Times Past: changes and sameness
Dating it is an interesting exercise. The cars parked in front of the parochial house would suggest mid- to late 1940s or early 1950s. The piece that can be seen of the Girls School shows the entrance door to the right of the window that was the Infants and High Infants classroom when I started there around 1950 (boys and girls studied together until after First Class), and afterwards moved across the road to the Boys School.
At the Boys School the toilet block can be seen in front of the two gable windows, and to the left in the top corner of the school field is the teachers' toilet. Where latter the sticks used to slap us with were stored to 'season'. Any poor unfortunate on whose hand the stick broke was sent over there to get a new one. On the school side the original row of cottage homes have since been replaced by the neater ones there today.
Across from them, in what's now the front part of the church car park, there's the priests' garden, and also a small orchard which attracted many boys to rob apples at the appropriate season.
The three trees in front of the church have obviously been severely cut, and there's no sign of the grass lawn that is today in front of the parochial house. Running along the border of the church/parochial house property is the laneway up to the old boys' toilet block for the Girls School, the facility already a ruin.
Along the road from the parish property, Nolans Yard is pretty well the same as it is today. Back on the other side of the road, there's the sloping field that would in time become the east end of the Valley Park, and the route of the mass path to New Abbey through the fields is clear. Paths through the green rushes to the 'headland' at the mouth of the Mill Stream can also be seen.
On the other side of the river there's a dwelling, and an apparently very productive garden from the amount of drills in the earth. Behind them, O'Connell's Field, with the hay saved and cocked, so it may be late August or early September. And finally, from the shadows on the buildings, it was likely around lunchtime when the airplane on a photographic odyssey passed over.
Does that all ring a bell with anyone of my vintage?
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