There was a fireboard (mantelpiece) above the fireplace. Light came from a small window high on the back wall and a larger one in the front that looked over the street to Drummuckavall hill, with its scattering of houses, beyond the river.

A large dresser held a variety of crockery, including cups suspended on hooks and dinner plates on racks.  By the back wall was the settlebed where my parents slept. There was a table and chairs, some stools and a fireside chair. The walls were whitewashed once a year by my father. A horseshoe was nailed above the door.

A step up led to the single bedroom where we children slept. The floor was clay which eroded with every brushing and had to be periodically mended by my father with special dense blue clay that he extracted from a place in an area of scrub and whin bushes nearby.  A single oil lamp and the flickering coal fire supplied the only light during darkness.

On the other side of the lane were five or six large beech trees that overhung the house. On the other side of the adjoining flat field was a clump of tall holly trees, which bloomed red with Christmas berries.

Five other children were born in that house; three girls, Kathleen (1939), Alice (1943) and Eileen (1946). I was the only boy who survived. Two brothers, Owen (December 1947) and Edward (January 1941) died within a short period of birth.  My parents did not talk about them.  Infant mortality was not uncommon in those days, in urban as well as rural areas. It was accepted stoically as the will of God.

My mother kept a few hens for the eggs and my father would occasionally wring one's neck and pluck it for the pot. This fascinated me, the feathers flying in the wind and the other hens clucking and pecking about without a care in the world, oblivious to the similar fate awaiting them when their productive life ended. 

When day-old chicks were delivered from time to time, I couldn't equate the little balls of yellow and white fluff with the large creatures now running about the place.