Snapshots of our Childhood

Áine Furey, 1970s

Áine Furey and Gillian Power, dressing up in mum’s clothes and make up, 1970s

Do you remember getting milk in school?

Back in the 1970s Gillian Power and myself were absolutely the best of friends, from when we first met at the age of three, for the next almost fifty years. Gillian with the shorter hair, mine long .

If anyone remembers, back then in Primary School all the children were given a small glass bottle of milk to drink daily. Gillian and I at about nine or ten years of age were tasked with collecting the milk from outside the school gate where it was delivered daily, and bringing a crate between us to each classroom. It was a VERY small school in Co Waterford called The Model School where for instance three classes were in one room ( we were in a room with 4th, 5th, and 6th class) and the teacher operated with three different lessons marked on the chalkboard, a line dividing each. It was remarkable really. Well honestly we thought we were VERY important doing this duty. Gillian always had the best smile, and the giggles we had between the classrooms…I still remember it all very fondly. 

Gillian and I washing The Furey Brothers and Davey Arthur’s Tour van 1970s

My beautiful friend Gillian tragically died in a car crash in Australia on March 30th 2021 at only 51 years of age. I miss her dearly but treasure amazing memories of our friendship from childhood.

Gillian Power February 16th 1970 – March 30th 2021. RIP.

Áine Furey.

Milk being distributed at a primary school in Northern Ireland in the 1950s. Credit: The Irish Post

‘Millennium’ milk bottle from the Museum of Childhood Ireland collection

In Ireland, schools often provided milk, usually in small bottles or cartons, as part of a school milk scheme. This program, funded by government or local councils, aimed to provide nutritional support for children, according to a Belfast News Letter article on a blast from the past. The milk was often distributed in classrooms or break periods, and the bottles or cartons were sometimes stored in crates or under trees pre refigeration. https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/many-will-never-forgive-milk-snatcher-hate-figure/29182701.html. https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/question/2014-10-07/223 School milk scheme to be revitalised. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/school-milk-scheme-to-be-revitalised-1.1043808

Joe Jackson, 1960s Glasthule

Joe, age 7 on a wall in Glasthule, with Sandycove in the background. Photo by Joe Jackson senior.

Memories of Two Cinemas and a Beat Club. 

Every time I pass by the Spar shop in Glasthule, I am reminded of that building in three of its previous incarnations – the Astoria Cinema, Club Caroline, or the Forum Cinema. It must house countless thousands of memories.

In my own case, it is highly likely that I would not be writing this article or have written anything during my career as a journalist and author if I hadn’t gone to the Astoria one afternoon when I was nine. The life-changing experience reminds me that it is too easy to say movies are an escape from reality. They can reshape reality and lead to self-actualisation. That sure happened to me when I saw Deadline Midnight.*

During one seminal scene in this forgotten film noir movie set in a newspaper office, a City Editor, played by William Conrad, gave a rousing speech defending the core values of journalism. It concluded with him declaring that their newspaper “Gets good information to people who otherwise might not get that information.” I was hooked. I felt, ‘He makes being a journalist sound like being a Knight of the Round Table.’ I ran home to Eden Villas and told my folks, Phyllis and Joe Jackson, “I am going to be a journalist when I grow up!” 

Better still, I saw that movie for free. My Dad knew Mr. Scanlon, Manager of the Astoria. I didn’t have to pay to attend those screenings after school during the early 1960s. Not so on Saturday mornings, however, when hundreds of us children would eagerly hold onto the torn half of our ticket stub, hoping to win the raffle for a box of sweets. If you won, you had to walk down the aisle to the front of the cinema to get your prize. You were famous.  

The Astoria was one of the greatest things about growing up in Glasthule as a child of my g-g-g-generation. I realised that this year when I began writing a memoir. The same is true of the fact that at precisely the same time I transitioned into my teens, the Astoria closed down and reopened as one of the first Beat Clubs in Dublin: Club Caroline. I still have a rough draft of my membership application card on which I added two years to my age to gain admittance to this site of afternoon teenage dances linked to the great Radio Caroline. 

It was, in fact, designed to resemble the Mi Amigo ship from which the pirate radio station broadcast. This made it all even more exciting. The DJ, often Danny Hughes, was located on a stage in front of what had been the cinema screen; there was a lower deck dance area, an upper deck, a mast, and, best of all, booths in which couples could sit and kiss. More than once, I saw Christian Brothers arrive to haul students out of this “Den of inequity,” as we were told it was, in school. God knows that made us run even faster to get to Club Caroline. 

I often wonder what the Parish Priest in Glasthule, Father O’ Sullivan, would have said on the night later in the decade if he had walked past Club Caroline and seen me standing outside passionately kissing a nun who was responding in kind. I guess here I should hastily add that it was after a Fancy Dress Party, and she was not a real nun. 

Yet there is no doubt that thousands of us teenagers had real fun inside, outside, and maybe behind Club Caroline. Best of all, it didn’t attract only local kids from Glasthule, Sandycove, and Dun Laoghaire. They came from areas such as Dalkey, Foxrock, Killiney, and further afield, which was a social first for Glasthule and heaven if you were dating. 

The Astoria and Club Caroline were so important to this kid’s life that I wrote about each in my diary, noting in 1965, ‘Tommy the Toreador was the last film shown in the Astoria’ and, in 1970, ‘The Astoria is set to reopen as a cinema called The Forum, I hear.’ 

My favourite memory from the latter period comes from 1971 and involves Father O ‘ Sullivan. He probably knew me best because I was in charge of Sodality for St. Brendan’s Youth Club, in Beaufort. He must have been perplexed, to say the least after he heard a rumour that I intended to smoke dope when I went to see Woodstock at the Forum. 

Worse still, he was told that I was trying to “induce a younger, local chap” to do the same.  

So, he said to my Dad one night at our front door after he arrived, hoping, presumably, to save our souls from eternal damnation, or, as he might have seen it, from the inevitability of deepening addiction to heavier drugs. The latter, dubious a premise as it might have been, was commendable. However, something Father O’Sullivan said made it difficult for Dad and me not to laugh, though we didn’t. He mispronounced the word, ‘marijuana.’

“I have been told by someone who is worried about them that they are planning to buy marriage-u-ana downstairs in Murray’s Record Centre and smoke it in the Forum.”

“Buy what, Father?”

“Marriage-u-ana, or ‘grass’ as I hear it is called, though God knows why.” 

“Thank you for informing me. I will deal with Joseph my own way.”

How did dad “deal” with me? He showed me his stash of hash, a drug I didn’t know until then; he occasionally used “Listening to music.” Talk about a hip Father. And I don’t mean Father O’Sullivan. As it transpired, I was anti-drugs; the thought of getting stoned at Woodstock with that younger guy who I heard say he’d like to, was a momentary fancy, and it never happened. I went to see Woodstock in the Forum on my own, and while sitting there, I realised I didn’t have to buy dope to enjoy it. The cinema was filled with the pungent aroma of people smoking dope. If I had checked I’m sure the walls would have been stoned. 

Glasthule was a glorious place to grow up. 

The Forum – Exterior. Copyright Joe Jackson, 1980

The Forum – Interior. Copyright Joe Jackson, 1980

Joe Jackson’s memoir, East of Eden Villas, will be published in 2026.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-30-_(film)

Léa Blanchard,1990s, France and Dúnlaoghaire

“I see little Léa, six years old and sitting on the stairs of her Home, holding her teddy bear tight with thumb firmly affixed between her teeth. Overlooking the living room, the familiar furniture is gone, and there’s a distinct smell of cleaning product mingling with that funny hot musky smell the vacuum cleaner blew when in use. I lean my little head against the wall, remembering when mum had painted it herself, and there in front of me are the hand prints squished into the long-dried pinkish paint; Mum, Dad, Me, and the tiniest one being my baby brothers’. This house had so far been my whole world. I don’t understand why we’re leaving, the grown-ups just started packing things up as far as I can tell. I don’t understand terms like “forever” or the true implication of “goodbye,” but I do feel a sadness overwhelm
me. This staircase feels important to me; It represents distinct transitions between place and time, between bedroom and living room, bed time and breakfast time, needing to run up to pee and needing to run down to greet someone at the door; on these stairs I transitioned from crawling up them like a baby to jumping down them like a big girl. I didn’t yet understand the concept of a ‘first’ Home, because so far it had been my ‘only’ Home. But over the next twenty-plus years, it will be twenty-plus Homes ago. I’m all grown up now, and I see little Léa on that staircase, with her big blue eyes welling up with confusion and sadness. I realise now what a strong little girl she is, cause while in that moment her sense of ‘Home’ was being lost, she would forever-more have an enormous capacity of making Home wherever she is.”

Barbara Hopkins, 1960s Dublin

“The Pink Lady”

“The ‘pink lady’ in this picture is my mam, Rose Ryan (nee Skelton) She was just four years old is this photo. Her mother (my granny) and her aunts entered her into a fancy dress competition which she won. The photo was taken in Owl Studios in Henry street. This would’ve have been close to where my mum spent most of her childhood. She was born on September the 13th, 1932 and lived her parents Alphonsos and Kathleen (nee Burke) Skelton and her five siblings in Gardiner street, and spent most of her childhood in her grandparents home at Abbey Cottages. This is where her mothers parents lived, the Burke Family. Thomas and Bridget or “muddy” as my mother called her. She attended Marlboro Street School and eventually went on and became a French polisher by trade. Her mam, dad, and family were eventually housed in Kilkiernan  Road in Cabra West, where she met my Dad Joseph Ryan nfrom Drumcliff Road in Cabra. They married and moved to Finglas West (Kildonan Road) where they raised six of us! I’m the second youngest of the family, Barbara Hopkins(nee Ryan). We have the  photo all these years and I remember vividly my mam telling me the story about it. I’m so glad I kept it. My mam Rose sadly passed away exactly sixty years to the day she was born, on her birthday day in 1992. The story lives on in our hearts as a family and now we hope with everyone through the Museum of Childhood Ireland.

I spent most of my own childhood in Abbey Cottages too, as my grand aunt (my granny’s sister) still lived there with uncle Jack up until the early 1980s. The lane and the remains of the house are still there. They have obviously built a new structure on it now, but all the memories of my childhood and my mam’s and granny’s are still there. That house was a hive of activity every day, with lots of family always visiting my grand aunt and uncle who lived there. Rose (nee Burke) and Jack O Connell had a son Dermot, who at eighteen years of age while working on the construction of the Annunciation Church in Finglas West, was tragically killed in an accident. It was a big story at the time. They never got over it as he was an only child.

I have so many ancestors in this photo and I love to look at their clothes and hairstyles

This picture was taken in 1932 the year of the Eucharistic Congress, which was also the year that my mam was born. These were the neighbours at Abbey Cottages. They came together to adorn the bottom of the lane with an altar and religous decorations to mark the celebration.”

Barbara Hopkins

Sorcha Kavanagh, 1990s Arklow

“One of our favourite games as children growing up in Arklow was to play night chase! Sent out to play after school, we would not be called back in until after dark. One of my fondest memories is of getting all dressed up to be a bridesmaid at my aunt’s wedding. Here I am looking pleased as punch and posing with my wonderful father.”

Ann Mc Hugh (nee Mc Mahon), 1960s Greystones, Co Wicklow

16 year old Ann McMahon, C.1981. “Looking through old photos and found this! The trophy was presented to me by Roly Daniels on the night! Anyone who knows me knows I still love to dance.“

As I look at this photograph, A million memories come to mind, I grew up in Greystones Co. Wicklow,  A nicer place is hard to find. 

I was in St.Davids secondary school when I heard about a night, To help raise funds for the community, For its future to keep bright.

There was to be a Disco! and a show! In The Woodlands Hotel,  A place I used to frequent, And the P&R disco I loved so well.

I heard there was a famous person coming, Roly Daniels* was his name,  Entertaining and singing was what shot this guy to fame.

I was just so excited I knew I had to attend,  To beg and plead with my parents whose arms I had to bend. 🤣

Eventually they gave in and I couldn’t have been more glad,  Off to Bray I went to buy new jeans, with a small amount of money that I had. 

In a little shop up the Arcade where the clothes were all the trend!  A lovely top and a pair of  pink trousers my money I did spend. 

You see on the night there was to be a competition to find the best disco dancer,  And as I just loved to dance I thought I’ll be a bit of a chancer. 

Well the hotel was buzzing with folk out for a good night,  The nuns attended, lots of business people, all my school pals were in sight.

And so I took to the floor when the competition did start,  I literally danced, and danced, and danced with all my heart, As I looked around the floor I was just one of three,  And I filled myself with belief that the winner could be me.

So I gave the floor my all as the music kept on playing, And two girls left the floor and it was I that was staying!  And so it came to light that I was the dancing queen,  And as I beamed from ear to ear I thought it was a dream.

And just to top the night off I got a trophy. Well Holy Moly! And presented to me by none other than the handsome and famous Roly. 

I still live in Greystones Co. Wicklow and I have fond memories of growing up here. I will be 60 next year in March. That night in the Woodlands Hotel, ( It used to stand close to where Greystones Driving range is now) will always be a fond memory for me.”

Ann Mc Hugh (nee Mc Mahon)

*https://www.last.fm/music/Roly+Daniels/+wiki

Mark Doyle, Malahide, Dublin 1990s

Growing up in Malahide, rugby was the heart of my childhood. I started playing at five years old, with my dad as my coach. Weekends and evenings were filled with training sessions and matches, where I learned teamwork, discipline, and resilience. We travelled all over Ireland for games, and each trip was an adventure. The bus rides and time spent with teammates felt like one big family. Malahide Rugby Club was more than just a club—it was home. It shaped my childhood and teen years, providing a community and memories I’ll cherish forever.

Liam McGrath, 1980s Whitehall, Dublin

1981, Liam (10 years old) on the far right with Luke Kelly and Liam’s cousin Niamh

“It was the summer holidays of 1981 in the Comeragh mountains, county Waterford. Myself and my cousin Niamh had been loitering around the back of the big trailer that The Dubliners were due to play on. I had my mind set on saying hello to Luke Kelly. He had been sick with a brain tumour and in the days leading up to the concert many believed that he wouldn’t be able to be there. I just really wanted to see him, get an autograph and tell him that we were all thinking of him and wishing him well.

Being a kid from the Dublin suburbs, I looked forward to every school holiday getting a chance to go be with the cousins in the country. My mam was one of eleven and we were the only city dwellers. To go back to the place where she grew up and help around the family farm was great. I remember one year, the job for the summer was to remove rocks from a big field so it could be used the following year for oats or barley. It was great to feel useful because when the hay was being saved I wasn’t strong enough to lift a bail onto the back of a trailer. I remember the feeling of being part of something, dirt under my fingernails, welts on my hands and sitting around a table of fifteen or more to eat spuds, ham and cabbage and drink fresh milk. Large chunks of butter on my plate and Dilly, my grandfather’s faithful and award-winning sheepdog by my feet, knowing that I’ll give him a little bit of fat from the side of my plate.

My mam, the eldest of the girls, had left home at eighteen to go work as a nurse in London. It was there at an Irish dance night that she met my dad who was a city boy. Although his family was from West Cork, he was born in London. He often shared with me the culture shock of being brought back to West Cork during the war. When he was old enough to attend school he had to learn everything through Irish. He sometimes ended up in fights with the other kids because they were from England. When he returned to London six years later at the age of ten, it was tough for him and his two younger brothers, who now knew nothing of doing subjects in English. He had to be saved by them on more than one occasion in school-yard brawls that erupted because they were ‘stupid Paddy’s’. My dad gradually excelled in school and by the age of sixteen had won a coveted apprenticeship in the tool- making department of Fords in Dagenham. His dad worked on the foundry floor and somehow had swung this role for his eldest son. At twenty three he met my mam at that Irish Céilí night in Mile End in London. They married and soon set their sights on returning to Ireland.

My dad got a job in Dublin airport and so we all ended up being brought up to the sound of the thunder of the Jumbo taking off. I always looked forward to every summer when we sometimes got to go work on the family farm and usually at the end of the summer you’d get £5 to spend on slot machines and arcade games in Dungarvan.

The cousins never let you feel bad for being from Dublin, but it was with some of the other kids you’d come into contact with. There was a bit of a suspicion of the ‘dirty Jackeens’. Apparently, we ‘flew the Union Jack up there’ and that was one of the reasons why we could not be fully trusted.

I had met Luke Kelly once before. I spotted him with his partner one Christmas Panto night sitting on high chairs at the bar in the Olympia theatre in Dublin. He was such a hero in our household. I wanted to just stand beside him and say hello. I walked straight over to try and order a bottle of Coke from the bar. Although there was loads of space either side of him and his partner, I decided I would stand waiting for the barman to take my order in front of the two of them. I stood without looking at them, waiting to make my order when Luke swung around and looked at me up and down. He held out his hand, “How are you, what’s your name?”, “my name is Luke”. “Liam is my name, I live near where you used to live in Whitehall”. “Nice to meet you, Liam from Whitehall”. He introduced me to his friend who he said was from Germany. She smiled and shook my hand. He looked at my blue dungarees worn over a sturdy Aran jumper that the Clancy’s would have been proud of. “I love your outfit” he said. He asked me what I was having. He ordered it, and handed me my Coke. It made my year.

Now here I was, two years later, in the middle of county Waterford at the Buhadoon Festival, away from the crowd who were waiting on the other side of the trailer, standing with my hero, the chief Dubliner, and proud of where I came from.

As it would have it, two and a half years later I was kneeling in the Church of the Holy Child in Whitehall, as an altar boy officiating at Luke Kelly’s funeral. My name just happened to be on the roster for that cold morning. As I knelt there, deeply saddened, I said a prayer and I wished him well, and told him that I looked forward to seeing him another day in a better place.”

Liam McGrath, 2024

Bairbre Ní Fhloinn, 1950s Clontarf, Dublin

“Once, when I was very small, my mother bought me a child’s scissors. It was in the shape of a bird with a beak that opened and shut as the blades were opened and closed. Obviously, it was designed to ensure that no serious damage could be done with it. But I managed to change all that.

When my parents married in 1949, my father was given a present of an electric wireless by his colleagues at work. The wireless measured about three feet by two with a kind of fabric-covered area in the middle which covered the speaker. I remember the sound as being very mellow and rich and the opposite to tinny. On the front of the wireless, below the speaker, there were two large knobs, one of which controlled the volume while the other was used to tune the wireless to the radio station of your choice. The latter operation involved turning the knob in order to move a needle along a dial which presented a range of stations from various parts of the world, involving all kinds of exciting and exotic possibilities. The speaker and knobs were set in a dark wooden casing which also sported a small plaque with an engraved dedication to my parents from my father’s colleagues. In short, the wireless was a beautiful piece of furniture and it was duly given pride of place in the centre of the living room. For these were, after all, pre-television days.  

In what must have been a quiet moment one day, and in a burst of happy creativity, I decided I could improve on the wireless’s appearance. With scissors in hand, I managed to scrape and scratch my way into the wood across most of the front of the set. I left no particular pattern in my wake, producing instead just a long squiggly line with little peaks and valleys here and there. But that didn’t matter to me. As far as I was concerned, this was art. I have a clear recollection of thinking how pleased my parents would be when they discovered what I had done, with a real feeling of ‘Wait until they see this!’. On and on I scratched, to my great satisfaction and pleasure. It seemed to me that I spent an age on my creation although it can’t have been more than a few minutes.

Inevitably, I was at last discovered. The thought that I might have been doing something wrong had never occurred to me and I vividly recall my dismay and confusion at my parents’ reaction to my artwork. To be fair, and to their credit, they must have partly sensed this, as I have no recollection of undergoing any awful punishment for my exertions. Not surprisingly though, the scissors was disposed of and never seen again. The incident stayed with me over the years, however, coming to mind on occasions with my own children in later life, and sometimes making me think twice before accusing them of deliberate mischief. Because children see things differently to adults and because beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.”

Bairbre Ní Fhloinn

Noel O’Donovan, 1950s Cork

“The following story is my husband’s*. He often spoke about this incident and it remained vivid in his memory all his life but, sadly, he’s not around to tell it any more.

When he was very small, his grandmother, his mother’s mother, came to live with his family in their house near the centre of Cork city. She became very unwell, however, and eventually died in the house. At the time, my husband was no more than a toddler, maybe two or three years old. Shortly before her death, my husband remembers going upstairs to his grandmother’s bedroom and standing beside her bed while his own mother was doing something elsewhere in the room. As he was standing there, he saw what appeared to be something bobbing up and down outside the bedroom window. His memory was that it was the figure of a person, but whether it was male or female, young or old, etc. was not clear, and he could recall no further details. His impression was of something vague and undefined.

Small as he was, he clearly remembered thinking it was very strange that someone should be outside his grandmother’s bedroom window as the room was upstairs, and how could anyone get up there on the outside? His principal recollection of the incident in later years was this feeling of puzzlement at the logistics of the situation, and he always stressed that he experienced no sense of fear or danger or a threat of any kind from the presence at the window. And he had no particularly positive feelings either. There was simply this vague figure, bobbing up and down …

My husband’s grandmother died shortly after this happened. My husband never discovered an explanation for what he saw.”

Bairbre Ní Fhloinn.

We wish Bairbre well in her retirement from lecturing at the National Folklore Collection, UCD.

Noel O’Donovan — The Movie Database (TMDB)

Delaney Price, 200s Arkansas

This photo was taken in 2006 for my sixth birthday in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The party was held in a train carriage that was renovated as a place to experience afternoon tea, and lavish costumes were provided for my preschool friends and me to dress up in. 

Cónal Creedon, 1970s Cork

Down Our Street

“On Pine Street yesterday, I bumped into my neighbour and friend Anthony O’Driscoll. He threw his eyes to heaven in response to the developers constant din of destruction. I was reminded of a time when the loudest noise you’d hear in this spaghetti bowl of streets was the sound of downtown dirty faced delight – or a rip-roaring pig-skin rattling the back of the onion sack – sending a shudder along the steel shuttering of McKenzie’s Gate.

– here’s a little piece I wrote about my favourite street in my Universe.

I think Joni Mitchell said it best when she sang:

“They paved paradise – and put up a parking lot”

– you might enjoy:

TAKE A WAlK WITH ME ALONG PINE STREET

It’s a city of steps and steeples, more steps and steep hills – where above the heads of the merchant paupers and princes, the golden fish on Shandon casts a sceptical eye over the fish bowl that I call home.

Two channels of the River Lee insulate the city centre from generations of Northside / Southside rivalry. Two factions holding up mirrors to each other, reflecting carbon-copy monasteries, breweries, cathedrals, towers and bridges.

We don’t call it the inner city, it’s just plain Downtown, and home for me is a spaghetti bowl of streets centring on the one called Devonshire. My family lived and traded here since the Vikings. A busy little shop more social than commercial – and bivouacked in various nooks and crannies throughout the house – my parents, 12 siblings, a clatter of pets and a string of guests who came to dinner and stayed.

Outside the streets were bustling too, with families talking and taking air. Shawl wrapped Annie selling apples on Carroll’s Quay, Connie the Donkey hawking sawdust for soakage to publicans and to those who butchered, cured or filleted – O’Connell’s beef, O’Sullivan’s bacon or Charlo Quain’s fresh mackerel and O’Brien’s the Greyhound Stadium home of the creamiest porter this side of the Lee.

And each morning, a new day would be heralded by the dawn chorus – the men of Blackpool and the Red City of Gurranebrahar walking and whistling their way up our street and all the way down the docks to the Motown of Fords and Dunlops. Ah but, that was a long time ago – a time when people were buttoned–up in the days before Velcro.

Without a blade of grass Downtown, street soccer evolved into a sport all of its own. You’d find us there every day after school, droves of downtown dirty-faces, red faced and roaring, funting a ball up and down Pine Street – every boy, girl, cat and dog chasing an inflated pig-skin. Toddlers tackled teenagers, and the dogs of the street always waiting on the wing to score on the re-bound.

Shep Dorney, a bow-legged black and tan terrier from Number 7, will always be remembered for her sensational equalizer – with a diving header – her snout drove the ball home past the corner of the post, into the back of the goal – rattling the back of the onion sack to a clatter of steel-clad shuttering across McKenzie’s – enough to put Pelé in the shade.

And with no set time limit, a game once lasted the whole summer – from June right through to September. The final tally on the score sheet recording the decisive victory – 674 to 453.

But with the death of a child the people of downtown surrendered sovereignty of our streets. Ashes to ashes – dust to dust. And flesh and bone gave way to rubber and steel when blood soaked into concrete and asphalt, and a schoolboy’s bones were crushed beneath the wheels of a truck. And the heart of a city stopped beating.

The families moved out soon after that, out to the reservations in the wastelands. Ironically, where once the Downtown Dirty Faces played, now stands a multi-story car park, keeping the car safe from people…

And yet, on my dawn walk this morning and I heading up the Skeety Bars Steps, I paused awhile at the corner of Pine Street. In my mind’s inner ear, I swore I could still hear the shrieks of downtown dirty faced delight as quarter irons knocked sparks off the road – and put a pig skin squealing: rip, roaring, like a rocket rattling the back of the onion sack, sending shuddering waves along McKenzie’s gate.”

Conal Creedon.

Allycia Susanti, 2000s Indonesia 

I couldn’t have been older than five in that picture. Although I don’t remember what year the photo was taken, I know it was taken during lunar new year, because that’s one of the only times I would wear a traditional chinese Qipao. Being Chinese-Indonesian, I only started to really understand the complexity and significance of my ethnic background when I look back at how much of my childhood and life was shaped by my culture. I may look unimpressed in that photo, but I was really in for a full-on new year’s feast that day!

Juliet Jobling-Purser, 1940s Co Dublin

Juliet, at home, June 2024

Irish Olympian, Dressage 1968 and 1972

1940’S TO 1950’S – 3 STORIES

Juliet’s Early childhood story…..

It all started with my mother saying she’d take me to Scotland to see a pony, but we mightn’t buy it. We went, just the two of us and it was love at first sight. A little pony, he was 12 2, as they were measured in those days. There’s four inches to a hand, so I don’t know the metric measurements…

He was at the end of a lane and Jane Thompson said I could ride him down the lane and come back. I couldn’t believe my luck! I was lifted on to him, I was four years of age, and I walked him down the lane and it was magic, it was freedom itself and I turned him around and came back. It was decided that we would buy him but there was a condition, I was to share the pony with my two brothers and my sister,
and it couldn’t have been worse. I considered him MINE! Anyway we bought him and he came and I learned to ride him as best I could and I had lessons. It was very good, and my brothers and sister didn’t pay too much attention at all. I went to the pony club for the first time in a horse box! Now we didn’t have a trailer for the pony and I think CIE was rung for a horse box, and when it arrived it was vast! It would take 8 horses, and ALL it was going to take was little tiny Peter Pan.

We set off with the Pony Club for the first time and we made an absolute show of ourselves, everybody else in tractors and vans, and one pony seemed to be in a hen coop! Peter stepped out of this vast lorry, and I was told I was going to get a lead around the course of jumps by Jack Leonard…He had much experience at such things, and we set off not too fast, and Peter jumped everything… He got a 3rd rosette, I remember that.. I took it to Dodgen’s riding school to Mac Master who was my favourite and he took one look at the yellow rosette and said “That’s no good it has to be red”…I burst into tears. Then Mr Dunne who was good with children took over. That pacified me, and I put the rosette in my pocket.

1950’s Teenager story…..

I grew out of Peter who was so small, and the next pony I had was Little Prince, and Little Prince was grey and a good jumper. We went to the RDS. I was thirteen, and we won a competition and I remember the lady that helped me with the horses Paula Stoke she said “You’ll never do that again ! .. and I don’t think I did.

Age 16 Getting the British pony club championship for members. Horse is Bonney

Little Prince was grown out of, he was 13 2. The next pony was Bonney and she was 14 2 which was the biggest of the ponies. She was a fantastic jumper and she won the Irish Pony Club Championship not once, not twice, but three times in a row and each time she won the championship she was entitled to got to England to jump in the cross country there. I went, and the first time was alright, the second time it was better and the third time I WON The British Show Jumping Cross Country and Dressage Championship. It was a fantastic help to me because I had a miserable time at school, and finally I found something I could do well. I was into every kind of practice or anything that needed doing with horses, I would do it to succeed.

I started at 14, 15, 16 ( RE Horse Championship in England) when I won it and then I stopped. I had to move into the horses then which wasn’t so easy, because they were harder against the adults.

There was one thing I wanted to add. When I went to England having won the Pony Club Championship, it was the first time we’d sent a team to England, and I did fairly well, but I had an ambition…and that was to beat the Brits! It didn’t happen the first time, or the second time, but I beat the stuffing out of them on the third!

Jenny, Olympic horse, Munich

2 photos of Juliet on Jenny at Badminton, England

Later Story, Juliet teaches children….. 1970’s Kilmashogue Dublin.

Word got out that I had been at the Olympics. It got out to riders on the road. They were very young. One day the doorbell rang and there were about ten of them outside!
“What’s this?”
I opened the door and they said
“We’re starting a pony club..”
And I said “Oh hold on I’ll get my handbag..”
“WE DON’T WANT MONEY, WE WANT YOU TO COME AND TEACH US!!!!”
And that’s how the pony club started.. they had all the ponies brushed to the last degree, plaited up, saddled all correctly.. bridles perfect, bits good, and we trotted around in circles correcting their riding..

There was one star turn. It was Neddy the Donkey! He was grey and white and very wise. He knew how to escape. He did it by lying on the ground and rolling his way under the fence. (He) would go off and pester people in their gardens. But he didn’t think much of the pony club, he did two or three rounds, and the rounds got smaller and smaller and smaller until he was standing beside me.

The pony club went on… I don’t know much about it’s history after I stopped. I swapped with the children, I didn’t think it was good for them to get it all free. I said they’d have to come to my farm and pick stones and pull ragweed, which they thought very exciting, and came without bother to do that.

That’s the last I heard of the pony club.

(Kilmashogue pony club… Burkes were there… children of Ciarán Burke from the Dubliners)

The Apple Loft

My two brothers and myself got into the apple loft when we discovered you could remove a door that opened out on to the yard. We discovered there were some bad apples, bramleys, and that they made excellent bombs! We’d peg them out onto the
yard… SPLAT… very satisfying. We did several of those. But there was a head
gardener Mr Lee, who didn’t like children. My brothers heard him coming and scattered.….I saw a big apple, and decided I’d throw it out. Mr Lee caught
me by the arm. As I resisted I fell to the ground, and he dragged me along, and then
down the stairs…bump…bump…bump..on my bottom. At the bottom of the stairs he
paused momentarily, and I BIT HIM ! I bit him behind the ankle where it’s meaty, and he let go and I scarpered – ran for my life.

About two days later I found a scab on a cut that I got going down the stairs and I decided to show it to my father. I said “ Daddy, look at this? This is what Mr Lee did to me.” He sat up immediately, and Mr Lee was called in.

He said to Mr Lee “ what’s this about my daughter having been cut on the arm?”
Mr Lee said “well I’ve had to go to the doctor because the bite she gave me festered and I am contemplating suing you”.

“Well“ said my father “ you have a free house, you have the run of the garden, you have two gardeners under you, and you don’t have to do much work, so I think that is very unadvisable. Maybe we could fix it that I pay the doctors fee, and we put a lock on the door to the loft!?”

And that settled it!

The Toy Boat

Mr Lee was brilliant at growing chrysanthemums and won the flower show prize several times over the years.

He was doing cuttings, for the chrysanthemum show, in the greenhouse with the water trough outside. My brothers , completely independently, thought the water trough would make an excellent place for them to sink plastic boats that they had made. They had assemble many boats, but they had one in particular in mind for this – a battleship.

We raided the nursery bathroom for cotton wool, and my brothers got lighter fuel from my father’s mantlepiece. They saturated the cotton wool and they stuffed it into the boat, and they took it to the tank. With a box of matches, they lit it…. It was absolutely realistic. I was there as a bystander. Flames shot up from the lighter fuel, and at first the stern went down, then it sat for a bit, then the bow went up in the air, and then she sank.

Mr Lees cuttings failed. He did a second lot of cuttings, and they too failed. Then a friend gave him more cuttings and there was talk of sabotage from the man that had been second for the previous three years. It got very serious. A lock was put on the greenhouse, where there had never been one before. Anyway, Mr Lee kept on with the watering until finally he got near to the bottom of the tank, and THERE was the mangled remains of the blasted boat and its poisonous toxic exhalations!

In the end you couldn’t really blame anybody because the boys were only being boys, they didn’t intend to ‘do in’ the cuttings. Mr Lee got help from a friend but they were too late and I think they missed the show altogether that year.

THAT WAS THE WAY IT WENT.

Stories as related to Áine Furey, Museum of Childhood Ireland by Juliet in June/July/August 2024.

Cian Spillane, 1980s Cork

The childhood picture is of me “baking for the birds” which was a regular activity that my grandmother used to indulge me with. Those crows have given me some of the best feedback on my cooking!

Áine Furey, 1980s Dublin

A photo of me In sixth year, just before sitting my Leaving Certificate exams

Sitting the leaving certificate Art exam

I sat my leaving certificate in 1988. Looking back I have mixed emotions about it all, but mostly my leaving certificate art result. I wasn’t amazing at Art but between the painting or drawing, and the written work I did, most often I’d get an A from my really lovely Art teacher Mr Roger Garbett.

Mr Garbett was an inspiration, always very encouraging and understanding. I remember he sat me down one day close to the exams and said I should get an A, BUT it all depended on who was marking my papers! Over my sixth year in Newtown school, Waterford I had come up with my own style of painting sky, by placing the colours on the paper with my hands, and swirling the paint to form a magical sun idea.

My sun technique

This was definitely what I was going to do for my Leaving Certificate, and was encouraged aloud in class to do so by Mr Garbett.

Alas, on the day of the leaving certificate art exam as I was painting my sky, I noticed a fellow classmate using MY original sky idea, but rather than my greys whites and yellows, she had chosen to use reds, oranges and yellows.

I was very annoyed because this girl got As in EVERY subject and I thought this very unfair.

A few months later, the results…

I got a C, she got an A!!!

I was very very upset. 

So you see, as Mr Garbett said it all depends who might be marking at the end of the day! 😉

Áine Furey

And a photo of me in 1977

“Me aged 2-3 in my grandmother’s garden in Edinburgh, 1973.”

Sheree Atcheson, 1990s Co Tyrone

“I was adopted at 3 weeks old from Sri Lanka by an Irish family, raised in Co. Tyrone. I’ve openly shared what this has meant for me, through growing up as a child (and now woman) of colour in a very white space. I’ve used this as an avenue to expand on the ability of being both underrepresented & privileged 🙌🏽

Being Irish is something very important to me – it’s where my family is and where I was raised. I’ve spoken at the Irish embassy on St Brigid’s day, I’ve won awards from phenomenal Irish institutions & I was Queen’s University  Belfast’s 2019 Grad of the year (& the first woman of colour to ever win this award in their 20 years of existence). Last year, I applied for my Irish passport. Being adopted, it was not a smooth process with lots of hoops to jump through because of my adoption being intercountry & registered on British register (I have a British passport too). But … now, finally after a year, I have it 

There is something very emotional about having this little book in my hands now. Yes, I’ve always been Irish, and whilst those Irish dancing medals and my silver fáinne are great 😜  having my own Irish passport feels like the final tick in the box.”

Sheree Atcheson

The views expressed are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of the Museum of Childhood Ireland.

Megan Brien, 1990s Dublin

Growing up I was never seen without drawing paper and colouring pencils. One particular chapter of my childhood stands out as a favourite memory—the days spent baking jam tarts with my grandmother. During these baking afternoons our kitchen became a cosy mess of flour, stories, and playfulness.

Karen Keogh, 1970s Waterford

How did we survive? Play in the 70s. 

I was lucky growing up. My father, was the C of I rector in Castlecomer. Consequently, we all had to live in the rectory. It was a huge but freezing cold house, there was no such thing as central heating in those days! The only room with any heat was the kitchen, with the yellow Aga. In the evenings one of us kids had to light the fire in the sitting room and get it to take by holding  the blazer ( an old metal sheet held against it to get it to “draw”). The house was  surrounded by a huge garden with woods and streams and sheds which were our playground. It also became the playground for our local friends, all roman catholic, which at the time I didn’t realise was unusual!

My brother being nearly four years older was friends with “Bobo”, Martin and “Nippits” and I was friends with Anne and Veronica. On the tame days, we girls played with our dolls and made our own “house” out in one of the sheds. This was “raided” regularly by the boys whose job it was to mess it up. Once my brother pushed me backwards as I sat on the half gate protecting it, onto the cobblestone ground! I survived! 

Most of the time however we learnt about danger through play. We challenged each other to run through the field of bullocks and see who could get to the gate on the other side without being trampled. We challenged each other to jump out of a second floor window onto the grassy bank below – if you got it wrong you would end up in the bed of nettles below. We played with candles in the coal house. My brother had a collection of pen-knives and daggers which he used to sharpen sticks with, but we also played “stretch” – you had to stand opposite your partner and they had to flick the dagger into the grass beside your foot. Wherever it landed you had to stretch your leg to ( think like twister, with no money or props!!!). The difficult part was getting the dagger between your partners legs without it going through their foot to “Release” the stretch!

There were the hours we spent building camps in the woods – some of the “houses” were big enough to hold all seven of us, and in fairness, kept the rain out after we plaited the roofs with different branches. When boredom set in, we dug trenches 3 feet deep in the ground and covered them with a mesh of twigs and leaves so our friends would fall in! We once sawed  up the neighbour’s ladder into three pieces to fit the right height of the tree house , then hid in the woods later when he came to berate my mother! My parents ended up having to buy him a new ladder – not cheap at a time when we had little money! This was the same neighbour who “told” on me when I was precariously standing on one pedal of my bike ,balancing the bike out the other side of my body going down a hill ( of course there was no such thing as helmets either in those days). I didn’t see it as dangerous – I thought he was mean, spoiling my fun! Then, there was the building rafts out of pallets and barrels and going out in the stream at the back – you had to be careful where you stood to avoid the place with eels! We made “beds” in the “eucalyptus tree” – I’m not sure it was eucalyptus, but it was a great tree for all the gang lying flat and staring at the sky and chatting and eating the ripe elderberries off the neighbouring tree, or to plan the next raid on Dr Dunne’s orchard without getting caught.

Who knew in those days that elderberry was good for immunity!!? Not getting caught by Dr Dunne was better for our health as the risks climbing the six foot wall to get in to the orchard had its own perils. Having survived the outdoor play, occasionally we were forced inside – our adrenaline rush came from taking the lid off the play box putting it at the top of the stairs and “riding” to the bottom on it – we used to fight for turns! It as great fun! In my mind now I can’t even think how we managed to balance on the flat piece of wood.

When occasionally I escaped my brother, my other form of “play” was cooking. My mother taught me how to make sponge cakes at 4/5 years of age. I made my first Christmas cake at 8 ( my mother made one also that year just in case “my recipe” didn’t work, but after that it was my job as my mother was working.) I continued to experiment, cooking unsupervised regularly ( I can’t  remember anyone worrying that I would burn or cut myself) and the only condition was I had to clean up. Since we were made to take our turn washing and drying dishes even when I had to stand on the chair to reach the sink that wasn’t a problem!

One of my favourite things was going up to Miss Greene’s to buy sweets on pocket money day. She had the jars lined up behind her and would carefully measure out a quarter of broken Club milk bars, pear drops or cola cubes, but my favourites were the huge chocolate ( rock hard) toffee mice which were probably also a choking hazard, but lasted longer than any other sweet!

My memories are of being blissfully unsupervised throughout childhood but I guess my parents maybe sensed danger and observed from a distance or closely when necessary – it was many years later in adulthood my mother spoke about not liking the feeling she got from the “free school dentist” and she insisted on coming in to the surgery with us when we went to get the inevitable post chocolate toffee mouse check up – I am happy to say I survived that as well as childhood with my innocence, teeth and and all bones intact.

I am eternally grateful to my parents for allowing me to toughen up ready for life with life skills I have needed to survive 30+ years of teaching teenagers Home Economics. I used to correct my granny every time she proudly described me to her friends as a “Domestic Science” teacher, but I still use some of her and her sister’s recipes from their domestic science copybooks, and I think we were the lucky ones to grow up in the 70s.

Karen Keogh

Karen Keogh is the Home Economics teacher in Newtown School

Aoife Ní Chorráin, 1990s Armagh

Armagh had just won, and as you can see from the photo I’m thrilled! (I’m in the photo on the left) I also have a funny comparison photo… the second photo is of my little sister and it was taken a good few years later, as there is a 12 year gap between us. The similarities are staggering! Just goes to show that personality traits can be very much inherited!

Gerry Kelly, 1970s Co Wicklow

Photo of Gerry as a teenager

 The hills were alive, and still are

                                                                 Monday is my fave day off. Gardai, nurses and taxi drivers will understand this sentiment. If you have to work the weekends, then you want Monday off. It’s similar for us tour guides; in the busy months of Spring, Summer and Autumn we take what work is going, and it’s a 7-day working week. But if Sat & Sun go into my diary, then I’ll fight like a tiger to keep Monday a blank. A free Monday means a lie-in, and later, coffee and the newspapers to catch up on the weekend’s sport. (By now the reader will be fully aware that I am comfortably middle-aged !!!) However, I suspect my reasons go beyond work, and back to my primary school years. My guilty little secret is that I missed Monday at school on a roughly monthly basis. My mother would decide I was too tired for school, and instead I would accompany her on the weekly shopping run – sent forward to scout for bargains & special offers, like a Viking raven dispatched to guide a longship through the fog.

                                                              These truant Mondays came directly after weekends spent in Co. Wicklow, south of the capital. To this day I tell visitors to our capital city that we are uniquely blessed to have the lovely bay to the east, and the majestic hills of Wickla’ to the south. In modern wealthy Ireland it’s a mere 30-40 minute drive south, but in the Ireland of the 1970s the Garden County felt like an another world, or at least another country. My father was in the Boy Scouts, and having failed utterly to persuade my older siblings of the attractions of camping in a sub-arctic climate, I suspect I was his last throw of the dice. At the age of 5 I joined the fighting 45th for a hike from Enniskerry to Powerscourt Waterfall. Can a 5 year old be described as “hooked” – because I most definitely was. Within a few years I had been in all the county’s youth hostels – Glenmalure, Ballinclea, Aughavannagh and others. In fact by 12 I was able to tell my primary school teacher I had been in every county in the country. ( We extended our range during the summer months )    

                                                                 We even got to see the army train in the Glen of Imaal. A young lad’s dream, come true. But what I recall most from these trips away was the chats around the fireside; every adult seemed to be a fount of knowledge. I learnt why sheep are the most common farm animal, why the Liffey is 5 times longer than the Dodder even though they begin on neighbouring hills. I learnt that Wicklow was the last declared county in Ireland – holding out against English rule until 1628. (They were at it again in 1798 !!!) I also learnt of fairy trees in the fields, where the legend of the Leprechaun, the rainbow and the pot of gold came from, and why the summer evenings are so long, and winter days so short. I now realise that our ancient ancestors would have felt entirely at home on such campfire evenings.

                                                                    It’s a matter of Scouts pride that all the men who ever walked on the Moon were Boy Scouts. Plan ahead. Work as a team. Expect the unexpected. Always have a Plan B. Oh, and DYB DYB DYB – do your best.  Other lessons still recalled 4 decades later include – never leave home without checking the weather, never wear jeans on a hike, always check you are leaving nothing behind when you leave a location.

                                                                    I wasn’t actually THAT tired when I missed those Mondays, and I suspect my mum knew that. But I like to think that what I learnt from those days and weekends away more than made up for anything I missed at school. (I also like to think I’m not the worst male shopper in the world !!!)

                                                                    Last weekend I took a group of numerous nationalities around the county on a day tour.  We took in the treetop walk in Avondale, the monastic ruins & beautiful valley of Glendalough, and then the village of Hollywood and its sign to remind people of “the real Hollywood”. Tour buses, day trippers, hikers & bikers were all out in substantial numbers – and good luck to them all as they enjoy a county that truly seems to have something for everyone.

                                                                    But as we made our way from Rathdrum to Glendalough I spotted a road sign for one of the old hostels. I could not help but reminisce, and also thank the fates that I now get paid for something I consider a privilege – spending time in Ireland’s beautiful, magical Garden County.

Gerry Kelly –  May  2024  

Diana Nadira, India 1990s

Growing up in the culturally vibrant North Malabar of Kerala, India, this photo is from my kindergarten dance performance—my very first! I was all dolled up and excited, confidently looking at the camera and smiling seconds before stepping on stage. I remember even the tiniest details: the colourful costume, traditional makeup, pearl chains, glass bangles, and silver anklets. I played the role of Kurathi, the lead female in “Kuravanum Kurathiyum”, a beloved folk dance from southern India. According to legend, Kuravan and Kurathi were a tribal couple turned into hills by Lord Rama after a curse. Statues of these mythical characters can still be found in the Idukki district of Kerala.

Amy Clarke, 2000s Naas, Co Kildare

As a child I got really into History when we went to Collins Barracks Museum in 3rd class, from school. There I learned about the 1916 rising and the war of independence. My brain went into overdrive on Irish and European history and how it is all interlinked – whether a major link or minor. I still have all the books my family bought me to feed what they called my addiction! One of the books was ‘The Easter Rising 1916 – Molly’s Diary’ by Patricia Murphy.

Finbar Furey, 1950s Ballyfermot

Ted Furey ( Finbar’s father) on fiddle, Eddie Furey on guitar, Paul Furey on accordion 🪗 and Finbar on the uilleann pipes

Playing for the fairies

When we were children, about 8 or 9 years old, young Johnny Keenan and myself used to hang around together all the time. He was a month older than me.  Old Johnny Keenan, his father, and my father, Ted, used to busk together and they used to take us busking. I played the pipes, which was a half set at the time, which was bag, bellows, chanter and one drone, and Johnny played the fiddle. We used to go fishing with them, they took us everywhere. I remember we went over to Palmerstown in Dublin, down to the Liffey and on the left hand side as you went towards the Liffey there was a fairy fort. We used to always go in and have a look at it, and my father and old Johnny were very respectful of this place and of course as kids you would be respecting your fathers words you know.  Ted might say ‘ oh it’s unlucky to break a branch’, or ‘ you can walk in there as long as you don’t touch anything or break anything in there because that’s an old fairy fort probably hundreds of years old, so you have to respect it because the leprechauns live here ..’

And me and Johnny went ‘ WOW!’.

Then of course they would fool us and say ’if you look very hard you might see one’.

So we used to go in and we’d be staring through the branches to see if we could see anything you know. It was perfectly round, amazing, and of course we never saw anything. If you saw a bird moving you would get excited ‘Oh a fairy..’

So another day myself and young Johnny decided we were going to go over to the fairy fort, and this time we decided to bring the pipes and the fiddle, and sit down inside the fort and play the fairies a tune. So off we went. We walked all the way from Ballyfermot, you could actually go through the fields to Palmerstown, we went down this laneway past an old mill and we found the fort. We went in and we were very respectful now, we were saying things like ‘ will we take off our shoes?’ .

We found a few stones in there where we sat down, I strapped the pipes on and Johhny got the fiddle out, and we played a few slow tunes, then we played a few nice slow jigs, and we finished by playing a lament. Johnny was a beautiful fiddle player.

The two of us playing together it was like we were flying on the one wing.

When we were finished, we packed away our instruments and we thanked the fairies for allowing us to play in their beautiful home or fort. We never went in there again, to the fort, we just always thought we would have good luck. We just left them and made our way home to Ballyfermot.

When we told my father and old Johnny, my father said ‘ oh that was lovely, you’ll have good luck with that because the fairies will respect that. ‘ But he said ‘ don’t ever go over there on your own again, but that was a nice thing to do for the fairies’.

Finbar Furey

Listen to Finbar Furey’s music here:

David Kitching, 1980s Co Mayo

Growing up in rural Mayo, our house was beside a small sunken site we grandiosely called “The Valley”, where this photo was taken. My friends and I spent countless hours playing there, swinging on a tyre from an old sycamore, building huts, and concocting thrilling adventures. For all the sensation of independence and wild escape, I realise now, with amusement, how many of my parents’ odd jobs happened to focus on the laneway directly overlooking us. Though an illusion, the feeling of freedom meant a great deal and the memories persist.  

Joan Power, Dungarven 1970s

A picture of Margo and us messing – she was my favourite Aunty

One of my happiest childhood memories was spending time with my Aunty Margo who had no children of her own and loved spending time with us on her holidays. 

Margo was a nurse in Dublin and would visit home (Dungarvan) on her holidays – she had a real gift for finding birds’ nests on the old lane between our house and our granny’s – we’d track the birds’ nests and their nestlings all spring and summer and it was great fun – Aunty Margo also took us to the river with picnics with Grandad’s dog Judy, and we would watch the salmon jump up the river to spawn. Margo would always say that when she died she wanted to be cremated and sprinkled in that river. 

Later in life when I met my husband in Wicklow, it turned out that he was friends with my Aunty Margo in Dublin! Small world. 

Margo died 20 years ago and got her wish. 

She was a great Aunt, and was so good to us.

Joan Power 

Supriya Baijal, Kolkata, 2000s

This photo from an Inter-State Athletics Event captures Supriya with medals—gold for the 4×200 meters relay and bronze for the 200 meters individual race—highlighting her prowess as a sprinter and her competitive spirit. 

Joni Spring, Kerry 1980s

Joni

Childhood Memories

Growing up in Kerry, the full moon in my window, the mist of the morning burning away under the light of the rising sun, the swallows cutting through the autumn skies and the rooks on the electricity wires holding court in the evenings are all elements of my life from young child to teenager.

These following ones are about daises.

One distinct memory I have is as a small child, no more than four or five, taking a walk along the quiet road between Castlemaine and Milltown. The margin is dusty beneath my patent leather summer shoes. The left-hand side of the road is dotted with half built houses that need more money for breeze- blocks and roofs to finish
them. The daises are covering the lawns and I am holding my mother’s hand as we round the corner to the funeral home. My question is what is a funeral? Mom says she’ll point one out one day. It’s sunny and the car mirrors flash at us as they pass us by.

Three years later I’m in Third Class and I’m looking out on the school lawn in mid May. We’re practicing hymns to sing to Our Lady as we walk around the convent grounds. The daisies this time are scattered in an orderly manner in the lawn underneath the freshly laundered sheets (pink and blue) hanging behind the convent.

And finally, a year later. My mother has chosen some new plants for the garden. The roses were looking friendless. She planted some African Daisies ( Stars of the Veldt). These ones close their petals at night and open again in the morning and they have a lovely purple colour complimenting the stark white.

I have my own roses now but I think I’ll get some stars of my own.

Thanks to my friend Aine Furey for requesting me to think about the flowers. And to Angus Óg who made the daisy for us to admire.

Joni Spring

Daisies, Co Kerry 2021. Photo credit, Museum of Childhood Ireland.

The views expressed in all of the Snap Shots stories, and the photos used are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of the Museum of Childhood Ireland.

Catherine Mc Cartney, Belfast 1960s

 Some of the family

It was sunny that day. I was probably about three years old. My memory is vague, but it is certainly my first ever memory. The summer of 1963 in Belfast in our back garden. We had a massive back garden, and at the back of the house was a yard where we would skip and play. My fist memory is of my brother Tom swinging me around. I was laughing and so was he, there was a big chestnut tree at the side of the yard, and the sunlight flecked through its leaves and branches onto my face. How lucky am I that my first memory was such a happy one. I didn’t realise it at the time that not everyone lived in a happy home.

We were very lucky. My father had promised my mother when they were courting that he would build her a house in Fruithill Park, which was West Belfast’s most affluent street, the leafy suburbs. He was a penniless plumber at the time and my mother laughed, holding on to his hand even tighter. When they got married and had their first child, Tom, they didn’t even have a home of their own. They lived with my father’s sister Annie and her husband and then with my mother’s father, my grandfather Johnny Quinn.

My parents

My father was a master plumber and my mother was a woman who was a force of nature in so many ways. He started his own plumbing business with her giving him the confidence and courage to do so. He got his first job from a catholic priest whose parish was in Toombridge, cycling the 45km with his tools on his rucksack, did an excellent job and then cycled home. Other catholic priests started to give him jobs. He started his own business TP Mc Cartney and sons Limited. That was really something for a catholic plumber to become a catholic businessman in the 1950s.

MY family

So after their sixth child Joseph was born in the April of 1955 the Mc Cartney family moved into their detached house, number 22 Fruithill Park. My father Tommy Mc Cartney was a man of his word. My mother would go on to have another six children in total, five boys, and seven girls. Tom, Brid, Maire, Clare, Frances, Joseph, Edmund, Stephen, Katherine, Patricia, John and Therese. 

My dad, TP Mc Cartney

We had a very happy family life. My brother John and I often said that we were the Walton’s* of Fruithill Park, complete with our very own John Boy. Unlike many families in West Belfast our family remained intact through the many years of the troubles. We had many happy Christmas dinners in that house, and parties and christenings in the garden. My father died in his bed in that house in the December of 1990, a sad day for our family, but especially for my mother Mary who has lost her husband and best friend. Something changed in the family that day and our lives would never truly be the same.

Catherine Mc Cartney

* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Waltons

https://m.imdb.com/video/vi2831401753/?playlistId=tt0068149&ref_=tt_pr_ov_vi

Ray Esten, Dublin 1980s

“A photograph can tell so many stories. Here is my photograph with my classmates from Mourne Road School in Drimnagh, on my First Communion day.

The brass rabbits will be forever associated with Mourne Road School! Look closely at the photo above and you can see the rabbits cast from brass, on the newel post.

This picture conjures ‘sambos’ – corn-beef or cheese sandwiches smothered in margarine, and the hot cross bun that you got in our school in the 1980s. Food that some people look back on with horror, but which I lapped up. 

It brings to mind also my parents, in the prime of their lives, standing on the field in Drimnagh with a prayer book in hand. My ‘Ma’, a term of affection we don’t often hear today, taking my photograph with a disposable camera, then driving to visit my relatives in the back of our small Renault. ( I remember with fondness other trips in the car around that time, especially to the beach at Sandymount. After this time the family never had a car again.) My brothers were also in their best clothes. I remember receiving money as a gift, and imagining all the good things I might be able to buy. Imagination is a great thing!

But, it also makes me sad. My school friend David Kane ( top right in the photo) died of cancer shortly afterwards.

I remember walking up from the school in floods of tears. I could not believe what had happened to David, and an old woman stopping me to ask “what is wrong son?” “

Ray Esten

Ray on his communion day

The views expressed in all of the Snap Shots stories, and the photos used are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of the Museum of Childhood Ireland.

Fankun Cao, China 1990s

Since childhood, I’ve always loved toys. Holding a panda toy, wearing a baseball cap, and dressed in an oversized t-shirt, I looked curiously into the camera, wondering how its flash captured me so vividly.

Conal Creedon, Cork 1970s

Conal is in the white t-shirt in the middle of the 2nd row. 4th class, North Monastery, Cork

“– We’re On The One Road by the Wolfe Tones crackled from the car radio. Funny how a song can dig deep into the crevasses of the cranium to unearth a long forgotten past.

---

Like wildfire, the rumours had spread around the schoolyard, and that’s what prompted Jojo Duggan to raise his hand and ask a simple and straightforward question.
– Are we going on a school tour, Brother?
Brother Hennessy hesitated and looked out across the sea of faces, from desk to desk, past row after row of expectant eyes twinkling beneath fringe-cut bowl-cuts.
– Let me think about it, he said.
Sometimes the answer to a simple and straightforward question is neither simple nor straightforward.

For this 12-year old schoolboy, Ireland was a sepia-toned, wax-cloth map hanging in the classroom. We’d gather around it and rattle off the power-horse of Irish national industrial centres.
– Carpets in Navan. Sugar in Mallow. Electricity in Ardnacrusha.
Like some aberration of a John Hinde postcard, this New Ireland as envisioned by Seán Lemass presented a semi-state hybrid of an industrialised future firmly rooted
in our pastoral past. Of course, there was that day Brother Hennessy asked,
– Right, Creedon – Name the minerals found in Ireland?
– Fanta, 7UP and Tanora, Brother …

1970s Ireland was a rising tide – and Cork was on the crest of a wave. The Motown of Fords and Dunlops was the powerhouse of the city – pumping steam. It was the era of the job for life, where a work place was handed down from generation to generation, and we would be next in line to take our place on the assembly line.

Brother Hennessey had heard the whispering around the staff room. Two of the fee-paying colleges in the city were planning school tours. One had their sights set on Switzerland, the other on Paris. Two schools whose primary focus was educating the next generation of Captains of Industry, Merchant Princes and sons of the professional classes. By comparison, my alma mater, The North Monastery boasted an alumni from the vast blue-collared heartland on the Northside of the city. Celebrated in song and in story, The North Monastery was a nursery for hurlers and heroes – past pupils had made their mark as poets and politicians, with pride of place dedicated to our two martyred Republican Lord Mayors, McCurtain and McSwiney. Brother Hennessy instinctively understood that working-class values came hand in hand with working-class wages. Therein lay the kernel of the conundrum, the expense of a school tour to Europe would be far beyond the financial reach of his flock.

That weekend Br. Hennessey set to work calling in favours. He secured a bus from Cronin’s Coaches, a batch of Dolly Mixtures from Linehan’s sweet factory and Punches pledged a box of Tayto and a crate of Tanora. By Monday morning a plan was in place.
– “Right, says he. – We are going on a school tour.”
A tsunami of excitement swept the classroom.
– “Paris? Switzerland, Brother?”
– “No!” says he. – “Not Paris or Switzerland. We are going to Rosmuc!”
– “Rosmuc, Brother?”
Brother Hennessey nipped any hint of disappointment in the bud saying,
– “Rosmuc was good enough for Patrick Pearse – It’s good enough for us.”
He went on to say,
– “Life is a bus journey. So, let the journey be our reward!”

And so, on the appointed day, fifty-two wild boys and a Christian Brother piled onto a bus and trundled out of Cork, on the rocky road to Patrick Pearse’s cottage in Galway. And yes, motion sickness induced a few cases of projectile vomiting, but it’s fair to say that by the time we reached Limerick, communal supping from bottles of Tanora with a froth of Tayto flakes floating on top had established a
collective antimicrobial immunity against measles, chickenpox, smallpox, leprosy and every known schoolboy infection.

Brother Hennessy mapped out a circuitous route tracing the footsteps of O’Sullivan Beare. At every crossroads and village he identified holy wells, burial grounds and ancient battlefields strung out like beads on a rosary along the blood- drenched road of Irish history – from Cork to Rosmuc.

Pearse’s cottage, set in splendid isolation on the shores of Loch Oiriúlach, framed by the towering Twelve Bens and the majestic Maamturk Mountains, is a place of breathtaking beauty. This landscape inspired the Patriot, who in turn inspired the birth of our nation. Brother Hennessy impressed on us the significance of this
magical place, with extracts from Eoghainín na nÉan and Íosagán – finishing in an impassioned flourish with the prophetic words from Pearse’s oration at the grave of O’Donovan Rossa.
– “the fools the fools they have left us our Fenian dead.”

The cottage was small and spartan, and with access limited to five individuals, Brother Hennessy organised us in batches. We were led in hushed tones from the sparse kitchen to the austerity of the bedroom – the only apparent furniture a small iron-framed bed. When our guide announced that the Fenian, Joseph Mary Plunkett’s brother, had stayed here with Pearse, it prompted Jojo Duggan to ask,

– “In the same bed, Brother?”
– “A Christ no, man! They took it in shifts.”

But stunning scenery and the serenity of solitude offers little by way of entertainment to a busload of schoolboys – so, we entertained ourselves with a game of Brits & Patriots – a new take on the old standard Cowboys & Indians. And maybe Dagenham Dave, the leader of the Brits, ended up in the lake as a reprisal for the Burning of Cork – but what happens on school tour stays on school tour.

Maybe it was the sheer enthusiasm of Brother Hennessy, but something about that day spent in the wilds of Connemara was profoundly inspirational. Every mountain, bog and outcrop seemed to present a narrative and a profound understanding of what it meant to be Irish. Ireland was no longer just a jaded abstract map hanging in the classroom. For the first time in this boy’s life, Brother Hennessey had succeeded in imparting a deep and meaningful interpretation of Ireland as a constantly evolving work in progress – an ancient land shaped by the people and a people shaped by the land.

And so with the darkness of evening setting in, it was time for us to strike the long road home again; one final stop at Salthill for sausages and chips and an opportunity to empty our pocket money into the slot machines of the amusement arcades along the waterfront. A quick headcount and we were back on the rocky road to Cork. Brother Hennessy shortened our journey with a sing-song – the full Republican repertoire from Boolavogue to Sean South of Garryowen. But something about the rousing culturally inclusive lyrics of We’re On The One Road just seemed to capture the spirit of that day. We sang it over and over again – from Salthill, County Galway all the way to the Burren in County Clare.

Half a century has passed, and yet the names and faces of each and every one those boys on the bus that day is indelibly etched in my memory. Red-faced and carefree, singing at the top of our lungs, living in the moment – blissfully unaware that within a decade, Ireland would be battered by a gale-force recession and Cork would be in the eye of the storm. By 1985, the Motown of Fords and Dunlop had shut down the assembly lines and padlocked the factory gates. With half the town unemployed and the other half redundant, the only career opportunity open to me and my classmates was to take the next Slattery’s Bus heading for London – and onwards to Brixton, Berlin, Boston or the Bronx. The day of the job for life was over.

And if life is a bus journey, as Brother Hennessy said, it’s odd that me and the class of 1972 got on the same bus but by the twists and turns of life, we all ended up in totally different places.

But sometimes, when faced with the challenges of life, I like to think that maybe in some other alternative reality – that old Cronin’s Coach is still trundling along some back road between Rosmuc and Cork. Brother Hennessey is still driving on the sing-song. And a busload of schoolboys, high on Tayto and Tanora, singing as one, over and over again.
“We’re on the one road.
Maybe the wrong road.
But we’re together now who cares.””

Conal Creedon

The views expressed in all of the Snap Shots stories and photos used are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of the Museum of Childhood Ireland.

Dr Sorcha De Brun, Baile Átha Cliath 1980s

Dheineas staidéar ar an bpianó i gCeol-Acadamh Ríoga na hÉireann, mar aon leis an gcuid eile de mo mhuintir: mo dheartháireacha agus mo mháthair romham, ise mar chuid den ghrúpa amhránaíochta ar ar tugadh ‘The Thirteens.’ Bhíos ann mar pháiste, mar dhéagóir, agus go dtí go rabhas im bhean óg agus mé aon bhlian is fiche d’aois. Tobar mór inspioráide mo shaoil, ionad súgartha dom a bhí san Acadamh. Tá sé fós ar chúl mo chinn agam, agus é mar fhoinse don tsuim atá agam sa cheol agus sa litríocht. Mhúnlaigh an taithí a bhí agam ansin ó bhonn mé. B’ann a fuaireas amach gur féidir leis an saol a bheith diamhair, doléite, mistéireach. Na heachtraí a bhí agam ann, thuigeas as an nua a raibh de cheol agus de litríocht sa bheatha. Chuas ar seachrán agus mé ag seinnt ceoil agus bhailíos liom go háiteanna im shamhlaíocht ag cumadh scéalta a bhí bunaithe ar chumadóireacht leithéidí John Field, Mendelssohn, Tschaikowsky. An drámaíocht, an rómánsaíocht agus an briseadh croí, bhaineadar de bhonn m’óige mé amhail is gur ag dul trí stoirmeacha a bhíos. I gcomhluadar Schubert a bhraitheas go raibh cara nua agam: ba dhuine é a raibh aithne agam air, dar liom. Chuaigh ceol Haydn i gcion orm, a chuid rógaireachta ag glioscarnach fé mhéireanta mo láimhe. Ba é ceol maorga an chumadóra Rúisigh Kabalewski a d’oscail an doras dom mothúcháin nua a chur in iúl, an t-aon mheán a bhí agam mo chuid tuiscintí úra faoin leatrom agus faoi iarmhairtí easpa deiseanna saoil a bhí ann do pháistí chomhaois liom, páistí chathair Bhaile Átha Cliath na n-ochtóidí, a léiriú tríd an gceol.  Agus ba iad nocturnes John Field an t-aon sólás ar thalamh a bhí agam nuair a d’fhág mo ghrá geal an tír le dul ar imirce lena chlann chun na hAstráile, imeacht a d’fhág in umar na haimléise mé ina dhiaidh. File aitheanta a bhí im mhúinteoir pianó, Anthony Glavin. D’fhoilsigh sé cnuasaigh ar nós The Music Room agus ghnóthaigh gradaim éagsúla as a chuid filíochta. Chuir Glavin mé i dtreo na filíochta agus na drámaíochta atá ginte sa cheol, i dtreo dathanna an cheoil, agus – go minic – i dtreo eispéireas liteartha a bhí le feiscint mar scáthán i seinnt an cheoil. Nuair a cailleadh Dina Copeman (1926-1982), a mhúinteoir pianó féin, bhíos mar fhinné ar a bhrón. An lá a cailleadh í, chas Glavin an troscán timpeall sa seomra ceoil ionas go raibh gach uile rud bun os cionn, ionas go mbeadh radharc aige ar an gcathair bhriste lasmuigh. Ar nós loinge a bhí ag dul go tóin na farraige, bhí gach cuma ar an scéal go raibh an tAcadamh ar tí titim as a chéile. Na 1980í a bhí ann. Bhíodh gíoscán seanleithrísí le clos i gcónaí sa bhfoirgneamh ard cathrach siúd, fuaimeanna na gcéadta bliain ina macallaí mórthimpeall orainn. Ábhar iontais a bhí ann domsa, mar pháiste. Nuair nach mbínn i mbun teoiric an cheoil le Brendan Murray, a bhí ina shaineolaí déanta ar cheol an chine ghoirm agus ar an snagcheoil, nó nuair nach rabhas ag útamáil le Clair de Lune ar an bhfliút clasaiceach faoi stiúir Rosemary Hill, nó ag freastal ar ranganna Music Appreciation le Annette Perry (shamhlaíos mar Chleopatra í), bhínn ag dul suas agus síos staighrí an Acadaimh, mo rothar á tharraingt im dhiaidh agam, agus gan aoinne ag cur isteach ná amach orm. Lean guthanna sopráin mé, daltaí amhránaíochta an mhúinteora Smolenski ag dul suas agus síos scálaí na n-ochtach agus mé ag dreapadh liom.  Tháinig mé ar sheanleabharlann tráthnóna fómhair amháin in íoslach an tí, é lán de smúit agus de leabhair dhonna ceoil lena lámhscríbinní tréigthe. Dheineas iontas de na ballaí cloiche, de na comharthaí doléite doiléire a bhí le fáil ar na ballaí céanna, cén fáth go rabhadar ann, cé a chuir ann iad, agus dheineas mo mharana fé na daoine, na searbhóintí a théadh i gcoinne an aird ar mo dhála féin agus suas na staighrí cloiche romham céad bliain roimhe sin.   Níos déanaí, rachainn abhaile agus scríobhainn gach rud síos im dhialann. Ba mhinic a bhreacas tríocha leathanach de chin lae gan dua. Ach b’fhéidir gurb í an chuimhne is mó atá agam ná m’athair ag fanacht liom ar chéimeanna eibhir an Acadaimh tar éis na chéad cheachta a bhí riamh agam. Ina sheasamh dó ar thaobh na sráide a bhí sé, agus thaispeánas na excellents a bhí faighte agam ó Anthony Glavin le mórtas, Glavin tar éis a chuid féin a bhreacadh síos im leabhar nótaí. Scéal eile is ea scéal m’athar, agus bua na scéalaíochta a thug sé ó dhúchas leis. Ach feicfidh mé go deo é ag fanacht go foighneach liom ar chéimeanna an Acadaimh, ag fanacht chun mé a thabhairt abhaile.  

When I was a child, I studied piano music in the Royal Irish Academy of Music with the rest of my family. I was there as a child, as a teenager, and until I was a young woman of twenty one years of age. The ‘Academy’ was my imaginative and cultural playground. It has remained a major source for my lifelong interest in music and literature. My experiences there shaped me in a fundamental way, and my explorations, both musically and otherwise, introduced me to all things musical and dramatic, poetic and literary, crumbling and mysterious. I lost myself in pieces of music, imagining narratives and constructing stories based on compositions by John Field, Mendelssohn, Tschaikowsky. Drama, romance but also heartbreak took my childhood self by storm. In Schubert, I believed I had found a friend. Somebody who understood. I grew to love Haydn for his glittering sense of fun. It was the stirring chords of the great Russian composer, Kabalewsky, that allowed me the only means with which to express my burgeoning awareness of injustice and my understanding of privilege, a sense that other children living in the streets near the Academy were not so lucky. And it was the nocturnes of John Field that were my only solace when my childhood sweetheart left for Australia. My teacher, the renowned piano teacher, Anthony Glavin was an award-winning poet. His tuition frequently directed me to the drama and poetry inherent in music, to the meaning of colour, and to life outside of music, and reflected back in music. I only had to witness his silent sorrow on the passing of his own piano teacher, Dina Copeland, to get a glimpse into the lives of others. The day she died, Glavin turned the furniture in the piano room around so that everything was back to front. It was the 1980s and the building seemed to be falling apart. There were views out over a dilapidated city, creaking old toilet cisterns that had been around for a hundred years. But to a child, all this was a source of wonder.  When not doing music theory with Brendan Murray, or piano, or recorder, or doing music appreciation with the inimitable Annette Perry (I imagined her as Cleopatra), I wandered the building, up and down the old back staircases, sometimes hauling my bike after me. The sounds of female singers ascending and descending their scales in teacher Smolenski’s room was a constant backdrop as I climbed. I found a library with dusty music books and faded brown manuscripts, and wondered at ancient marks on walls, and why they were there, and thought about the people, the servants, who had climbed those cold stone steps before me. Later, I would go home and write all my experiences down in my diaries. Perhaps one of the strongest memories I have is of my father waiting to meet me after my first lesson. He was standing on the steps of the Academy, where I proudly showed him the excellents given to me by Anthony Glavin and duly recorded in my piano notebook. My father’s childhood stories and spellbinding gift in that department are for another day. But in my mind’s eye, my father will forever be waiting for me on the steps of the Academy, and waiting to take me home. 

Dr Sorcha De Brun

“When we were small we used to holiday in my aunt’s cottage in Donegal. We met this little donkey on the windy roads as we were adventuring one afternoon and Dad decided that we should all have a go on his back. After my two sisters and brother hopped on, it was my turn. This photo was taken just before the donkey decided that he’d had enough and decided to take off at full tilt, with me hanging on to his mane for dear life and Dad running beside him trying to lift me off.”

Sinéad Casey

Pat Cotton (Cahill) Sheffield, South Yorkshire 1950s

“My relationship with my mum was a difficult one. We argued a lot, mainly because she argued a lot with my dad, and he could do no wrong in my eyes! Often it was too cold or too hot for him to go to work. Food and money was tight, but on Fridays the priest always came looking for the donation. Things improved financially when my mum was allowed to go back to work. (How times have changed ) 

l loved my dad, James Cahill from Co Mayo, very much. He was a quiet man who never lost his lovely accent. I wasn’t too sure about my mum until much later. I went every Sunday with my dad to mass. On the way home he would buy me a Mars bar, then went for a Guinness. I used to wonder why mum never went to mass, but she never said anything. 

I told more lies in the confession box than outside it! I used to say that I hadn’t been to mass when I had! I used to kneel in the the confession box not not really knowing what a sin was, so I made things up! I said my three Hail Marys and Act of Contrition afterwards, and forgot about them until the next time I went. I wouldn’t dare go to school and say I hadn’t though. On Mondays the headteacher would check in assembly if everyone had been to mass.

My mum and her twin sister were born at Grove Street, Birr, Co Offaly in 1921, two of eight children. Their names were Cathrine (Kathleen) and Evelyn Woods.

In 1935  they were taken  to St. Mary’s, Stanhope Street, Dublin 7, by a sister of the Convent  of Mercy, Birr, Co Offaly. In 1938 while there, they were enrolled as Children of Mary.

My mum is the child holding the sheet in the centre of the photo below showing workers at the laundry

My aunt Evelyn is the child at the back right of this photo, marked by an arrow above her right shoulder

My mum died in 1996 followed not long after by my aunt Evelyn.

Several years later I was reading the Mail on Sunday magazine. On turning a page there was a photo of my mum in a laundry. Can you imagine my shock? ( I remembered seeing that same photo when I was in my teens, although then I didn’t understand what I was looking at. ) I showed the photo to my husband who asked me “what’s you mum doing in the magazine.” The article was actually about Irish industrial schools, so for a long time I searched in all the wrong places. 

You may not believe this, but I only found out about the laundries when I went to a clairvoyant with a friend. During the show the clairvoyant asked if anyone had twins. Several of us put up our hands.  Following more questions, I was the only one with my hand still up! She asked me if I was searching for information. I said yes. She answered that she had a lady holding a photo! Then she said that I was looking in the wrong place, but that I was not to give up!

A little later I was on the computer looking for information, and that is when my mum’s photo popped up, and my long journey for answers began.

Off to Dublin I went, not sure what to do or even where to go. Eventually I found St Mary’s convent, knocked on the door and asked the nun who answered about the laundry. She said that it was “over there” gesticulating with her hands, and that it was “long gone”. She gave me the name of a nun at Mary Aikenhead house. From her I received information on the dates my mum and auntie were there and the dates they were sent away, and also the information that they were fourteen years old when they entered St Mary’s.

A few week s later I’m back at the convent, this time with my husband. Alan knocked on the convent door and again asked about the laundry. A nun closed the door on us. 

As I cried, the postman who had overheard the conversation with the nun said “go out the gate, turn left and left again, and you will find it!” And there it was! 

Unfortunately I didn’t get any further answers as the nuns would not engage with us.

Returning a few months later, I’m determined to get inside. (the laundry part is now demolished and replaced with a garden of remembrance) As I’m walking up and down outside not exactly sure how I’m going to get inside, but determined to one way or another, a work man appears. I approach him, asking if he knows anything about St Mary’s.  He said he did. (he also knew what l wanted because of my English accent. I wasn’t the first person to have come searching ) He asked us if we wanted to go in through the girls entrance or the nuns. We choose the girls which was grey concrete stairs. 

We viewed the dormitories that they slept in, and through the window we saw the exercise yard. Everything was very grey. Next we came down to the nuns beautiful entrance. The workman told us about a lady in her 90s that had been back. She told the man that her dying wish was to walk up and down the nuns entrance that she’d had to scrub on her hands and knees! So she did just that!

Over the years I’ve emailed the convent asking for the reason given for my mum and auntie being taken into to St Mary’s. I admit I was not always very tactful. They sent me a solicitor’s letter saying not to contact them directly again but to go through him. 

I’ve cried a lot of tears over the years. I  was really mad with my mum and auntie for not telling me about everything while they were still here. They never spoke about it to anyone. Perhaps we could have gotten some answers. My auntie had never told her son. 

I told him after the first time we went to Dublin. He’d had no idea. As you can imagine, he was very upset.

As a young girl I always wondered why my family was different from that of my friends. Now I know why.

What I will never understand is why my mum sent me to a catholic school run by nuns. I was very unhappy, and very scared of the nuns, especially a couple of them who were experts with tables tennis bats!

Recently I might perhaps have found out one reason why they had been sent…It seems my mum’s older sister Violet had given birth to a baby girl named Mary, at a very young age. Incidentally, it seems that Violet was told that her baby had died. She cried about her baby right up to the day she too died. Questions arise now as to whether Mary died or whether she had been adopted.

Was it for moral reasons, or because they were very poor, that they were taken to Stanhope St? Grandad was an ex soldier so I imagine there was not much money to feed ten mouths. 

I won’t give up! I want to find answers for my mum and her sisters, and for all the other girls who were in the laundries. l will never give up looking for answers as to why they were there. I have so many questions!

While working in the laundry for almost 4 years without pay, I wonder if the girls were allowed to go out, and if they were allowed any visitors? How was it arranged for them to go to England? How did they pay for their tickets? How did they get to the ferry port?

I’d also love to know more about the Children of Mary organisation too, if anyone can help me?

My aunt Evelyn’s medal and candle

My aunt Eyelyn’s certificate

My mum Cathrine’s Rule book

In 1938 at the time they were disposed of,* from St Mary’s to England, their parents were living in Woking, Surrey.

*the word used in a printout the convent sent  to me.

I visited my nan and grandad frequently, and loved spending lots of time with them, especially at their house in Sheffield. We even had delicious real butter on our bread there!  

My Mum carried on working in factories with her sister, my auntie until they retired ( they were always together)

Fast forward a few years. I met my lovely husband. We have been happily married for nearly fifty years, and we have two amazing daughters.

As the years went on I began to understand my mum more, and realised how difficult her life had been. We didn’t have much, never had a holiday, not much for Christmas, and sadly we never had kisses or cuddles.

My dad died when he was only sixty seven. My auntie died not long after that with lung cancer.

A couple of years after dad my mum was diagnosed with lung cancer. By this time she was very frail and wasn’t able to look after herself, and I did what I always said I wouldn’t do under any circumstances – have my mum to live with us. She was only with us for three weeks and they were the best weeks we ever had. I realised just how much I loved her.

We didn’t have much but what we did have was all down to my mum.  If only we could turn back time!”

Pat Cotton

The views expressed in all of the Snap Shots stories, and the photos used are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of the Museum of Childhood Ireland.

Tony Gunning, Dublin and Waterford 1960s

 A formal photo taken in Jerome Studios, Mary St., Dublin back in 1961 on the occasion of my Communion (aged 6 and 1/2).

A Year From My Childhood

“1966 was memorable for so many reasons that greatly influenced my future life. It was the year England won the World Cup. It was the year we commemorated the 50^th anniversary of the Rising. It was the year I made my one and only trip to the Gaeltacht and it was the year that John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers album was first released. The latter didn’t impact on me for another two years but it was a defining album in my future musical journey.

Up to the summer of that year I had no interest in sport. I can remember my father giving me ten bob to buy a pair of football boots or a pair of boxing gloves. I had no interest in either but figured I could share the boxing gloves with my brother. One could have the left glove and one could have the right and with my brother being three years younger I could box the head off him. I can still remember them vividly. Orange leather…well not really leather but plastic covered cotton wool. It all ended in tears when I boxed his ears too often.

Back Row: (left to right) Harold Shepherdson, Nobby Stiles, Roger Hunt, Gordon Banks, Jack Charlton, George Cohen, Ray Wilson, Alf Ramsey.

Front Row: (left to right) Martin Peters, Geoff Hurst, Bobby Moore (Capt.), Alan Ball, Bobby Charlton 

England’s World Cup 1966 team with manager Alf Ramsey. Credit: PA:Empics Sport. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thesun.ie/sport/football/9947713/england-1966-world-cup-winners-alive/amp/

With Ireland not involved at the World Cup finals the whole nation supported England. Football mania infected us. All the England games were shown on T.V. We only had a black and white but I can still remember the sense of excitement every time England played. Everyone was glued to theirs or their neighbours T.V. to watch the final between England and West Germany with everyone shouting for England. This was less than two years before the ‘troubles’ in the North. It was like Italia 90 before we knew what Italia 90 was. I got fired up with the spectacle like everyone else. I don’t remember the games but can still recite the England team by heart. We saw highlights of the final in colour on Pathȇ News a week later in the Gala cinema. Throughout the summer of 66 street football got more and more popular. Organised football these days starts at under 8 but back then it started at under 13. Street football was a free-for-all. I was only eleven but my pals were all ages up to 14. When one of the adults finally took us in hand we were all thrown in at the deep end at under 14 to get as many as possible involved. It gave me a love of football and sport in general that continues to this day.

Going to the Gaeltacht in Donegal was my first time away from home on my own but it was compulsory for entry to the scholarship in the 6^th year of Primary. All secondary schools were fee-paying so getting a scholarship was vital. By the time I did get to sit my Primary certificate the following year the Minister of Education, Donagh O’Malley, had announced the introduction of free secondary education.

A wasted trip to the Gaeltacht?…..I don’t think so.”

Tony Gunning

Like most Dubliners I was born in Holles Street maternity hospital and baptised in St. Andrew’s Church, Westland Row.

When I was just one year old my family moved to Waterford, where we stayed until I was five. I spent my childhood growing up in Ballyfermot where all my schooling, both primary and secondary, was with the De La Salle brothers. In secondary I had the option of studying either Art or Latin. My choice of Art was overruled. 

I decided to skip 3^rd level altogether and in 1973 took a job with the Revenue Commissioners where I stayed until 2000, mostly in the Customs & Excise service. I walked out the door of Revenue with a business degree, determined to find my own path as an artist. Again I skipped the formal training of Art College but my immersion in the art world over the next few years taught me more than I could ever have learned in an academic setting.

I had my first professional success as a finalist in RTE’s ‘Open House’ art competition in 2002 leading to my first solo show at the Davis Gallery in Dublin which sold out. I’ve had fourteen solo shows since then and have far exceeded all of my ambitions as an artist. My work has been selected for many prestigious group shows including Royal Academy, Royal Hibernian Academy and Royal Ulster Academy annual exhibitions. Internationally I have exhibited solo at the European Parliament and represented Ireland at the Florence Biennale in 2006. At EV+A (Ireland’s foremost contemporary art showcase) in 2007 I was winner of the Curator’s Award and the Bank of Ireland Emerging Artist Award. Two pieces were purchased for the Bank’s collection.

I was very privileged to have had work exhibited in many of Dublin’s leading galleries until the recession of 2008 which forced most of them to close their doors by 2013.  

I continue to work from my studio in Bray, where I now live. I am a member of Visual Artists Ireland and the Signal Arts Society.

Tony Gunning

Website:  https://tonygunningfineart.com/

E-mail:  tonygunningartist@gmail.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tonygunningartist/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tonygunningart

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-gunning-19421544/

Deirdre McGuirk, Ballyfermot Co Dublin, 1970s

A photo of me, Brenda, my mam, aunty and brother’s arm!

The Horse Show.

“Every year there was great excitement in our household for the RDS Horse Show. This excitement was not that we were going, but we were actually taking part. OK I know that does not make sense, but in the world we live in today it could be said that we were taking part remotely!

My elder sister, brother and I, inspired by Eddie Macken, would set up a series of jumps in our back garden in Ballyfermot. All brushes, mops and buckets would be transformed into jumps in our small back garden. Our little wall in the garden was also used as a jump. We would giddy up, click and slap our hips over each jump. I cannot remember who won, all I remember was the great fun we had and we still talk about it today.

Great summers and great imaginations.”

Deirdre McGuirk

Deirdre is originally from Ballyfermot and grew up in a family of 6 with her mam, dad and 3 siblings, close to the CIE works in Inchicore.  “Our road was a very tight-knit community and we knew all our neighbours.  We spent our days out playing in the fields and by the Liffey Bank and the Memorial Gardens.  Ballyfermot was a great place to grow up.”  Deirdre loves history and folklore and collecting traditional Irish customs.  She is now a tour guide in the NMI, Co. Mayo and is completing an MA in Public History and Cultural History.

The views expressed in all of the Snap Shots stories and photos used are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of the Museum of Childhood Ireland.

Keith McNulty, USA and Germany 1980s

The day I met the King.

“When I was 14 years old, I met Pelé, the “King of Soccer.” It was May 24, 1983.

Pelé led the Brazilian soccer team to three world cup championships, in 1958, 1962, and 1970.  Many see him as the greatest soccer player of all time, and he coined the phrase “the beautiful game” to describe soccer. On a promotional tour for Puma, Pelé visited Germany to sign autographs.  My family lived in Düsseldorf from 1981 -1984, when my father’s company moved him to Germany with his family.  He signed autographs in Düsseldorf at the Kaufhof department store. This is where I met him.  

I first learned about Pelé at the first professional soccer game I ever attended. My father Dan took my brother Will and me to see a home game for the New York Cosmos in Summer 1980, at Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands in New Jersey.  Pelé had played for the Cosmos from 1975-1977, so he was not on the team at the time, but the team had become famous for the fact that he had played for them.  Other famous international star players for the Cosmos from that era were Italian striker Giorgio Chinaglia and German sweeper Franz Beckenbauer.  My brother and I originally started playing soccer at a club in Fairfield, Connecticut, around 1979, so seeing the Cosmos play was inspiring for an Irish American boy who had just learned to play soccer.  

At the time I met Pelé, I was playing soccer for my school team in Germany.  Our coach, Barry O’Farrell, was from Ireland. When I met Pelé, I was starstruck.  His reputation was larger than life, but in person, he was average height, and appeared to be otherwise an ordinary person, although he radiated confidence and had a great smile.  Reflecting on that moment, my impression was he enjoyed being himself and was grateful to his fans for the recognition and respect he received as a soccer player.  He was blessed, as a master of a sport that he loved and that was loved by so many adults and children around the world.  

Pelé signed a photo of himself and my blue adidas shirt.  I still have them. “

Keith McNulty

January 11, 2023

“I forgot to mention, this movie had Pele in it, and it was released in 1981, so I had another reference point about Pelé from that time.” Keith

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083284/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pel%C3%A9

Jen Condon, Dublin 1990s

My favourite photo of me as a child – Winner of the Grumpy Looking Baby Award! According to family members I was quite the grumpy one and didn’t sleep a night until I was 3 (my poor mother!) 

Nora Corcoran, Co Galway 1960s

“I was a Christmas Gawyer/ Baby/, born December 1967.

Any time I am presenting, I like to tell the audience how my family used to tell me I was brought back to the “TaeMan’s”, the area in Co Galway, ( possible location in the pic below of my immediate and extended family), where my family were camped. I wear this memory with pride now, a rite of passage from my Mincéir Heritage.

I come from a big family, I have 10 brothers and three sisters, and I am the fourth youngest. My father was a Tinsmith, eking out a meagre living, trying to compete with the more popular plastic. We were ofttimes going to bed with hungry bellies, and were only too glad of the daily dinners at school lunchtimes, prepared by the Sisters of Mercy, who ran the local primary schools at that time.

We lived in the country for most of my childhood. At the time I hated it, wanting to live in the town, so I could walk to school with my friends, instead of getting the school bus, and having to constantly endure the shame of being called dirty Tinker by the non-Traveller children. Many a fight my brothers had standing up for us. Nowadays, aside from the memories of the name calling, I am so happy to have the memories of living in the country. The fields and woods were our playgrounds. Long hot summers were spent running wild, climbing trees, and going on picnics. Autumn yielded an abundance of tasty treasures; honeycomb apples, blackberries, wild raspberries, hazel nuts, plums and damsons. We were natural foragers, though I only recently learned this was the word for our “picking”.

I was the typical tomboy, fighting for my space in this big family. I challenged the boys to races and bragged about my victories. Myself and my friend were always picked to be goalies, because we were better than the boys.

But my great passion was reading. I first remember when I started school, I would stare at the pictures, frustrated because I couldn’t read the text. I learned quickly and halfway through the term, I was moved to a higher class, as I had started school, with my two older brothers and one younger all on the same day. We are all moved to classes closer to our age groups. I remember the teacher getting me to read two ladybird books to catch up with the others.

“Are you tired, do you want to stop Nora?”. She asked me.

I replied, “No miss, I want to keep going!” I was in a hurry to catch up with the rest of the class!

Books were my escape from my impoverished childhood. I was an avid reader and devoured any Enid Blyton books I could find in my local library. I also loved the “Just William” series, and the “Nancy Drew” mysteries.

As a child, I was conditioned to believe that I was less equal than non-Travellers. My parents were very subservient, accepting a less equal place in society, and this was the example I was expected to follow.

They were also illiterate, and my father used to love showing off my reading skills to anyone who would listen.

My mother was a great storyteller and would regale us with stories of myths and legends. I truly wish that those stories were archived, as sadly, they died with her.

Sadly, my formative years were also filled with discrimination, exclusion and marginalisation.

My one abiding memory of growing up is not really fitting in. I didn’t really fit in with my Traveller or non-Traveller peers. I put this down to losing myself in books, losing my Traveller identity. Trying to fit in with the non-Travellers as I became increasingly ashamed of my Mincéir background.

How I wish that I could have seen my Traveller self in the picture of the storybooks I read.

I truly believe it would have changed my life, given me more self-acceptance. I now cherish my ethnicity and mourn the loss of not embracing my rich culture and heritage as a child. That part of society that denied me an authentic equal childhood, through forced assimilation, oppression and marginalisation, needs to right that wrong. Part of this is to make our country more inclusive. Let Traveller children see themselves in the pages of story books to allow for positive change in the future for our children and future generations.

Nora Corcoran.

Peiyi Zhang, China, 2000s

This is a photo of me when I was four years old, in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, China. I am standing in front of a TV in our old house, and I miss it so much. I spent most of my childhood there. My childhood experience was not as great as it should have been and I have grown up with the wish to use my power to help children.

Siobhan O’Sullivan Morrin, Dublin 1950s

“My Aunty Una wore trousers – but only at weekends or on holidays cycling around Monaghan with her cousins. In 1950s Dublin it was a rather daring thing for a lady to do – and the garment was always referred to as ‘slacks’ to take the harm out of it. One Saturday morning in December 1959 Una called over to our house to deliver a parcel for me. She was a tailoress like my Granny before her and the parcel contained my Christmas present which she had made herself. I can see her standing at the end of the stairs with my mother waving up at me. I knew who she was, what was going on and most importantly was aware that the moment was imprinting itself on my brain.  I was two and a bit years old and I knew I was now capable of making memories.

Christmas for me as a child and a young adult was always the sweetest and most exciting time of the year and for anyone who lived in Dublin a trip into town in December always involved that magical walk down Henry Street. I remember the lights – rows upon rows of them strung high across the street – yellow, orange and red in that order. A star at the top of each set and six glowing ribbons of bulbs streaming down. Under the lights were the stalls filled with decorations, wrapping paper and toys. The ‘Cheeky Charlie’ a grey furry monkey puppet with strings was the most famous toy, remembered by many generations of children.

‘Get the last of the Cheeky Charlies’ the traders called though oddly enough another Charlie was produced from a box as soon as the alleged last one was sold.  Unfortunately Charlie never made it home to my house, my mother generally favouring dolls for girls. I think she found him too grotesque to be honest. He had very wild eyes and a strange smile. Instead I was given a small grey clockwork donkey whose tail whirled around. The donkey, Neddy, suffered an injury to one of his legs leaving him unsteady on his feet. He was sent to live in the china cabinet and only ever taken out by appointment. He gazed out at me from the top shelf where he stood in a forest of good drinking glasses keeping company with a showgirl doll dressed only in feathers.

In the fifties and sixties clockwork toys were fiercely popular. Not for us the ‘batteries not included’ proviso on a box but a metal key to wind the toy to life. Mine was a dancer named Matilda, her mechanism hidden under her yellow skirt. It would be wound carefully – ‘not too tight mind’ – before she was let loose on the floor to waltz on her little wheels, collide drunkenly with the furniture, and finally topple over leaving the doll with a dinged head, poor thing. Later, the keys were abandoned in favour of revving the toys up by brushing the rear wheels on the floor. This latter sort were nearly always vehicles of one type or another. A miniature red sports car driven by a doll with a ponytail of nylon hair streaming behind her plastic head drove into our front room one day. She amused me greatly for many years and had far better luck than poor Waltzing Matilda ever did.

Back in Henry Street Santa was to be found on every street corner and occasionally you might see two at the same time. A teacher at school explained this by saying these weren’t the real Santa but they were Santa’s brothers who came down from the North Pole to help him out. I didn’t believe her. I knew, as did most of my classmates, that these imposters were just men dressed up. Like the Great Oz, the Man in Red was unseen and contactable only by letter or communication through your parents.

Being an only child I was extremely shy in the presence of strangers so I hated meeting a Santa imposter in shops. However I did enjoy the present and the trip to the North Pole – through Aladdin’s Cave or on a sleigh drawn by Penguins in Pims of George’s Street, a shop long since gone to make way for an office block.

‘Pyms have the best Santa,’ my Mother would say though she never specified the criteria for excellence.

On Christmas day though, Santa always turned up trumps! I never had a complaint about the delivery even when it was a surprise. There were always books – the annuals Bunty, Judy, the Princess Ballet Book and the Look and Learn – full of facts, history, legends. My Dad always read that one, sometimes even before I did!

There were always dolls – plaster ones with wigs glued on, others with rooted washable hair and once a knitted black doll whom I loved to bits. A neighbour, a contemporary of my Granny’s, knit him for me and he arrived with a small bar of Cadbury’s chocolate one Christmas Eve. I took a notion after reading some story or other and offered him to my Dad, an actor, to use as a lucky mascot. That little doll had a great life going to New York, London and dressing rooms in every theatre in Dublin!

I only ever spent one Christmas Eve night away from home. My Mother and me stayed not far away with my Granny and when we got home on Christmas morning I found a child sized wooden dresser with two tea sets – one a beauty, cream with gold edging and little knives, forks and spoons. Years later I found out that in my absence my Dad had set out the display of plates and cups on the shelves and cutlery in the drawer, with the annuals and the second tea set in the cupboards below. Another year I found a child’s record player with two dozen multi coloured kids records, I had my parents out of bed at half five that morning and all records played by seven am. Reading through this the gifts might sound extravagant but I was an unexpected and only child in a small family of adults. Christmas and birthdays were days of being spoilt. I can assure you that for the rest of the year life was normal.

Meanwhile back to being two and a bit and Aunty Una and the outfit – when my mother opened the parcel she found a red coat trimmed with white fur and a matching bonnet. Delightful but that wasn’t all. There was another item in the bundle – a pair of red trousers just like Aunty Una’s! My Mother was charmed. She bought me matching red shoes and booked a photographer to call to the house. As is the way, I had grown out of it the following year but I still have the photographs!

I was born in August 1954 in Dublin between the two canals – the definition of a true Dub!

My Dad, Archie to his friends, was an actor in the Radio Eireann Players * at the time. He was also a Dubliner. My Mother Mary, a Tipperary woman, like many women of her time worked in the home.

I was an only child, a total surprise apparently, and grew up in a very small family surrounded by adults who liked to talk a lot. The family circle was made up of one Granny, two Aunts, their husbands and my cousin. These relations were entirely my Dad’s family, my Mam having been orphaned at age ten lived at a distance from her own people.

Childhood was a happy time though with my Dad’s work, especially when he opted to go freelance when I was about six, financially life was sometimes precarious. I can still recall my Mam’s face when he came home and announced that he’d quit his job.

When they married, Dad bought a small cottage, originally built for workers at the Westland Row (Pearse) railway station. But the fact that he owned his own home, albeit on the bijou side, gave security and permanence.

The direction my formal education took was totally accidental. I was to go to a fee paying primary school in Leeson Street but someone mentioned that there was an Irish speaking school in Earlsfort Terrace which was free. Obviously this later proved a blessing. This was Scoil Bhride*, co founded by Louise Gavan Duffy who had worked with P H Pearse in St Enda’s. Though the place was steeped in history the parents of the pupils were an eclectic mix with varying social, economic and political backgrounds including some actors. The school moved to new premises in Ranelagh.

When it came to secondary school I opted to go with my friends to Scoil Chaitriona** in Eccles Street, another Irish speaking place with an equally wide mix of people. This I absolutely loved. The nuns. Dominicans, encouraged thinking for yourself and asking probing questions.

The fun stopped when I opted for a job in the Civil Service instead of going to college. I wanted financial independence but initially I hated the work. I did later find a niche there and learned a lot during my twelve years there. I chose to leave after my Dad passed in 1981 and career wise meandered along until I began working in Charities on the Business and Admin side some fourteen years later. The world of voluntary bodies is difficult to describe – the two agencies I worked in provided services to homeless people and drug users. It changed my perceptions totally – places of extremes both for service users and staff with much despair and much to hope for.

But what am I really? The last paragraph was the day job. My real interest is amateur theatre. I’ve been involved for forty years (sharp intake of breath here for me) in all aspects,9 acting, directing and writing. And I’ve been in musicals, pantomimes and plays. I’ve often described the group that I belonged to as the village I grew up in. I also write fiction (as yet unpublished).

And that’s about it, save to say I am now living in Drogheda with my husband.”

Siobhan O’Sullivan.

December 2022

*https://dbpedia.org/page/Radio_%C3%89ireann_Players

** https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000277340

*** http://www.scoilchaitriona.ie/page/StairHistory/55132/Index.html#:~:text=Scoil%20Chaitr%C3%ADona%20was%20founded%20in,on%20the%20Le%20Ch%C3%A9ile%20Trust.

The views expressed in all of the Snap Shots stories and photos used are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of the Museum of Childhood Ireland.

Melissa Bonotto, Brazil

I spent most of my childhood time playing freely outside as a child. In our garden or on my grandfather’s farm, was my favourite place. I truly believe that playing freely on the farm, in contact with nature, helped me to build the strongest qualities I carry in adult life, such as courage and resilience.

Maria Clery, Rialto and Ballymun, Dublin 1950/60s

“I come from a large family, seven children plus Mammy and Daddy, not a lot of money around but my parents Kevin Breen and Margaret Hendrick always made sure we had a summer holiday.

Most of our holidays were on the north side of Dublin, in Donabate where we climbed on the rocks and dunes, Rush where we often helped out with the tomato harvest and earned pocket money, Bettystown, running across the golf course to get to the beach, Mornington and the tower. I remember climbing up it with my brother. I’m sure we were about ten and eleven.

Ours days were spent on the beach and wandering around the area.  We had a lot of freedom, collecting cockles mussels and winkles boiling them up for dinner, picking potatoes at the back of St.Ita’s home.

Our food was different from our usual fare. Rice Crispies and Cornflakes for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch and salad for dinner (my dad was never happy with that!). We got chips from the chipper and sometime fish from the fishermen.

We stayed in caravans, beach huts, (more like shacks), and once we had a huge house in Virginia by the lakes.

We didn’t have a car so our uncle Liam Breen used to pile us in his car, all nine of us !

They were wonderful holidays and the sun always shone.”

Maria Clery

Rafael Medina, Puerto Rico and Brooklyn, New York 1950s

”My father came first. He landed a minimum wage job in a factory and then we followed. My mother was able to sell what was left of our house and belongings for three hundred dollars which was all the money we had.

In the beginning we lived with my father’s sister who was well established in a large apartment. Shortly after that my father found an apartment in a sixteen-family tenement. We were lucky, the apartment was rent-free but we had to maintain the building. We were called all kinds of names but officially we were the “supers” of the building. Since both my parents worked long hours, my brothers and I were charged with all the labor that went with keeping the building clean and in working condition.This meant that we did everything from changing light bulbs, sweeping and mopping the public landings, stairs and hallways, to unclogging drains and collecting every tenant’s garbage on a daily basis, except Sunday. 

When you are a child living in a poor neighborhood, you don’t really know you are poor. With a few exceptions, mostly everybody in that ghetto neighborhood were also migrants and poor. Of course there were several kids of other nationalities but none of us made that distinction. Buddy was the first Irish person I ever met. He had red hair and a great sense of humor. He was also the leader of our gang. He had a younger brother named Rusty and together we made our street a public playground. 

None of us had fancy toys, so we made our own. Everything from bottle caps to shopping bags were converted into play things. An Italian woman named Marie owned the local news stand and candy store. She sold us tops and Yo-yos and Spalding balls for pennies. She would also give free candy to some of the really poor kids who only had a single parent. She knew us all by our names including our parents. Attached is an illustration I painted of all the toys we made and a picture of the view I had from my bedroom window…

One other toy missing from this picture were balloons. Marie would sell them to us for pennies. We would fill them up with water and bombard people from the rooftops. Marie would let us hide in the candy store whenever the cops came after us. 

A “chiringa” was a kite made from a paper shopping bag and had long paper tails. At the end of the tail we would attach a razor blade and compete by racing the kite across the opponent’s lead string to cut it and send their kite flying into the street. One day in the heat of our competition a boy named Augie tripped and fell four stories below from the roof. We ran in a panic and when we got to him, he was laughing and hanging, two feet from the ground bundled up in ropes and laundry. He fell on the side of the building that had all the clothes lines. He hit every single one which wrapped around him, breaking his fall. My father was very angry with us not because we were playing a dangerous game but because he had to replace all the clothes lines. 

A broom handle was my most favorite toy of all. “Stick Ball” was the game played by all the kids in the hood and on weekends the fathers would join in. Whenever the fathers played all the mothers and any visiting relatives would sit on the tenements’ front stoops drinking beer and cheering for their team playing in the street. 

A child can create a toy from just about anything. We proved that all nationalities can play and get along by using our collective imagination…if only we did that as adults. ”

Rafael Medina

Ciara Aoife O’Síoráin, Dublin 1990s

Here I am, absolutely coated head to toe in mud which I assume came from the massive ditch behind me. By my side, as he has always been, is my brother. I can only imagine the idea to play in the dirt was entirely my own, considering his pristine condition.

Growing up with three older brothers, I was raised in a rough-and-tumble manner which I have always been incredibly grateful for. My family remains the most important pillar of support in my life, standing by my side and offering valuable advice, even when I make terrible decisions (like playing in the dirt in my new clothes!)

Alan Esplen, Gravesend, Kent, England 1940s

Alan Esplen, on how he became a lifelong Meccano enthusiast.

“I was born just after the end of the Second World War in 1946. Mum did not work and I have a memory of her taking me in my pram to help sort out the estate of my late Grandfather. I was probably a toddler at that time. He farmed in Northfleet and Higham Kent. She had worked on the farm in the office since leaving secretarial school. After this she had no other work and remained a housewife. Money was always short although my parents owned the house rented then purchased from the builder, during the Second World War. Most of my toys were made by my dad from scraps of metal and wood in a small workshop in the “box room.” This I imagine sparked my interest in making things.

The picture taken in the summer of 1947 is of me in the garden with Mum and as I remember a  beautiful  blue engine made by Dad.

I cannot remember when I first badgered my parents for a Meccano set but I must have been about 5 years old. However when Christmas came around I was given a small construction set but to my disappointment it was not the Meccano set I had longed for but a poor imitation! The parts were tin and dull zinc plate steel with the same hole spacing as Meccano but the strips were crude, flimsy affairs compared to the glossy green and red Meccano parts I had longed for. Meccano was an expensive toy and I imagine Mum and Dad bought this as it was no doubt much cheaper.  I have no idea who manufactured it. I do remember it having a very small instruction booklet and the set bringing me a great deal of pleasure. Dad often made me new toys from the set after I had been tucked up in bed. One I remember was a Ford Consul. At that time he worked on the production line at the Ford factory in Dagenham assembling those cars.

I was determined though to get some real Meccano and saved up my small amount of pocket money. Gravesend in the nineteen fifties had three Meccano dealers two of them, W.G. Shaddick and Halfords stocked spare parts. The former was my favourite. Upstairs was a large wooden cabinet on a counter top with lots of drawers where parts were kept. This was presided over by a Lady who had worked in the store before the war, only she knew where all the parts were, no other member of staff ever served Meccano parts! It was a rare treat to be allowed to look inside the compartmented pull out trays, as boys usually had to stay at the front!

On the front of the cabinet was a large coloured illustration behind a pane of glass showing all the parts in the Meccano range. I remember sometimes being disappointed because a part I wanted was not in stock and Mum getting impatient as I made up my mind, drooling over the illustrations, as to what other part or parts to choose or afford. The parts were wrapped in brown paper with a label showing the part number or in yellow card boxes. If you bought all the parts that were left in box you got the box too!

I must have gone on a lot about having “a real Meccano set” because when I was seven or eight, I received for Christmas a large second hand pre-war No. 7 set. It consisted of sets 5, 5A and 6A the parts were finished in gold and blue with red wheels and pulleys. Meccano colours that I had never seen before but I was in heaven. No matter about the strange colours, what joys! I can still remember my Mum telling me that I was only to take one of my treasured boxes to Grandma’s on the Christmas day I was given them.  I continued to play with my Meccano and buy more parts throughout my childhood until well into my teens. When I had the chance to go to Art School and was accepted it was packed away. It was not got out again until I had children of my own and my interest was re-kindled but that is another story.

My first Meccano build for 2022 had to be of course an antique. It is a steam Wagon based on a model in a 1928 set 00-3 manual. The model is built with original circa 1930 parts and motor. I first came across it when I was given the manual as a lad in the 1950’s but never built it till now.

In the past two weeks I have made three of these steam wagons based on Meccano manual instructions. From left to right: 1928, 1934, 1937. The fourth is my own design made earlier.”

Alan Esplen.

https://alansmeccano.org/

Mary Elizabeth Hunt-Judge, Castlerea, Co Roscommon and Newark, NJ, USA 1900s

“My Grandma Mary Elizabeth Hunt – Judge came here ( Newark, New Jersey) at 17 years of age from Castlerea, Co. Roscommon. She married my Grandfather Thomas Judge and had 10 children. This picture of her with my two aunts and Uncle is from the early 1900s.

Her husband died at 41 years old from a goiter. She was a young widow and the remaining kids including my mom and her brother dropped out of school to support the family while my uncles served in WWII.

She was the strongest person I ever knew with a kind heart. I’m grateful to her and my mom for instilling those tough Irish values in us. I was 17 when she passed away at the age of 86. When I was a little girl she would braid my hair and hers. It was very long, jet black on the bottom and white on top. She had olive skin and beautiful huge blue eyes that were passed on to all of us. She would pray to the Virgin Mary every day and go to church and always said that she asked God every night to let her die in her sleep, and she did. She deserved peace.”

Debbie Gencarelli Chacon.

The views expressed in all of the Snap Shots stories and photos used are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of the Museum of Childhood Ireland.

Leo O’Kelly, Carlow 1960s

“The three dancers in the photo are from the McDarby School of Dancing, Carlow.* The two girls in front are Kathleen McDarby’s daughters, Geraldine  (leprechaun), and Colette. Breda O’Meara is the girl at the back… 

They were a group of young dancers and musicians from Carlow. My brother, Hugh, and I occasionally accompanied them. 

We just went under our own names, Leo & Hugh O’Kelly. 

We were asked to perform on Seoirse agus Beartlai,** an RTE children’s television show which also featured later-to-be stars like Twink and Alma Carroll. Hugh normally played piano, but as there was a resident pianist, he played spoons instead. I was 15 and Hugh was a year younger. 

I honestly don’t remember playing anywhere else with them, except for the TV show. I remember now that the school of dancing was at the other end of our street, College Street, so that may be why we were asked.

In 1965 Irish television was just a couple of years old, so it was especially exciting for us. I got Larry Gogan’s autograph outside his dressing room and would not let anyone else sign my book after him! My mum, wisely, hired a local photographer, Donal Godfrey, to take a picture from the television set.”

Leo O’Kelly. 

https://www.facebook.com/leo.okelly

https://www.ventriloquistcentral.com/ventriloquism-tribute/ventriloquists-20th-century/index.htm

https://stillslibrary.rte.ie/indexplus/image/2040/028.html

https://stillslibrary.rte.ie/indexplus/image/1007/055.html

https://stillslibrary.rte.ie/indexplus/image/2482/083.html

https://stillslibrary.rte.ie/indexplus/image/2482/085.html

**Seoirse agus Beartlai, RTE

*McDarby School of Dancing, Carlow.

http://www.igp-web.com/Carlow/Mrs_McDarby.htm

Martin Coffey, Cabra West, Dublin 1950s

“This photograph was taken in about 1953. That’s myself, sitting behind the railings in my pram in our front garden. ( Cabra West, Dublin) The photo was most probably taken on a Sunday morning because my brothers and their friend are all washed and polished.

The trousers the three boys are wearing were made by our neighbour who lived on the other side. Before she was married, this neighbour was a Seamstress and worked for one of the larger shops for Ladies’,  in town. She had to supply her own sewing machine when she started working and was allowed to take it home when she got married. She probably made the trousers for the boys out of old material that she had from skirts, dresses or coats that belonged to one of her three daughters.

The boy on the left is Hughie Quinn, sitting in the middle is my brother Brendan and then there’s my other brother, Paddy. I am the middle child in a family of seven girls and eight boys. Our house had two bedrooms and a toilet upstairs and two rooms downstairs…”

Martin Coffey.

Norah Casey, Dublin 1960s

“My Christmas. I still love this time of year. I remember when the biggest decision was whether to go for a Bunty or a Judy annual from Santy (never Santa). Usually Judy’s heroine ‘Bobby’ Dazzler won out over the Bunty’s Four Marys. The brothers would be pondering on Meccano or an air fix model. That was until Scalextric arrived. And talking dolls! 

It was all about the excitement and anticipation. And thankfully the pre-Christmas flutters were mercifully short, starting when the school bell signalled the start of the holidays and we raced home to help put up the tree, just days before the big day. Then off to see the magic of the Christmas lights. There was always a visit to the moving crib in Parnell Square watching intently for the donkey to nod or one of the wise men to reach out a mechanical arm. Henry Street was usually next to get the ‘last of the cheeky Charlies’. We gazed in wonder at Switzers’ window and visited Santy at Cleary’s. The house smelled of Christmas. I remember the spices and cinnamon of #magscasey making the Christmas cake and the rows over who would get to lick the wooden spoon.

On Christmas eve we’d be huddled in the kitchen listening to Santy on the radio reading out letters from children all over Ireland until we were shooed out from under her feet. The original celebrity chef, Monica Sheridan, would be on the tellie giving tips on Christmas dinner. The turkey stuffing would be made, the ham boiled, the marrowfat peas steeped and a mound of potatoes peeled. All our clean clothes would be laid out with pristine white knee socks and shiny shoes. All six of us, in and out of the bath in rotation ,were issued with stern warnings that Santy would not arrive unless we were asleep. We whispered to each other about imagined sounds on the roof… and there would be many early morning false starts with a holler from the parents to get back to bed. And of course he always came. With compendiums of games, dinky cars, Barbies and Sindys and we would race to show mammy and daddy what we got. We believed. And I still do… write that letter to Santy and see what happens!

Norah Casey

#christmasmagic #ibelieve #dreamscometrue “

Elizabeth ‘Lily’ Devine and Yoni Palmer Krepka, Dublin 1940s

“Children of Smithfield, Elizabeth “Lily” Devine (1942-2013) and Yoni Krepka (c 1942-?) are here photographed around 1949 on Blackhall Parade, Smithfield, Dublin 7, when she was talking her doll out for a ride on her tricycle. 

Lily was the third of four children of John Devine who worked at Irish Wools Ltd on Queen’s St. and Sarah “Sally” McGarry, who worked in Jacobs and then in Dolphin Hotel (now Dolphin House).  Like all the girls from the neighbourhood, Lily went to school at the nearby Sisters of Charity Convent until she was 14 and then went to work in Jacobs.

Her love of cycling persisted, and in her late teens she joined the Harp Cycling Club in Phibsborough.  There she met Billy McCarthy, who’s family hailed from Stoneybatter. Billy was a champion cyclist. They married in 1963 and moved to Beaumont where they lived out the rest of their lives. They had two children, Karen, a journalist and best-selling author now living in New York, and Earl, who swam for Ireland in the Olympics and lives in Dublin. 

Yoni Krepka was one of three children of Nancy Palmer and her husband, an Estonian merchant seaman whom she met in Belfast during World War II.  The senior Krepka was much at sea and rarely saw his family.  Nancy and her children lived at 111 N. King St. in Smithfield and were known to the locals as “Palmer” after their mother, and only used their father’s name for official business, probably because Krepka would have been a very unusual name around those parts in the 1940s. Yoni went to the nearby St. Paul’s Christian Brothers on Brunswick Street.  In his teens, Yoni and his brother Revon moved to England, never again to be heard of by the locals in Smithfield.”

Karen Frances McCarthy. 

The views expressed in all of the Snap Shots stories and photos used are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of the Museum of Childhood Ireland.

Bridget and Frances Murphy, Derry 1900s

“AlI I can find out about the photo of the 2 girls is that the the taller girl is Bridget Murphy (my granny) and the other girl is her younger sister Frances. The photo was a professional photograph. The leafy background is just a backdrop. I don’t know what the occasion was. Most likely taken in Co Derry around 1912. My granny looks 14, I think, and she was born in 1898, so that’s how I have arrived at 1912!”

Kayte Mosse.

Dave Lordan, Co Cork 1970s

“The photo shows me at age 16 in late summer of 1991, at a friend’s “free gaff” party, after which we were all grounded for 1000 years.”

Jacqueline Ronald, Dublin 1960s

Jacqueline Ronald’s first holy communion 1967 / 68, with sister Margaret Mary, Goldenbridge. 

“My sister Lorraine O’Reilly wrote the above poem as a memory for me for my 50th birthday. It’s the story of the frock in the photo.”

Jacqueline Ronald.

Deirdre Caffrey, Dublin 1950s

1957 Deirdre, first birthday.

Photo 1. Site 71 Quarry Avenue, Whitehall Rd, Dublin.

The address changed to Greentrees Drive, Terenure, Dublin 12 in about 1959. It would change again decades later to Greentrees Drive, Manor Estate, Dublin 12.

The price of the house off the plan in 1953 was £1,725. My newly-engaged parents-to-be paid a £5 deposit. My father was earning about £7 a week then. They got a thirty-five year mortgage from Dublin City Council. The housing estate took over three years to be finished.

My parents married in 1955. For quite some time after they moved into their house they had very few possessions. They began with only a bed and a gas cooker. The cooker would last twenty-two years. Great-aunt Kathleen gave them an old armchair and ‘a bit of carpet’. I learnt happily to crawl and walk on bare boards and then to climb everything I could.

Photo 2. 1961 Deirdre with train, Assumption School, Walkinstown.

In Low Babies and High Babies my Dad sometimes cycled me to school on his pushbike, in a tiny wicker seat on the cross bar.

In First Class I walked a little over a mile to school by myself taking my brother by the hand. Mam was at home with the two younger babies.

A shy child, I preferred to play with my brother’s train rather than my doll, Katie. You could go places on a train, although I never did. Where could a doll take you?

Photo 3. 1963 Deirdre First Communion, Assumption School, Walkinstown.

Religion in our daily lives was supremely important, although it was more important to me at that stage to be six and three-quarters. By now I had a baby sister four months old, born at home, just like my youngest brother had been before her. My mother, an accomplished needlewoman, sewed my dress, and was particularly proud of the drawstring bag she eked out of the leftover fabric. She borrowed my veil. With three boys younger than me, and struggling to make ends meet, there was no point in buying a veil for only one or two occasions and laying it aside for several years until my sister would need it.

Photo 4.1963 Deirdre First Communion, gates near Kimmage Manor.

Three of my father’s five brothers became priests. One uncle, then a Holy Ghost seminarian at Kimmage Manor, took this photo. My mother had made my coat and my lace gloves. She afterwards dyed my new white shoes a serviceable brown.

Photo 5.1966 Deirdre Confirmation

Photo taken in the photographer’s house called ‘Genazzano’ on St. Peter’s Crescent, Walkinstown. (Name not known of photographer to credit him.)

My mother managed to buy this beautiful suit for me, and new navy blue shoes and bag. She knitted the finest pale blue jumper for me to wear underneath.

My middle brother was seriously ill and hospitalised for a long time. Concern for him in the family always ran high. His treatment cost money and money was always tight anyway, despite my father working two jobs and my mother getting work when she could. Yet she paid for me to attend a hairdresser for the first time because it was my Confirmation and she taught me the importance of fashionably matching the hat and gloves, and the bag and shoes. Then she splashed out for us to go on the bus into O’Connell Street, where she bought us each a Knickerbocker Glory. She loved ice-cream. She ate all hers and most of mine because it was too generous for me.”

Debby Raymond nee Deirdre Caffrey

The views expressed in all of the Snap Shots stories and photos used are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of the Museum of Childhood Ireland.

Yagmur Burhan, 1990s Turkey

My favourite toy as a child was, and still is, a brown teddy bear with unusually loose limbs. His name was Artikin, a name we made up, and my mother taught me geometry using his arms, legs and big belly. It is one of my happiest memories with my mother in my childhood.

Robinson family, Coolock 1970s

“The Robinson family from Coolock, Dublin at Butlins* in the 70s. “You couldn’t miss me! I lost the Tarzan competition and cried in front of everyone. I’m over it now though. It only took 40 years and I can’t even remember what the prize was!”

Robo Robinson.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlin%27s_Mosney

Caitlin Corcoran, Dublin 2000s

“Caitlin dressed in her 1916* costume and her special doll, commemorating her great grandmother Molly O’Reilly. “She loved the day and also got to raise the flag as at the time the defence forces were presenting schools with their flags. That was a proud day. See her write up about Molly in the photos .

As I say there’s not many who can say they’ve seen their great grandmother mother on the back of a bus, in doll form , in stature form, a painting on a wall in the ambassadors residence , a painting on a wall on at a Belfast house and now thanks to Catherine featured in a song! 

And she is like Molly too!

In 6th class her school decided to exclude the two 6th classes ( 44 kids ) from the school run home work club . Caitlin loved school and feels it’s a child’s right to be educated. From a young age she’s known me saying that in our history we weren’t educated in Ireland, and world wide children are still being denied their education, so she knows how important it is to be educated. They complained that they weren’t being let in to the homework club that they had all been in up untill 5th class, and that the home work was much harder in 6th class and that they needed it this year of all years! So with Caitlin having Molly running throught her veins she got a petition going to ask to be included In the school run homework club!

She was 11 ..”

Suzanne Corcoran 

https://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/index.php/articles/what-was-the-easter-rising

The views expressed in all of the Snap Shots stories and photos used are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of the Museum of Childhood Ireland.

Roland and Beatrice ( Bebe) McCrann, Dublin 1900s

“My father Roland McCrann born 1913 and his Sister Beatrice (Bebe) born 1911. Their mother died in 1917 and they were reared by by both their grandmothers. 

Next is Roland’s school photograph, he attended the boys school attached to St. Agatas Church in William St. North Strand. Had to include the photograph of my grandfather Peter McCrann (note the monkey! They lived in Mayor Street just off the docks and I guess that’s how the monkey arrived) Roland is the youngest boy and Bebe the young girl and Peter (They had a brother called Peter called after his father Peter) the older boy.  They lived in Mayor Street and the family exported cattle, mostly to England.

Next  is a photo from my mother’s side.  Her two younger brothers were Kevin and Paddy Bolger.  

Peter McCrann born in Dublin in 1884 and Peter McCrann before in him 1849.  Peter born 1910 is in this picture and  I already told you about Roland and Beatrice. Their cousin Dolly (Anastasia) McCrann is on the right and she was reared with them.  I don’t know who the young girl in the front is and  the man on the left is probably his brother Arthur McCrann who was Dolly’s father. My grandmother who died was Ann Roland (  Ann Roland /McCrann died of acute gastritis and sudden heart attack) born in High Street, Galway to Sergeant Major George (Jock) Roland from Scotland and Byna (Mary Sabina) Hutchinson whose father was a blacksmith and shopkeeper in Galway.  When Ann (Roland) died the children lived with their Gran McCrann but at some point the gran Roland also lived with them.  It is difficult to explain but as Gran McCrann’s maiden name was Hutchinson (her father had a pub on the docks in Dublin) and Gran Roland’s maiden name was Hutchinson it is likely they were related.  When my father Roland was at school the cattle  business had been badly affected by new regulations and they lived in Buckingham Street and went to the same school as my mother Nora (Catherine) Bolger and her brothers Brian, Kevin and Paddy who lived around the corner in Killarney Street.  

The next photo is of my great grandmother Mary Walsh nee Kelly and I knew her as she died when I was 8.  My grandmother Elizabeth Walsh (later Bolger) is on the left.  Next shows my mother Nora and her brothers Kevin and Paddy. They are in the studio photo also.  

Next is Roland as a young man. then Nora. I think she was 17 and next is one of them together probably about 1945. Sadly Roland died in a car accident when he was just 37.  I was just 2 1/2 years old, my sister was 7. He had lost his mother when he was 4  and like him we then went to live with our grandmother in Killarney Street although my mother was with us always. 

Next photo , and I know I’m very fortunate to have these, is of my great great grandparents, parents of Mary Kelly. They are John Kelly, Detective Sergeant in the DMP from Ashford, Co. Wicklow and Ann Reilly (a monitress) from Navan, Co. Meath.  (5-9)

(10)John Kelly and Ann Reilly about 1870

This is my grandmother at school with her two younger sisters, they are in the front and she has her hands on their shoulders.  So she was Elizabeth Walsh (later Bolger) born in 1887 known to her grandchildren as Marney. Her sisters Nora and Mary.  You have her also in the photo with her mother Mary Walsh nee Kelly.  They grew up in Ballybough. This is the same school as my mother and fathers’ families attended it was founded in 1825. Next is my mother’s (Nora Bolger/McCrann) school photo, she is second from left on the second row. (11 and 12) The 3rd one is a picture is of my mother Nora Bolger age 1.”

Sheila McCrann.

John Loughrey, Dublin 1950s

Day out at Dublin Zoo*. Early 1950s. 

“I was from the inner city,  Summerhill and Mountjoy Square, Sheriff Street. I was the oldest, born in 1949. My brothers names were Anthony (on the right) and Brian (in the middle)” 

John Loughrey.

The views expressed in all of the Snap Shots stories and photos used are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of the Museum of Childhood Ireland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Zoo

Charlie Flood, son of Christopher Flood, two longtime Dublin Zoo employees, with a lion cub c. 1936

Francis, Mini McGovern and others, Tyrone 1930s

Joanne Williams was in contact about this wonderful group of photographs they discovered. The children in the first photo have been identified as brother and sister Francis and Mini McGovern, from Clogher, Co Tyrone. 

The photos perhaps taken by Rose Shaw: 

http://www.newulsterbiography.co.uk/index.php/home/viewPerson/1521

[Rose Shaw lived in the Clogher Valley, County Tyrone. She was a governess to the Gledstanes who lived at Fardross, near Clogher. She was an amateur photographer. Only about thirty of her photographs have survived and these are in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, Cultra, County Down. She published Carleton’s Country 1930, which had an introduction by Sir Shane Leslie and included many of her own photographs.]

“Hi, i have these photos and we think they were taken in Ireland. Possibly Donegal but that’s maybe a guess. They belonged to a man named George Bickerdyke and they were given to my Nan and now we have them. I would love to find out more about them, where they were taken and who they are, maybe reunite the photos with the family….

George lived in Warrington until he died in about 1987. 

Any thoughts would be very much appreciated”

Joanne Williams

⭐️ Update: The baby in the cradle has been identified by Liam Donaghey as his Great Grandparent, surname McKenna from Clogher.

With grateful thanks to Mary Keating for her wonderful help in identifying the children and adults in the Photographs:

Annie and Cassie McKenna and baby Eugene in cradle, from Clogher.

By the fire, with little boy: The Hollands, Clogher.

Making hay: kitty Holland from Clogher.

Man walking with dog: Oweny McKenna, Clogher.

Man with pipe: Cormac Holland, Clogher.

All details were from her copy of :

Carleton’s Country

By Rose Shaw

Talbot Press, 1931 

The views expressed in all of the Snap Shots stories and photos used are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of the Museum of Childhood Ireland.

Stefania Porcul, Italy 1990s

A photograph from my first Christmas. A giant teddy bear and a ride-on toy delivered by Santa Claus.

Bernie Mulvey, Dún Laoghaire 1960s

”Myself and my 4 sisters and 3 brothers, Mam and Dad, and friends used ‘the baths’ quite a lot growing up. We lived not far from them on Glasthule Rd beside the old Astoria cinema. It was just a hop, skip and a jump away. My Mam would love having the seaweed baths. What was great about the baths was they had lots of facilities there like dressing rooms, showers, plenty of toilets, places to secure your clothes and a place at reception to store your valuables, also plenty of space to sit around. Even though the baths had seawater in them if you were a strong swimmer the life guards would let you go off the Jetty to swim in the open sea. Also a tuck shop in reception where we could spend our pennies on the way out to buy such things as Sailors Chews, Pixie and flash bars. Sometimes if we had enough we could go across the road and get a Teddy’s ice cream. Then when the Rainbow Rapids came we had even more fun. We would swim in the baths nearly every day until closing time, we would either go to Bug Rock or Sandycove for more swims or we would go to the Peoples park to play. 

Years later when some of us left DunLaoghaire we would travel out to meet our families  who still lived  in Sallynoggin and Ballybrack. We drove from places like Navan, Tallaght, Sandyford, Bray and Westmeath. It has been a big loss to all of us as we used to socialise with family picnics and bring our children with us. We were pleased our children got to experience the fun to be had in the baths. Of course the picnics had to get much bigger when we brought out our children with us!”

Bernie Mulvey.

The views expressed in all of the Snap Shots stories and photos used are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of the Museum of Childhood Ireland.

Betty Brady ( nee Fitzsimons), and Mary Rice ( nee Locke), Dublin 1960s

“Mary Rice nee Locke and her friend Betty Brady nee Fitzsimons. They both came from corporation buildings* inner-city. Mary moved to London I think when she turned about 16 or 17, married in London, had children and she passed away about 2 or 3 years ago. I know she and her friend went to Rutland Street school Dublin.”

Pauline Braymer.

• Corporation Buildings, Dublin:

https://stillslibrary.rte.ie/indexplus/image/1016/058.html

Rutland Street school:

http://www.dublincityarchitects.ie/rutland-street-school-refurbishment-and-renovation-2/

Cian Spillane, Cork,1980s

The childhood picture is of me “baking for the birds” which was a regular activity that my grandmother used to indulge me with. Those crows have given me some of the best feedback on my cooking!

Norman Bainbridge, Dublin 1940s

“I’m obviously far too young to know who took this photo of my mother and sister and I,  but I was told some years back it wasn’t my father. Sadly, the role/duty of being a parent got in the way of his drinking/gambling/womanising and his fear of hard work. When this photo was taken, the three of us had been rescued by my wonderful grandparents and had moved in with them. 

With the exception of marrying a wonderful woman, having two great children and 5 fabulous grandchildren, the best thing to have happened to me in life was my parents separating. That meant I grew up spending 9 wonderful years with loving, kind and caring grandparents plus I had the love of the best aunt in Ireland, my dear Aunt May, my second mum.

That life changed dramatically one Friday in June 1956, when we sailed from the North Wall, Dublin for the UK. I thought I was destined to stay in Dublin for life but we, like millions more Irish women, men and children, became economic migrants seeking a better life with lack of work in Dublin being the deciding factor. To this day, 65 years later, I can still see how angry my grandfather was towards my mother, daring to take my sister and I away from him, grandmother and Aunt. I visited them as often as I could during the rest of their lives. 

This photo (left) would have been taken around 1950, in Fontenoy Street, Dublin. My sister, Josephine, is in the center with her arms around a friend and me. The girl on the bike was Una Matthews. Josie and Una were the best of friends. 

Not long after this photo was taken, sadly we moved to Drumcondra. Sad because we lost a lot of contact with good friends, Aiden Lee, John Woods, Tommy Murphy and others. I remember at lunch times at Aiden’s home, we would have Butterscotch Instant Whip for dessert after our sandwich. Funny the things you remember. Wonderful happy days!

Wonderful happy days growing up in Dublin! (photo on right) I’m the little blond haired boy in front, with my pals from the Fontenoy Street area. At such a young age, we played far from our homes, oblivious of dangers. Photo was taken opposite the State Cinema, Phibsborough and near the Mountjoy Prison. Only going home to eat and then bed. Wonderful happy days! “

Norman Bainbridge.

The views expressed in all of the Snap Shots stories and photos used are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of the Museum of Childhood Ireland.

Ciara O’Síoráin, Dublin 1990s

Here I am, absolutely coated head to toe in mud which I assume came from the massive ditch behind me. By my side, as he has always been, is my brother. I can only imagine the idea to play in the dirt was entirely my own, considering his pristine condition. Growing up with three older brothers, I was raised in a rough-and-tumble manner which I have always been incredibly grateful for. My family remains the most important pillar of support in my life, standing by my side and offering valuable advice, even when I make terrible decisions (like playing in the dirt in my new clothes!)

Brendan Redmond, Dublin 1950s

This is a picture of me taken aged 12 in 1959.

Working at the Caledonian Hotel Dublin.

“I was born in 2 Gt Bride St Dublin, the eldest of seven children.

We moved some time later to 78 Aughavannagh Rd. Dolphins Barn and I attended the Christen Brother School, my mother saw an advertisement in the Evening Mail, a hotel was looking for a part time page boy and after sending off a written application I was invited for an interview.

The Caledonian Hotel in South Great Gorges St  (now Kelly’s Hotel) was owned and managed by the Ryan family, I was interview by Mrs Ryan and managed to get the job as a page boy for 15 shillings per week, not bad for a 11 year old boy.

I gave my mother 10 shillings and kept the remaining 5 shillings  with which I was fully independent and bought my own clothes.

Basically I was on duty between the full day porter and the night porter starting at 7pm until 10.30 pm Monday to Friday, and from 2.30pm until 10.30pm on Saturday and the same on Sunday but starting at mid-day.

I absolutely loved the work and the Ryan family treated me like their son. The work was hard, 33 hours per week but for an inner city kid it was a fantastic education, listening to the music much loved by the Ryan’s they also gave me books to read during the quieter periods and I mingled with people from all over the world.

It was the most fantastic experience but there was a price to pay !! Later on in life I came to realise that I missed out on my childhood, I never mixed with boys my age, I never played football or learned to swim, I became so independent that later in life I found it almost impossible to work as part of a team.

I left school unofficially at age 13 1/2 (it was 14 then) without a single academic qualification, I could hardly read or write.

At aged 14 I got a full time job working in very dangerous conditions at Persons a wire manufactures working 40 a week plus continued at the hotel which made my total working week 73 hours.

June 1962 I was aged 15 and with Mom and 6 siblings we did a moon light flit, leaving Dublin and heading to Birmingham via boat to Liverpool and train to Birmingham to meet up with Dad.

That’s another long story for another time.

I managed to become an apprentice sheet metal worker and became a well paid skilled worker.

I joined the West Midlands Fire Service in ’74, reached the rank of Sub Officer (totally self educated) until I retired in 2002, moved to New Zealand, had a business as a driving instructor and worked at the local college as a teachers aide.

Now I’m fully retired at 74 and living the good life in France.

Phew….and life continues to be exciting.”

Brendan Redmond.

The views expressed in all of the Snap Shots stories and photos used are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of the Museum of Childhood Ireland.

Emily Barton, Dún laoghaire 1980s

This is me aged about 3 in 1988 dressed up for the annual Victorian Garden Party in Crosthwaite Park, Dun Laoghaire, where I lived for most of my life. Every year the residents would host a victorian garden party. Everyone would help out by making cakes. We would all dress up in Victorian Costume which we would parade around in and a winner for best costume was selected. There was always a band playing and I remember dressing up every year with my family. It was such a novelty and a wonderful experience of neighbours coming together as a community.

Joanna Hill, Dublin 1980s

“In October 1980 I discover that a new Ice Skating Rink is due to open in the old Leinster Cinema in Dolphin’s Barn. It is opening at the end of the month. I am already a keen roller skater and regularly skate at the Star in Crumlin wearing my aquamarine shiny leggings and leg warmers. The idea of skating on ice is exciting to me and I am determined to be first in the queue on the opening day. I arrive at the rink at 9am even though it doesn’t open until 10am. I get there before the staff and they seem to be surprised to find me waiting. They ask if I want to wait inside and allow me to look around before opening time.

I love everything about the rink. The ticket office is the old cinema booth with a bell punch ticket machine that is fully loaded with a spools of tickets. There is an enormous reel to reel tape player for playing music. To this day I am transported back to the ice rink every time I hear ‘if you’re going to San Francisco’, which is one of the many songs played on repeat over the speaker system.

The ice is pristine and I have the pleasure of being the first customer. I hire a pair of skates and glide across the ice. It’s such a wonderful feeling and I can’t wait to come back for more. I quickly become a permanent fixture at the ice rink and spend every waking minute there. My Mam and 2 of my aunts end up working at the rink. My sisters and brother take up skating, so it feels like a 2nd home.

As my obsession with skating progresses, I read Noel Streatfeild’s ‘White Boots’ and dream of one day owning my own skates[1]. My Mam has also said ‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get’, so I hatch a plan to get my own skates. I knock on the office door and speak to the owner of the rink, Des McEvaddy. I put a proposition to him. I offer to work in the rink to earn myself a pair of white boots. Des and his brother Ulick agree to this deal and I set about covering shifts in the skate hire, café, cloak room and ticket office.

I work and practice hard for a few weeks before I go back to see Des and Ulick and tell them I think it’s time to pay up – or words to that effect. To my delight they agree that I have worked hard and accompany me to the skate shop where they tell the assistant to fit me out with a pair of white boots. I am absolutely elated!

I start having skating lessons with ex-professional figure skater, Derek James. He has been hired by the McEvaddys to train Irish people how to ice skate. I keep practising hard and my coach tells me that I and a few other students have been selected to go to Solihull in England to take our National Ice Skating Association of Great Britain awards. We are to travel there in Des’s private plane. On my return from England I receive a NISA book which lists all their members. I flick through and find my name. It is great to feel part of something bigger than my day to day life. Skating offers so many opportunities to me and my family and we grab these opportunities with both hands.

On the day we travel to England to take our tests, there are some press photographers at the airport waiting to take our picture. We appear in the newspaper and the whole experience is so exciting.  A good indication of how forward thinking the McEvaddys are is the fact that the Ice Skating Association of Ireland wasn’t established for another 25 years. They had a real eye for a photo opportunity, and we find ourselves on TV and in the press a number of times. We become great adverts for the ice rink and for ice skating in general.

On one occasion a camera crew from RTE’s Off the Wall come to film me skating. They tape a camera to the end of an ice hockey stick and follow my and others around on the ice. I am invited in as a studio guest and asked about my dreams of competing in the Olympics! I have recently won the Irish Junior Figure Skating competition, which is not as grand as it sounds as it only involved people who skated at the Dublin Ice Rink. On the day of the interview I am dressed in pink pedal pushers and I have very red cheeks. I am sporting my new page boy haircut and when they give me a glass of lemonade, I drink it in one go because it’s very hot under the studio lights. I only find out afterwards that the drink was meant to be a prop and I wasn’t supposed to drink it.

During the time I was skating we had a big snowfall. A gang of kids from the ice rink are invited onto the Saturday Morning programme, Anything Goes. We are asked to skate outside the RTE studio while the presenters close the show. We skate up and down, throw snowballs and generally create mayhem. RTE did try to film us skating on the frozen canal near Harold’s Cross, but the local kids kept throwing stuff at us and the filming was abandoned. That same week we were taken into town to skate on the ice outside the Press head office wearing Dublin Ice Rink sweatshirts. This worked a treat as they took pictures of us skating on the frozen roads alongside the Liffey and featured us in the national press.”

Joanna Hill.

The views expressed in all of the Snap Shots stories and photos used are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of the Museum of Childhood Ireland.

[1] White Boots 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Boots

was first published in 1951 and is the tale of an unlikely friendship between a poor girl and a rich girl who meet as a result of ice skating.

And

Joanna Hill skating on ‘Off The Wall’ broadcast by RTE 24th August 1981. Reporter, Ultan Guilfoyle.

https://www.rte.ie/archives/2021/0809/1239892-ice-skating-new-to-ireland/?fbclid=IwAR1Uew6PKgluSJLpBjQO7KU0vK9ljpUw4Dl1MBwIVzos81IwjI5nGo_7M-w

1. Cinema: Joanna, Jane, Sharon and Robbie outside the Gaiety Theatre in 1979

2. Cinema: Joanna & Lorraine Larkin 1979, back garden Rossmore Rd, Ballyfermot

3. Cinema: Joanna, Jane, Sharon and Robbie Allen with Maria Murphy 1979 Rossmore Rd, Ballyfermot

4. Cinema: The Gala, Ballyfermot

5. Butlins: Joanna, Jane, Sharon Allen at Butlins Mosney, 1979

6. Butlins: Joanna and Sharon Allen with Mam (Anne)at Butlins Mosney, 1979

7. Butlins: Joanna roller skating at Butlins Mosney, 1979

8. Butlins: Learning to swim with at Butlins Mosney, 1979

9. Butlins: Robbie Allen at Butlins Mosney, 1979

10. Parents:  Joanna with parents Anne Allen & Richard Gallagher 2010

11. Music: Joanna in Brighton 1984

12. Music: Joanna living in B&B in Brighton 1984

13. Jobs: Joanna working in a Wimpy Bar, Brighton 1984

14. Jobs: Joanna, Sharon & Robbie Allen, front garden Cloonmore Drive, Tallaght

15. Tallaght: Bricks

16. Dolphin House: group photo taken during Italia 90

17. Dolphin Hse: My great grandparents The Traceys in their garden in Sperrin Rd, Drimnagh

18. Dolphin Hse: My grandmother Bridie on a works outing with the other women from The Adelaide Hospital

19. Goldenbridge: My first communion

20. Connections: Philip, Jason and Derek Weldon, my cousins.

21. Connections: my grandson Eddie 2020

22. My Grandfather: Patrick Madden’s Communion

23. My Grandfather: Patrick Madden at a family wedding

24. My Grandfather: Patrick Madden driving a truck in Burma

25. Radio Dublin: logo

26. Moving: Joanna with friends Christine & Barbara Brown 1980

27. Moving: Joanna with friends Christine & Barbara Brown 2013

28. Moving: Joanna & Son with friends Christine & Barbara Brown, London 2018

Tallaght

Our house in Jobstown, Tallaght was broken into in 1982. We didn’t have enough money to buy a replacement telly, but we found a way of sourcing one. A friend of our uncle was planning to build himself a new fireplace. He needed 200 red bricks for the project. Getting hold of bricks was fairly easy, because the estate was only half built. Every time we went out, we had to bring some red bricks back with us. Most of the time we collected them in our pockets or carrier bags, but occasionally we used a shopping trolley to wheel them home in larger quantities. We piled the bricks up in the hallway until we had the required number. They were then swapped for a television and everyone was happy.

My first paid job, other than babysitting, was a mobile dry cleaning service. The man who owned the business had his wife’s name tattooed on his arm, fortunately his previous partner had the same first name as her, so he has made it work by adding an ‘F’ to his old ‘Jean’ tattoo. The wife’s surname was Fish, so ‘Jean F’ was probably the best option in the circumstances.

When we moved to England 16 year old Samantha Fox had just come to prominence after winning The Sunday People newspaper’s Girl of the Year amateur modelling contest. She was only a year older than me and the winning photos were taken by her mother. My Mam suggested I put myself forward. I didn’t have any desire to become a Page 3 model, so I refused and instead got a job in the local Wimpy.

Years later when I was in a club with my Mam, she watched me walking back from the bar. I sat down and she said with some regret ‘I was just thinking, that Samantha Fox made a fortune out of your figure.’

Music

Music was banned in my home for the first 10 years of my life. When my parents split up things changed. Our home was no longer a place of fear, but a party house filled with music and noise. To this day the songs from this era have the power to transport me back to a moment in time, the soundtrack to each memory adds a layer of emotional connection to each time and place.

These memories include:

The Real Thing, ‘You to me are everything’ evokes memories of Butlins. It was played repeatedly over the PA when we went there for a week’s holiday in 1979.

Scott McKenzie, ‘San Francisco’, takes me back to Dublin Ice Rink, my second home between 1980 and 1982.

Bill Withers, ‘Lovely Day’, reminds me of a time after my parents split up and my Mam’s new partner moved in. I thought we’d found our happy ever after.

Blondie, ‘Heart of Glass’, is the soundtrack to the teenager’s disco on Monday nights at the TV Club in Harcourt Street.

Carole King’s, Tapestry was my party piece and my winning entry in the Ferrini Talent Show.

The Ruts, ‘Babylon’s Burning’ was a favourite of mine (still is) when we moved to the sprawling and desolate estate of Tallaght in the early 80s.

Siouxsie and the Banshees, ‘Dear Prudence’, will always have a special place in my heart because my first ever gig was the Nocturne tour in 1984.

Here’s an extract from The Wrong Daughter about my first gig:

I go to my first ever gig, Siouxsie and the Banshees at The Brighton Centre on Friday 22 June 1984. My Mam isn’t keen on this event, so my uncle Alan agrees to comes with me. Alan has been to loads of gigs over the years and is reluctant to join me down the front. I buy myself a Siouxsie t-shirt on the way in and I am so excited to see the band in the flesh. I am particularly pleased because most of the bands I have discovered since getting into punk music are no longer together. As soon as the band come onto the stage, I discover why Alan has chosen to stand at the back. The weight of the crowd lifts me off my feet and I get pulled and pushed around for the whole set – it’s brilliant. After the gig my t-shirt is soaking wet with sweat from the crowd and from the beer that was thrown. I change into my new Siouxsie t-shirt and when I get back to the hotel I find it impossible to sleep because I am so full of adrenaline. I can’t wait for the next gig.

My parents

My parents had no contact for over 40 years, but their relationship taught me a lot about true love. They broke up when they were teenagers, even though my Mam was pregnant with me. In 2010 they met for a drink. My father had recently lost his wife, the woman he loved and had left us for in 1968. The first thing my Mam did when she met him again was to give him a candle in a holder which had the words “Angels are looking after my wife” inscribed on the front. She slid it across the table to him and said, ‘I am so sorry for your loss’.

Maybe theirs was not a romantic love, but it was based on love for your fellow man and respect for the choices they have made in their lives. People often asked my Mam why she didn’t bear him any grudges. Her response was that she knew they would not have gone the distance even if he hadn’t met his wife. She loved him for the daughter he had given her, who she counted as a blessing and something to be celebrated rather than fought over.

This was the only time in my whole life that I was in the company of both parents and I am grateful to them both for agreeing to meet up after such a long time. They passed away within 4 months of each other, 7 years after this pictures was taken.

Butlins

My family could never afford summer holidays. The annual day trip from Dolphin House to Butlins in Mosney was the highlight of our summer. The coaches were always packed and we sang all the way there. Most of us had very little spending money and the bus usually returned to the flats laden with stolen cutlery, crockery and anything else we could get our hands on. Some years we would go on a day trip and if we knew someone who was staying for longer, we would make sure we missed the coach home and stay until the end of the week. We never worried about how we’d get home when the time came; and to be honest I don’t remember how we did. 

Cinema Memories 1977

Like most young people I love the cinema. I watch films at the Our Lady of Victories Youth Club where the volunteers feed the film into a projector on a table at the back of the hall and a screen is erected at the front. Sometimes the film catches or unravels part way through a show. The kids always cheer and jeer when this happens. It is hard to get the kids to be quiet and to stay in our seats before the film starts, but once the lights go down and the music starts things begin to calm down.

We are lucky to also have the Gala Cinema close by. The Gala, which opened in 1955, can seat 1,850 people and is one of the largest suburban cinemas in Dublin. I often go to the Saturday morning pictures where they show classic films. These films have left a lasting legacy on the local landscape in the ‘California Hills Park’ the name of which originated when used by local movie going kids who played ‘Cowboys and Indians’ there. The name later became official by popular public request.

The first Star Wars film is released we persuade our Mam to take us. This isn’t going to be shown locally, so my Mam and her friend take about a dozen kids with them to the Savoy cinema in O’Connell’s street. When we arrive, there is a queue around the block. Instead of joining the queue our Mam walks straight to the front and asks to see the manager. We all follow behind and listen while she explains to the manager that she and her friend have taken all ‘these kids’ out of Goldenbridge Orphanage for the day and want to treat them to a cinema trip. The manager not only waves us through, he only charges for the adults and a couple of the kids. Once through the barrier the place echoes to calls of ‘Ma, can I get popcorn?’ ‘Ma, can I sit with you?’ and ‘Ma, can I have a coca-cola?’ No-one picks up on the fact we are not orphans and we take our seats to watch the film…….

Moving Home

Between the ages of 10 and 15 my family moved home 4 times. Some of these moves were triggered by relationship breakdowns, or the need for more space. All of the moves were driven by a desire to make a fresh start and to leave the past behind. Sadly, the past often has a way of catching up with you and none of these moves provided my family with a happy ever after.

Many of the people I have come to know in my life still have friends from the area where they grew up, or from their school days. These friends bear witness to early experiences and often validate memories when no-one else can. This is often denied to people who moved a lot during childhood.

I was lucky to have 3 close friends when I was 10 years old. All of our families broke down at the end of the 70s and the consequences of that were huge, but different, for each of us. We kept in touch until our early teens, but then didn’t see each other for almost 25 years. We eventually reconnected through the power of social media and arranged to meet for a drink.

We spent an evening together and it was like no time had passed. We talked a lot about our shared experiences and the paths our lives had taken since we last met. Being able to talk about the past with people who were there was a truly life affirming experience. We ended the evening with a toast to the fact we had all survived and followed our own paths that were informed, but not defined, by the troubles we faced as children.

Not only are we still friends, they are now friends with my kids too.

Radio Dublin

One of my regular errands was to get a bus to Inchicore to hand in a request at the Radio Dublin headquarters in Sarsfield Road. We loved hearing the requests read out on the radio and we all sang along to the jingle ‘turn your radio on, 252, radio Dublin’. We got to know one of the DJs who was living locally and when there was a competition to win a camping holiday around Europe, he encouraged my Mam to enter. She didn’t seem surprised when she won the competition and promptly set off for a trip around Europe with John. They had a wonderful time visiting beer festivals and seeing the sites. On one occasion their tent was flooded, but even that was seen as a positive because they were able to claim enough compensation on the travel insurance to cover all their spending money – every cloud!

I have very vivid memories of getting the bus to the Radio Dublin station. The house where it was based always seemed to be full of kids and there was a real sense of excitement surrounding the station. Although it was a pirate radio station it had a huge following and a loyal listener base. In June 1976, over 1,000 young people joined a protest march in support of the station from O’Connell Street to Dail Eireann, the Irish Parliament building on Kildare Street.

It was only when I read Siobhan Kennedy-McGuinness’s ‘Playing in the Dark’ in 2010, that I realised how close I had been to evil and how lucky I was not to have become a victim of the paedophile Eamon Cooke. Kennedy-McGuinness described the station as an ‘Aladdin’s cave, filled with broadcasting equipment’ and shares her memories of the house being a playground for her and her friends. For Cooke, it was a place he could lure his unsuspecting victims. Fortunately for me I never stayed for very long after handing in my request, so was not one of the many victims that were tortured by this cruel man. Another lucky escape!

https://www.goodreads.com/…/13240449-playing-in-the-dark

Pope’s visit to Dublin on Saturday 29 September 1979

Pope John Paul II visited Ireland and gave a mass to one third of the Irish population (1.25m people) in the Phoenix Park. My family were not in attendance. We spent the day playing table tennis and exploring the gardens of Coolmine Residential Rehab where our Mam’s boyfriend was living and receiving treatment. We were so happy to see him, he seemed fit and well and enjoyed spending the day with us and making plans for when he came home.

At the end of the visit, we walked to the bus stop. We waited patiently but no buses came. A passer-by reminded us that the buses had all been suspended because of the Pope’s visit. We had no option but to begin the 8km walk home. As we got to the main road an out of service bus saw us and stopped to give us a lift. The driver and conductor were clearly enjoying the break from their routine and the excitement of the day was palpable. They teased us about why we hadn’t gone to see the Pope and said we wouldn’t go to heaven.

On Monday we returned to school. Everyone was full of the Pope’s visit and talked about what an amazing experience it had been, which section of the crowd they had been in and who they had seen while they were there. When people asked me where I had stood, I lied. I pretended that I had been part of this shared experience. That I too had enjoyed the Pope’s visit. I felt embarrassed and ashamed that instead of going to the mass, I had spent the day enjoying myself surrounded by the families of drug addicts looking for a sign that their loved ones were on the mend and would return home free of their affliction.

When I shared this memory with my siblings, it was apparent we all had different memories of the day. I’ll share their responses here (in age order) because I think it is fascinating to see how people’s memories can differ and below there’s a link which may explain why this might be the case.

• 1st sister – yes, I remember that day well, but I thought the rehab was down the country.

• 2nd sister – I have no memory of this.

• Brother – Oh, I always thought we went to see the Pope!

https://www.irishpost.com/…/on-this-day-in-1979-more…

We are now understanding that there are strong individual differences in how people remember, and these differences are etched in our brains. People’s brains are wired differently depending on how they naturally approach the act of retrieval.

Beyond individual brain differences, there are other reasons why two people might have conflicting memories of the same event. Their emotional response to it is one. Emotional events can be recalled much more naturally, almost like they are stamped in our minds. What we remember will also be affected by whether we consider it useful. And there are benefits to that too. It can help us learn lessons and bond with others.

https://www.newscientist.com/…/mg24032011-300…/…

Patrick Dessie Madden

My grandfather will always be a hero to me. Not because he was in the war, but because he was brave enough to defy convention and welcome his unmarried teenage daughter (my mother) and me into the family home in 1968. We are all too aware that this was a time when many others turned their backs on women in the same situation. He already had enough mouths to feed and enough problems to deal with, but he showed love and compassion to us. Whenever my Mam spoke of him, she would say ‘he loved you’. I have always felt that love, even though I have no memory of him.

This is my Grandfather, Patrick Desmond Madden. At 20 years old he was a member of the RAF’s catering corp and served time in Myanmar. The things he witnessed in Burma haunted him for his whole life. He was traumatised by his experience and rarely spoke of it. Today he would have been diagnosed with post-traumatic disorder, back then he was just thrown on the scrap heap and left to fend for himself and his growing family. He earned 2 medals during his service, which he never received. My family has now claimed them in his name.

I don’t remember my Grandfather, because he died when I was only a year old. He passed in 1969 at the age of 46 following surgery for a stomach ulcer. These photos show his first communion, attending a family wedding (Paul O’Brien) and driving a truck in Burma.

I have to confess to not knowing much about the Burmese War and I am sad I didn’t get to speak to him about it. Sadly, there were too many other witnesses to the atrocities. If you would like to learn more you can hear real life testimonies here:

https://www.iwm.org.uk/…/listen-to-8-people-describe…

Connections

This week has been all about connections.

Last week ended with a Zoom call to friends in Cardiff who we haven’t seen for 18 months. After the call my husband said to me ‘that was so nice, you forget you miss people, you bury that need to connect’. He was right and it’s not often I say that! Here’s how I have been connecting ever since.

This time last week I had written quite a few sections for a book that I have intended to write for some time. I was feeling a bit stuck and I as I reviewed what I had written so far, I thought some of the content might resonate with some of the Facebook Groups I am signed up to. I posted a couple of short extracts and was really surprised by the reaction.

I received messages of support from so many people and saw many other people in the groups engaging with each other about their own shared memories of the same times and places. Long lost friends, family members and neighbours reached out to me and gave me their encouragement to continue. I decided to set up a blog so I can continue to connect with people who are interested in my story and I set myself a target date for completing my first draft.

Last night I received a phone call from the founder of the Dublin Ice Rink. A man I haven’t had any connection with for 39 years. He was delighted to hear about my writing and he helpfully, corrected some of the detail that I had misremembered (the rink opened in 1980, rather than ‘79) and we reminisced about a time and place that was special in both of our hearts.

I was stunned to discover he was only 26 when he opened the Ice Rink, and I was intrigued as to what made him do it. He said his Mother had been a teacher in London and always spoke fondly of skating at Queens in London and about how popular the sport was. He thought ‘we’ve never tried that here, why don’t I give it a go’? And that is how we came to have the first proper Ice Rink in Dublin. I hope one day Des will write his story too, but for now the Rink will be a small part of mine.

The final connection I made this week came when I added photos to my page. My daughter had just given my grandson his first fringe trim, he looked like he would fit right in alongside my siblings and me with our own 1970s wonky fringes. Seeing our fringes in the photo, and my grandson’s today, triggered a connection with one of my all-time favourite family photos. My 3 cousins all sporting various varieties of bowl cut. I’m sure everyone has one of these in their family album.

This week I will be writing about new beginnings and the various house moves we made during my childhood. I am aiming to do 500 words a day. I’ve managed that this week, so hopefully it’s achievable. Thanks again for the support.

Goldenbridge

As a pupil at Goldenbridge and a local resident I have the opportunity to take part in a number of events. The Easter Parade is an annual event, where everyone is encouraged to wear an Easter Bonnet to parade around the grounds. The first (and only?) time we attend I am really excited. Everyone at school has been talking about the Parade and what they are going to wear.

On Easter Sunday some of my aunts come to visit. I ask if we are going to the parade and eventually everyone agrees it’s a good idea. I tell the adults that I’ll need to have an Easter Bonnet to wear if I am to take part. We haven’t made any preparation for this event, so my Mam and aunts start looking around for items that could be used to fashion a bonnet for me.

They eventually settle on the red netting that contains some oranges as the basis for my creation. The netting is put on my head and they then stick bits of shiny easter egg foil and some fluffy chicks to the netting and Voila! The most ridiculous, pathetic looking ‘bonnet’ you could imagine. They all tell me it looks great, but I know it doesn’t. When we arrive at the parade, I see the other bonnets and realise mine is not really up to the mark. Some of the creations would put a professional milliner to shame, with their bright colours, extravagant flowers and creative flourish. Mine looks like the contents of a dustbin. The silver foil and fluffy chicks threaded through the orange net, doesn’t stand any comparison. My face stings with embarrassment and I decide I don’t want to walk in the parade.

My Mam gives me warm words of encouragement. She tells me to hold my head high and to take my place in the parade. She says everyone has done their best with what they had available and everyone deserves their place in the parade, regardless of how big or fancy their bonnet may be. I do as I am told and although I look enviously at the beautiful creations on the other kids’ heads, I try to enjoy the fact I am here. The process of making my bonnet had seen my aunts and my Mam in stitches of laughter, and anything that had provided a moment of fun or laughter in my home was worth celebrating.

Another event that takes place at the convent is the May Day procession. This is shortly after I make my communion. All the children wear their communion dresses and we are given little baskets of flower petals to scatter as we walk. We sing hymns as we process around the grounds. We sing ‘May is month of Mary, month we all love so well. Mary is God’s own Mother, gladly her praise we tell….’

I am still on a high from my 1st communion, I feel blessed to be in this place of women, which celebrates Mary and other Mothers, or so I thought! I feel completely at peace and sure I am protected by the love of God. I have no idea what is going on behind the closed doors of the convent. I don’t know, that the place which is such a sanctuary to me, is a living hell for so many other children….”

Dolphin House

My Mam’s family home is Dolphin House. She moves here at the age of 7*. Her family think it is paradise after the tenement slum they have been living in on Usher’s Quay. In this flat they have a separate scullery, three bedrooms, and indoor toilet and gas fires in the bedrooms. There are a lot of large young families living here and all the women help each other out. Resources are shared and there is always someone worse off than you. As the eldest grandchild I spend a lot of time in the flat. My nan eventually tires of entertaining hordes of children and it becomes the norm when her daughters visit, to leave their children ‘down the block’.

The flat is always full of people and full of life. As my aunts and uncles grow up, I see their energy and their passion for music and fashion. My aunties Dolly and Betty are obsessed with the Bay City Rollers and save up to buy their records and memorabilia. I see and hear them trading clothes and jobs around the house ‘If you do my scullery tonight, I’ll do your washing tomorrow’ and they like nothing better than having a secret to hold over each other as a bargaining tool. As well as her 11 children and many grandchildren, my Nan also has 10 siblings. Her brothers, and her married sons, often call in for a meal at lunchtime, so there is always a pot of stew or a coddle on the go. On Saturday nights she prepares a pot of ribs and pigs trotters for the teenagers coming home with the munchies and she leaves dried peas steeping in the sink for the Sunday lunch before she goes to bed.

My uncles help to provide food for the family by going hunting in the Dublin Mountains. They hang the rabbits they catch on the washing line over the bath until they are ready to be eaten. My Nanny’s brother Frankie also lives with her and makes a contribution to the household. He sleeps in the ‘sticker’, so called because the door often gets stuck. The rest of the family share the other 2 bedrooms. My nan and her youngest two children sleep in ‘the front’. The others squeeze into the biggest bedroom, known as ‘the bigger’.

I love being part of this big, noisy family. There’s always something going on. One way for kids to earn a bit of money is to go to the shops ‘for a message’. I am often sent to Mr Ryan’s. My aunts and uncles think nothing of sending me for a ‘one and one’, which is a cigarette and a match wrapped is the soft brown paper normally used to wrap the fresh bread – the Vienna roll and Turnover being firm favourites. My Nan’s shopping list always starts with bread, butter, tea and sugar. She uses lifebuoy soap and I often go with her to Meath Street to buy meat, fish and vegetables from the market stalls. We usually get the bus and if there’s one thing my Nan hates, it’s paying bus fare. It’s hard to avoid paying because there are conductors on the buses, but she just stares into the middle distance when they approach in the hope they’ll think she’s already paid.

My Nan is obviously trusted by her community. She runs a ‘Club’ which many of the local women use to save for major purchases. The way it works is there are 10 numbers, representing the next 10 weeks. Each member of the club pays £10 a week and then on the week they have chosen they take out the full £100. If you have an early number, you receive £100 and then repay it over the subsequent weeks when others need it. People who don’t need to have the money so quickly select a later number. Putting money into the club, keeps it out of drunken husband’s hands and means these women can get the things they and their family need without getting into debt with money lenders, or pawning their belongings. My Nan keeps the club money in a leather handbag by her armchair and she guards it with her life. Most people give her a tip when it is their week to get the club money.

(*She moved there when she was around 7, so 1956. Some of her family still live there. She moved out when she got married, but her mother stayed there until her death in 1990.)”

Joanna Hill.

Geneva Wilson, Minneapolis, 2000s

“My most magical memories as a child were playing in our overgrown flower garden in the backyard. I felt like Alice in Wonderland as I chased the bunny rabbits that lived in the bushes. When I was six, I named my first cat Dinah. I would bring her to my favourite corner of the garden and sing to her—just like Alice!”

Concept and online story project, Majella McAllister. Contact: mmcallister@museumofchildhood.ie

On behalf of the Museum of Childhood Ireland, we would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to all of our wonderful participants for their time and their stories.

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The views expressed in all of the Snapshots stories, and the photos used are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of the Museum of Childhood Ireland.