Archive News
Durcan puts Sickeen’s glory days on the map
Date Published: {J}
Imagine a street where everyone knows one another, looks out for each other’s children, a street where cows were milked every morning in one yard and where the local rowing clubhouse is like the communal sitting room.
That was the way life was lived in one particular street called Sickeen in the general area of the city that is widely known as Woodquay.
Though say that to Durcan Forde and he will quickly correct you that Sickeen is not Woodquay, but the heart of Galway City.
In fact the memories of Durcan’s native street are still so vivid to him fifty years later that he decided to put them into a book.
Durcan was baptised Patrick, but was given his nickname by a regular visitor to his home, a name that stuck and that he still uses. He enjoyed every minute of gathering old photographs, putting captions on them and writing his own memories of a street that is no longer the community it once was.
“Everyone on the street knew each other. No door was locked, many were left open in the summer months and the children played in the street like it was their own playground. And it was because there were few cars passing through and it was a safe place in a safe time.”
Durcan, who is now retired and living in Corrib Park where he and his wife Della reared five daughters and a son– all grown up now living their own lives – is thrilled with the positive reaction to the book, Sickeen in the Rare Auld Times.
He now realises that he could have included a lot more photographs and written a lot more, following readers’ reactions to it, some with their own stories of their experiences in Sickeen.
Will he compile a follow-up?
“No, it was something I wanted to do for a long time and it’s done now. It was hard enough doing the one book and I can’t see myself doing another.”
He admits he is nostalgic about a time that is long gone and wishes that communities today couldn’t be more like what it was in Sickeen in the 50s, 60s and 70s.
It was a simple way of life in a place that was then just a town. Just beyond Sickeen, there were green fields, a countryside which was extensively explored by Durcan and his friends.
“We could be gone all day and our parents wouldn’t worry about us because there was nothing to fear in those days. People looked out for one another.
“The idea for the book was in my head for a long time because I would think of the street and all the families in it when I lay down at night.
“In my head, I would go up and down the street naming who lived in each house . . . but the place has changed so much now. My sister, Nora Power, still lives in our old family home and I visit her every Sunday but many of the other families have moved out. The younger people moved out into new estates built in the city. When I got married we got a house in Corrib Park and gradually the families moved out from Sickeen though there are a few still living in their family homes.”
Durcan left school when he was 14, which was the norm, and went to work in Lydons Bakery, which was in High Street then. Durcan remembers a very hot work environment where he slaved on the wash-up for £2 a week.
His next job was with Connacht Minerals in Lombard Street and then a new factory, Steinboch, opened in Mervue and Durcan jumped at the chance of a new adventure.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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