Newry Mitchels GAC
The John Mitchel Gaelic Athletic Club in Newry was formed by a group of enthusiasts back in the late 50’s. Gerry Brown of Clanrye Avenue, a Physical Education teacher at the Abbey Grammar was its first Chairman and under his expert guidance the new club attained immediate success with a number of notable championships.
Creggan Poets
You have gotten used to the placid view of Creggan Churchyard. Still used today as the burial place of those of both faiths in the neighbourhood, it is celebrated rightly as the final home of the last bards of the twilight age of the old Gaelic order in the Kingdom of the Fews.
Wednesday Walks with Father
I remember as if it was yesterday our walks up the Camlough Road…
my father holding my hand as I walked up ‘the big ditch’, which turned out to be just a little rise on the side of the road – but back then it was a ‘big ditch’ to me.
24th Lislea Drama Festival
The first performance in the 24th Lislea Drama Festival begins next Saturday evening…
Boys of Crossmaglen
In the normal scheme of things, far removed from that two-word misnomer of the easily forgotten Pro-Consol Merlyn Rees – a slur I choose not to repeat! – South Armagh now struggles to return to that idyllic rural backwater it was of old, preserver of the best of our ancient customs that the Newry Journal extols.
Crossmaglen Conspiracy
The so-called Crossmaglen Conspiracy of the 1880s rocked the Liberal Government of the time, brought the resignations of Joseph Chamberlain and of O. J. Trevelyan and the return, following a general election, of a Tory Government.
Dialect ‘T’ 2
Dialect ‘T’ 2
Tell count, ‘I could never tell twice two’
Teem downpour, ‘It’s not raining, it’s teeming’
Take your wee house too!
Paddy and Bridget lived in a cottage high up on the far side of Slew Gullion and had few visitors. It was raining cats and dogs the day the parish priest came to call. He had one of them new-fangled umberella things to protect himself and he unfurled it to enter the narrow door of the house.
Once inside, he put it up again and left it on the hearth to dry.
Peter McParland & Great Newry Sportsmen
Peter McParland, Pat’s great predecessor on the international soccer stage, has a park in the area (Barley Lane) named after him. Older folks will remember his incredible exploits in the greatest F.A. Cup final of them all! Captain of his international squad, Danny Blanchflower admired him greatly, considering him an outstanding ‘outside left’: of his team-mate and role model, Peter Doherty, an inside forward, Blanchflower said
Halliday’s Folly
As stated on our Newry Workhouse series, Dessie McGennity’s family moved from the workhouse to the castle above Chapel Street’s High Walk. Des was only seven years old and remembers how frightening it could be. On winter’s nights the wind howled ‘like a Banshee’ and made the shutters bang. It was bitterly cold with the stone floors, walls and stairs. There was an absence of heating and the outside toilet was ‘little more than a hole in the ground’.
Boat Street Rooneys, Carrs etc.
John Rooney spoke of the spirit and of the craic that there was in the Boat Street where he grew up.
‘Everyone helped one another in time of trouble or bereavement. They also shared the joys of good times like weddings, Christenings, First Communions and Confirmation, Christmas and Easter. All doors would lie open. If someone overslept so that they would be late for work at the mill or factory, or on the docks of Albert Basin, then they were knocked up. If a child came home complaining they had been given a thump by a teacher or another adult, then they would get another clout from their parents, for surely they deserved the first one!’
Chapel Street luminaries:Jennings
Among the notable clans who hailed from this area are the Jennings, McParland, Carr, Carroll, Duffy, Fox, Gorman, Hughes, Feenan, Keenan, Kelly, Coulter, Bannon, Lambe, McElroy, McCourt, McGrath, McGivern, McGuinness, McKeown, McKevitt, Mathers, Murtagh, Price, Traynor and Tumilty families.
