Few of our streets have remained substantially unaltered over the last century – but those featured below from the Newry Street Directory of 1906 are among them.
Arthur St/Aileen Terrace 1906
Places
Ghosts
After the usual round of gossip and comments on the weather and the horse-racing, people on their ceilidhe in the old days invariably lapsed into stories about banshees, pookas, fairies and ghosts.
Drumbally: Ceilidh House
The houses about Drumbally were scattered – I doubt if there were more than a dozen in a radius of a mile – and there wasn’t much by way of entertainment available. What there was, was talk.
Drumbally: neighbours
The river bounded the other side of the field where our house was located at Drumbally. It was about 20 feet across and about five feet deep between steep sides six feet above the level of the water. Two sturdy planks spanned the gap. The whole was about a yard wide with no side rails or rope support.
Crossmaglen, 1930s
Crossmaglen, or Cross as it is better known in the area, was the largest village in that part of the County. Its principal feature was its large square, reputedly the largest in
Actually, Warrenpoint – but you get the picture!
There was the chapel, school, police barracks, picture house, dance hall and football pitch. The village was not electrified until the 1950’s although the cinema had a generator.
Drumbally, comprising 265 acres, lies two miles from Crossmaglen and three miles from the borders with Co. Louth and Co. Monaghan. Drumbally lies on a large drumlin and from the top on a clear day, flat countryside stretches south for many miles into Co Louth. In common with most of the rest of the country, the townland suffered a decline in population during and after the Great Famine 1845 – 1848. From Census returns we know that from 144 people in 75 dwellings in 1841, the population steadily declined, by 1951, to 37 people in 14 dwellings – a 74% reduction.
At the time of the 1901 Census (the first one for which complete documentation survives) 11 of the 17 households contained at least one native Irish speaker – 13 in all. The average age of the group was 61; eldest 80, youngest 40. Drumbally had a significantly higher proportion of Irish speakers than the (civil) parish as a whole where 785 of 5249 (15%) spoke the language. When I arrived, 37 years later, most, if not all of this group would have passed on, taking with them a whole tradition.
The house where I was born and lived in until 1952, was a slated single storey, two-roomed cottage 50 yards down a sunken lane at the foot of Drumbally hill. It belonged to “James Pat” McShane who had emigrated. The rent was 1s 6d a week. There was a shed, a “street” (a clear area, or yard, in front of the house) and two “gardens”, one of which my father planted out in potatoes and vegetables each year.
When it rained, the water rushing down the lane in a torrent was an endless source of joy to me in setting up dams, making diversionary channels and generally getting wet through. I never remember the water as cold – it always seemed warm and fresh, with a feeling of newness, and promise, as it first rushed, and then trickled, over the stones. In the hard winter of 1947 the lane filled with snow and my father spent a whole day digging up to the road.
… more later …
For those of you who tire of my drip-feed methods (the Newry Journal style from the beginning) – you may read Pat’s memoirs complete here
… History: Town of Crossmaglen? …
Drumbally, 1938
November 22nd of 1938 dawned cold and foggy with a ground frost and light to moderate northwest winds. There were cloudy periods with occasional showers and some sleet on the high ground.
Fosters Finale
It isn’t easy to believe that Peter still could not allow things to settle before chancing his arm again. He determined to return the very next Thursday.
Fosters: moths in coffee
Foster’s Coffee Shop was not the sort of place where one raised one’s voice.
A manager suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
That old Bridge
Strange as it may seem this old bridge has a fond place in my memory. As a young boy with my friends I used to walk out along the
Nearby there was a beautiful glade of trees, most of them easy to climb and by tying a rope to the uppermost branches we could swing out over the river. Sometimes we would venture up on to the railway track. We knew that we weren’t supposed to do this, but you know what kids are like. We would then dare each other to walk the full length of the Good Shepherd’s railway tunnel and back again.
Later on, after the railway had closed down and as a young teenager, I still used to ramble out this way whilst taking my dog for a walk. But this time I could journey along the disused railway track. The old bridge still attracted the children as a play area. I remember once a group of kids had one end of a knotted rope tied to a bush with the other end hanging over the parapet of the bridge and dangling down to touch the water below. They were trying to climb down the rope to reach the river.
I just had to have a try at this stunt. It looked so much like fun. The kids let me have a go and I must say that I was the only one that day who could climb right down the rope to reach the river below and then return climbing back up the rope again. And I’m quite proud of that, whatever you think!
As I stood there standing on a large flat rock in the middle of that gurgling river, with the sound of a bee humming nearby and observing how the dappled sunlight was sparkling through the green leaves, I was moodily reminiscing on days past. I felt sorry for the old bridge that played such a part in my youth, a bridge that was saved from its Armageddon and cruel fate only by the thickness of a line of ink from the draughtsman’s pen. I reflected to myself that the only thing consistent here is the bridge, and of course the river itself, but the river unlike the bridge is free: free to wander, free to sing its burbling song and free to carry on flowing until it makes its connection with the Newry Canal further downstream.
After passing under the railway bridge the
The little waterway then snakes its way through half a mile or so of green fields before going under another road, the
This is another place that is dearly held from my childhood memories, but that is another story, another ramble for another time.
…. Canal and towpath ….