You also had the Meadow Sports Day that would take place in the green between Iveagh Crescent and Slieve Gullion Road. This was before Jennings Park was developed.

Summer days were always an early start because you would have to rush down to Newry Swimming Pool to queue up for the free swimming sessions.  Sometimes the queues would be quite long and many a time you would be queuing up for the nine o’clock session and you wouldn’t get in until ten.

The neighbours I remember back then in the street included:  the Morrows, the Finleys,  Emmett Rafferty the bread man, the Linneys, the Mathers, the O’Hares, McCanns and I remember the McFerrans who used to keep two big Alsatian dogs. When they were let out at night, the street used to empty until the owner took them back in!

I remember Mrs McKigney on the corner of Slieve Gullion Road who always used to give me an apple from this fruit bowl which always seemed to be full - of all the different varieties of fruit - and across on the other corner into Derrybeg Drive you had a woman called Mrs McMillan.

I remember going down the line to catch frog spawn and tadpoles and we would put them in the empty Rover biscuit tins and carry them home and keep them out our back gardens.  They never seemed to last very long!

We left the Meadow in 1975 when I was only eight! This was because we were allocated a bigger four bedroom house with a garage on the Hospital Road looking onto the Camlough Road and facing Derrybeg estate.  The house in the Meadow was only a three bedroom and there was nine of us including our mother and father.

I still came back down to the Meadow for a few years afterwards to play with my friends, including the Mathers family. And we still are very good friends with each other.  I also would come back down to play with my friend Tom Carragher for many years afterwards.

Luckily enough I didn’t move too far away and I always still consider myself a Meadow man and I am glad I still have all the fond memories of the Meadow and the many people who came from that area.

.... 3 of 3 Meadow 1970s memories .....