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Cecil Street: 1 :Frank Hall |
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Written by John McCullagh
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Tuesday, 28 September 2004 |
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Frank Hall, one-time Newry draper and later RTE radio personality recalled his young days in The Valley, Newry’s Cecil Street.
In my time Number 36 – later the home of Mary
McGuigan – just two doors away from our house at Number 40 – was the
residence of Mrs Sally Gamble who sold sweets, sugar, Willie’s bread,
and buns and cakes from McCann’s Bakery in her front room. She also
sold cigarettes, mainly Woodbine that could be purchased singly for a
halfpenny.
Mrs Gamble’s husband Billy lost an arm in
France during the Great War. He owned a horse that had the field
behind our house. He died as a result of fall through the roof of the
Queen’s Theatre that was situated in the loft behind the sweet shop of
Lisa Garland in the first house of Cecil Street, Number 6. I never did
find out where numbers 2 and 4 were.
The family at Number 38 were really a merry
lot. Mr and Mrs Mick Magee had Billy, Dermot, Gerry, Imelda and
Kathleen. Though unemployment was Newry’s principal occupation at that
time, they simply ignored that and made everyone happy.
The sport was mighty on summer evenings on
the pavement in front of the houses. The Magee brothers were without
equal on the French fiddle (now known as the mouth organ). They were
occasionally joined on the flute by Jimmy and Dominick Loughran from
Wilson’s Row, an L-shaped addition to our street that formed an open
football-friendly area. Then only the music of angels could have
exceeded them for sweetness. That’s how I saw it on summer evenings
about half-eight, when the dying rays of the sun fell in a certain way
across Cecil Street.
1 of 2: memories of Frank Hall |
Reminiscence 
