Telling the stories of the Valley

Construction began on Kilcullen's Valley Park 50 years ago and would result in what is today a much-used riveride amenity, writes Brian Byrne. Pictured above is the concrete pour for the foundation on the ornamental pond feature.

The story of how the Valley came about is worth telling on its own, but there are also many stories about it over the subsequent five decades.

Noel Clare will retell those stories this afternoon in a Heritage Week event, 50 Years of The Valley, a walk and talk beginning at 2.30pm. All welcome.

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Explore Your Archive focus week: GAA medals

Explore Your Archive is an annual campaign that showcases the best of archives and archive services in Ireland and the UK. 

The focus week runs from 21 November, and local woman and retired librarian Mary Orford has compiled a set from the Meitheal of Memories collection and the Main Street Gathering collection.

The subject themes this year are Decisions, Heroes, Tiny, Huge, Fashion, Mythology, Disco,  Family, Animals, and Your Archive. The Diary is publishing one item from Mary's choice each day, today with the late Andrew Nolan's football medals as her Heroes theme.

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Explore Your Archive focus week: Knockaulin Bar

Explore Your Archive is an annual campaign that showcases the best of archives and archive services in Ireland and the UK. 

The focus week runs from 21 November, and local woman and retired librarian Mary Orford has compiled a set from the Meitheal of Memories collection and the Main Street Gathering collection.

The subject themes this year are Decisions, Heroes, Tiny, Huge, Fashion, Mythology, Disco,  Family, Animals, and Your Archive. The Diary will publish one item from Mary's choice each day, beginning with her family one above before the Knockaulin Bar was sold.

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Looking Back: The Young Ones — were you there?

Click on pic to enlarge.

This is a pic from The Bridge of 3 September 1972, sent in by Eugene Brennan. It is captioned 'A youthful group of parishioners taking time out from the festivities in Hotel Keadeen to pose for the Photographer'.

Like Eugene does, I recognise some of the faces. But maybe Diary readers could send in names? And what were the 'festivities'? (OK, we could look up the magazine collection in the Heritage Centre, but that means leaving the office.)

All submissions welcome.

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In Those Days: A picture is worth many memories

Courtesy of indefatigable collector of mid-county memorabilia Joe Murray, this is a grab from an Irish Press in 1932 showing the weir and the rear of Collins's Mill in Kilcullen, writes Brian Byrne. In addition, they show the hillside cottages, which have their own bit of local history.

According to the late Jim Kelly Snr, tailor and historian, an original row of thatched cottages on the side of the hill was demolished around 1900. The historic Ordnance Survey map of 1829-1842 shows those cottages, but they didn't go as far up the hill. The current houses, which are approximately 720 sq ft in area and comprise sitting room, bathroom, kitchen and one bedroom, were constructed soon after the others were pulled down, because they are shown on the OS maps published in 1913.

The weir also has its own story. The late Jim Collins often spoke of how it provided his father with power via a sluice and wheel to run a milling operation that also gave his dad the lifelong nickname of 'The Miller'.

Jim pointed out how his father kept the very rough-built weir in place against the frequent flood waters, reinforcing it with the chassis' of discarded vans, scrap granite stones, and anything else that would help keep the water diverted through his wheel. Many of those worn-out vehicles were vans used by the postman Jim Barber, who lived in the 1930s where the Murphy Design offices are now, and whose transport was always so clapped out that whatever he was driving was usually described as 'The Wreck of the Hesperus'.

Jim also revisited the story of your editor's father, Jim Byrne Jr, who operated a cinema during WW2 in what is now the Town Hall Theatre, among his business interests. With electricity all but unavailable for such uses, my dad organised a generator to be hooked up to Mr Collins's wheel to provide power to run the projector in the evenings. "People would come from as far away as Allenwood because there was nowhere else to see a film," Jim recalled. "And as an added benefit, because the power was coming from my father's mill, I got free entry to the cinema, so I became an authority on Gene Autry, Tom Mix, and all the other cowboy heroes of the time."

The weir was breached in 1947, requiring Jim Collins's father to find a more modern source of power.

Thanks for the pic, Joe, and the memories it revived.

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Podcast: What will we talk about? Remembering Mike Burns

When I heard of the death of former RTE journalist and editor Mike Burns over the weekend, it brought back memories. In fact, I had only been thinking of him recently, wondering how he was. Now I know, at the age of 84, he has doorstepped his way into that great newsroom in the sky. Produced by Brian Byrne.

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Podcast: The Hideout Good Fridays

Good Friday was always a special day in the family pub, The Hideout. Being one of just two days in the year when the pubs in Ireland closed, it was when there was a chance to get things done that couldn't easily be managed during the rest of the year. While there were no customers, the place was always abuzz with activity. Produced by Brian Byrne.

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Podcast: A Risky Childhood

Bardon’s in my memory is a place where us Byrne kids’ best friends lived. Where we played together a lot, mostly whenever they weren’t playing at our house. It was the kind of scenario where the youngsters in families got to know each others’ homes intimately. Produced by Brian Byrne.

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Podcast: Explosive times

Bang! It didn't sound like a shotgun. Besides, people didn't use shotguns in the middle of villages. And fireworks were illegal. I looked at my dad. "Carbide bombs," he said with a grin. Produced by Brian Byrne.

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Podcast: "I've a big file on you."

When two Irishmen happened to meet in a bar in Gibraltar in the 1970s, they unexpectedly closed a circle around separate cinema and liquor licensing matters which had taken place in Kilcullen over more than two decades. Produced by Brian Byrne.

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Podcast: A Ford, and Father and Son

Some years ago, an announcement about bringing in private contractors to try and deal with the chronic backlog in driver testing reminded me of my own first car driving licence. It was very different then. There were no driving tests, no provisional licences. You went into the local council office, paid out £1, and you were street legal. Produced by Brian Byrne.

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Podcast: The Smell of Radio Days

It’s funny how you can still 'smell' memories. Like the mix of battery electrolyte and paraffin, a most distinctive odour that I can still smell in my mind today — the smells in the back of my grandfather's hardware store, and 'radio days'. Produced by Brian Byrne.

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'He paid too much' — Judge

The Irish Civil War only lasted eleven months, ending in May 1923, but it left a terrible legacy in death and economic destruction. The conflict is said to have cost up to £50m, in actually waging the war and in dealing with subsequent compensation claims. But it's the local claims which give an insight into the real money. Produced by Brian Byrne.

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Shoeboxes to the Stars

Shoeboxes were important to us youngsters growing up in Kilcullen in the early 1950s. For their original purpose they had no interest to us at all. It was what they could become. Produced by Brian Byrne.

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Looking Back: How The Hideout began

The internet, social media, the now almost old fashioned newspapers, and ever-present TV chat shows, make becoming a celebrity, or instantly promoting a business, available to everybody. But back at the turn into the 1950s that wasn't at all the case. Produced by Brian Byrne.

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Looking Back: A Red Indian

When Jim Collins gave me a printout of the Irish Motor Directory and Motor Annual 1914-1915, I remembered a red Indian. Nope, not a native American. Nor even a person from the sub-continent. It was a motorbike. I never saw it, but my grandad often talked about it. When I saw the registration number IO 91 in front of James J Byrne's name in the IMD, it kind of came to life. Produced by Brian Byrne.

(Photo by Lars-Göran Lindgren Sweden, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.)

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