TO SCHOOL THROUGH THE 1950s
Éanna Brophy
My first school was Belgrove School in Clontarf, or, to give its official title, Scoil Eoin Baiste. It was only about a quarter of a mile from our house, so from a very early age I could walk there unaccompanied, unless an older brother or sister was heading there too. Sometimes I would meet other boys on the way … and we might take (parentally unapproved) short cuts through an overgrown field and over a ditch into a lane that still survived amid the suburban house-building that was replacing the last remaining farmland.
On the way home in the afternoon we might divert into the grounds of Clontarf Cricket and Rugby Club: I got into severe trouble at home when I tore my jacket on a barbed wire fence while climbing out through a surrounding hedge there. I still remember that there was much talk about it’s being a “three-corner tear”, which seemed to be a terrible thing at the time.
Another diversion on the way up Castle Avenue was to turn into Blackheath Park to peer through the trees and shrubs that bordered the grounds of what we knew as the Orthopaedic Hospital. But what were we looking at? There were children a short distance away wearing red high-necked jumpers and sitting up in bed in the open air. Or so it seemed: in fact the beds were in large, open curtained cubicles that functioned as hospital wards: the children were being treated for tuberculosis, and fresh air was nearly all that might help them to recover. The scourge of TB was at its height at the time.
I attended Belgrove from babies to second class in the boys’ school.
Then my family decided it might be a good idea for me to switch to Scoil Colmcille, an all-Irish speaking school in town. (I should add that I was brought up speaking Irish at home – and English out in the garden with my pals. My father, Pádraig Ó Bróithe, who died when I was quite young, had been an active member of the Irish language revival movement in the early part of the 20th century. He wrote many children’s stories and plays in Irish. I was the seventh of eight children.)
Going to my new school was a great adventure. My older brother Pádraig was going there too, so we would catch the bus in Killester at the top of our road, and in less than 20 minutes we were in Lower Abbey Street about 100 yards from our new destination. That’s if you were lucky enough to get on a bus: in rainy weather the buses coming through from Howth or Portmarnock could be full, so we’d have to walk a bit further to the CIE 54 bus terminus at the junction with Collins Avenue. (The other buses I mentioned were run by GNR, Great Northern Railways, who also ran the trains north of Amiens St Station, which became Connolly Station in 1966. Their buses were much more comfortable than those of CIE: they actually had heaters!)
It’s amazing what remains dormant in the back of your brain until you start delving into the past. I can still recall the wording of the advertisements from the Department of Health that adorned the bus windows. I picture a frustrated poet labouring at his civil service desk, producing these ads. One of them (with a little cartoon illustration) went as follows:
“The wretch who sneezes all around him
Spreads coughs and colds ad lib, confound him.
The worthy soul who hanky uses
Rarely causes such abuses”.
Looking back now that journey seems to take longer to unfold in my memory. The route takes us down the Howth Road and into Fairview. Soon we’re crossing the Tolka River and on up the North Strand Road to Newcomen Bridge over the Royal Canal.
The nearby flats that are now on both sides of the road here were built in the 1970s but I remember this stretch as a flattened wasteland on one side, and a deep hollow on the other. It was like that for many years, taken for granted by people my age to whom the story of the German Luftwaffe’s bombing of the North Strand in June 1941 seemed like a tale from a distant past.
My main interest in this area as a schoolboy was the children’s library in Charleville Mall, which enabled me to keep up with the doings of William and the Outlaws, The Five Find-Outers, and my favourite- the Fat Owl of the Remove – Billy Bunter. They were very funny books set in an English public school but you might be arrested by the political correctness police for reading one of them today.
Which brings us to the Five Lamps at the junction with the North Circular Road which, every Wednesday morning was the bane of our lives. Why? Because then it would become the scene of a cattle drive to rival anything you’d see on the Oregon Trail in the cowboy films which were hugely popular back then. There was an enormous cattle market up near the Phoenix Park, from which the hapless cattle would then be herded down through Phibsboro and all the way to the Dublin docks and onto waiting ships for live export to England. I always felt sorry for the animals, but sorrier for myself because it meant I was late for school again.
The Central Model Schools in Marlborough Street were a complex of national schools opposite the Pro-Cathedral. Scoil Colmcille was the all-Irish component.
Its pupils were a strange mixture. The sons of middle-class civil servants from the leafy suburbs mingled with boys from the poorer streets nearby, who were probably there only because the “Scoil Béarla” classes were overflowing. Free milk and thin, thin sandwiches were distributed at lunchtime from Lawlors of Naas. One per child. Some of these boys could have devoured a whole sliced pan, especially on Wednesdays, when there was a sliver of brawn on the sandwiches. (Or was that the day when there was a currant bun instead of the sandwich?) Like others more fortunate, I brought my own supplies. Sometimes I gave some away.
My first teacher there was Tomás Luibhéad aka “Luvvier”. A great, likeable teacher who never got cross, he would have the whole class enthralled with tales and poems about Fionn MacCumhaill, Oisín and Tír na nÓg. Meanwhile I was sitting beside a nice boy who lived with his family in Parnell Square. Ten of them. In one room. I often think I had a great education.
My secondary education was just up the road in Coláiste Mhuire in Parnell Square, so I continued using the bus for a few more years there. Then I got a bike …
Éanna Brophy
Éanna Brophy is a retired journalist. He grew up in Clontarf, Dublin, one of a family of eight children, of whom he was number seven. He wrote for a number of magazines and journals before joining The Sunday Press in 1973. He worked there as a reporter, feature writer and sub-editor — and eventually became quite well-known for his mainly humorous back-page column. Outside of journalism he has contributed scripts to several theatre productions as well as radio and television shows.
He and his wife Yvonne had three children, as a result of which they now have eight glorious grandchildren.
(Pádraig Ó Bróithe 1897 – 1949) A link to his books in the National Library:
Some of the illustrations for Pádraig Ó Bróithe’s books were by Marion King, who used to write and tell children’s stories on Radio Éireann about a rabbit called Seán Bunny!
Éanna Brophy Éanna recently self-published a book on Amazon.ie The cover features the keyboard of his father’s typewriter, whose lettering was in the old Irish typeface: