Glorious memories of growing up in Clonmel

It’s a gloriously sunny June Bank Holiday 2023 and I’m going to visit Stephen Cooney at his cottage in Loughtally.
The garden is bursting with vibrant colours and heady aromas. Stephen is a tall gentleman, most amiable, and is living here with his jovial wife, Martina.

They are chirpy and warm as they greet and welcome me into their abode. I notice that they hold hands and smile at one another as they lead me to their sitting room.

“We’ve known one another since we were children,” Stephen says in reply to my first query. “Ours was the first wedding under the new clocks of St Mary’s Church, which Fr Michael Kennedy put in situ. We were married on the March 3 1990 and I have also been a Eucharistic Minister in that church since then. I come from a very catholic background. My granduncle is Dean Byrne who is buried in Ss Peter and Paul’s Church.

FLOODING
“I was born in St. Anne’s home on the May 26 1947. There used to be awful problems with flooding on the quays back then. The doctor carried me out of the building in wading boots after I was born. My parents lived in Bella Vista, Marlfield, before they came here. There were only six cottages here then and our neighbours would often be in and out of one another’s homes. Now I’d hardly know my neighbours.
“I can remember once when one of them put an engine onto his four-wheel cart. The road was hilly so it saved him from having to push it back up again. Another neighbour brought me to school on a pony and trap. If the weather was wet after school her husband John Lonergan, who had a Morris Minor, would collect as many children as could fit in from Loughtally and he would take us all home. You couldn’t do that now.
“When electricity came here first, each house could have a light in three rooms only. That’s the way it was. You were only allowed a certain amount. We got our water from a well at the top of Pondside. It’s overgrown now but long ago I used to head down and leave a bucket over the wall to remember to fill when I would be passing back. Half the time I could forget about it and cycle home without it. We had no piped water here in those days, so I would have to go back down to the well again to get my bucket of water.

FARM LABOURER
“My father Jim Cooney was primarily a farm labourer. He then got work in the Sisters of Charity. When you were officially working for them you could be asked to do anything. One of his morning jobs was to burn the newspapers. There was no other way to get rid of newspapers back then. He did gardening and caretaking. He did messages for the nuns. There used to be a laundry there. He did a bit of everything. But all of those grounds are just one big carpark now.
“My mother Bridget Anglim was from Colman, Lisronagh. She lived in America for 18 years before she returned back home and wed my father. I was their only child. I was 10 when my mother died from cancer. I remember watching her grave being dug. I was lucky to have so many aunts to care for me after she died. They were very good to me. All of them are buried now in the old graveyard in Shanavine. It is a hard graveyard to find because one has to go through fields and an old avenue about 500 yards long, then through St Luke’s farmyard and then cross another field. The farmer would have to be given plenty of notice about a funeral. No animals could be left in the fields that day with the hearse going up and down along there. Gates would have to be kept open.

“I can remember how different the hospital system was in those times. If I wanted to visit a patient there was an archway I had to go in under from the Western Road. Then I would have to get clearance in the Office before I would be allowed to go any further. There was also a psychiatric hospital in Clonmel back then called St Luke’s and that place used to be really tightened up. There was a big metal bridge up by Glenconnor and that was used by the patients to get from one building to another, so they wouldn’t have to go out on the street.

MARLFIELD SCHOOL
“I spent my primary years in Marlfield School and my earliest memory is of a day in 1961 when Fr Carey was ordained a Priest and he came to visit. I remember it well because we all got a day off. There is a photograph of me and all my classmates taken on that day with Fr Carey who is from nearby St Patrick’s Well. A lot of work was carried out on that well about fifty years ago. Before that there were no walls around it and the place was like a jungle. One wouldn’t have been able to bring a wheelbarrow down there. Everything had to be carried down, so it took a long time to get the task completed. But a Mass is said down there now, each year at the end of June.
“When I finished in Marlfield School, I attended the High School CBS for a few years and that was a rough time. It was all books although I was very good at Maths and I even won an award. Then I transferred to the Old Tech down by the quay. Now it’s called Mulcahy House. Down in the Tech there were metalwork and woodwork rooms. One could give one’s life in the High School and you wouldn’t know how to drive a nail. If one was only a year or two in the Tech at least you’d know a little bit about something. Returning in September there could be twenty in a class but by Christmas three or four of them will be gone due to being offered an apprenticeship.

COONEY’S SHOP
“Two elderly aunts had a shop called Hanrahan’s located at 49 Upper Irishtown. It was locally referred to as Cooney’s shop. When I was big enough, twelve or thirteen, I was doing a lot of shop work. Even though I was officially going to school, it was a side-line job for me and I was helping them out as well. The shop was across from the meat factory, Clonmel Foods. There were a lot of shops in Irishtown at the time but that factory opened at 8 o’clock in the morning, so if we didn’t have that shop opened at quarter to eight in the morning, we’d be losing fairly heavily.
“Back then the ‘chappies’ used to put all the waste down into the river. I can remember the smell was wicked. There were about 200 ‘chappies’ working there, so at break time we were always busy trying to serve them all. A man would come very early in a van every morning with a large delivery of confectionery. We always told him to be up on time, before the ‘chappies’ break, because if he wasn’t, he could take back half of the delivery. The market was big for the buns. But cigarettes were the most important thing. The ‘chappies’ would all be in for their supply of fags, to keep them going for the day and they handling meat. Unbelievable.

CIGARETTE MEN
“Travelling cigarette men from Carrick-on-Suir and Clare would come once a month to supply the shop with 20,000 or 30,000 cigarettes. My aunts in the shop did a massive trade in them. I was handling cigarettes every day. Imagine as a young boy I handled millions. We also served a percentage of the girls walking over to the convent every morning. My wife Martina was one of them. They would drop in for their Gallon Sweets as they were called. We weighed them and put them into paper bags for them.
“In those times a customer would come in with a list of whatever messages they might need. They would be back in an hour or two to collect them. It was up to us to have that basket filled and ready waiting for them. Friday used to be a hectic day. When someone is buying sugar today it’s already weighed and packaged. In those times, it all had to be weighed out inside in the shop. Think about how many 2lb or 3lb bags had to be weighed, out of a hundred weight bag of sugar? We had to weigh the tea and weigh the sugar. That took up a good bit of our time. Money was different too. There were 240 pennies in a pound. That building is just a normal dwelling house now. There’s a lovely flowerbed outside it.
“I also served my time as a mechanic. Firstly, I spent a couple of years in Irishtown for a man by the name of Tom Flynn. That garage was located where the Town House Deli is now. Later, I went to a garage at the other end of town run by Paddy Whitty. He was doing a lot more business and sales. But he moved from Clonmel to Carrick-on-Suir. So, after there I got a job in Prendergast’s garage which was a big outfit in Clonmel at the time, situated at the Gashouse Bridge. And then that place kind of went to the wall too. But one of the bosses there set up his own garage after that on the Davis Road. His name was Brian Mordaunt and after a while I got a job there, where I spent twenty-four years.

RECOVERY TRUCK
“We had a good set of customers and looked after them well. Let’s say today is a bank holiday - we’re off today as long as that phone doesn’t ring. We had a small recovery truck so if a customer got into trouble, we’d try to help him out if we could, even if they were fifty miles away. They weren’t just all down the road. All our customers knew that they would be well looked after and given a good service. In comparison to other trades working in garages was a low paid job. Oh, there’s big money in it now but not in those days.

VAUXHALL VICTOR
“I have a Vauxhall Victor 101 outside in the garage. I haven’t been able to use it for years because I had to get a hip replacement done. Now I wouldn’t be able to step down on the pedals. Martina and I used to drive around in it at the vintage rallies. When I was working in one of the garages, one day a man came in to buy a new car because the Vauxhall was giving him trouble. He asked me if I would just take it off him as it was not going at that stage. So, I did and over the years I’ve been tipping away doing bits of work on it.”
When the time comes to leave this pleasant couple, Stephen opens his garage door. I am taken aback by the gleaming splendour of a blue and cream 1967 Vauxhall Victor. They are grinning as they observe my awed reaction. I drink in the pristine exterior and interior of this eclectic clunker. I tell the pair of them to honk the horn should they see me whilst cruising around. Perhaps I will have the honour of accepting a lift from them some sunny day.

A writer of poems with a love for foraging

Isobel de Barra hails from verdant Woodrooffe, Clonmel. She is a language tutor and piano music teacher. She makes candles in her spare time, along with writing poetry and she also loves foraging. Some of her poems have been published notably ‘Magical Hedgerow,’ ‘Tobar Íosa’ and ‘Gateways.’

She lived and worked in Galway, Cork and Barcelona for some decades, before returning home to the Golden Vale two years ago.