Category: Shannonbridge

• Going in on the Altar or an altar boy`s apprenticeship in West Offaly in the 1950s. By Pádraig Turley. Blog No 160, 9th Nov 2019

  This episode in my life dates from the early 1950s. I was about nine year old at the time. I lived with my mother, grand-parents and uncle on a farm in the townland of Clerhane, near the village of Shannonbridge. My father worked in Dublin.
  Our house was what was then called a rambling house, where friends and neighbours would gather for a chat, and to generally sort out the problems of the world. I must add that my grandmother, a somewhat severe woman, felt these matters could be sorted out elsewhere. My grandfather loved these evening chats, so it was unlikely my grandmother`s desire would ever prevail.

  

  Great craic and the curved ball

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  November 9, 2019

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• My childhood memory of a Christmas in west Offaly over sixty years ago by Padraig Turley. Blogs No 113, 22 Dec 2018

   

  

  As Patrick Kavanagh might have put it, I was ten Christmasses of age and living in a place called Clerhane, a townland some two miles south of Clonmacnoise.
  We were farmers, and there were five of us residing on the farm, my maternal grandparents, my uncle Joe, my mother and I. My father for economic reasons worked in Dublin, and I would only see him three times a year, the Easter break perhaps three days, his summer holidays that took place during the first two weeks in August, and of course for Christmas break which generally lasted two or three days depending, on how Christmas fell. You can imagine the excitement that built up in me as a child with the prospect of the approaching Christmas.
  The Christmas I am talking about was 1954, indeed as time would prove, my last Christmas residing in west Offaly, as the following summer my mother and I moved to Dublin to live with my father, who had just purchased a house.
  1954 is best remembered for the floods, the river Shannon reaching the highest level since 1925. I remember soldiers from Athlone assisting the farmers that year with the harvest. Folk were really looking forward to the bit of Christmas cheer.

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  December 22, 2018

  Shopping

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• Cures for the Whooping Cough circa 1950. By Pádraig Turley. Blogs No 101, 29 Sept 2018

  If I may paraphrase Dylan Thomas , I am not sure if I was six years of age when I had the misfortune to get the whooping cough that lasted five weeks or I was five years of age and it lasted six weeks. I was then living in Clerhane, a townland near Shannonbridge with my mother, her parents and my uncle. My father was living in Dublin, where he worked as a mechanic. He and his father had run a public house in Shannonbridge in the hungry thirties, and when it did not do very well he was forced to go to Dublin to seek work.

  

  So to set the scene for the little generational tug of war I am about to relate, my grandfather Michael Claffey was from Bloomhill, Ballinahown and was born in 1868. His wife, my grandmother was an Elizabeth Molloy from Parkwood, Moote, County Offaly and was born in 1880. My uncle Joe was born in 1918 , and my mother Margaret had been born in 1914. We all lived in a three roomed thatched cottage, which did not have electricity or piped water, on a farm which also included a quarry. (more…)

  September 29, 2018

  folk remedies, pertussis, whooping cough

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