name anyway, that’s what he used to tell me.

He made one of the greatest poems, he was a poet, he used to work in the college, and the priest asked him a few times would he go into the college, he was so brilliant an’ he working there, that’s all you had to ask him, would you make a poem in the night, if he was off they’d ask him would you make a poem and it would come flowing for him, he was a genius. But he made a poem on poaching the rivers, t’was one of the greatest, t’was a story in a poem.

What was the one you were telling me one day down at work?
Oh, the one, I made a poem myself. God, I’ll give you that one if you like.

This is a poem about a man from Roscrea.
Yea, I made this poem thinking, well there’s another fella in it with me. We made this and it went in under his door.

In a little Ivy Cottage in the middle of Birr Óg

There lives a lovely bachelor and his age is fifty-two

Ryan Patrick is his name me boys, better known as Johnsie

But people sometimes mix the name and often call him Swansie

Now he is a man who for many years has escaped matrimony

And if he does not marry soon, I’m sure he’ll go stone looney

There’s megs in plenty around the town who would love to flirt with Johnsie

But none of them would have the nerve to sleep a night with Swansie

He talks about the Summer months and the dew upon the grass

He says he does a ten-mile walk, but he does it on an ass

He never was a chosen one of that fickle lady fortune

But if you went into his house, you’d surely come out scorching!

Around the fire on winter nights, the boys would congregate

The lads would have their question time and Johnsie would adjudicate

And now to conclude and let me add, do not judge him badly

For if he ever gets a wife, I’m sure she’ll live quite madly.

Signed and sealed, under the door. And we thought now……….every place we’d meet him, “give us the one about me”. He had the laugh.

He enjoyed it?
He enjoyed every bit of it.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Tommy passed away in 1997 aged 82 and is buried in Roscrea.

This interview was recorded on 15th January 1991 when Tommy was 76 years old.

It was digitized by the Killaloe Ballina Local History Society in 2018 with assistance from Paddy Collins, Ballina

Main photo: Benny O’Grady pictured with Paddy O’Brien (RTE).

Just over 33 years ago, Killaloe-Ballina RTÉ Community Radio aired from the Molua Centre in the Green, Killaloe from 6th – 11th April 1987.

The committee involved in this wonderful project were –

Michael Connolly, Killaloe (Chairman)
Ann McKeogh, Newtown, Killaloe (Secretary)
John Sheehy, Roundhill (M.C.C.)
Michael Miller, c/o AIB, Killaloe
Denis Floyd, Birdhill
Thomas Mills, Ballina
Benedict O’Grady, Ballina
Michael McNamara, Ogonnelloe
Pat McNamara, Main Street, Killaloe
Billy Shanahan, Boher
Pádraig Vaughan, O’Briensbridge

The Community Radio was broadcast in Killaloe and Ballina, and was also enjoyed in Birdhill, Boher, Bridgetown, Clonlara, Newport, Ogonnelloe, Portroe, Scariff and Tuamgraney.

Michael Connolly as Chairman introduced this Community Radio Week as an opportunity for local people to meet and “air” views and ideas on different Social, Educational and Cultural matters, with music, song and story, all presented and produced locally.
Michael goes on to say that he hopes “that this week of broadcasting will live on in memory for many years, and that all aspects will be enjoyed by you, the listeners”.

Antoinette Ryan came across cassettes that her mother Mary Ryan (nee Minogue) recorded during this Radio Week which includes most of the shows aired over the six days. Often, in the background, you can hear Mary pottering about in her kitchen. We would like to say a huge thank you to Antoinette for donating these cassettes to us!

We would also like to thank Pauline Quigley, Grange Road, Ballina for sending in these amazing photos, taken by her husband Michael in studio in 1987.

The Local History Society are so delighted that over 30 years later, we have the opportunity to share these shows with you and we hope, whether you are hearing them for the first time or you were tuned in in 1987, that you enjoy listening – click here!

If you have any queries or require any further information, do not hesitate to contact us by email: killaloeballinalhs@gmail.com

You can listen to the full interview here through Soundcloud! 

Would you tell me about your relationship with Bishop Ryan, how would you have been related to him?
He wasn’t an uncle, he was an older person. I don’t ever remember I think seeing him long ago, he was Bishop alright, how long he was in Garraunboy or Killaloe I don’t know, but he gave the Convent anyway to the Nuns, and he went up to live in a small house some place around Ennis and he stayed there and he built the College in Ennis, St. Flannan’s, and he built a Chapel also, and I think he built another Private School too. He lived to be a big age, but he never looked for a penny off anyone, anything he got, he never had collections or anything, but it was the people that were generous and good to him; that’s how he got to build the things.

And he put it back into the community? Yes, he wasn’t mean, no.

Do you ever remember meeting him? I never remember meeting him, no.  

Where would your Grandfather have been from? Was he also from the Glen?
He was, he was.

So how many generations do your family go back?
I don’t know, five I suppose anyway.

Would you have any idea what your Grandfather would have done for a living? Farming.

And you father? Farming.

And is that the original house now that the family are still in? Would that be your home place? Yes.

That’s where your Grandfather and Father would have been born?
Yes.Well of course we built a new bungalow but the old house is still there, we made a cow-house out of it. That’s where my daughter is living now. Of course, they done away with all the old thatched houses and they built bungalows, but of course some were very poor in them, long ago they hadn’t much at all, they had no luxuries one way or another like we have now.

I remember going to school and we had to cross a river, over to the Glen School and t’was built on our farm and I remember going to school bare-footed for a long time. We used to get shoes I suppose for Sunday, very few could afford them at that time. 

And you went to school in the Glen? I went to school in the Glen. 

There was a girls school up there?
It a mixed school there, but there was only ten or twelve going. 

And what were your teacher’s names?
Mrs Scanlon and Miss Cleary, and there was a Hayes girl from Tulla, no Feakle teaching for a while. Mrs Scanlon was there for a long time but all her family then were coming to that school. But anyway, it’s done away with now; but there is nobody hardly living up there at all, only one woman now with a family, that would be Betty, there is nobody living in the Glen, only two people, they are all gone out of it. 

So what age would you have started school in those days? About five, I think. 

And what age would you have finished? About fourteen, I suppose….the term. 

And when you finished school, what did you do? 
I didn’t go anywhere, I stopped, slaving around at home. 

So you became a farmer? 
Yeah. But a lot of people went to America. Well I remember now, I can barely remember two of my sisters going to America and they never came back. A few of our neighbours’ girls went as well and never came back, they were poor you know, and they couldn’t afford to keep them there, aunts or someone took them out. 

How did they go – by passenger ship? By ship, yes. 

It would take a long time? I think a week, or more than a week.  

And was there a graveyard in the Glen, where children were buried? There was.

Where exactly is that? Oh God, ‘tis up very far, the Kyle I think they used to call it.

Did you ever know anyone’s families that were buried there? I didn’t.

No names at all?
I don’t know now, I don’t of anyone, cause of course they were all kind of buried on the quiet, any children there was buried there, they were buried on the quiet, it’s only a small little place.

And are there any headstones?
No, no, t’wasn’t big enough anyway for headstones, t’was only a small little patch like.

Was there a Church up there? No, Garraunboy was the nearest to us.

And was there Hedge Schools or anything like that up there? There wasn’t.

And what about Mass Rocks?
There was no Mass Rocks, wait now ‘til I think, Garraunboy was the nearest to us and there’s a graveyard in Garraunboy, outside the Chapel, there’s a graveyard there alright.

Is that still there?
Oh it is, there are people are still buried in it, up to last week there was a funeral in it I think.

Can you remember your Grandparents at all?
I do, I can remember my grandmother, she lived to be a big age, I don’t remember my grandfather.

So, where would your Grandmother have been from? God knows, I don’t know.

Can you remember the house, what it was like when they lived in it? T’was a thatched, very dilapidated, very hard to keep it, pulling and dragging, but they were very warm houses, but they needed a lot of attention, t’was very hard to keep it clean, we used to white-wash the hobs every Saturday night.

So, they did all their cooking on an open fire? They did.

So then, your Mum and Dad lived there? They did.

And did they modernise it at all, any bit?
They didn’t, they couldn’t afford to. An amount of people didn’t do anything with their houses around, they were all thatched houses around about.

Do you think it’s a shame that they’re gone now, or is it better?
Oh ‘tis better, they were shook, and a lot of labour got with them, you see you’d have to go for straw, maybe a couple of miles, come back and tease it out and pay a Thatcher.

Have you any idea how much it would have cost? I don’t know now, no.

Would your father bring his animals down to the fair in Killaloe? Yes, yes always.

Did you ever go with him? I didn’t, no.

Even when you got older? No, I didn’t.

I suppose it wasn’t a place for ladies. No.

You’d have no idea how much he would have got for any of his cattle or anything?
No.

When Garraunboy Church was built, t’was consecrated on such a day and everybody had to go down and I remember my father took me down on his back, I was very small, and he took me down on his back, we couldn’t get into the yard you see, they had wire around it, to keep back the crowd, so I was on his back all day, looking in. 

Can you remember what year that was? I don’t, I don’t, no.  

You don’t remember how old you were then – you must have been small. 
I was I suppose maybe only about two. 

And where was the old church, before they built the new one?
T’was very near there, do you know Dillon’s cottage, at the back of that, all Dillon’s sheds are built on it now, you’ll see it when you’re passing. Nobody ever came back to look at it. 

And who paid for the building of the new church – where did the funds come from? God knows, I don’t know now, I can’t think. 

You can’t remember your family contributing? I suppose they had to. I
can’t think now who built it. 

Who would have been the priests – can you remember any of the priests?
No, wait till I think? I can’t think of them. 

Even when you were young, can you remember them back to your day, when you were growing up?
There was a Father, oh God, I can’t think of him. He used to come to the school to examine us on the catechism, Father Lawlor, and I think Father O’Dwyer was another. You know there used to be a catechism examination every month and they used to come up and give us a bit of a doing. 

To see how well you knew it?
Yeah, yeah. But when we were preparing for confirmation in them times we had to go to Killaloe, down to the church every Saturday, they were teaching us before confirmation, but sure that’s all done away with now, there’s no religion much now like.

So where did the Priests live – the priest that you would have at Garraunboy, did they come up from Killaloe, like they still do? They did, yeah.

So as a girl growing up, you must have gone down to Killaloe – you must have gone down at certain times. 
Oh of course. I often went down on the ole ass and car with my mother, to Killaloe when I was small. 

What would you go down for? To shop? To shop, yes. 

Where would you do your shopping? 
Well t’was Crotty’s. Crotty’s isn’t there all the time. McGraths, I think bought it. It changed hands a lot of times. 

Can you ever remember who had it then before Crotty’s? 
No, no, God Crotty’s had it for a long, long time. 

Can you remember any old characters from Killaloe, or any of the old shops in the town?
No, there was a lot of old beggars around mind you, a lot of poor people. They used to come out the country, they used to come to us and we’d be after churning and goodness gracious, you’d see them at the door and they waiting for a cup of buttermilk, they were starving kind of and they’d come every Monday when we’d be churning and my mother used to give them buttermilk and they used to be delighted the craters…

Did you bring your milk down to the Creamery in Killaloe? Or was the Creamery there then?
There was no creamery there, all we had was a couple of goats and maybe two cows and that’s all; that’s all anyone had around us. I remember now Lynch’s near us had five goats and we had three or four. 

Did ye milk your goats and use the milk? 
Yes, goat milk was grand. T’was yeah. That’s what we lived on. 

Did you make the butter from the goat’s milk?
No, from the cow’s then after a while. When we got rich from the goats. 

So, you never sent your milk to the Creamery? 
No not that time but it’s going now of course. It’s all creamery now. It is. 

You say none of the families were wealthy, but you would have had enough? Yeah.

How many were in your family?
I had four brothers and I think about four sisters. There’s two of my sisters are living yet, one in America, one in Limerick, and they’re aged, they must be over ninety.

And what about your brothers? My brothers are all dead.

And where are they all buried? In Garraunboy.

And what did they all do for a living?
They slaved around on the farm, like. None of them emigrated but the girls did.  

It wouldn’t have been as easy for the girls to get work? No

Did you ever come down to the dances in Killaloe? 
Indeed I did, often come to the Ballina dances in the Creamery.  

We heard a story about that, t’was called the Cheesehouse – is that right?
Yes, that’s right. 

Now, we heard about dances and then we heard that wasn’t true – so you can tell me that’s true. 
Oh God there was dances in the ould Creamery, we used to have a great laugh altogether at them. 

Who’d be playing at them now? 
Some ould Fiddler, I think he lived there in the lane, near the Convent. 

In St. John’s Lane? Yes, and he had only one leg. 

You don’t know his name?
I can’t think of it now. But he used to have great crack, he used to go every place with the one leg. I think he used to manage an ould bike or something. 

Any how often would they have a dance?
Not so often like, because the people hadn’t money to go into it. 

And how much would it be to get in? 
About four pence or threepence, t’was very cheap to get in. 

And where did you meet your husband? 
Where did I meet him – at a dance. He’s a Tipperary man. 

In Killaloe? Yes. 

You’ve a lot drawn out of me now! 

Where used you bring the half a sack of flour from?
In Killaloe, from Crotty’s, every week.  

By donkey and car?
Yes. There was a lot of us in it at that time. T’would be no good to bring a strum of flour with us crowd, so they used to bring a half sack of flour. Then the flour bags, God forgive me, they used to knock the brand of them, you know, with washing soda and they used to make sheets, they were lovely.
But they wouldn’t do it now!

Did ye grow your own vegetables?
Oh yes, and does still. We’d grow everything we want. We’d five or six drills and everything is in that, potatoes and turnips and everything.

Would your cut your own turf? We cuts our own turf.

Where would you cut it? In the Glen bog.

And did everybody do that?
Everybody dug out ten of them but of course ‘tis the machine that comes and cuts it, then there’s no bother with it, he scatters it and he cuts it, the machine scatters it and then you’d have to go up and turn it after a day or two and then you could bring it home.

And the bog it still there?
The bog is still there, oh ‘tis cause there’d be nine or ten farmers up and the machine will come.

Did you ever milk the goats yourself? Oh God I did; a very hard job to milk the goats.

Were they hard to catch or did you keep them tied up?
No, they weren’t, they were very quiet mind you. But if you wasn’t careful you’d have more than the milk going home!

How far were they from the farm?
Oh God knows they weren’t very far away, they couldn’t be you know when we had to milk them like in the mornings.

Did they ever wander away?
No, very seldom, no. But there’s nare a goat around anywhere now.

And they say goat’s milk is better for you than cows.
Oh, indeed it is, it is. Well they make out that it’s healthier than the cow’s milk at the present. The cow’s milk, you know, there’s a lot in it.

What can you remember about the time of the Black and Tans?
They came to our house one morning. My brothers was all on the run and they came to our house one morning, I remember it well and they searched the house and we had a loft you know and t’was a ladder going up to the loft, like in old times in the thatched houses they hadn’t any upstairs, and they went up and pulled the ould tick asunder and prodded and plucked and you’d see feathers going in all directions. They blackguarded the devil out of us but sure we sent them away anyway, but we were in dread of our lives that they’d come on, there was a few of the men down in an ould house of ours down in the fields far away, and we were afraid of our lives they’d go down and catch them, but they didn’t, they went away peacefully after searching the house.  

And was it only once they did that?
Only once, but we were all the time afraid of them. They frightened us.

Can you remember want it was like in Killaloe? I don’t remember, no.

And can you remember the executions on the bridge?
Oh God yes, I remember them because I was going to the Creamery with the pony and car one morning and I saw all the blood on the bridge, and I was wondering what it was all about, I thought it was somebody that maybe fell naturally and didn’t rise up in a hurry or something. And t’was there anyway and t’was there all the time, and I coming back the blood was all around the bridge.
And t’was afterwards I heard about them, they were brutally shot there.
And sure someone there now in the village puts an ould wreath on it, they done it last week, I think, I saw in the paper, t’was sad.

You didn’t know the men?
No, McMahon, Egan, Gildea and another name, I didn’t know them, no.

They were from Scarriff!
They were, up that way. They went up in a boat whoever took them up, someone spied on them of course, devils, they went up in a boat to Williamstown, someone went up in a boat and brought them down.

We’ve heard different stories – that after they shot them, they took them to the Lakeside and held them there. We also heard that they took them up to the Barracks. They did, they did, they blackguarded them, they did. Oh, indeed they did.  

And they didn’t release them to their families? No, no. T’was a terrible time.

Some of the boys went down, a brother of mine went down and a boy of the Lynch’s.

And he (?) used to teach Latin?
He used to teach Latin over in Ballina, over where the Gooser’s is now.

In Murphy’s Pub in Ballina – that’s where they taught Latin. Was it a proper school or just part-time?
Oh, t’was only part-time, I think. They used to go down for a few hours, I think.

That would have been private – they would have had to pay for it?
No, I don’t think they had to pay for it.

Tony: Well I used to go over to Hinchy’s, the family the Hinchy’s and Lewis’s were the people who used to fish for eels. And I’ll always remember as a child going into Hinchy’s yard and everywhere you looked there was eels and they had these shallow boxes, well what they used to do, they’d actually go out from Killaloe and row up to Mountshannon. Mountshannon was a place where they did a lot of their fishing and you can imagine rowing up there and a north wind blowing down or coming home in the evening and all wet. 

How long would it take them to get up there?
Well t’was ten miles roughly say and I’d imagine t’would take them sure I suppose three hours or so, depending on the weather too, and sometimes they would bring back timber, firewood, on their boat with them. But they had these little shallow boxes, I don’t know how much eels would fit in them, and they’d get ice out from Limerick or somewhere and they were sending the eels, exporting them to London, Billingsgate in London, and t’was a very slow process. 
They had keep nets here and there, even down in the Canal there now, where Parks has the boats, they had keep nets there, just a big like a square box with lettuce wire on it and a trap door on the top of it, and they’d come back there in the evening and throw in a couple of stone of eels in to it, they had several of those around so when they had so many ton then I’d imagine, they wouldn’t have tons I’d suppose, only hundredweight I’d imagine, they’d export them to London.

So, it was like a small enterprise they had going themselves? 
Oh yes, yes. The boxes were only about say four or five inches in depth and they’d put a stone or two of eels in each box, put ice in them and nail the boxes together again and there was air holes in them. There was an old man living here on this street, Paddy Gissane, and he had a pony and car and he’d come and take them to the Railway, but as often as not, they didn’t get any money, all the eels were supposed to be alive, you know that time I suppose the service wasn’t as good as it is now, the eels were held up here and there and on the other hand then maybe the people that they were selling them to would say that they didn’t arrive in as good a condition as they expected and they wouldn’t pay for them you see, that happened fairly often. But that was a regular thing. Paddy would come along on his pony there and collect the eels. When any shopkeeper in the town would order groceries from Limerick or wherever he’d go the station, that was his job with his horse and car and collect everything for the shops. 

His horse was called Dolly wasn’t it? 
I can’t remember, it could be. He had a couple of cobs ponies. Another job, also he was the bill poster you know, he was the man who’d get the bills if there was a circus coming or concert on or an auction. 

The local advertiser.
Yeah, he’d do that. And another job of his was, if anybody died, in Newtown especially, I always remember as a child, he’d come along with the coffin, you see, in the horses’ car. T’was a very solemn kind of occasion to see him coming along, they’d be waiting and saying “any sign of Paddy Gissane coming?” “The funeral was supposed to be in at such a time”. These are people now that, very few people, only the wealthy people would have a hearse in those days, they couldn’t afford it in those days, that was during the War when petrol was scarce and they wouldn’t be inclined to go, a short distance especially. 
So, Paddy would come along and he’d bring in the coffin, the people would have to carry the coffin into the Church it would be going in. So, he was a Jack of all trades. 
He was also one of the men that knew where every grave was in the old cemetery below, if anybody had a grave to look for, Paddy had to go down and point out where the grave was. 

Tony, where does the fishing come in in your family?
In my family? It’s just that I suppose because I was born in Newtown myself and say we used to keep a couple of cows and I’d deliver milk as a child; I used to sell milk around Newtown and I used to visit all the houses and listening to the old minds, like. Bill Ives was the oldest man, all his family fished of course. Bill Ives, Mickey Noonan, Mickey Hogan, Willie Robinson – the first man I ever went fishing with, Bill Courtney and Tom Lewis of course, so fishing was the topic of conversation nearly, it was part of their life like. When I was a child the Shannon Scheme wasn’t long over you know, and you see their way of life had changed so much you see from the baiting fishing and everything, they were mostly course fishermen, they hardly ever fished for trout, very, very seldom.

T’was only the gentry that really fished for trout in those days. Up to the 40’s, actually, I often heard of a man from Birdhill, this will give you an idea of the change in times, of course there was no engines then, the late 30’s and the early ‘40’s, the engines started appearing on boats and more people went fishing. Before that it was nearly all fly fishing. There was this kind of a snobbery attached to it aswell, you were above your ‘station’ if you were a working man and you went fly fishing or fishing for trout at all really. In the early 40’s I heard of a couple of local chaps that were on the way up the lake, one of them now was working in drapery and this old guy above, the changing times in Ireland if you like, he had his Gillie there with him of course, and he looked like that and he didn’t like to see the likes of those people coming on the lake fishing and he said “Here comes the Cart Horses”, you know he was the Thoroughbred you know…that existed you know.

How often would you fish?
I’d fish when I was young. Well I’d fish every Sunday I suppose and for a long time I only fished from the bank. I’d go out with the brother out to Ballyvalley out to Parkers, out to the boathouse in Parkers and fish off the boat.
Of course, not many people had boats in those days either you see, when I was on holidays from school if anyone would take us out we’d go. Willie Robinson would go out, sometimes he’d just go out for the pleasure of pulling around as far as Cookes, Cooke’s Hotel as we called it, where the Arab is living now was a far down as we’d go
and maybe a little bit below it and up as far as Derrycastle on the other side. If you were just going out for coarse fishing, that’s as far as you’d go.
Micky Hogan was another man now in Newtown that I went with, he had three daughters and he used to fish a lot himself, and I used be there as a child you know , going out to the house and he used to bring me fishing quite a lot so I imagine that he was the man that gave me the ‘bug’ for it the first time.

He’s the one to blame? He’s the one, yeah.

Do you remember your first fishing rod?
My own first fishing rod I would alright, but I remember that generation always had the good timber rods, ‘Greenheart’, they wouldn’t fish with anything else as a rule, t’was all that type, the reels were brass, very nice.
But as I a child we used to have a few cows below and we used to have the grass of where that Canal is now, t’was called the Marl Cave when I was young out where John LeFroy has the place now, that was always referred to as the Marl Cave when I was young because they brought in marl there, t’was a kind of fertilizer.
The fishing boats were along there with the baits and the rods on them, left there the round of the year you know and I’d look around and just sit in to the boat, I wouldn’t touch the baits now or anything like that, pike baits I suppose they’d have, they would have an odd trout bait I suppose. If anyone saw me I’d be leathered for even doing that you know but just to think that you could do that, leave the roads and the baits and everything there.

Now you have to lock the oars to the boat…..

And then I had another problem…..when the season was up and the cattle would be down there they’d an awful habit of scratching and rubbing their heads along them, they’d have the boats up on horse-type thing. Some people would have very poor trust and it might be there for generations. There was one boat there and t’was I suppose a hundred and ten years old at least. A boat was treated like one of the family, t’was the father’s boat before them and it was handed down to the son. T’is unbelievable, the quality of the timber but they were very good to look after boats, they made up their own paint, a mixture of white lead and oil. T’was the best quality, the oil would soak into the timber you know, you can’t get it now, the lead was taken out you see. And even when I was young, for years we used to use white lead.

Tony, can you remember when the first Fishing Club started here?
Well the first one that I had anything to do with was in 1957.

And what was that called?
Killaloe/Ballina, the one that’s there, the Anglers Association. T’was to bridge the gap, they tried to get away from the split. There was always a kind of a thing between Ballina and Killaloe and it even existed between Killaloe and Newtown believe it or not, in a small little place, unbelievable you know what happened abroad there. And you had people like Jack Lynch outside you see and Tom Bennett, Tom Bennett was one of the best men I think, he was a Chemist here in the town, he was a great man to organize and a great man to look ahead and to plan.
I remember I was involved with him in the Fishing Club and the Swimming Club and I remember going out with him when I was in the Swimming Club years and years ago out to where the Swimming Pool is now and he saying to me this is an ideal location for a Swimming Pool, that time you had the idea of letting the water in at the upper end with the natural flow of water that you could, for a little outlay you know you could have a Swimming Pool there.

No need for pumps or anything!
But when we came back to the club in Killaloe, “oh that was Ballina territory, you know”, you had this thing and t’was very hard to overcome, you know.

Did you have Ballina members?
We hadn’t any Ballina members in the Swimming Club that time, no.

But in the Fishing Club you had Ballina members?
Oh, Ballina and Killaloe members, there was as many from Ballina as there was from Killaloe.

And how many members would there have been altogether?
In the Fishing club? That time sure, it went up to about 150 I’d say, around that I’d imagine!

Was virtually everyone who was any way involved in the fishing then a member?There was families joined and you got a lot of members really.

What was the membership fee in those days, would you have any idea?
The membership fee was 7 and 6 pence, or something like that, I think. 

And you’d have competitions like you’d have today?
Yes. Well the first competition, you see I wasn’t one of the founder members even though I was involved indirectly with them, I was very friendly with George Waterstone, he was one of the founder  members and George asked me to know, I was only very young at the time, would I go out to Cookes, that was the first competition that was ever held, out in Forthenry there and of course they weren’t used to having competitions so that particular day, you paid so much to go out fishing and you got a prize for the heaviest fish and the greatest weight, the usual thing, I don’t know how many prizes there were that particular day, but my job that day was to stand on the bank with binoculars, he gave these binoculars, to see that there was no roguery going on, that one boat wouldn’t pass some of the fish to the other, if there was two friends out together you know, they could pass the fish, this is what they were afraid of happening. So, they ironed out all those things as time went by. That was my involvement in the first fishing competition, that was the 1st of October 1957, yeah, I was on the bank looking on, as a spectator.

Were there any problems in the club then?
Ah no, there wasn’t ever any problems, we never had any problems in the club as such, no! The only problem that the club had in my time I’d imagine was with that thing we were talking about with the Marl Cave, looking for a Right of Way down there, it was always public. T’was belonging to my Grandfather J.H. Ryan and for generations people went down there, you see, and there was this person came along and bought it and said he bought it as private property, so of course, we objected to it as the Fishing Club, and he offered us……there was only say about six or seven boats there at the time, and he offered us a quay each and obviously some of them people that he offered the quay were elderly people and when they’d die they couldn’t give the quay to anyone else and we said we wanted a right of way down to launch boats and things like that.
Eventually there was a public hearing up in the Courthouse and t’was decided there by this arbitrator that came down from Dublin that t’was an established public right of way and that every person in Killaloe or in the area had a right to go down there, not only the fishermen, you know, he made that very clear. That all fell through within a few years again. It’s there in the Clare Champion for anyone to read. His ruling, some people said he hadn’t the power. He came out from the Courthouse and inspected the place and came to that decision and everyone seemed very happy with it.
Now it’s supposed to be private property again, you know, something happened with it!  And that was an ongoing thing. For hassle, that was the only thing, we had to go to the owner of this property that lived in Limerick so it was an ongoing thing and there was bitterness over it really I suppose, you know. Other than that, there was never any trouble.  

Your first Lake boat……
My first Lake Boat, I bought it from John Tiernan and that was only in 1958, John Tiernan in Mountshannon and I gave him £42.50 for it, yeah, an 18foot boat. It’s still there but I don’t own it.
The second boat I built myself, in a wood-work class in 1971, with Jimmy Foley, there was four boats built at the time, and it cost me £45.00 to build it and I kept it for 17 years and I sold it after 17 years for £500.

That was a profit!
It was, yea. So, after having the pleasure out of it, you know. It’s a fibreglass boat I have now, I don’t like them as much as I do the timber ones but you’ve less trouble with them, no maintenance. If you’ve a nice timber boat like the other one, even though I made it myself I was always very proud of it, t’was a lovely boat, a lovely boat to handle on the lake. I didn’t build it exactly as the other boats were built because I had this thing in my head the way I wanted it built so I asked Jimmy Foley to change the design really, for balance and things like that you know.
Obviously they’re nice to have if you have a boathouse and a suitable place to keep them they’re easy keep but if you haven’t, they’re a lot of trouble. You see the quality of the timber isn’t as good, or wasn’t as good then when I bought it, t’was White Deal, and of course Larch, but it’s hard to get a good quality Larch then as well. But obviously the White Deal, after twenty years everything starts to go in it you see. And one year you’ve to put in ribs and the next year you’ve planks and leaves and it’s an ongoing thing so that’s why I decided to go fibreglass.

And did you ever do Gillie, any of ye?
I did it a few times only just for the Lakeside Hotel would ask, they’d send over for me if they were stuck, they had their own boat, Denise Costello, she’d send over for me and she’d supply the boat actually and the engine. I took out several different people on the Lake but I never charged them, I enjoyed the trip on the Lake so much that I never charged anybody in my life. I often went out with people that it didn’t suit me to go but simply that enjoyed it so much I didn’t ever charge.

You were telling me there earlier about the way people shot Pike? Can you tell me about that?
Well that’s all I remember – I suppose it was for the want of something to do. Some of those people made their living on shooting alone, say shooting and fishing, they didn’t do any other work. So I suppose, they shot the pike when they came in to spawn, they’d come in there to the shallow waters you see and very often if the sun was shining even in October or any time of year, they’d shelter under a tree and they’d stay very close together. There’s nothing more I can say about that. Well Peter Hinchy now and the Hinchy family would be the ones I remember. Pat Collins was another man.

They’d sell them, would they?
I never really asked them or found out what they actually did with them, they’d pickle them I suppose. And maybe I don’t know would they use them for the dog food or whatever.  Pat Collins now lived where Paddy Reddan’s pub is now, they had a pub there for years, he was a man that was always into dogs and guns and going shooting.

And I suppose in the Summertime they supplied the Hotels didn’t they, the local fishermen. They used to sell the fish when all the Hotels were here in Killaloe?
I suppose, wait till I see now, there wasn’t that many fishing, they didn’t fish for Trout that much, those people didn’t really fish for Troutnow and I doubt if they ever sold them. Most of those were Gillies you know originally and the Lakeside even at that time, I remember Tommy Lewis telling me, you often heard of Anew McMaster, he was a  Shakesperean  actor, Killaloe was about the smallest place he ever came to, he wasn’t a very generous man according to Tommy anyway but I always remembers Tommy taking him up, he was doing Gillie for him from the Lakeside, and of course he was being paid by the Lakeside, a small wage every week, but as a rule when you’d take out somebody like him they’d give him a tip you see, so I said to Tommy one day, “I bet you got a good tip from Mr. McMaster”! “Yup, yup” said Tommy “three brass washers” says Tommy.  There were the old brass thrupenny bits, that was nine pence. “After me hard day” he says. And t’was the wildest day that ever came out of the heavens.

Rowing by hand? Rowing by hand, yeah.

Tony, you were telling me there about school and the way you were always involved with horses, how you loved horses? And how you got out of school more or less to look after horses?
I was very much involved with the horses and I was over in McKeogh’s Yard one day and Paddy McKeogh asked me would I be interested in taking the job of riding out his race horses, t’was like a dream come true to me, they had some very good horses, you know, before that and up to that time, they had one that was second in the Galway Plate, he is buried up there at the back of the Bakery, they have a stone over him actually and I said to him that I’d think about it, that I’d have to ask my parents, so I went home and I asked them. I told him that I was going to school and he said “Oh forget about it” he said but I said I’m thinking of leaving anyway, or something like that to him trying to soften the blow and he said “Oh no, once you’re going to school, I won’t have anything to do with you” he says “I wouldn’t dream of taking you for a job like that”. When I went home and when I told them what he wanted me to do sure they said for little money you have to go to school, finish your education first. I had ideas of being an electrician at the time.
So, I jibbed anyway and I went on for several months, about seven I think anyway and they eventually gave in to me and I left school. So, I went back to him and asked him for the job and he said he had his mind made up to sell the horses ‘cause he couldn’t get anybody suitable to look after them. But I asked him for another job and he gave me the job in the confectionery and he said to me “You can have a go at it anyway, you probably won’t like it” he said “and I’ll see in a couple of weeks’ time and I might get something more suitable for you”. I was there eleven years and he never asked me to know whether I liked it or I didn’t like it so I looked for a transfer into the Bakery for more money and I got it. But I was always handy for them from that point of view then that I could do bakery work or confectionery work, that time we used to do an awful lot of confectionery. We were baking for his brother in Mullingar and we literally had something like I suppose a couple of hundred of iced cakes a day alone, along with maybe three or four hundred dozen of buns, there were thousands of cakes going out of there. There was seven of us employed in the confectionery that time and there was about fifteen in the Bakery, about twenty-one between the two places, that’ll give you an idea of the stuff that was going out. Then we used to bake this sausage bread, there was a Sausage Factory in Nenagh and you’d have to put different colours into it, what they call a long ham. You’d put different dyes in, t’was all for making sausage anyway, t’was a big factory. T’was closed down afterwards anyway.

The bread would be put through the sausage?
Yes. And then before Christmas when we’d be making Barmbracks and things, they used to hire McGrath’s lorry, there was such a demand for stuff. The business they did in those days!

When you first started what hours would you be working?
At first, I’d start at 6 o’clock in the morning and I’d usually finish that time at around 2 o’clock. The Confectionary was a little bit easier, the hours were shorter than the Bakery, the Bakery were the long hours. But in the Bakery you’d have…Monday was always a very, very long day, you’d start at 6 o’clock in the morning and you wouldn’t finish maybe till 11 o’clock at night but then Tuesday you might be finished after four or five hours, you see, and Wednesday, then Friday and Saturday were two very long days again.
At Christmas, we’d start in the Confectionery about two months before Christmas and Sunday and Monday you started at 12 o’clock every night and you wouldn’t be finished until about 12 o’clock the next day and that was it, there was no break, Sunday or Monday.

Did you get overtime?
You got very little, you got about a weeks’ wages, you didn’t get overtime by the hour you know we’ll say. Gerry Brookes was the head man there at the time, he got paid so much for every hundred weight of sugar that was used. We only got paid say, we might get a few pounds at the end, at Christmas. 

And in the very beginning, what would your wages have been?
I think when I off the wages were getting good, according to the older generation of course. I was getting the £1.50 or 30 shillings in those days, that was considered very good, ‘cause there was people working for five shillings that time.

So, you were quite privileged! And you were there for 41 years. So you much have liked it.
Well I’ll tell you I was always a kind of a home-bird, I loved Killaloe, you know and my mother used to always be telling me about Killaloe, and about when I was young and I was always very frustrated over this; about the great times in Killaloe, the great regattas and the great atmosphere, the trains coming in and everybody had this kind of an attitude when I was say a teenager about nothing can ever be done in Killaloe, there’s no one to do it and I used to be very annoyed over that and I remember sitting down writing a few lines of a poem one evening you know and it went something like this:

Killaloe, an old historic town, in County Clare,
Was once so prosperous, bright and gay,
With the lovely Shannon, flowing by her feet,
She was once a town to greet,
All kinds of folk would ever take the road to Killaloe,
But now she’s dark in silence, like a wreck upon the shore,
And her natives they have banished by the score,
Though her beauty still remains,
The times and folk have changed,
Except the few old stagers that remain,
And they speak of days gone by,
Sure, they’d nearly make you cry,
As they speak of her with pride,
That’s the Killaloe they say has lived and died.

This is the way I felt about it you know at the time.
But I got involved then in the Local Development Association, I suppose. I was always keen to do something like that or to get something done. McCutcheon was the solicitor here at the time and people didn’t like him, but I firmly believed that if I could get four or five people like him, because you have to have somebody with substance, like, I always felt. I started off in a very small way I suppose, and we put down the seats on the Aillebhaun, which are gone out of it now of course after the slip and the seats down there by the water. I went around collecting off the shops collecting and got ten pence and things like that to make those seats, you know, and I ran a 45 in Ballina, in the Hall in Ballina, just to get money to make the seats.
So then, from where Irish Molly’s is down as far as the old Railway House is, that was a derelict site, you know, full of briars and it was a dump actually and we went over and we started cleaning that area and then the Tipperary County Council saw that somebody was interested in it and they developed it, that’s one thing I’m kind of proud of, we’ll say, that if you get local involvement into a thing, it goes on from there, you know.
We cleaned the Aillebhaun, the first year we got a prize from Bord Fáilte of £50 for our effort, and t’was amazing the amount of young fellows that you’d get out, if you had enough to organize it, they came out with their shovels and I’ll always remember Mrs Switzer and her husband, she was an old, bent woman even at that time coming with her shovel over her shoulder, you know it made you feel good to see somebody with that kind  of spirit coming along to clean the Aillbhaun and places like that. But ‘tis very hard to keep it going then at the same time, people were saying we were……McCutcheon was the……we were ‘yes men’ for a dictator and things like that and you have to listen to all, he said to me of course if only a half dozen of us can stick together now he said, you’re going to get more kicks than haypence out of this thing, he says and you have to be prepared to take it, you know, but we went on for a few years and did little bits here and there around the town.

So, you’d approve of the development that’s going on now?
Yeah, no doubt about. And, because the place was literally asleep, for a long, long time and very hard to get anything going, they always blamed……the old people saying…..they had this attitude that you couldn’t do it you know, people tried I suppose and some people did it over the years, there was always somebody doing bits here and there. There is so much going for them I thought, it’s a very picturesque place and with a small little bit of effort it could be a very nice place.

Something I meant to ask you when we were talking about pollution – what’s you view on that?
Well of course, obviously it’s getting worse and I asked Noel Roycroft you know and it’s not up to the danger level, you know they keep monitoring it every now and then but obviously it’s getting worse. Sure there is no ….. we’ll say, Bord na Móna …. the peat moss that’s coming down there and the factories and the sewerage we’ll say, sure Athlone and places like that, they have no sewerage system, of course all those things, there is no one thing, it’s a combination of factors that causes it. Like Mountshannon now have put in a new sewerage system and every little thing like that will help. You had a problem with the Chipboard Factory up there, for instance, that they conveniently let off very highly toxic stuff every year, and blamed some new person for it and this was an annual thing and got away with it, they shouldn’t have got away with that.

They’ve been stopped now?
Yes. The farmers as well, they’re putting out fertilizer and unless they do something to prevent that, I know the farmer has to make his living but they are putting it out there and it is literally being washed down into the streams and while you have that happening……. Of course, even the firms are doing something about the washing up liquid and all those things, they are taking out some of the chemicals out of them and of course all that will help.

Do you think it is a problem?
Oh there is no doubt about it yeah, yeah sure you just go up the Lake, when I was young going up the Lake and we used to spend hours and hours going along and they were just letting the boat glide along looking at the rocks and the different shaped rocks down below, different types of stones and rocks below, you can’t do that now with Algae. And if go up there to Brian Boru’s Fort, at times the stench that’s there is unbelievable and out at the swimming area at the Two-Mile-Gate, sure that’s as bad.

Yes we know about that, people getting rashes………….But last year, I don’t think it was as bad as it was a couple of years ago!
But that was always there, there was a little germ in the water, and anywhere you have a point coming out on the lake, it holds the water. I remember going out there swimming, oh tis 30 years ago, I suppose and Cotter now, the head man above in Newport and his brother in law Pat Stakelum, do you know Pat Stakelum the hurler and the three of us were there swimming one day and Cotter had this young fellow that came from France on holidays and he got a fierce dose out of it, he all broke out in these blotches. Well it used to happen to me so I was able to tell him what it was you know, we used to get TCP and put it on it and it would go, it affects some people’s skin, it’s a little germ that is in the water but it wasn’t really polluted at that stage, it was more a natural thing.

So, when you were young, because your brother Jack used to go swimming out there, so in those days, when you would have all gone as youngsters…………….
Well now, Jack would be 10 years older than Lisa, 12 years I suppose and I was the youngest, there were seven in the family and he was the  eldest so that’s why there is such a gap in our ages, but at that place wasn’t even developed that time. But Byrnes Shore was the place for swimming, all the people, during the War years, used to come out from Limerick on the side-cars and go down there.

Jack told me that Two-Mile-Gate was too far, they didn’t bother to go!
In those days, but you see you wouldn’t be allowed in there, Vaughan’s owned that place.  Paddy Byrnes, Lord of Mercy on Paddy Byrnes, he’d be a cousin of Jack Byrnes down the street now, well I remember as a child, I spent a lot of time with him and his two sisters out there in that old house there and I used to go for the cows for them in the evenings, on a Sunday evening and I’d be bringing the cows back along the shore and most of that shore is gone now, it’s washed away out of it now and people would be lying along the shore and they’d be giving out hell to me for disturbing them……..with the cows……and he owning the land, yes, and they’d come up to him for milk then and come up to him for sugar and they were very good, decent people, the Brynes’s were.

Tony, where was Byrnes’s out there?
Do you where the old house is, just before you go down to Gleeson’s on the shore there? That little cottage, that was the farmhouse and they owned the land from there over as far as where Mc Cutcheon lived, all that shore.

Jack used to swim along where Ryan’s is, that’s where Jack told me …
Oh yeah, that was Gillies Quay you see, that’s directly underneath Jim Varley’s house now is Gillie’s Quay, there was a man by the name of Gillie living straight across from Varley’s house now, Gillie was his name and that’s how it got the name, years ago, there’s just a few stones left there now where the house was. When I was young that’s where the scouts used to frequent, down there, there’s a stream going down there by Jim Varley house, the scouts used to go out there, just for a day’s outing and I always remember the older scouts jumping across the stream there and playing, there was a nice little green patch there, they used to have games there and jumping, they used to put up jumps there with sticks and things like that, you know.

You can listen to Maureen’s interview from the early 1990’s here through Soundcloud!

John Crotty was my great-grandfather and he had only one child, one daughter Elizabeth, Eliza and she married a Peter Scanlon and actually he died before John Crotty, so that’s the connection with Crotty’s. And I can remember when I was small, the Canal Store and down there in the Mill, they used to bring up the coal and the grain and everything in the horse and cart, hauling it up and down, and the Guinness in the barrels.
Killaloe that time the waterways was the way of transport, even though there was a Railway but I think most of the stuff came by Canal by barge down.

This is just something funny……..When my father got married, he bought Abbey House well he bought Abbey House in 1910 and he married in 1913 and he and my mother were in Paris on their honeymoon and they went to see a show this night and there were acrobats and things like that on the stage and then they brought out is it a special ‘turn’ they said and they brought out a whole lot of barrels and this chap came out and he started to jump from one barrel into another, or something like that, and my father started to laugh and Mom turned to him and said “what are you laughing at? What’s funny in that” and he said “to think that I came all this way to see that, my father used to do that in the barrels, in the Yard in Crotty’s and I’ve been looking at all my life”

He was a terrific athlete, he could jump over anything and when the English people would come over fishing and they used to stay in Graces, t’was a Fishing Lodge and there was a right of way, you know where Sean Ryan is and Carmel and there’s a right of way in the back of the two yards and there was always a right of way to Crotty’s, so the English people would be in there and they used to love to watch him doing this and if there was a horse and cart heeled up in the yard, he’d leap over the whole thing, he’d just think nothing of it. 

And how many years was he in Crotty’s?
My father? Sure he was born there, until he died. He died in 1923 and my mother was only married that length of time and we were only kids. I don’t remember a lot about him to be honest sadly, and that’s the sad thing, you know, I mean if he’d lived on you know you could have asked him a whole lot of questions. Naturally my mother, that side of the family, she didn’t want to have anything to do with them, she was so upset and worried and everything, in those days they wore Widows Weeds for seven years until 1930. I mean it was more her own side of the family that I knew about then, sadly.

But I remember there was this walk between the waters to go down by the Canal and the old Mill, and you’d see all the grain and the maize and it could be in the barge and they had this kind of thing and they’d scoop it all up and then it was ground in the Mill. You could go down to the first Lock which was Magee’s and that was a walk we loved as children and then you went over the bridge, over the Canal and it dropped down and there was a Lock Keeper there cause they had to change the levels of the water, you see, I think Castleconnell is about seven feet lower than Killaloe, that’s why they had to have these Locks and there was one there at the Bridge and they would go changing the levels of the water when the barges would come in. Then the second Lock was Crowe’s and I never walked further than that because we were too small as kids and there were wild swans there and they were so wild that we were terrified of them, not like nowadays they’re tame.

I think I heard from somebody that there used to be races down there, horse races, I think it was in the month of April and you know women used to come out from Limerick, you know the ‘Maggie Women’, selling apples and things like that and they had all sorts of excitement. It was in a flat field, I think it was in Maloney’s land, somebody told me that but I don’t know where the riders came from or anything. I don’t remember it.
Bridget Tully told me, she remembers going down there as children, walking down there and seeing where the races were. But she’s a bit is older than me. I mean I don’t remember it.

Maureen, where would you grandfather have come from?
Now that’s what I don’t know, because he started Crotty’s. But I mean, I was out with the McGrath’s when they took it over but I don’t know where they got all those dates from, you know, it was in the paper that it was eighty years old but I went down and took it off the tombstone so I mean my grandmother was born in about 1840, so he must have been married before then, that was John Crotty, she was John Crotty’s daughter, so I don’t know where he came from, unfortunately, it’s very sad now, I’ve no one to ask but with my father dying, we used never think about that – where we came from. He’s the first recorded on the tombstone.   

They would have made a good living there?
Presumably, yea! That and McKeogh’s, across the bridge, they were the two big stores around. 

They employed a lot of people, didn’t they? 
They employed about 20 hands. They used to have butter that used to come in from the country, the farmers would bring it in in their horse and carts, from Ogonnelloe especially and that’d be sent off down to Cork, and that happened every Monday. Then you see all the things that you get in the Creamery now, feeding stuffs was all sold there and sure everything had to be weighed in those days. There were four girls at the counter, two girls in the Hardware, there was a girl in the Bar, a girl in the Cash Office and there was a man in the back Office, there was a lad weighing and there were a whole lot of men. There was a Bakery of course, the Moore’s, you know the Moore’s down in New Street, well there was Paddy and there was old James Moore, and then there an old man there, his father before him, old James, and they came from Roscrea, they always made lovely bread. 

Were McKeogh’s not a bakery then? 
Oh it was. 

So there was great competition?
There was great competition, there was great rivalry between the two. They were poles apart, not getting on and all that!
And coal of course. They went around, they had a horse-drawn van for delivering the bread and I think the bread used to be delivered maybe twice a day anyway all around the town with it and another lot came out, hot bread. 

And I’m sure it tasted a lot better than today’s bread!
The Moore’s oh they were wonderful, old Jas Moore, all during the War, my mother never had to taste the white bread, it was horrible, t’was kind of grey in colour and he used to make a little loaf for her every day, he used to sieve the flour through a silk stocking so that she’d have a pure white loaf, he thought so much of her, you know he was a dear really, old Jas that would be Paddy’s father.

So you were never there as a child – your family had bought Abbey House?  
We were living in Abbey House but my mother ran it. 

Do you remember it? 
Crotty’s? Of course I do. When did we sell it? 1950’s, Mom had been ill, she’d had a major operation. Maybe 1955? 

Did you work there Maureen? 
Not really, I helped out a little bit in it but we had a huge staff, but I didn’t really. I didn’t take it over because t’was a hard life kind of. We had land that time, the farm and land and the garden. 

So you had plenty to do!
We had plenty to do.

So when did your family buy Abbey House?
1910.

And who did they buy it from? 
They bought it from the Church Body. The Church Body were putting it up for sale you see and there was a Mrs. Forde in it, she was renting it and my father left her in it and when she died, her husband had been out in the Indian War and they had alot of stuff, it was mostly basket furniture and swords and things and he wouldn’t have an auction he just gave them a price. They had old swords and daggers and things and the Flag of King Theobald, the last King of Burmah, when they got his Flag he had to capitulate and his umbrella. We offered them to a Museum. 

And how did they come to have those? 
They were loot, you see Mrs. Forde’s husband was in the Army, a Colonel, she was a widow then, and this was loot from the palace, you know what they did in those days. There were teak…we had an old dragon thing and there was teak and gilt, painted over gilt. Will I tell you this?

Yes, please do.
King Theobald, the last King, he had four angels on his bed, the two good ones and the two bad ones, the four posters of the bed. There was one of them in a Museum in London and there was one in America and there was out in one Burmah and my uncle by marriage, married to my aunt, he was in the Civil Service and he was in Burmah and he was writing a history of it and there was somebody there that he was going to get a loan of this golden boy and he was going to get it copied and he would write copy, he promised to write copy underneath and he, the owner, agreed but then at the eleventh hour the owner decided no, he wouldn’t allow it to be copied. 
My uncle was very disappointed naturally and he was back in London and he was engaged to my aunt. Mom and Dad were married at this stage, a couple of years. So she brought him over to stay in Abbey House and they were telling this story and he said if only he knew where the fourth Golden Boy was and my father said, “Joe” he said, “haven’t we got that Golden Boy”. “Ah now Michael Scanlan” he said, “don’t be joking me” because he was an Englishman and he was too serious and he didn’t believe him. 

But some of our relatives, they put it in somebody’s bed, you know, as a joke, and he put it outside the door of the bedroom to prove that he had found it, you know and I suppose the maid in the morning, she just put it up in the trunk room up in the attic and it was lying up there all the time. I remember it alright, it was on a wooden stand and he had a little red loin cloth around him and we used to play with him. 
Wasn’t it the Golden Boy that they had searched the World for and to think that they should find it in his perspective in-laws house, in Killaloe in a village. And he put it in his book, he wrote a History of Burmah, but sadly my father died not too long after and he thought it would be too hurtful for my mother to see it written so he left it out and sadly because now, I mean it would be nice to read. 

Was it valuable Maureen? 
No I wouldn’t think so, but it was just the sentiment to them. 
We had the Flag, that nobody wanted, so we gave him that, we gave it to him as a wedding present, we couldn’t have given him anything else, he had everything he wanted. He gave a lecture then in London afterwards and we shipped it over, we wrapped it up in yards and yards of cotton wool and shipped it across, but t’was very easy then, you just put a parcel on the train, the four o’clock train that went out to Birdhill and anything was in London the following morning, we used to often send fish in those days, and now, planes and everything and it doesn’t mean anything. It was a wonderful postal service. 

And how would it get there so quick? 
It went up to Dublin, over in the boat, down to Euston, it went in to Euston at six in the morning. 

Well it certainly isn’t like that now!
It is not!

What about this story of a Gandon House – will you tell me about that?
It was about 1963 that John O’Donovan, the historian, living in Dublin, well he came down, he had been talking to alot of American students in a Gandon School in America and they were very interested in Gandon work and they were looking at some ruins in the diocese of Ferns, it was supposed to be a Palace and there was a Dean Burke down there and John O’Donovan got interested in it and he discovered that Gandon had built a house for his friend, Dean Burke in the Diocese of Ferns. Then he found out that Dean Burke had been transferred to Killaloe and he came down here looking up where it was, he tried Clarisford and it wasn’t there, it wasn’t old enough, they tried Ferns Hollow and that wasn’t right so he came to Abbey House and he decided it was Abbey House, as it had been a Rectory or a Deanery, he went back and got alot of photos and he found where there was a little path going from Abbey House garden into the Cathedral, private part, through the yard and from the photos he decided it was a Gandon House. He then said the stairs in the house was Gandon and the little hall, the decoration on the ceiling was Gandon but it seems when Hugh Weir was writing his book he seems to think that Gandon wasn’t in Killaloe at that time so he didn’t seem to think how it could be, but sadly John O’Donovan is dead so we never disputed the thing, just wondering if it could be or could not be?  I imagine, I think it must be because when it was built Dean Burke was there.  

And there was never anything on deeds or anything to say?
No we never found that, we only found going back to 1840 when the Martins were in it, I mean our solicitor had it going back that far, the deeds didn’t go back any further than 1840. 

Didn’t a Spaight live in it? 
A Spaight lived in it but all these people that were living in it were only renting it from the Church Body. It probably would have been before Mrs. Forde and she was a widow, she was a kind of recluse, she just lived in one room, a bedroom, up stairs, she had the servants naturally in those days, but she was alone.

There is a little pane of glass in the window of what was my mother’s bedroom, it’s terribly thin glass, it’s amazing how it hasn’t cracked or anything. Peg Martin, December 24th 1824 was scratched on it and these Martins of course, were living in it in 1840. A relation of theirs in South Africa being a Martin, and she came over to write the history of all the Martin family and she was a terribly nice woman, and she went down, she got an awful lot of information from Seán Kierse of course. When she was writing this history, she told us that the Martin Family had built the present Deanery and when they were leaving Killaloe, I don’t know when that was, they presented it to the Church Body and that was it then, they decided they’d move and they’d make that their Rectory and they’d put Abbey House on the market and that’s how my father bought it. And there was a Mrs. Forde in it and he left her in it because he didn’t want to live it then because he wasn’t married. 

So he lived there and just continued still to work in Crotty’s, continued to run his business? 
Oh of course, he went up every day and he ran it. 
When Peter Scanlon, his father, died he was only 19 I think, and the other brother was wild so I mean he had responsibility at a young age, and his mother of course, she helped in the business too, I remember Granny, she died after him, she died in 1925. 

Can you ever remember anything that your grandmother would have told you?
No I don’t, sadly I haven’t anything at all like that, because in those days we’d a very sheltered childhood you know, we had a nurse and we were up in the nursery, you were segregated from your elders, not like nowadays. Even though I was old enough to mix around with people, we had Governesses and people looking after us you know what I mean. We were only taken out on state occasions (laughing).

Where did you go to school or did you have private tuition?
I went to school in England actually. We had private tuition until I was thirteen and of course in those days, my father had just died in 1923 when we became Independent after the Civil War, we separated you know from England. We knew they would be teaching Irish in the schools and we didn’t know any Irish so it was thought that it would be rather a handicap to go away to a sort of a boarding school in Ireland when we didn’t know any, I don’t know whether it would have but that’s what my mother said. 
And we had this aunt in England who was very keen on education and my mother wanted us to go over there so we did.

So you just came home on holidays?    
Came home on holidays, yea.

You must have felt very isolated?
We did terribly, yea. It was a mistake in a way because we hadn’t any Irish friends.

And what age did you finish school?
About seventeen and then I went abroad for a year, I went to Switzerland.
Then I went to Austria for a couple of weeks, because a friend of my mothers in Limerick, her sister had gone, there wasn’t much to do, this would have been before the Great War, she went out you wouldn’t call in au-pairing in those days, but you know teaching English for her family, because there was very little for girls to do in the olden days and she married this Austrian and he was killed in 1914 War and she had just one daughter and we knew her sister in Limerick, she was a Doctor, Dr. O’Sullivan,  and  they were great friends of ours so I went there and I stayed with them for about two months after I left Switzerland school, before I came home. I saw quite a bit of the world, at a young age.

Your memories of Killaloe from your childhood and growing up and everything, what can you remember?
I don’t remember a lot. Did you know that there was a Golf Links in Killaloe in the old days?

No.
It might have being going years and years ago but there was a Bank Manager here, Andrews, Cyril Andrews, I think he came in 1927? And he was very keen on sport and all that kind of thing, he done a lot of shooting and any kind of a game and he started it. 
T’was in Rohan’s land. I don’t know what the estate is called now, it’s out the Portroe Road and it goes down to the lake and it’s all covered in bracken.
Well there was a nine-hole golf course made there and the unique thing about it was that you could only play in the winter. Rohan’s wanted the land for hay so they had to close it off in April and they grazed it in the winter then. The greens had to be surrounded by barbed wire so that the cattle you know wouldn’t walk across. They’d an awful lot of work to do but anyway they had apparently great fun. They used to have the people around, like what they would do in the ICA now you know, so one person would be hostess and have tea and I think it was a Thursday afternoon and people would go and play.  

For men only?
Men only? Oh heaven’s no.

Men and women?
Of course. The women were the majority I would think. There was no Golf Links in Nenagh at that time so the Nenagh people used to come over but then they got to build a links in Nenagh, a couple of miles outside Nenagh and when that came then eventually the Killaloe one disappeared.

What a shame and all the golfers we could have here.
Yes, there was no one to keep it up.
Well when you couldn’t play in the Summer, you see that was the time when people would like to play. I suppose nowadays, of course, they could have bought it.

Did you ever play?
I played around a little when I was young but I never took to it, I was keener on horses, I used to hunt a bit and that was enough for me.
I think sort of being dragged over there while our elders played around and just having to go in the cold.

There was no Club House or anything?
There was but there wasn’t much, it was a sort of a hut. But we’d be around, playing around in the winter and it was so cold and you’d get bored with it after an hour and they could be three hours playing, my mother and another friend. So I was never that keen, it was a game I said that I would never play when I was grown up, too boring. I played a little bit alright but then I took up riding and hunting and that was enough to do you know because I had to go a distance then, I had to go to Limerick. 

What did your parents do for recreation?
I don’t know what they did. My father loved walking anyhow because I found old letters. When my mother was in a Nursing Home I found letters when I was organising the house. He used to go down Between the Waters as they called it, that walk, he loved walking down there. I don’t what they did in those days. I mean they couldn’t move around.

He was a great athlete, he used to cycle. I think he used to cycle every day. My mother told me one time that they had a business in Ennis and he used to cycle over to see how it was going along. He was terribly keen on riding.

Can you remember the first car they had?
Yea he had a car, he was very keen on cars too, he was not keen on horses funnily enough, because naturally we had a trap, a horse and trap and then it was kept down for Granny, she used to be taken out on it.
I suppose it was one of the first cars in Killaloe. I remember he said he was going along in the car, out through Ballina and up Templehollow hill and there was an old farmer on a horse and cart and my father started hooting at him as he was in the middle of the road and naturally he had to pull up in the car and he said to the farmer ‘why don’t you pull into the side’ and the farmer said ‘ I didn’t know which side you were hooting for, so I stayed in the middle.” (laughing).

Can you remember anything about the old buildings?
Abbey House, The Bank, The Deanery and I think down at the Pier Head well I think they were built by the Martins. The Bank was built in 1900 and Newman was the first Bank Manager.

Do you know who built it?
I suppose Rafferty’s built it they were the builders at the time. It was Rafferty’s that did the extension in Abbey House, we squared it and had 2 extra bedrooms as there was only 4 bedrooms in it. The sitting room looks out onto the yard, it was a nice room so you didn’t have to stay in the dining-room all the time.

Can you remember any of the hotels?
Collins the Chemist was Thompson’s Hotel, there was a hotel on Abbey Street too, Harley’s were their names, they lived in it and people came from England for the fishing and they used to have a seat out on the footpath, an iron seat, they would sit out in the summer and read the paper. The Shannon View was another hotel, Annie McKeogh lived there on the corner beside the Anchor and she had a kind of Hotel there and then down the Cul-de-Sac where the Welsh’s are, that was The Royal Hotel and in the beginning that was the Ponsonby Hotel, it was built by The Limerick Navigation Company.

Can you remember any of the people when you were growing up?
Where Jimmy Whelan is now that house was Lucas’s and where he has his store I think that was Maloney’s, the Minogues were next and then Rafferty’s and then Ryan’s were next, they had a shop there and across the road where the slot machines are that was a drapery shop owned by Larkin’s and there was a draper shop down where Maggie Ryan was where the bus stop is and I think his name was Keane. When Jack Crowe came I think he must have bought him out and he bought the shop where Kathleen Nash is and he lived in the big house where Woods are so that was Jack Crowes shop.