Castle Street

Bob, Mary and the children lived at number 17, Castle Street, Newry. The street no longer exists, being replaced by the main road through to the Belfast Road, built in the late 1960s. People talk about growing up on Castle St. as being part of an extended family community. For Oliver, it seems to have been a combination of family, poverty, and scary spirits. Banshees wailing on the wall at night, ghosts of medieval monks rattling around, and blood and gore from slaughtered livestock in the back yard.

Bob worked down on the Newry Canal, shoveling/unloading coal from the edges of the holds of the boats that docked at the Basin.

[This is] a ship at Newry, my dad and his friends on the deck to who I brought a milk bottle full of tea at their break time 9:45 to ten. Along with the tea was a soda farell with an egg and a single slice of bacon both of which my mum sent me to get at the shop across the road. The purchase was one egg and a slice of bacon the soda farell was made by my mum. My dad usually broke it into halves, giving his brother Henry one half and he the other. The story goes on, such was my young life.
Oliver, Facebook, July 2016

Bob in the back yard with his pigs, 1960s

My father told stories in our house in Castle Street. Many dockers came to hear his craic on the weekends, the house was full every night: Bone Crusher O’Rourke, Francie Price and many other dockers and other folk, like Jimmy Hutchingson, Christopher Lockarine, Fallons, Crossies, Lundys etc. came for mother’s stew and da’s stories, and a dance in the kitchen – lovely days 🙂
Oliver, Facebook, 2011

My uncle Brendan, the youngest sibling of our branch of the Curran clan, describes life in Castle Street in more specific detail:

Our old house was rented for 1 shilling a week, it had a big wood front door with a round glass at the top, it had a small hall with an inner door. The front door was open from early morning to 11pm. There was a long hall from the inner door to the living room which you always ran down fast at night because there was no light and you were afraid of the ghost getting you.
There was a large room off to the right of the hall which was used for gathering rubbish and where Da mended shoes. To the left of the hall was a rough wooden slat door with a latch out into an entry, which led into the front street by two thin panel doors, and then into the yard where Granda [Bob] and Oliver is in the photo.
There was a cellar under the house beside the water tap in the yard. The cross beam over their head had a bicycle chain where the pigs and sheep were hung, being butchered after being slaughtered. No inside toilet…and no inside water for most of the time, until Da and the boys built a red brick scullery.
The living room/ kitchen was heated by a range that burned coke, there was also a gas ring to boil water. The stairs were at the bottom of the main hall, leading to two stories – 4 rooms in all for 7 boys, two girls and Ma and Da.
We were the first house in the street to have a tv. To make ends meet Bob cut hair, bred pigs, fixed irons, kettles and clocks. The house fell down 3 weeks after we moved out of it.

Notes from Brendan, April 2023

Oliver (l) & Harry beneath the cross beam

Brendan, who in recent years has been writing poetry about his youth, the Troubles, and life in general, includes a reference to Castle Street in The Poor Town in the Valley, which explores elements of 1950s Newry life:

In Castle Street the range is glowing, dissolving mice prints in the pan full of lard,
Mother boiling water on the gas ring, to wash her docker in the yard
Soda bread baking on the griddle, black pudding frying in the pan
The flour and yeast on the griddle is rising now, the end to a long hot stand

(l-r) Oliver(?), Mary, Ma, Paddy, abt. 1952