A few weeks ago I had cause to scan a number of old family documents and pictures. To enable me to perform this operation I first had to remove some items from their frames.
After removing one particular picture from its frame I noticed a name and address that had been written on the stiff cardboard used to provide a backing to the photo in its frame. That name and address was:
M Teggart,
Brown’s Yard,
Newry
12/7/1929
This picture had not been removed from its frame in almost eighty years so the name and address inscribed there hadn’t seen the light of day in all that time.
Now, that address was like a blast from the past! How well I remember the stories told to me by my Great Aunt about that old long-gone place.
My brother and I as children huddled beside a blazing fire on a cold winter’s night, listening to our old Aunt recounting stories about haunted houses and some of the places that she knew of as a young girl. We children were fascinated by it all. We were dead scared, but transfixed in morbid fascination. I haven’t met anyone since who could tell a captivating anecdote or horror story the likes of those my Aunt Kate could tell.
‘Brown’s Yard’. There are not a lot of people alive today who can remember that old place. There are only two that I know of who can remember Brown’s Yard, and out of those two people one of them actually lived there for a time.
There is only one photograph in existence that shows what the yard and the cottages in that yard looked like. That is the case as far as I know anyway. If there are other photographs out there I for one would love to see them.
This tale is about real people, and hard times: the same types of events were happening in other places, to other people all across the country at that time. To read or hear about some long forgotten place, and what sort of people lived there may not be something that everyone would enjoy, but then again, they have never as a child sat beside a blazing fire on a cold winters night and listened to ‘Great Aunt Kate.’