Eileen Malone of Cherrywood Grove grew up in Upper Mill Street. Later she met and married Thomas Malone, butcher, of Upper Water Street and raised a fine family including Jackie, now married to Jennifer of Concern. I showed the photo here to her and asked for comment of the district in which she was reared.
‘Of course I remember this. Next door, going down towards North Street was a little shop called Ma Hughes. She and her daughter who was called Nellie sold chips and peas and ice cream. Next was a house and a little shop also. The people were called Sheridans. Next to that was the home of the Stokes. Then there was a large hoarding and bills were posted on it telling what was on in the town. After was another little sweetshop [boiled sweets, toffee apples] tended by a lady called Maggie Vickers. She was married to a man called Meekan, a seaman and they had two children, a girl called May and a boy called Joe. Maggie also had a brother called Joe Vickers who had a barber’s shop close by. This Joe was the grandfather of two girls Marie and Joan Vickers who married two McAvoy brothers and live still in Mourneview Park.
Close by there lived two brothers Freddie and Peter Troy, tradesmen who worked all week in Balbriggan and came home only for weekends. They had a sister who was called Madge and she was married to a man called Ronald Rogers. They had a son and two daughters. They lived in Magennis Street and would visit the Troys on Sunday. One daughter, Stella survived into adult life but the other children died young. Also visiting the Troys were a brother and sister Bridie and Paddy Vickers who were the children of Joe the barber just mentioned. This was about the year 1933. Joe the barber was a fattish man with black, shiny hair and tanned skin. He cut hair in a room at the back of the sweet shop, down past Converys in Upper North Street.’
Paul Mac [Guestbook!], a much younger man, tells me his parents in the 50s had one of the two houses, round the corner in Chapel Lane [the other was the Magills, John etc]. Ma Hughes’ name was Margaret. Ma Hughes, in later life resided with her daughter Nellie in the small pensioner bungalows of Clanrye Avenue. Ma died c. 1968. Her daughter Mary Ellen [Nellie] died in 1985. Another daughter Lily married a Mr Lennon and she lived to the ripe old age of 102, and is only recently deceased.