The photos puzzle fully solved

We got a lot of feedback on these photos which came from Christy Sheridan via Frank Mitchell, writes Brian Byrne. And now today, all the outstanding mysteries have been cleared up by Christy himself.

The occasion was a Seniors outing organised by Christy, who was at the time the chairman of the equivalent of the Senior Citizens Group (the Old Folks Committee?).

"I had previously met with the Mayor of Kilkenny, in McTernans," he recalls, "and I told him that we'd bring a group down. He said to be sure to let him know in advance and he'd meet us officially."

The visit to the Franciscan priest, Fr Andrew, was because Mrs Morris had corresponded with him for a long time and was a great admirer of his work.

When we published this story first some weeks ago, Geraldine Nugent did another bit of her excellent detective work and established the location of the pictures as High Street in Kilkenny, from looking through the Irish Newspapers Archive. Mulhall's Restaurant is now apparently an AIB branch.

She also found from an issue of the Kilkenny People of 1970 that Allen's Ladies Hairdressing, 95 High St, was in business in the city at that time. And that the mayor featuring in the pictures was Thomas Martin who held the office in 1967, 1974, and 1979.

Meantime, with the help of John Brady's super memory, a number of the Kilcullen people in the pictures were identified.

In the top picture are Dick Reade, Gertie Bardon, Fr Tim Murphy, the mayor, Tommy Orford, Stu Murphy (Mrs Conroy's father). The second lady on Tommy Orford's left is Annie Hillis and the grey-haired gentleman behind is her husband George (thanks to Bernie Hillis for that info).

Here are Tommy Orford, Tess O'Rourke, Hal Conway, and Maggie Bathe.

Above we have Mrs Bagnall, Mrs Wyse, Fr Tim Murphy, Mrs Mitchell (Frank Mitchell's grandmother) and Joe McGrath of Kilgowan.

In this one we have Mick Brady, Gertie Bardon, and the two ladies on the right are believed to be a Mrs Nolan and Mrs O'Connor.

In this picture, the woman second from the left is Mrs Fitzpatrick, and (below), the man on the left might be Tommy Kernaghan.

And that about answers all the questions. Many thanks to Christy for giving Frank Mitchell the undeveloped roll of film which kicked off all of this.



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