Call for Main Street memories

Event will be voices and pictures on the pastKilcullen Heritage Group is to hold a 'Memories of Main Street Families' gathering event in August as its contribution to National Heritage Week, writes Brian Byrne.

The event on Sunday 18 August will include a display of family memorabilia and photographs from families who lived on Main Street through the decades before Kilcullen began its expansion to its current size.

And although few actual families live on the street now, the organisers have already put together a list of more than 90 such families who still have people living either elsewhere in Kilcullen itself or further afield, even abroad.

"We're hoping that a representative number will either come along on the day and talk about their families' experiences growing up on Main Street, or send in their stories," says Nessa Dunlea of the Heritage Group, who is organising it along with Mary Orford.

Both of them come from Main Street families — Nessa is an O'Connell and her family operated a shop and a bakery on Lower Main Street. The Orfords operated a pub and a grocery shop.

"In advance of the event, we're issuing an appeal to the families to let us have the loan of appropriate memorabilia," Mary says. "These can include photographs, letters, invoices — many of the families were in business in the town."

Ideally, the exhibition that will come from such memorabilia will use copies and scans of whatever was sent in, so that the originals can be given back immediately.

"The first point of contact for this should be the Heritage Centre, which is open every morning," Nessa says. "We'll have copying and scanning facilities to make sure that there's no danger of losing irreplaceable mementoes."

For the purposes of the exercise, Main Street is being taken as from the entrance to Sunbury (beside the Garda Station) to Hillside as far as the McTernan home on the Dublin Road.

The event in the Heritage Centre will be videographed and the stories told recorded, which will provide an invaluable heritage and historical resource for the future.

This article was originally published on the Kilcullen Page of the Kildare Nationalist.