Sarah Allen

One of the great pleasures of visiting other countries is the occasional opportunity of meeting people from or in some way connected with Athy.  It is almost 30 years since I was first invited to the annual dinner of the Kildare Men’s Association in Manchester.  There I met many born in the shortgrass county who for a variety of reasons left Ireland to make a life in the industrial cities of Britain.  One such person was Sarah Allen, formerly Sarah Bolger, born in what she described to me as ‘an old house’ off Meeting Lane, Athy in 1932.  Her father was Stephen Bolger who worked as a canal boatman towards the latter part of his working life and who was married to Nora Lawler of Ardreigh.  Nora’s father, John Lawler, was one of the many local men who fought and died in the First World War.  He was a reservist in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers having served in South Africa during the Boer War.  He is one of six World War I soldiers who died during that war and are buried in St. Michael’s cemetery, Athy.

 

Sarah Allen, who has lived in Manchester for many years, has fond memories of youthful days spent in Athy.  She recalls picking mushrooms with her mother in Hendy’s field at Ardreigh and being carried in her mother’s arms to see her father while he was working on the sewerage scheme under construction for the houses at Rathstewart.  Sadly her mother died when Sarah was five years old, after which she went to live with her grandmother Lizzie Lawler in Ardreigh. 

 

Sarah, whom I met earlier in the summer when she returned to Athy for her step brother’s birthday celebration, spoke to me of Athy’s past and her abiding memories of bygone years.  Her memories and those of older generations of Athy folk, whether or not now living in Athy, are the stuff of local history.  Their recounted lives and the attendant folk stories allow us to view from a distance the life and lore of past generations which hugely differ from that of the present.

 

Sarah spent one season working in the local pea factory in Rathstewart before leaving at 15 years of age for London.  She was met by her aunt at Euston Station and after a short while got work as a chamber maid in the Royal Hotel, Russel Square.  There she remained for two years, earning 22 shilling per week all found.  Even then Sarah’s sense of responsibility and duty saw her sending home £1 per week to her father who was then out of work.  It was a pattern repeated by so many Irish men and women working and living in England during that post war period.  Lack of employment opportunities in Ireland separated families, while the Irish emigrants of London, Manchester and other industrial centres of Great Britain forged an uneasy and sometimes unwelcoming relationship with the war-torn communities on the British mainland. 

 

Sarah endowed with a social conscience and marked with an admirable sense of responsibility paid a prominent role amongst the Irish community in Manchester for many years.  The Kildare Men’s Association and the Irish Centre in Manchester were but two of the many organisations with which Sarah was associated with over the years.  Now at 85 years of age Sarah has retired from voluntary community work and has time to think back on her life which started in Garden Lane, off Meeting Lane, Athy, extended over some years in Ardreigh before her life experiences were strengthened in the cosmopolitan cities of London and Manchester.

 

Sarah has proved herself as one of Athy’s finest, bringing as she did to her voluntary work in Manchester the cheerfulness, kindness and wisdom of a girl who first saw the light of day in the town of Athy in the south of Co. Kildare.

 

Last week marked the 50^th anniversary of the death of trade unionist and social activist Christy Supple and his anniversary mass in St. Michael’s Parish Church was attended by his sons Joe and Tommy.  I have written previously of Christy and his involvement in the agricultural labourers strike of the early 1920s.  Christy encouraged by William O’Brien of the Dublin based Transport Union, set out early in 1918 to unionise the workers of south Kildare.  The agricultural workers strike of 1922/’23 was an acrimonious affair and attacks on property resulted in Free State troops having to be billeted in the Town Hall, Athy for 8 months from March 1923.  Christy was himself arrested in January of that year and held in Carlow prison for several months.  In 1925 he was elected as a member of Athy Urban District Council, but like so many other men and women had to emigrate to England in later years where he died in November 1967, aged 69 years.

 

Christy Supple’s story is one of courage and commitment to the workers cause but his role in the defence of the agricultural labourers strike of south Kildare is a story which has yet to be written and remembered in his native town.

Manchester Irish (2)

Enjoying Sunday lunch in the Irish Heritage Centre in Manchester with members of the Kildare Association, I was very conscious of the importance of their links with their home County. The Kildare Arms cast in bronze in the Co-Operative Foundry in Athy and presented to the Kildare Association some months ago, has taken its place with the other County Association emblems which line the walls of the Centre.

Last week I mentioned the effervescent and delightful Sarah Allen, whose father Stephen Bolger and brothers Stephen and John live in Athy. Sarah arrived in Manchester from Athy in 1951 but returns "home", as she and indeed all Irish emigrants still refer to their home towns, every year. She is a volunteer with Irish Community Care based at 289 Cheetam Hill Road, Manchester, a charitable organisation which provides support, advice and comfort to Irish in need especially families and the elderly Irish. The Association has a full-time co-ordinator Sr. Elizabeth, and is funded in part by the Irish Government. Sarah tells harrowing and sad stories of Irish men who left Ireland before and after the War years now living alone and forgotten in dingy, squalid conditions in Manchester. As part of her voluntary work she makes weekly house visits on the aged and lonely Irish and occasionally is involved in making burial arrangements for those poor individuals who left their Irish homes in youth and with high hopes but who ended their lives penniless and alone.

On Sunday afternoon Sarah brought me under the "Fenian Arches" which were the site of the Fenian Ambush in 1867 which led to the public hangings of Allen, Larkin and O'Brien. Later on we visited the Martyrs Memorial in Moston Cemetery, now sadly defaced with paint thrown over the carvings on the celtic cross and the sculptured stone figures at the corners of the memorial damaged.

Not too far away from the most famous Irish Memorial in Manchester I saw the grave of an Athy woman, Eileen Berry, formerly Fennell who once lived in the Tan Yard at the back of Herteriches. Her father Jim was well known in Athy in the 1930's and with his wife Polly and his family he lived in a river house boat which he retrieved from the Barrow and placed on stilts in the Tan Yard. Jim worked occasionally on the canal boats and Eileen his only daughter went to England in the late 1930's to take up nursing. Jim and his wife and his two sons Seamus and Fintan were later to join her in Manchester. Eileen married Paddy Berry of Skerries, Athy, but was to die tragically at the age of 26 years and found a resting place in Moston Cemetery near to the Memorial to Allen, Larkin and O'Brien.

There are many other Athy men and women in Manchester some now in their golden years, all part of the great diaspora of the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's. No visit to Manchester would be complete without calling on another Athy man whose popularity in the Irish and English pub scenes is legendry. Indeed Billy Cunningham is so well known that with his group called "The new Athoys" he has issued a number of musical tapes. Every Saturday and Sunday he is to be found in "The Wheat Sheaf" on Oldham Road where the Landlord is a Tuam woman of indeterminate age who has spent almost a lifetime in Manchester. Billy, whose brother Paul and sister Anne live in Athy, left the town in September 1954 after a spell in the Asbestos and I.V.I. factories and two years in the Irish Army. He even spent a couple of weeks on the canal boats where his strength and youthful energy was amply rewarded in loading boats at 13/6 a time. Billy who recently suffered a bout of serious illness is one of the most popular pub acts in Manchester.

The Kildare Irish in Manchester are a close knit community who have never forgotten their home towns or the experiences of their youth. In three days in the Lancashire city of Manchester I
learned more of life in Athy before and after the second World War than I had ever previously known. Meeting Kildare and other Irish people outside their own country is a sharing and bonding experience which leaves me aware of the loss we in Ireland have suffered through emigration.