One punishment detail that fell to prisoners in The Bridewell was to scrub out the Military Barracks across the town.
Public street entertainment of the home-made variety was the norm then. Niall McAteer and John Sweeney who played the accordion at our street dances were our hosts. The venue was the Gas-yard Gates on Chapel Street. Tom McKeown recalls for us his reminiscences of growing up in the Kilmorey St/Chapel Street area in the 1940s. The Bridewell, where the army was stationed during the war, was the largest and most impressive building in our district and the more mysterious for housing those not of our nation – much less of our area. In my life I have many memories but none as clear as the last walk I had with my Dad. He loved to walk and always had his faithful brute “Brandy” by his side. Smuggling reached a peak in the War years. The British enforced a blockade of the ports of the neutral Irish Free State and consequently there were many items available to us in the North that were not for sale in the South. It cut the other way too! Things were not requisitioned there for the war effort. For example they had plenty of cloth and the Dromintee pahvee came into his own. Free soap and buckets!
Chapel Street Dances
Tom McKeown: Introduction
Only SIX plays in Festival!
Prisoners in Bridewell
Tommy Jones’s Last Walk
One, Two, Three nationals
Homecoming
Wartime Smuggling
Free Cod Liver Oil!
Unapproved Roads
Wan Hung Loo
Priestly Power Again
It is because your editor has been a lifetime patron of Newry Drama Festival and has continually afforded free advertising space on this site, that I feel justified in expressing a few serious reservations in advance of this year’s festival launch.
We take political incorrectness to new extremes. The following One, Two, Three, lists are meant for fun and not designed to offend!
I have just spent two wonderful weeks in Newry with my Mum Bridie, as I have done many times during the past thirty-two years. This time was much like any other; the same laid-back time, same views from my bed-room window. The only difference is the size of this wonderful town, I mean city! It is forever growing and the thing we call progress is very evident. All great things and more to come.
Remember the time when every home had a cupboard with a shelf containing the ‘medicines’? These consisted of a bottle of iodine, syrup of figs, castor oil and a packet of Beecham’s pills (or powders).
You can recall the time of the ‘unapproved border crossing roads’? Large signs were erected, with the legend: ‘motor traffic between Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State is prohibited on this road’.
The Hol Ches Mingin Hospital disclaimed responsibility at once.
Indeed Matron seemed almost to gloat about the poor woman’s predicament.
But the powers of the priest of old were much greater than that, as Blind Jimmy McCreesh cud tell ye!
