Luminary of the Arts in Newry, the Music & Orchestral Society and Newpoint Players in particular, Sean Murtagh is one of the earliest residents of Ballinlare Gardens and, with his wife Marie, is thankfully still living there. He afforded us the benefit of his early recollections.
‘I worked then in the Civil Service. Strange – there were many such, professional people, police – well-employed, you could say, who were allocated these excellent Housing Trust homes back in the ’50’s and ’60’s. By contrast ‘Council’ house allocation then was more ‘political’, shall we say, more open to award by ‘influence’.
I recall we had to pay a deposit to guarantee ‘respect’ for the house’s fixtures and fittings.
It was August 1953 when my wife and I were first allocated a flat in
Those were (ARE) very good three-bedroom flats. We lived there for nine years during which time the houses on the east side of
The Meadow was designed as a varied but integrated estate, the flats catering for smaller family groups, single professionals, childless couples, the retired and so on. The principle was good – indeed is followed to this day. The reality rarely lived up to this. The common public entrance created an unforeseen problem when non-residents encroached, and children included it as part of their wider play area.
The result was that through all the succeeding decades, there were few long-term residents of these flats on
Marie and I raised our family, since 1962, here in
I’ll tell you now about our good neighbours in Ballinlare Gardens.
… more …