John Dowling, for whom property is personal

When Kilcullen auctioneer John Dowling is interested in something, he goes at it full tilt, writes Brian Byrne. He was interested in flying, so he took training as far as flying and landing a plane solo. "In another life I would have liked to be a pilot ..."

He likes hill walking — "there's no better way to clear the head" — and he has trekked to the base camp of Mount Everest. Knowing the dangers of walking even our local hills and mountains, he got involved with the Dublin Wicklow Mountain Rescue Team in 2008 — and climbed Mont Blanc in 2011 as part of a fundraiser for that organisation.

He likes cars, as models and pictures of race cars in his office suggest, and his personal transport today is the latest electric car from a German brand with a strong sporting heritage.

And the recent marking of 21 years of Dowling Property is a celebration of making a successful career in a business in John's own home town, which was a small village when he began it. 

John trekked to Everest Base Camp.

Perhaps it was inevitable that he would go into business for himself, as his parents John Joe and Noreen were business people in their own right and in their heritage. "I suppose I became interested in property when working in the family newsagents shop," he recalls, "and knew people coming in to pay rent on a couple of properties around town that my parents owned. What I was seeing in a small way was what is today called property management."

After leaving school, and following a few years in the Irish Defence Forces, John chased up that interest by taking an apprenticeship with Douglas Newman Good in Dublin. He studied for the various qualification exams and worked for a time with DNG when his apprenticeship was over. But the call to be working for himself was too strong, and in 2002 he set up Dowling Property in the same Main Street building where he had grown up.

Two things were going for him, one national the other local. "Though the Celtic Tiger wasn't yet in full roar, property prices were getting strong in a growing market. In Kilcullen itself, finally getting the village connected to the county sewerage system in 2001 meant that it could grow for the first time in decades. There were several developments ready to get going."

Over the last two decades, in spite of the ups and downs of the economy — especially the sudden death of the Celtic Tiger — Kilcullen did expand, and will probably have seen a doubling of its population over the period when the latest Census local population figures come out. Now a town, it became, and remains, a place where people want to come and live. "It's a great location, close to Dublin, beside the natural park of The Curragh and within easy distance of amenities like the Wicklow mountains ... as well as being built on the river." That popularity has resulted in Kilcullen being a relatively expensive place to buy a home. He doesn't see that changing, in part because the opportunities for further large developments are constrained.

Mary Foley and Amanda Kelly.

Meantime, looking back on his 21 years of Dowling Property, he attributes much of the success to his office team of Mary Foley and Amanda Kelly, and to the experience he gained in dealing with people while working as a teenager in his parents' shop. "Dealing with the public is hard, and you learn that whether serving in a shop, or a hairdressers, or a bar. What I learned then I would have used later whether I was selling cars or houses."

The underlying result of what John calls 'education by the public' was developing the personal touch that, even in the much more high-tech internet-focused property business of today, is still, to his mind, essential. And it is more than just the ability to get on with people — in managing a transaction that is recognised as one of the most stressful things in a person's life, a good estate agent is someone who can take a client through it safely and with empathy.

"People sell their homes, or buy homes, for lots of reasons. It's not always about money, sometimes there's a change in the family situation, it might be a job move or a separation, maybe a bereavement. Whatever, there's going to be stress, and it's an important part of my job to help people through it. People selling their most expensive possession need to talk to someone, they need someone to take their hand and lead them safely through the process. And it doesn't matter how pretty everything looks on the internet, people will not actually buy until they have physically walked through a house with a person who can answer their questions." 

An estate agent also has to manage clients' expectations on values. "Everybody selling their house thinks it is worth more than it actually is," John says with a wry smile. "In the end, it is the market which decides, and I have to agree a reasonable price to set. Then the client's neighbour will often tell them the price is too low, because the neighbours themselves have a higher expectation than realities."

But it's that kind of daily interaction with people that has John Dowling looking back with a quiet satisfaction on his career choice so far. Ask him if he still likes it, and after a tiny hesitation — maybe momentarily thinking of that other above the clouds option — the answer is a strong 'yes'. "I'm out and about every day, meeting new clients, arranging viewings, negotiating. No days are ever the same."

There are some things that need to be changed though, and he specifically cites the inordinate length of time it can take for a house sale to be completed in this jurisdiction compared to others. He blames 'legacy legal' issues for part of what is without doubt one of the biggest stress issues for his clients. "We need legislation to shorten it."

For dealing with the current housing shortage, he's not a fan of how social housing was 'handed over' to the private sector decades ago. "We need more social housing. And we need it to be provided through local authorities. Look at Kilcullen — the last Council housing estate built here was Avondale, in the early 1980s. When the country didn't have have an arse in its trousers, they built Nicholastown in 1945, then Logstown, Conroy Park, St Brigid's Avenue, and Avondale." Explicit in his commentary is that councils should revert to having their own direct building programmes, to bring back the necessary balance in housing provision that would meet local needs. "They should go back to building their own houses. They have the land, and they should never give that land to private developers."

But that is someone else's job. Someone else's shift in policy that he can't do anything about. So now, beginning the count to whatever will be the next big anniversary for Dowling Property, John Dowling goes on doing what he does best. For him, property is personal.

Getting away — hill walking in Wicklow.

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Hitting the Stardust notes

Noeleen Eston and Joe O'Neill.

While Noeleen Eston is familiar to her many customers as Kilcullen's postmistress, it may be that only a few of them know of her double life, writes Brian Byrne.

Because when she's not working behind her counter, she's quite likely to be on a stage somewhere, singing with Joe O'Neill under his famous musical family's 'Stardust' banner.

It's a pretty new departure for Noeleen, who became engaged to Joe last year. "I sang a song at the family's 'October Seis' a couple of years ago, and they said I should do more," she says. "So now Joe and I, and his brother Kevin when he's available, perform regularly in Laois, Carlow and Kildare."

Stardust don't do pubs, but they are familiar performers in ballrooms, hotels and clubs in the region. Joe and Noeleen have recently taken up a residency in the Crookstown Inn on Sunday nights, which has started adult dancing sessions.

Other regular slots include the Manor Hotel in Abbeyleix, Eire Og in Carlow, and Napper Tandy's in Stradbally. "We also do weddings, and any kind of parties and functions. And since Joe took early retirement from Kildare County Council, we do a lot of nursing homes entertainment during the week."

Noeleen can take the time because she has her sister Colette and her daughter Natasha helping out part-time in Kilcullen PO, a sub-branch which she took over at the end of 2005. Previously she had worked in Newbridge PO for nine years, and on the Curragh for three. It's very much in the family blood, as another sister runs the PO in Athboy, and for a time Noeleen also operated the sub-office in Kells, Co Meath.

"I originally worked as an instructor in the clothing trade, working contracts for Forbhairt and FAS in companies to show them how to operate more efficiently. But when the clothing trade died, I was fortunate to be able to get into the Post Office because I had previously worked in the service."

Stardust is a long O'Neill family tradition in Athy. Joe's father, also Joe, was the leader of the Stardust Orchestra which performed at dance venues all over the country during the 1940s and 1950s, alongside the greats like Mick Del and Maurice Mulcahy. Joe Snr also founded the St Joseph's Boys Band and later the CBS Brass and Reed Orchestra. When he died in 1989, he left a large family of musicians to carry on the musical work.

Every October, the family commemorates Joe Snr by holding an October Seis weekend in some part of the world where one of them lives. The proceeds go to a charity nominated by the member who organises it. Since 2006 the Seiseanna have been held in Cavan, Tewkesbury in the UK, New York, Naas, Westport and Athy.

This article was first published on the Kilcullen page of the Kildare Nationalist.

Pauline Fagan, Poet

"I couldn't see anything, but I heard this voice and it was an experience of pure music."

The first time Pauline Fagan heard Seamus Heaney speak, she couldn't see him because she was at the back of a crowd of people in Boston College. And she didn't understand all the words, because she was only seven years old. But ever since she has loved poetry.

(This is the latest in the series 'People of the Holly Bush'. Read on here.)

Fr Paddy says 'trust the laity'

When Fr Paddy Ryan leaves Kilcullen at the end of the month, he will, in his own words, be bidding farewell to a community which he says provided him with an 'enriching experience' over the past three years.



But he in turn has enriched Kilcullen, as evidenced by the wide range of people with whom he has interacted both in his pastoral duties and leisure time.

He will be remembered for being open to ideas, for his gentle way of listening, for his work with the elderly, the sick and housebound. And also with the families of the community both old and new, and the young people. In short, Fr Paddy has been a priest for the whole of Kilcullen. His ability to be so reflects a life in the priesthood which was for the most part a challenge.

Read more »

Mark and Alisha well settled in Brannockstown

"I've never felt more at home, with the church, with the Brannockstown community, with the whole area."

Pastor Mark Hamblen and his wife Alisha have been in Ireland just three years, and have been associated with Brannockstown Baptist Church for around two of those. But, no more than they have made their own impact on their new community, the people of their church and their adopted village have equally affected them.

Mark was told by someone that he had 'big shoes to fill' when word came that he had been asked to take over the position vacated by Robert Dunlop. "I haven't even tried," he says with a grin. "But the graciousness and support which Robert showed towards me has been a great help."

Living in Athy at first and working as a 'public supply' pastor with a church in Newbridge, as well as with the drugs rehab group Teen Challenge, Mark had preached occasionally in Brannockstown during the early part of 2008.

"I realised that I wanted the position there, and I prayed specifically for it," he admits. "But I didn't want to ask straight out. I wanted to see if they would come to me, that way I'd know we were playing on the same pitch."

Which is what happened. There were meetings with individuals and families in the Brannockstown Baptist community. There was a bit of mutual getting-to-know-you, and then the hoped-for request came.

"It was different to some of the places where I had been back home. This time we knew the people, they knew us. And what happened here was just brilliant."

Mark recalls that he and Alisha 'hit the ground running' when he took up the position at Brannockstown. It has been a busy time, especially with the complete renovation of the church building itself being the major task of 2009.

"We have also established a new monthly evening service that is totally different from the ordinary one. It's dark, with candles and is very informal. The extraordinary thing is that things like this were embraced by the community with absolutely no issues. For instance, having me just sitting on a stool in casual clothes, with the pulpit removed for the evening service ... I have been in churches where that kind of thing would have been a big problem."

Included in the renovation was 'turning the church around', physically reversing the way people sat. "Which actually was how the church was originally, so we were only going back to that."

There's more music too, and the organ has been replaced with a digital piano, another move which has been easily accepted. "We have other musicians too, including some who hadn't played together before, so we regularly have violins and flute in addition to the piano."

The Baptist community in Brannockstown is growing too, with six new families added last year, and two babies on the way. "I find it more diverse than other churches I have been with. We don't seem to have any people in their 40s, or teenagers, but otherwise it's quite varied. And the families are always doing things together -- there are very strong connections."

But what the Hamblens find absolutely charming is something Mark describes as a 'unified energy'. "It is just amazing. When we were doing the renovations, different people would just turn up on different days, and put in 12-hour stints of work. I never asked how they got the time, who looked after the children, they just came."

Mark made it clear from the beginning that the renovations were not just about the church community itself, but that the building would be a resource for the whole community of Brannockstown. And that's how it is already turning out to be. "The local school used it for their Christmas carols, with around a hundred children on stage and as many parents watching. I never thought that 200 people could fit in that church."

Mark acknowledges the help that came from other Baptist congregations in the area, and he looks forward to a future where Brannockstown's resources will be used to give back to them.

The Hamblens were aware that coming to Ireland would be a bit of a culture change, and it was so. But in a good way. "I guess I came with a 'check-list' expectation, that we would be straight into the work of church just as I would have back home. I thought that I would be 'growing' as many people as I could, as fast as I could. But I found that it is much more about relationships, about examining things that we need to take care of. And we found that interactions are longer here, that an invitation to lunch is not just a half-hour and then leaving before you feel you have outstayed your welcome."

Turning 40 this year, Mark also found that coming to Brannockstown gave him and Alisha an opportunity to reflect on their own church beliefs. "We spent a lot of time, many late nights, just talking. I was able to try and sort out what parts of my faith were cultural and what parts are authentic. It has been a time of pruning, of cutting away a lot of things that are not really part of our faith."

Against his experiences in his homeland, which for many years embraced the concept of 'mega-churches', the Brannockstown Baptist community reflects something which he feels there is a discernable returning to. "I think that people want community, and they're trying to get back to it."

Although there is a general air of crisis in most churches, Mark doesn't spend much time thinking about it. "What I do understand is that most people believe in a higher power, and most people want to live good lives. They may want to kick against structures, and against performance, but there's no shortage of spirituality. Just look in any bookstore, and the section on the subject is huge."

For the coming year, there's no physical project, which means that Mark and Alisha can give some time to building on the relationships which have already become such a part of their life in Brannockstown.

After all, that's what church, any church, and all of life is, isn't it? People.

Brian Byrne.


This article originally appeared on the Kilcullen Page of the Kildare Nationalist.

Exiting the Labyrinth

"I was 22 years old, and Idi Aman had just been ousted, and I thought that everything in Uganda would be OK."

And how wrong could Jo Wardhaugh have been? Not realising that the deposing of a despot in an African country was just a stage in ongoing violence, the newly-qualified nurse left Edinburgh in 1980 to do 'just a couple of years' with a volunteer missionary group.

It was to be the beginning of a 17 years journey through three African countries in which she saw horrible violence, worked with some of the most deprived people on the planet, and came out of it suffering the same level of post-traumatic stress disorder as soldiers on a battlefield.

Jo, who married Kilcullen man Matt Doyle almost five years ago, has now recorded her story in a book, 'Labyrinth through the Elephant Grass', which will be launched in Kilcullen's Town Hall Theatre tonight, Wednesday 6 August, at 7.30pm.

Landing in Uganda, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, Jo was immediately posted to a hospital run by Italian and French doctors in Gulu, in the north of the country.

"I was immediately appointed nurse tutor, as the previous one had just left after an assassination attempt," she recalls wryly. "She was from Idi Amin's tribe, and there was a lot of tribal violence going on."

Her stint there was just two years, but against the background of another coup and 'elections' which brought in another president, Milton Obote, it was an experience that changed her utterly.

"We went through two hijackings, a lot of shootings, our compound being attacked, and the results of horrendous atrocities coming in to the hospital day after day." Jo recalls one day during the election when a group of soldiers burst into her classroom and marched all her students away at gunpoint to vote for Obote.

"From that point, everything changed for me. I became much more serious in myself. I had come from carefree girl with a hunky dory fun life to a place where it was all about life and death, with wondering who was going to survive a night and who wasn't."

One particularly violent incident, when a man was murdered right in front of her, is the core incident in Jo's book. "It drew me into myself. I ended up praying more, looking at life from a different angle. My early idealism actually became stronger."

At a crossroads about what to do with her life, and influenced by the work of a group of Irish Franciscan nuns in Kampala who were also in the middle of the bombings and shootings, she eventually joined the order.

"I went home to Scotland first, and found that I didn't fit in any more."

After doing a midwifery course in Drogheda, she returned to Africa. "At the time the Ethiopian famine was at its height, so I went out there amid all the horrors of a communist system that wouldn't admit there was a problem even when their people were dropping like flies in a meningitis epidemic."

Working as midwife and with under-five children was hard. "There was a lot of walking from clinic to clinic, there were a lot of maternal deaths, women bleeding to death in the ditches while trying to get to the clinics."

After three years of that, Jo got sick herself and was brought back to Ireland. She did a year-long spirituality course and then went back out to Africa, this time to Kenya, to city slums and street children and AIDS.

"I spent six months walking around, meeting eight-year-olds sniffing glue all day, and older drug addicts. I ended up starting a programme where they could tell their own stories in a group situation and in so doing come to a realisation that often they actually had choices in their lives."

Jo carried out that work for some four years, with positive results. But through it all she was conscious of a nagging 'pain' inside herself, which she couldn't figure out. On a renewal course in the US, she was able to finally pinpoint the reason.

"It was survivor guilt, over that man who was murdered in front of me all those years before in Uganda. And I saw then that so many missionaries suffered from similar post-traumatic stress disorder. We had deadened ourselves to cope, to keep going, while our vitality as development workers, as missionaries, was fading."

Although she did go back briefly to Africa, Jo finally left the religious life and came back to Ireland. "I left the order so that I could remain healthy, otherwise I knew I'd be going right back into the same thing again. I knew by then that trauma disconnects us from our family and our culture, and I realised that I couldn't go through that again. At a very dark time during my renewal course, I had made a sort of pact with the man whom I had seen being murdered, that I would survive -- in his memory, if you like."

Today she helps the Irish Missionary Union, facilitating workshops for returned missionaries, helping them 'debrief'. To tell their own stories as an aid to their own healing and revitalisation.

Writing 'Labyrinth through the Elephant Grass' was a healing experience. "It made me realise that not everything about my life in Africa was dark. I found humorous stories as I wrote. Maybe it is the kind of dark humour that you only find in those kind of situations."

The writing was its own journey, in which she found that there had been sometimes painful choices to make, but that there were choices which brought new life.

Brian Byrne.

Paddling through memories

Paddy Maloney became interested in canoes because he had a family of six and 'didn't want to see them running around the roads every night'.



"The only other things we had were a boxing club and a tennis club, and they weren't interested," he recalls. "Then I thought that we have a fine river here, and maybe I could use that?"

Swimming and fishing were all that the river had been used for, but Paddy figured there was an opportunity for using boats of some kind. So he began construction of a canoe, in a store behind Jim Byrne's pub, The Hideout.

"I remember Jim Byrne Senior came up to have a look one day and he said it would never work. And in a way he was right, because when I finally launched it in the river it would capsize all the time."

The problem actually was simple. Paddy had put the seat high up and the craft with an occupant was top heavy. "Eventually I realised this and put the seat low in the boat and it worked fine."

He didn't realise it at the time, but this effort to keep his lads off the streets was the genesis of a Canoe Club which was to prove to be very competitive as the sport grew in Ireland, even to providing a several times Olympics paddler, Brendan O'Connell. Paddy was guest of honour at last weekend's dedication of the state of the art new clubhouse built by the developers of Market Square.

Now 88, he recalls how he built several more versions of the finally-successful boat, and organised the first of regular regattas along a stretch of the Liffey close to the town. "We had great times, with crowds lining the bank. We got 6d a head from them going in the gate."

Paddy was a carpenter by trade and his early constructions were made by stretching cloth over a light wood frame. "The cloth was ticking, used for covering mattresses, with a couple of good coats of oil splashed on it."

The 'clubhouse' for the embryo club was a lean-to of galvanised sheeting. Later they bought a piece of land from the late Joe McTernan and began a construction programme which eventually resulted in a safe storage area for boats and a slipway.

"One early club member was Jock Kelly, who worked on the Curragh and was a very good canoeist. He'd come along in the evenings with a couple of lads and they had their own boat which was called 'Katy Daly' after a popular song from the time."

Paddy was still into constructing boats, and had moved from ticking to canvas. But even with the stronger material, the craft were vulnerable to damage in the shallows.

"I decided to try and make one in fibreglass. I knew what I wanted, I knew I had the ability, but the material was the problem. So I went to Thompsons in Carlow, who were making pleasure boats for the American market from fibreglass, and they agreed to supply me."

The fibreglass-hulled boats which Paddy eventually put in the water in the early 60s were the first of their kind in Ireland. He considered making it a full-time business, but there really wasn't enough work to support him.

"It was very successful in its own way, but unfortunately I had to go back to work or leave my family hungry," he smiles.

Paddy was always curious and inventive, and after the canoes he took an interest in a completely different kind of vehicle which gave him a profile right across the country.

"I built a hovercraft. I used a lawnmower engine for power and a balloon underpinning. I remember one day I took it across to the Curragh and while I was driving it on the grass around Ballymany, a military jeep came up alongside me and pulled me over. These MPs with guns pointed surrounded me, very curious about this strange vehicle on their territory!"

The hovercraft could also ride on water, and in one of the early versions Paddy gathered a crowd as he drove it down Kilcullen's main street. "To get away from them I drove it into the water at the square and travelled on up the river," he remembers.

Paddy never lost his love for the river. For years after he'd taken a back seat in the club he would still be found paddling up and down the Liffey, often in the company of a pair of swans which he would feed on a regular basis.

He's very pleased with the new premises, about which the late Pat Dunlea consulted with him in the planning. "It is amazing, and with the floating dock it is state of art," he says, adding that with Kilcullen's recent development there is scope for a whole new era in the club's history.

Brian Byrne.

Sixty-five years on the last

Ask anybody in Kilcullen who Hugh Peacocke is, and the basic answer is 'The Shoemaker'. But the man who has just completed 65 years of mending and making shoes is an awful lot more.

He's been a champion boxer. Billiards player. Accomplished golfer. Award winning Bridge player.

Bionic man, even?

Yep, that last too. There aren't many people who can claim to having had five hips replaced, and two shoulder joints.

And at 79 Hugh can still be seen every day walking a regular circuit around Kilcullen. Also, he doesn't miss when he aims a hammer at a nail picked into a shoe's leather sole.

This year the Peacocke sign on Kilcullen's Main Street represents 50 years of Hugh's shoe repair business. Between himself and his son Ger they have 98 years of making and repairing shoes.

The shoe business is a major essay in itself, from the time Hugh's widowed mother got him and his twin brother Will jobs in the local National Slipper Company in Naas at the age of 14.

"Our father died when we were ten, and though I'd already got a scholarship to go on further in my education, times were tough and we both had to go to work," Hugh recalls. "The company then moved to Dun Laoghaire because they couldn't get enough workers in Naas."

Hugh and a number of other Naas employees moved with the business, and he became a foreman in the company at the age of 18.

While in Dun Laoghaire he became interested in boxing, and joined the Corinthians Boxing Club. The card with his club membership contributions is a valued item in his scrapbook of the boxing days.

It was boxing that brought him to live in Kilcullen. In tandem with his courtship of his wife Sheila, whom he met when he moved back from Dublin to work with the famous Tuttys shoemakers in his native Naas.

"Sheila was working in the office in Tuttys, and lived in Kennycourt on the Dunlavin Road out of Kilcullen. When we got married we went to live in Ballymore first, and I got involved in training at the local Boxing Club. But I was asked to come to Kilcullen to spar with Colm McCoy, then probably the best boxer in Ireland and who went on to box in the Olympics."

The deal brought the Peacocke family to live on Hillside in Kilcullen, from which home Hugh began his own business in shoe repairs on a part-time basis. Some time later, while paying billiards with Kilcullen acquaintances, the possibility of his setting up a proper shoe repair shop was mooted.

The current Peacockes business premises was bought for £75, beaten down from an initial £80. Hugh wasn't going into a sure-fire proposition though, as there were already three well-established shoe repair operations in the town.

"But I put them all out of business," he recalls. "I gave my customers a one-day service, which wasn't usual. It meant that I worked all hours, but people got their repaired shoes back the following day."

Hugh was kept very busy in shoe repairs, but he had been trained in Tuttys as a maker of shoes and he wanted to do more of that. "I brought in somebody I had worked with in Tuttys, and gave him the repair work. That left me able to do more making."

His shoe and boot making expertise quickly became famous not just in Kilcullen, but across the country. His customers included the late Charles Haughey, then Taoiseach; and a bunch of aristocrats who included the Lords Waterford, Hemphill, and Killanin. There were also many locals who appreciated Hugh's real leather work of those day.

Like most people who work for themselves, Hugh Peacocke didn't take the luxury of retiring at 65. Not that he might have wanted to anyway ... which is maybe why he has reached the age he has, and is still able to hammer a nail unerringly to where it should be in the leather sole of a premium quality shoe.

Brian Byrne.