Archive (10 life histories found)

My Father wrote an account of his time in the first world war. He didn't talk much to us of his experiences, but he retired from Guinness brewery with chest ailments, which we attributed to gas inhalation from his time there. He died at 82 years of…

Around this time a new street game gained popularity. Somebody discovered that if you mixed Sodium Chloride (at that time a common weed killer) and sugar and placed it in a lead pipe with both ends hammered shut, then built a small fire around it you…

My second experience in the canal was not so much a swim as a wading exercise. I was in North Strand Technical School. The journey from my house to the school took me along the banks of the canal from Jones Road to North Strand. One day in early…

Leaving primary school age was twelve and a half or thirteen years, some went on to secondary school, others went straight into the work force. Economic necessity in many families in the middle 1950s dictated that all who could, contributed to the…

I was one of the lucky few to progress from Johnstown primary school to secondary school. It was only after free secondary education was introduced in the mid - 1960s that secondary schooling became an option for a majority of primary school leavers…

I went to a big Girls' High School surrounded by a big high wall. I used to go to school in a school bus where there was a lady attendant who looked after us that we were comfortable and not any fight.I was an above average student and working hard…

A photo of Mary Dynan with her secondary school friends. Mary is first on the left of the second row.

In 1954 I was bundled off to boarding school in Castleknock in Dublin. The choice of school was determined by the fact that I failed the 11+ thereby disqualifying myself from secondary schooling in the North. My parents discussed in detail the…

These are the people who started secondary school with Mary Dynan in Kilkeel on 3rd September 1947. They met together for their school reunion in the Europa Hotel in Belfast on 3rd September 1997 to mark 50 years since they first met and to share…

A photo of Mary Dynan with school Pioneer Council, 1951. Mary is first on the left of the second row, she made the banner.