Sligo in the Rare Old Times (By Mary Kelly-White

THE CORRAN HERALD • 2021/2022 Sligo in the Rare Old Times

by Mary Kelly-White

If Sligo changes as much in the next few years as it has in the last ten it won’t be SLIGO it will be SLI…..GONE.

Pound/Connolly Street, where I was born and reared was narrow with seventeen-opposite nineteen mixed, two and three-storey houses which included eleven shops, five pubs, four guesthouses, (which meant lodgers); three butcher shops, a forge, a saddler’s shop, a café, a tailor, a dressmaker, and the remainder were private houses. There were about forty-five school going children between twelve of the thirty-six houses.

All the shops would be regarded as huckster shops nowadays with everything unwrapped; windows full of tempting sweets, pink lucky–lumps with money inside some of them. There were black liquorice five-a-penny and tiny multi coloured aniseed balls ten-apenny. Who cared if the bees and bluebottles were buzzing over the open boxes? Batch and pan loaves were heaped on one shelf and unwashed vegetables on another. The snuff and tobacco were on the high shelves. Cigarettes were scarce and hidden. All the shops were small then and carried everything except maybe bags. Lots of items even tea and sugar were sold in cones of newspaper. The loose milk was delivered to three shops in Pound/Connolly Street arriving in big creamery cans, by pony and cart, and it was so scarce that customers would be waiting around the shop door, first come first served, with various receptacles such as huge mugs, jugs, bowls, bottles, and cans. The one café was more an “Eating House” than a café, and our house was also an “Eating House” on Fair Days. Hamilton’s Forge was a concrete lean-to at the gable of their house, now an office block. It was like a big black hole full of horses and little men, with a red fire at the far end. Little girls did not hang around the forge. They just crawled by slowly watching the blacksmiths, with their backs towards the big quiet horses, nailing the shoe to the hoof resting between their knees, smelling the burning hooves, and listening to the hiss when the white hot irons were cooled in the cold water. People were shy about drinking then. Most pubs had screened windows and double doors for privacy. If women went inside at all it was in the snug where they would not be seen by other customers.

Saturday was Market Day and the horse and donkey carts were bumper to bumper on both sides of the streets. Paddy Kelly’s forge was on Burton Street. Sometimes the carts were left all day and the hungry calves and bonhams would be lamenting and squealing from under the sack covered carts.

Stephen Burns collected empty jam pots and porter/stout/Guinness bottles. He wheeled his barrow through the streets paying a penny or two pence to adults for bottles or jars and giving windmills to children. He made the windmills himself: two strips of soft cardboard gummed like a cross, with a small square of coloured paper gummed to the four ends like a swastika. He had a bundle of sticks, a wooden orange box split up or twigs from the hedges to which he would attach the cardboard crosses with a straight pin. No worries then about splinters, or poking eyes out, or awful insurance claims for unsafe toys. The gas man collected the money from the meters in a strong wooden barrow which he parked outside each house. I don’t believe he ever locked it and as far as I know he was never robbed or mugged, neither did anyone run off with his barrow. Gone are the days.

The buttermilk man, humped in a greening black overcoat, sitting on a board which was resting on his donkey cart would jog down the street calling; “Fresh buttermilk tuppence a quart” And the Town Crier, Ned Kelly, placarded in front and behind, wearing a black top hat and navy boots would march through the town ringing his noisy bell and shouting; “Roll up! Roll up! Roll up! Don’t forget the Dance in the Town Hall tonight! Dancing from 9pm unto 2, and the price is five shillings for the Dance in the Town Hall tonight.” The parcel post was also delivered by wheelbarrow; a huge green wicker basket with a lid, two short shafts for pushing, two bunty (short/sturdy) legs for parking and two big bicycle wheels.

The town was small then with the main shopping located at O’Connell Street with top fashion located at Johnson’s, Mullaney’s, Mode’s, Goods’, Blackrock, Stephenson’s and Lyons’. Alan Johnson’s, Rogers and Lyons Shoes and the GPO, were in Wine Street, as was the Gaiety Cinema. Smartwear, Tyler’s, My Lady, Strong’s, Carroll’s and Cullen’s Sub Post Office were in Castle Street. Hardware stores such as Green and McNiece, Meldrum’s, Woods’, Western Wholesale, Wood and Iron, Hanley’s and Nelson’s, carried everything from half soles to greaseproof paper. Books were on High Street; if it wasn’t in Keaney’s it wasn’t in Sligo. The Wallace family business sold every religious book and item imaginable, as well as newspapers and dulse, pronounced dillisk (edible salty seaweed), eaten dry from the bag, also boiled in milk and eaten as a vegetable on Fridays when meat wasn’t allowed.

Woolworth’s was the perfect rendezvous for everyone especially students. With the open layout of the shop no one was hidden, everyone was protected from the elements, and there was no need to be shopping. The atmosphere was pleasant with soft gramophone music in the background. There were several good grocery / pub /butcher shops all over the town: Scanlon’s, McGowan’s, McCrann’s, Campbell’s, Conway’s, Murphy’s, Cosgrove’s, the Crescent, Tansey’s, McDonagh’s, Billy Peebles, Blackwood’s, Bewleys’, Moody’s, Smoker’s Own, Higgins and Kiernan’s. of course not forgetting Finn’s and McMorrow’s who were in Holborn Street. Tim’s, Cavanagh’s, Collins’, O’Hara’s, Quirke’s, and Thady Foley’s were all flourishing businesses.

There were four bakeries; Tighe’s, Macarthur’s, Curry’s and Farrell’s. There were two Flanagan shops on High Street, selling everything from blocks of salt to coal. Most of the shopfronts were lovely but inside the wooden floors were uneven and the money was passed from the counter to the office by cables. The assistant would stuff the money and the docket into the cuplike container, screw it into the overhead cable, or into a socket in the wall, pull a cord and off it went to the office returning with a receipt and the change. The pubs had sawdust on the floors and spittoons at strategic points for spittle. IMCO and Prescott’s were Cleaners and Dyers. There was a pawnshop on High Street. I don’t remember the three balls but I’m sure they were there. We lacked nothing then. There were barber shops for men, I don’t recall hairdressers for women and parents cut the children’s hair.

Often on Sunday morning the Connolly Pipe Band would do a practice march around the Town, out the Market Yard, turn left through Temple Street and St. Patrick’s Terrace, down Pound / Connolly Street. All of us would make a mad dash from the dinner table to the front door to watch and listen. One particular lady who lived on the street, clad in crossover and slippers, with a tin basin under her arm, would get carried away with the music, follow the Band with the others through the streets to the Town Hall, and get the potatoes on her way back if the shop was still open.

The Mercy Convent was smaller, with as few as four in the Leaving Certificate then in the mid-fifties. Saint Laurence’s Orphanage and Saint Anne’s Laundry were part of the Mercy Convent, and it must have been well enough managed at that time. Summerhill College was also smaller and packed with boarders, always wearing their blue and white scarves. The Ursuline Convent was posh and also had boarders. There was always a little bit of rivalry between the three second level colleges.

Saint Anne’s Church, Doorly Park and Cranmore were just green fields then, as was Circular Road, Cairns Hill and Maugheraboy. Good walkers walked right around several times a day then and teenagers cycled everywhere. The Cathedral hasn’t changed but the Friary today bears no resemblance to how it looked inside and out, in the fifties. The Mercy Convent, The Ursuline and Summerhill Colleges are bigger and better. The orphanage and the laundry are gone. The Market Yard and Carraroe are thriving. I remember Sligo in the rare old times.