When I was about 10 years old, my cousin, Paddy Reilly who was just twenty two was drowned in a swimming accident. He and two good friends who worked in a sawmill in Armagh were coming back into the city after delivering a load of timber when they…
Road bowls or bullet throwing as it is also called is a game played mostly in Counties Armagh and Cork. It is a game where the 'thrower' has to throw a heavy smooth round ball made of lead over the longest distance along a road without it touching…
With no bathroom in the house the only way of having a bath was to use a tin one which I remember being sat in front of the old Doric range on a Saturday night to get us bathed for Mass the next morning. The said bath is at this moment in time…
All water supplies were from wells. The water was pumped into buckets and carried into the house. As for bathrooms, they were non-existent in country houses, except the grand ones. We had a dry toilet in a little shed about ten yards from the house.…
In the country area where I lived we did not have mains electricity or running water until the mid 60's. Prior to that people had Tilley or Hurricane lamps which were fuelled by paraffin oil and mentholated spirits and had little paper globes and…
My grandfather built the house at Ballyards, Armagh where I lived as a child. He and my grandmother along with their two children, my father Patrick (Paddy) and my Aunt Mary had returned from Scotland where they had lived since after their marriage…
I was born Ita Murphy on 12th of October, 1956, in Carleton Maternity House Portadown, Co. Armagh. My parents were Patrick Murphy, from Ballyards, an Insurance Agent and Sheila Kelly, from Lislea, Ballyards, a Linen factory worker in the nearby…
Even though we were beside the dance halls in the Sq., we didn't go there much. My friend did meet her husband in the National Ballroom. We had plenty of boyfriends in the Legion. We went to plays, pictures and the opera. I had two boyfriends who…
I started my first job August 8th 1949. I reported to the GPO Princes Street and worked there for 3 months. I remember the first day because I was staying with an aunt in Merrion Avenue, Blackrock and not being used to traffic, I had to keep an…
