My mother was Kathleen Nolan , daughter of Tom and Kate ( nee Howard ).She had only one surviving sibling , a sister , her brother Jack k.i.a. in the Balkans in Oct.1916 , another sister died of TB .
She had seven children .Although she spent all her married life as a 'housewife' she was always deeply interested in the happenings in Dublin of its day . Because of the large family no matter what happened in the city at the time , one of us was sure to have an inside track on the news of the day , either through direct experience or through a work collegue or a friend or a neighbour .
She had studied the Irish language ( before Irish became compulsary in schools , under Art O'Griofa ,an Croibhin Aoibhinn ) and was proud of her knowledge .
She attended 10 o'clock Mass each day in St.Joseph's in Terenure . Shopping for a big family , after mass each day , before the advent of supermarkets , meant having to visit the butcher ,maybe the pork butcher , or the ''baby beef'' butcher , the fruit and veg shop , the dairy , sometimes the fish and poultry shop and other provisions . This meant meeting friends and neighbours and passing on information ( she never let us use the word ''gossip'').
Bread , milk , and laundry were delivered ( in the earlier days ) by horse drawn vans or drays . So the mid-mornings on Rathgar Ave. were very busy indeed , with women coming home from mass or shopping meeting and greeting one another , the deliverymen knocking at doors , horsedrawn vehicles parked by the roadside , the clanging of trams or some of the newly-arrived motor vehicles roaring past .
When the family came home from work/school in the evenings our meal was ready piping hot , a stew , beef or chicken or even rabbit , ready to eat , followed by maybe , a freshly baked Madeira cake , or hot apple or jam tarts , maybe a huge deep apple pie , with whole cloves of course .
Sometimes we would have pancakes or delicious potato cakes baked on the huge black frying pan on the 'hob', big dollops of REAL butter and mugs of hot , sweet tea (from the best blended tea leaves ....none of your 'owl' teabags )......Let me pause for a moment to savour the past..........
Now where was I ????
I remember many of my mother's sayings , which presumably SHE heard from HER mother , but one of her sayings always mystified me ......If we told her what SHE considered to be a tall story that she didn't believe she would say '' Very like a whale ''. It was only in later years when we were studying ''Hamlet '' in school and we came to Polonious's humouring of Hamlet as they looked at the clouds , Hamlet said something like '' look at that cloud up there it's shaped like a camel '' and Polonious ''yes , indeed it looks like a camel ''and then Hamlet said '' but it is backed like a whale '' and old Po..agreed '' Very like a whale ''.....I guess you had to be there ....
The point I'm getting to is that in my mothers time many many people used lines from Shakespeare , often in daily conversation....maybe due to people like Anew McMaster and his fit ups bringing Shakespeare as well as Irish drama to everyone....
I was married in January 1973 , my mothers younger sister and only surviving sibling , died on Easter Monday of that year , my father's sister died mid year and my mother died on the 18th Dec 1973 , exactly a week before Christmas and two months before our first child was born....
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Rathgar in the rare oul times....( 1 )
Rathgar in the mid 1940's to mid 1950's was a great place to grow up . Rathgar Avenue , in particular , was a mixture of Georgian terraced houses , some detached old style houses and some ' newly-built ' ( 1920's or 30's ). All had large rooms with high ceilings . The reminders of the previous occupants , who would probably have been the ascendancy , were still there . The three story houses had 'servant ' or tradesman's entrances on the lower level with steps leading up to a grandiose front door ( seldom used by the new occupants ). In the two story houses the kitchen /scullary still had the servants bell- board and the main rooms had bell pulls beside the fireplaces .
Most houses had large gardens front and back .
The neighbourhood consisted of approximately half and half of the old protestant ascendancy business families and newly arrived Catholics , like ourselves , with large or very large
families .
The nearest church and school to our home were Church of Ireland denomination , my best friends included Church of Ireland and some Jewish children as well as Catholics , although we were scarcely aware of our different faiths , even on Sundays .
Playgrounds were few and far between but Palmerstown Park was popular and eventually a children's park and playground was opened at Orwell Bridge on the Dodder ( 50 years later this was still referred to as '' the NEW park''.
But we didn't need parks or playgrounds , the River Dodder itself WAS our playground . We ranged , mainly in Summer of course , on our 'excursions ' , from what is now Bushy Park ,(near Templeogue )then called Shaws Wood , to Milltown beneath the Nine Arches , fishing , swimming , dam-building : catching , pinkeens , minnow , sticklebacks ,and in dark gloomy side-tunnels ..the blind crayfish .
Once we even went fishing with a catapult , a-la Dennis the Menace , and actually caught a trout , stunning it as it rose to snatch , an evening fly-meal .
My father was a former tram driver , now driving buses . He was originally from Cavan and he never forgot his roots , as one of my brothers once remarked '' you can take the man out of the country but you can't take the country out of the man ''. Before he married when he was still working on the trams , each year he would give up his holidays to return to his family home in Cavan to help with the ''MEITHAL'' , in which country tradition , neighbour helped neighbour during harvest - time .
As we had large rooms and no central heating , during the '40's , a constant supply fuel for the open fires in all of the rooms was essential during winter .My father and some of his friends in CIE and the Gardai rented turf-banks or allotments from the state on the Featherbed in the Dublin mountains . As these men all worked irrugular shifts and had days off or early shifts during Summer they travelled up to the Featherbed mountain together on a hired high-creeled lorry from Terenure to '' cut turf ''.As we children got older we were sometimes allowed , school hours permitting , to join the trip .We learned very quickly the basics of '' cutting turf ''.
First the 'bank' was stripped of its surface growth of heather or bracken , opening up the soft mushy turf or peat underneath . Then an instrument called a ''SLANE '' ( basically a sharp spade with a metal '' wing'' welded on to the tip on the right hand side . The cutting started at the top corner of the 'bank', and each sod was sliced out and tossed over the shoulder of the cutter and laid out in neat rows to start the drying process .Some days later the sods were turned and then days later again the turf was '' footed'' , that is , made in to sort of stools , say four or five sods standing up and one or two on top , to allow further drying .
At the end of Summer when all the turf was dry it was then wheelbarrowed over the soggy surface out to the nearest bog-road and stacked neatly for taking away .
The same high-creeled lorry was then hired on an appropriate day and all the turf was loaded as high as safety allowed for delivery all the way down to Rathgar Avenue .
Once or twice as we grew older we were allowed to actually sit on top of the high-loaded lorry as it made its way groaning downhill across the Featherbed , down again steeply past the entrance to the Hellfire Club , around the Devil's Elbow, and eventually to Rathfarnham , by the Yella' House . All the time we who were on top of the heap had to duck under low lying branches or hang on grimly when rounding sharp bends .
So we arrived on Rathgar Avenue early afternoon . Our mother had already organised the friends and neighbours and prepared the house , because , the problem was , our house had no back entrance and the turf had to be carried through the house to our garden in the back.
The lorry pulled up outside our house and deposited its dusty load on the footpath , and partially on the road outside the railings .
Armed with baskets , sacks , trollies etc our family , friends , neighbours carried all the turf through the house and again stacked it neatly in our shed . All over and done with by evening time . A wash up , lemonade and biscuits for the helpers and our winter heating was sorted .
I never learned what our more posh neighbours thought of the ''turf circus'' , but many times over the years we were able to provide some of them with fuel....
A blazing fire in a bedroom at night is a wonderful sight , although nowadays health and safety would not permit , and as we drifted off to sleep on cold winter nights we could remember the Summer mornings helping our Father to save turf on the Featherbed mountain....
..even MORE to come....
Most houses had large gardens front and back .
The neighbourhood consisted of approximately half and half of the old protestant ascendancy business families and newly arrived Catholics , like ourselves , with large or very large
families .
The nearest church and school to our home were Church of Ireland denomination , my best friends included Church of Ireland and some Jewish children as well as Catholics , although we were scarcely aware of our different faiths , even on Sundays .
Playgrounds were few and far between but Palmerstown Park was popular and eventually a children's park and playground was opened at Orwell Bridge on the Dodder ( 50 years later this was still referred to as '' the NEW park''.
But we didn't need parks or playgrounds , the River Dodder itself WAS our playground . We ranged , mainly in Summer of course , on our 'excursions ' , from what is now Bushy Park ,(near Templeogue )then called Shaws Wood , to Milltown beneath the Nine Arches , fishing , swimming , dam-building : catching , pinkeens , minnow , sticklebacks ,and in dark gloomy side-tunnels ..the blind crayfish .
Once we even went fishing with a catapult , a-la Dennis the Menace , and actually caught a trout , stunning it as it rose to snatch , an evening fly-meal .
My father was a former tram driver , now driving buses . He was originally from Cavan and he never forgot his roots , as one of my brothers once remarked '' you can take the man out of the country but you can't take the country out of the man ''. Before he married when he was still working on the trams , each year he would give up his holidays to return to his family home in Cavan to help with the ''MEITHAL'' , in which country tradition , neighbour helped neighbour during harvest - time .
As we had large rooms and no central heating , during the '40's , a constant supply fuel for the open fires in all of the rooms was essential during winter .My father and some of his friends in CIE and the Gardai rented turf-banks or allotments from the state on the Featherbed in the Dublin mountains . As these men all worked irrugular shifts and had days off or early shifts during Summer they travelled up to the Featherbed mountain together on a hired high-creeled lorry from Terenure to '' cut turf ''.As we children got older we were sometimes allowed , school hours permitting , to join the trip .We learned very quickly the basics of '' cutting turf ''.
First the 'bank' was stripped of its surface growth of heather or bracken , opening up the soft mushy turf or peat underneath . Then an instrument called a ''SLANE '' ( basically a sharp spade with a metal '' wing'' welded on to the tip on the right hand side . The cutting started at the top corner of the 'bank', and each sod was sliced out and tossed over the shoulder of the cutter and laid out in neat rows to start the drying process .Some days later the sods were turned and then days later again the turf was '' footed'' , that is , made in to sort of stools , say four or five sods standing up and one or two on top , to allow further drying .
At the end of Summer when all the turf was dry it was then wheelbarrowed over the soggy surface out to the nearest bog-road and stacked neatly for taking away .
The same high-creeled lorry was then hired on an appropriate day and all the turf was loaded as high as safety allowed for delivery all the way down to Rathgar Avenue .
Once or twice as we grew older we were allowed to actually sit on top of the high-loaded lorry as it made its way groaning downhill across the Featherbed , down again steeply past the entrance to the Hellfire Club , around the Devil's Elbow, and eventually to Rathfarnham , by the Yella' House . All the time we who were on top of the heap had to duck under low lying branches or hang on grimly when rounding sharp bends .
So we arrived on Rathgar Avenue early afternoon . Our mother had already organised the friends and neighbours and prepared the house , because , the problem was , our house had no back entrance and the turf had to be carried through the house to our garden in the back.
The lorry pulled up outside our house and deposited its dusty load on the footpath , and partially on the road outside the railings .
Armed with baskets , sacks , trollies etc our family , friends , neighbours carried all the turf through the house and again stacked it neatly in our shed . All over and done with by evening time . A wash up , lemonade and biscuits for the helpers and our winter heating was sorted .
I never learned what our more posh neighbours thought of the ''turf circus'' , but many times over the years we were able to provide some of them with fuel....
A blazing fire in a bedroom at night is a wonderful sight , although nowadays health and safety would not permit , and as we drifted off to sleep on cold winter nights we could remember the Summer mornings helping our Father to save turf on the Featherbed mountain....
..even MORE to come....
Friday, February 19, 2010
Rathgar in the rare 'oul times.....
Late forties and early fifties , when we still had trams , travelling into Dublin City Centre ( an Lar ), was not only convenient but also exciting for children .The whining of the engine , the clanging of the bell and the crackling and sparking of the overhead cables as the trams swung around corners , was an adventure in itself , even before arriving in the heart of the thriving , bustling city .
I always remember my mothers story of her experience when travelling on a tram during our Civil War . As a young teenager she had been sent into town to collect fresh eggs which had been sent from a country relative by train . When she had collected the eggs and was on the tram heading homeward , to Terenure , an outbreak of shooting took place , between the two opposing sides , across the street . The tram was stopped and the passengers instructed to lie on the floor . In the process , the precious eggs were broken and my mother's abiding memory of the incident was , not the gunfire , which was a fairly regular occurance at the time , but the fact that she had to dispose of the remains of a basket of farm-fresh eggs , up a Dublin allyway .
Both my father and my maternal grandfather were tram drivers , and when The Dublin United Tramway Company ( a private company , the forerunner of C.I.E. ) , closed my grandfather and his collegues were given a small pension , and retired to their small terraced cottages . In my grandfather' s case this was a cul-de-sac in Terenure known as Rathmore Villas , or more commonly known as 'Tram' Villas .
These little houses consisted of , two bedrooms , a main living room , with an open fire/range , a kitchen /washroom/ scullary . In a small yard outside was the toilet and other washing facilities, a covered-in area for a 'mangle'( for drying clothes ) , and clothesline . There was also a bicycle shed and even a tiny garden space . The front door opened onto the communal pathway of the terrace and the back yard opened on to a laneway which in turn led on to the main thoroughfare of Terenure . Most of my grandfather's neighbours were , like himself , retired tram-men . So each family had their privacy and if they wished could share gossip and reminisences . All requirements , shops , post office , church , garda station were within a short distance .
My grandfather's only son was killed in action in 1916 , not in Ireland but in Greece in the '' war to end all wars ''. Jack was only 18 years of age when he was k.i.a. ( as they say ). He had volunteered two years previously , when he was only 16 ( pretending he was 17 ). One of Jack's first assignments , was to Cork to assist in the collection of bodies washed up on the beaches following the sinking of the Luisitania . An horrific job for such a young man , described in a letter to his parents , read to me by my mother in later years .After that he volunteered to be sent to the'front' and his commanding officer wrote to my grandparents to inform them that because of his age ( they must have discovered his true age ) , they would not allow him to go but if he volunteered a second time they would allow him to go . He did volunteer again . He was sent to the front.So it came to pass that :
18890 Acting Coporal John (Jack) Nolan
6TH Battalion ,
Royal Dublin Fusiliers ,
Killed in action , Balkans , 03/10/1916 ,
I never did get an opportunity to talk to my grandfather Tom Nolan , about his son , what he thought about how , after the Easter Rising , those young men who volunteered , and died in the Balkans , were vilified by some in our society .
My grandfather could have driven the tram that carried the volunteers to the GPO on Easter Monday 1916 , while his son was fighting overseas.....what did he think , how did he feel , old Tom Nolan kept his thoughts to himself......
more later.....
I always remember my mothers story of her experience when travelling on a tram during our Civil War . As a young teenager she had been sent into town to collect fresh eggs which had been sent from a country relative by train . When she had collected the eggs and was on the tram heading homeward , to Terenure , an outbreak of shooting took place , between the two opposing sides , across the street . The tram was stopped and the passengers instructed to lie on the floor . In the process , the precious eggs were broken and my mother's abiding memory of the incident was , not the gunfire , which was a fairly regular occurance at the time , but the fact that she had to dispose of the remains of a basket of farm-fresh eggs , up a Dublin allyway .
Both my father and my maternal grandfather were tram drivers , and when The Dublin United Tramway Company ( a private company , the forerunner of C.I.E. ) , closed my grandfather and his collegues were given a small pension , and retired to their small terraced cottages . In my grandfather' s case this was a cul-de-sac in Terenure known as Rathmore Villas , or more commonly known as 'Tram' Villas .
These little houses consisted of , two bedrooms , a main living room , with an open fire/range , a kitchen /washroom/ scullary . In a small yard outside was the toilet and other washing facilities, a covered-in area for a 'mangle'( for drying clothes ) , and clothesline . There was also a bicycle shed and even a tiny garden space . The front door opened onto the communal pathway of the terrace and the back yard opened on to a laneway which in turn led on to the main thoroughfare of Terenure . Most of my grandfather's neighbours were , like himself , retired tram-men . So each family had their privacy and if they wished could share gossip and reminisences . All requirements , shops , post office , church , garda station were within a short distance .
My grandfather's only son was killed in action in 1916 , not in Ireland but in Greece in the '' war to end all wars ''. Jack was only 18 years of age when he was k.i.a. ( as they say ). He had volunteered two years previously , when he was only 16 ( pretending he was 17 ). One of Jack's first assignments , was to Cork to assist in the collection of bodies washed up on the beaches following the sinking of the Luisitania . An horrific job for such a young man , described in a letter to his parents , read to me by my mother in later years .After that he volunteered to be sent to the'front' and his commanding officer wrote to my grandparents to inform them that because of his age ( they must have discovered his true age ) , they would not allow him to go but if he volunteered a second time they would allow him to go . He did volunteer again . He was sent to the front.So it came to pass that :
18890 Acting Coporal John (Jack) Nolan
6TH Battalion ,
Royal Dublin Fusiliers ,
Killed in action , Balkans , 03/10/1916 ,
I never did get an opportunity to talk to my grandfather Tom Nolan , about his son , what he thought about how , after the Easter Rising , those young men who volunteered , and died in the Balkans , were vilified by some in our society .
My grandfather could have driven the tram that carried the volunteers to the GPO on Easter Monday 1916 , while his son was fighting overseas.....what did he think , how did he feel , old Tom Nolan kept his thoughts to himself......
more later.....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)