While on another voyage of rediscovery upstairs recently I found a package of photographs and old negatives.
Some were from the late 1940s and others are relatively new, from 1974 and from the Castleisland confirmation ceremony of that year and a couple of the pictures were there for no explicable reason.
The package I rescued from my parents house before the big clean-out a few years ago.
Barrack Street was the only tenuous connection I could imagine as to why they were in the same envelope in spite of the gulf in their years of origin.
Confirmed by Bishop Casey
The confirmation pictures feature the Hewitt family of Barrack Street. Louise Hewitt and my sister Kate were confirmed by Bishop Eamon Casey back in 1974.
They are still firm friends in spite of the separating force of the broad Atlantic Ocean between them.
The pictures of the O’Reilly and my parents on Barrack Street also came about because of friendship.
Local Stone Cutters
My father served his grocery and bar apprenticeship at Tom Browne’s on Main Street here in Castleisland in the late 1940s and early ’50s.
The O’Reilly’s were the local stone cutters and monumental sculptors who would drop into Tom Browne’s for their sustenance, from their workshop / yard on the nearby Old Church Lane and themselves and my father became lifelong friends.
Rhyme and Reason
I think Barrack Street is enough rhyme and reason for these pictures to have dwelt together in that envelope for so many years and certainly enough for me to publish them here.
If there is anyone out there who can provide further information on any of the pictures featured please do comment or make contact.
