Looking Back: The Byrne girls, 1904

Here is a photograph that's quite fascinating to me, writes Brian Byrne, because it is the only known one of five of my grandfather's sisters, all six of whom were older than him.

The context is they are dressed up for the Tea Stall to be part of a Bazaar in Kilcullen in 1904, to raise funds to pay off the £400 then remaining on the cost of building the Kilcullen Parish Church. It must have been a fancy affair, because the Bazaar was opened by the Lord Mayor of Dublin

They are, back, Annie, Sarah, and Bridget (Birdie); and front, Margaret (Peg) and Honora (Nora). The missing one is the eldest, Katherine Agnes, who by that time had married Michael Shortall, a publican in Ballylinan. Their daughter Kathleen (Kitty) later came back to Kilcullen and married Gee Nolan, father of Kilcullen butcher the late Andy Nolan.

I only remember Peg and Nora when I was growing up. They both lived where they always had, beside the family grocery and bar which their father and mother had on Main Street. That is now incorporated into Eurospar. Neither married, nor had Annie or Sarah. Birdie married a John Byrne of Kilgowan, who owned the pub where Walls is now. She died a week after giving birth to their only son, a man I always knew as 'Uncle' Barney, who lives strongly in my memory from his account of being a prisoner of war in Hong Kong and Japan during WW2. I met him twice before he died prematurely in Hong Kong in the early 1950s.

Peg and Nora were running the grocery and bar when I remember them. Peg had been the Kilcullen Postmistress for many years, operating from the building to the right of Nolan's arch and now incorporated into the enlarged butcher's shop. My great-grandfather, a carpenter by trade, had either built or acquired both buildings.

The photograph came to me this week through Nessa Dunlea. It must have originally been in in my family's possession because more recent writing on the back records the background to the picture. It was told to my uncle, Tom Byrne, by the late James Kelly, tailor, in 1978. Mr Kelly died in 1984 at the age of 97, and would have been a contemporary of the Byrne girls.

The other interesting thing about the photograph is the photographer himself, one Harry Andrée, born in Dresden and who gave his occupation in the 1911 Census of Ireland as Master Photographer. At that time he was living in Linden House, Athgarvan, and clearly had been there when he took the photograph of my grand-aunts in 1904. During the period of WW1 he had a photography business based in Newbridge. He later moved with his family to Tottenham in Middlesex, where he had a photographer's studio in the High Street. He died in 1930, and his son, also Harry, continued the photography business in Tottenham.

Final thought: it looks to me like the photograph was taken in the Back Lane, behind today's Eurospar, which would have been behind their home and the family business.

Beat the Virus: Stay At Home. 

Photographs use Policy — Privacy Policy