Newry News and Irish Fun
The dreadful overcrowded town house conditions immediately after the war [mostly ‘entries’ with many families sharing a single tiny house] is clearly testified to by the list of tenants allocated the first twenty houses of Dromalane Park in 1950.
To this day these are known as ‘The Twenty Houses’ and the family heads, with the number of people in each family were:
The son of the late Dr John McVerry and his wife Eleanor, Peter McVerry was educated at the Abbey primary School and then at Clongowes Wood College. On leaving school he joined the Jesuit Order, secured a science degree at University College Dublin and taught for some years.
He then studied philosophy and theology in the Jesuits’ own school and after his ordination as a priest in 1975 he lived and worked in Summerhill in Dublin’s north inner city. The move to Summerhill was to prove a watershed event. He was galvanised into action to attempt to alleviate the deprivation and disadvantage he witnessed. In 1979 he opened a hostel for young homeless boys aged 12-16 and four years later founded the Arrupe Society to provide care and accommodation for homeless boys. Since then he has opened another three hostels for the homeless and a residential drug detox centre in Co Dublin for homeless drug users.
When he was conferred with an honorary doctorate of philosophy by Dublin City University recently, the President of DCU in his citation said,
‘Few people live to see their name become synonymous with a cause. Peter McVerry is one. For over a quarter of a century he has been a public champion of the young homeless. His is a passionate and tenacious voice for those who lack the clout, the confidence and the means to expose the scandal of young people sleeping rough on the streets of one of Europe’s most thriving capitals.
His ministry focuses on taking care of those whom society would rather forget. He is a vocal conscience prepared to challenge governments, public agencies and an increasingly affluent Irish population.’
Newry Journal is happy to pay tribute to this great man.
In passing we would also like to acknowledge the contribution in a similar field of Newry migrants of past decades such as Sam and Brendan Dowling and especially of Dan Moore. When your editor was in his early youth, he used to marvel at the commitment of this old-time Republican who was prepared to sacrifice several months of his life per year in doing time for the ‘crime’ of carrying the tricolour in the Colour Party of the annual Easter Rising Commemoration in Newry. Few have given a lifetime of service such as Dan – now well into his sixties – continues to do, for to this day he labours all week on behalf of Dublin’s drug addicts.
There must be other Newry greats in the same vein. We would like to pay tribute to them, so please get in contact with us and tell us their stories.
John McAreavey was born at Drumnagally, Banbridge on 2 February 1949. He is the son of Mary and the late John McAreavey and has two sisters and two brothers. He received his primary education at Ballyvarley School and then the Abbey Primary School, Newry. He received his secondary education at St Colman’s College, Newry. In September 1966 John entered St Patrick’s College, Maynooth where in 1969 he finished a degree in modern languages and in 1972 a degree in Divinity.
John was ordained as priest for the diocese of Dromore by the late Bishop Eugene O’Doherty on 10 June 1973. Fr McAreavey returned to Maynooth after his ordination and completed a licentiate in Theology in 1974. He was a post-graduate student of Canon Law at the Gregorian University of Rome from 1974-1978 when he graduated with a doctorate in Canon Law.
From 1978-1979 Fr McAreavey was on the teaching staff of St Colman’s College Newry. In the latter year he was appointed to the Armagh Regional Marriage Tribunal. He became head on the death of Fr Mulvenna in 1983 and held this post until 1991. Meanwhile he had been appointed in 1988 Professor of Canon Law in the Pontifical University of Maynooth. While there he wrote widely on Church Law, publishing in 1997 The Canon Law of Marriage and the Family. He had served on the Editorial Board of the Irish Theological Quarterly from 1998. He is also a member of the Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Canon Law Society of America. Since 1994 he has been secretary of the Greenhills Ecumenical Conference Committee.
Throughout his entire ministry John has been involved in the pastoral care of engaged and married couples. A fluent Gaelic speaker [indeed a polyglot] he is a member of the committee of Col
Myrtle Coghlan’s task on the day her family moved to Dromalane Park was to carry an armchair as big as herself.
This was not unusual as families had very few possessions and neither needed nor could afford to hire private transport. Hand carts were in great demand for a few weeks. With the baby removed, prams were an excellent carriage vehicle for numerous small items.
The Rev Dr Henry O’Neill was 58 years old when he was elevated to Bishopric of Dromore in 1901. He was the third son of John O’Neill of Dromore and had a brother Hugh also a priest. Arthur McCann U.C. J.P. was his brother in law. He entered St Colman’s College in 1857 and shortly after, at the suggestion of Bishop Blake [just featured] went to Maynooth College for further study. In 1867 he was ordained by his predecessor as Bishop of Dromore, Dr Leahy [also featured]. He became President of St Coleman’s, a position he held for a decade. The greater part of the rambling St Coleman’s College of today was built under his stewardship.
In 1886 he was appointed Administrator of Clonallon Parish. There he established a Convent of Mercy – which today acts as a refuge and home for elderly people. The nuns also undertook the education of Warrenpoint’s children.
Throughout his term of office, Bishop O’Neill distinguished himself as an eloquent, zealous and earnest pastor. He was also an esteemed scholar universally admired and respected as a tolerant citizen and a broad-minded, courteous gentleman.
O’Hanlon is a famous and illustrious name in South Armagh and the Newry area. The O’Hanlons were the most notable Catholic family in Newry in the eighteenth century when Hugh O’Hanlon settled in Mill Street.
He was a direct descendant of the ancient ‘lords’ of Orior and the son of Hugh Ruabh O’Hanlon of Killeavy and also a nephew of the celebrated Bard of Armagh, Dr Patrick Donnelly [D.D. Bishop of Dromore 1679-1716].
The highest point in the Fews is in the district of Armaghbrague [false Armagh] in the townland of Carrigatuke [hawk’s rock]. It rises to 1024 feet and was of note even in pagan days …
The Quaternary Period of the last 1.6m years has been marked by Ice Ages which were punctuated each 100,000 years or so by inter-glacials like the one we are presently in.
