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....