The floors in The Meadow were of a bitumen type that you weren’t allowed to cover. It was supposed to be polished. But, says Geordie, the floors were soft.
Meadow: my work
Places
Vandalised birds’ eggs
Our busiest and happiest times along the Derrybeg River (really a tiny stream) was in the summer months for it was then that the sprickleys were running, the hawthorn was in bloom and strongly perfumed and Corr’s field was awash with buttercups.
Clanrye Avenue people of old
We explained before how the Meadow houses are numbered out of sequence in a number of roads.
When we got in trouble with the law as youths we would give a seemingly correct address – such as
Brown’s Yard : End
The last cottage in the Brown’s Yard row, number four was the home of the Hamill family. After the houses in Brown’s Yard were condemned and demolished, the Hamills would move to the newly renovated housing at
Meadow: Helen’s Terrace
Helen’s Terrace in The Meadow was there long before the great housing estate was first constructed in the late 1940s. Indeed then they were the only homes in a kilometre radius – except for the isolated cottage of ‘Sticks’ Morgan’s people a little further along the Pighall Loanan.
In the bar in Kilkeel
Then one quiet day when I was about ten, I made my way into a public bar in Kilkeel because I thought no one was there.
Corr’s Field 1957: the ‘boat’
Down there close to Helen’s Terrace and near the bridge facing McClelland’s enclosure we each in turn pressed down with one hand on the strand of barbed wire atop the low stone wall that separated us from Corr’s Field and threw a leg over to the other side.
Meadow: 1957
In this the 60th anniversary of The Meadow housing estate we continue our occasional series of reminiscences of growing up there in the long-ago!
‘Not unlike the season we are presently enduring, that Spring of 1957 had so far been wild, wet and windy.
Addresses in Newry: 1
What with the huge expansion of our town in recent years, there are probably many of our exiles who could not find their way around the residential districts any more. For your benefit here is a list, each address coupled with others in the same area.