Archive (1372 life histories found)

From about age 13 - 16, I spent a few summers picking strawberries for a local farmer. The wages weren't good but the craic was great and many new friends were made. The man who recruited the young ones from our area sometimes picked us up in a small…

I started Nurse training on 10th March 1975 at Craigavon Area Hospital - Southern Area Group School of Nursing. There were almost fifty in our intake, girls and fells from both sides of the border, mostly from Armagh, Monaghan and Louth. I made many…

The Embassy Ballroom in Castleblayney, Co. Monaghan was a very popular attraction for the young people from just north of the border like myself. That is where I met my husband Mickey in 1980 and where a lot of people I know met their future…

I recall one bright summer evening when I was about thirteen, my mother, sister Eilish and myself watching my brother Aidan who was about seventeen at the time heading off to a Carnival about three miles up the road to hear Roy Orbison. I wouldn't…

At age fifteen/sixteen I went with my sister and our friends to guest teas and small local dances ran by football clubs. The guest teas consisted of tea and sandwiches and other savoury items plus cakes, buns etc and after the food was eaten the…

After primary school I attended The Sacred Heart Intermediate school in Armagh for a year and passed the review examination which meant I could go on to the Grammar of the Sacred Heart the following year. My best friend Leontia Nugent did the same…

I remember one day at the school when I was in one classroom of the old building and Patsy was in the other a great din broke out outside and the teacher and the bigger boys ran out to see what was happening. It transpired that my father who had come…

As children we all attended Lislea Primary school which was situated about two miles from our house, on the Ballyards road. The quickest way to get there was by taking a shortcut through a nearby farm, Nicholsons, which had an existing lane from the…

If we were too long away from home or didn't go back for our lunch etc. my mother would blow a pea whistle which she had and believe me it was shrill and it could be heard by all the neighbours who would know it was Mrs. Murphy's whistle. After long…

I don't think I had ever met a child whose mother was dead until after 1964 when a family of seven children and their father came to live in the farm across the road from us. Tommy Loughran was a hard working man whose young wife had died about a…