Joy and sorrow on the Barrack Hill

Let the busy world be hushed

Fr Jason Murphy

The wall of the Military Barracks stood tall, casting its shadow over the newly built houses along the incline at the top of the Barrack Hill as the workers in the Bostick factory, walking home after their week’s toil, watched as the finishing touches were being put to the newly-built houses in what was Heuston’s garden.

The year was 1968 and the Palais Dancehall, on to which the houses looked, was in its heyday with all the big bands of the day playing to hordes of young people who came to dance the night away and perhaps meet the girl or boy of their dreams. It was the same year that 10 families moved into the new houses built where once an apple orchard grew - Leonards, Reillys, McDevitts, Ruddens, Kings, Hughes, Carlins, Donnellys, Rowans and Maguires - surnames all so familiar to us now that we can picture the faces of all those who dwelt therein.

All these years later, the families, for the most part, still live along the hill, having shaped the lives of each other for over half a century.

In no. 8 Barrack Hill, the McDevitt family moved in from Sugarloaf. Mr McDevitt was previously a manager in the Savoy Cinema in Sligo in the 1940s and 50s having hailed from Strabane. In 1957, when ill health struck Mr McDevitt and yearning a slower pace of life, he answered an ad in the Irish Press newspaper for the position of a gardener and housekeeper in Brennan’s Sugarloaf House in Belturbet and so it was that he and his wife, Rita, and their six-year old daughter Geraldine moved to the Gardener's cottage on Erne Hill where began their daughter’s attachment to this border town.

Mrs McDevitt kept house for the Brennans as in an Edwardian age and John took good care of the gardens, doing all kinds of odd jobs for them, their little daughter blissfully happy, making new friends as she walked in the road to the Convent school.

After primary school, the McDevitts, thinking they were doing their best, sent Geraldine to St Joseph’s Boarding school in Navan, which in those days seemed an age away from Cavan. They would hire a hackney an odd Sunday afternoon to travel to visit their only daughter.

Whilst Geraldine was at school, her father’s health continued to fail, and her parents gave up their positions and their home to move to Barrack Hill, which her mother used to describe in the beautifully penned letters she wrote each week. She spoke of the stairs and landing, the sitting room with its fireplace and kitchen and moreover the bathroom with running water, which we all take for granted today. Geraldine was filled with anticipation and excitement of the thoughts of coming home on holidays to a new house and her own bedroom overlooking the River Erne.

Down the hill and around the corner, the Kings had moved into number 6 - Tom and Bridget with their family of six near adult children, which included the fourth in line, Tommy. Theirs was a childhood lived about the Railway Station, the River Erne and the streets of the town.

Having received his Confirmation in the Boys school, Tommy joined the factory labour force in the Irish Shoe Supplies with all the other men and women of the town. He, at just 14 years of age, started work with a wink and a nod from the foreman Freddie Bartrum in the stiffeners department, buffering the stiffeners of shoes. The call of the factory horn became a feature of his daily routine, as with the community of young people who looked forward to their wage packet at the end of the week and the price of a ticket to the Palais Ballroom or at the annual factory dance in the summer holidays each and every year.

The two neighbours, Geraldine and Tommy, rarely met as Geraldine had secured a job with Goodbody’s firm of solicitors in Dublin only coming home at weekends and Tommy having joined the ranks of the FCA in Sean Connolly Barracks in Longford where he rose to the rank of sergeant. Though neighbours, they merely passed each other by on the street with a polite hello if by chance both were home on holidays at the same time.

In 1974, Geraldine’s father John died suddenly, which was to change the course of her life as in the weeks thereafter she returned home to care for her mother Rita. She took up a job first with Hangar doors in Cavan and thereafter with the fledging Breffni Aluminium in Belturbet. In 1979, her mother Rita too died, and she was left completely bereft. Geraldine was quiet and reserved but, with a few close friends, she began to navigate the world on her own.

In the early years of the 1980s, Tommy left behind the FCA in Longford and took up employment in Pauwell’s Traffo in Cavan and Geraldine began to notice his passing the gate, more frequently. They rarely spoke until, one summer’s day, he noticed.

Geraldine trying to cut the grass with an old push mower, a relict of her father's. He offered to help but Geraldine being cautious and somewhat reserved, initially refused his offer until they both realised she wasn’t able to do it alone. He mowed the garden for her that evening and each week that followed and, though they had moved in some metres apart some twenty years before, it was only in the by and by that they began to converse at length.

Eventually, after many evenings over the summer of mowing her lawn, Tommy plucked up the courage to ask Geraldine out. Surprised, she mulled over it, night after night until she eventually agreed to meet for a walk, albeit not in Belturbet, for fear of talk and innuendo, but rather on the beach at Strandhill in Co Sligo. They walked and talked on many’s an occasion over the next couple of years until the September of 1990, much to the surprise of many around the town, the two neighbours married, Geraldine arriving for the ceremony before the priest and invited guests, sitting waiting in the front seat of the chapel for her groom to arrive.

So, in the days that followed, Tommy left his mother and moved from number 6 to number 8 Barrack Hill where for near thirty years the two lived quietly but happily together until it was that her beloved neighbour and husband to be, Tommy died prematurely from cancer.

Hers was a mere existence since his passing, a half life lived in his wake, battling grief and illness and reminiscing, until in the days that passed she rejoined the one she had met by chance, of a summer's day as she mowed the lawn of number 8 Barrack Hill to where 10 families moved not knowing what the future might hold.