In Market Street on January 15 2024
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A Mail Van
Photo and text shared on Facebook by Baily’s Corner
“For Beautiful Scenery See Kerry”. A Bedford KZ P&T van which would have been built locally here in Kerry! Patrick Hegarty was a mail van contractor, operating under contract to the Department of Post & Telegraphs (hence the P&T logo on the van). P. Hegarty, Killarney. Phone 55.
He operated daily from Killarney to Waterville via Kenmare & Parknasilla. The Postmaster in Killarney, as nominee of the P&T, held a licence under the Road Transport Act 1932 for a passenger service on the route, so the contractor was allowed carry passengers.
Pic: Roy Marshall – The Bus Archive
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Pillar Postbox
I hope the missing collection time notice is just a temporary accident.
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Oh for the days of the Kerry Dances
Text from Martin Moore on Facebook
A story from North Kerry. Martin Moore
There is a long tradition of step dancing in North Kerry, and this continues, thanks to dedicated masters such as Jimmy Hickey of Listowel.
The earliest known dancing master was Thomas Moore, known locally as ‘Mooreen na Rinnce’.
Other exponents of this style were Ned Walsh, Jerry Molyneaux, Phil Cahill and Paddy White.
Paddy White was from Bedford, Listowel and at a Feis in Listowel in the summer of 1915, he took first prize in the jig, reel and hornpipe and followed this with the same award for dancing ‘the blackbird’. The newspaper then incorrectly recorded him as ‘D White’.
Paddy lived a long life, and was still dancing when I was a garsoon!
This is all the more amazing considering how his dancing days could have ended on New Years Day 1921.
That evening some neighbours were playing cards at Bedford and they dispersed on the approach of lorries of Crown Forces.
Paddy and Edward Barrett jumped a fence to hide. The occupants of the lorries raided a nearby house, where a man named Mangan, of Kilfeighney, was hiding.
Mangan, took off, was spotted and fire was opened on him. Meanwhile, Barrett and White found themselves in the line of fire and both were wounded. Paddy suffered a broken leg.
The injured men were treated initially in Listowel, and subsequently in the military hospital in Tralee.
Paddy’s son, Ned, told me 23 years ago that the White family came to North Kerry from Antrim about 1704.
Crown Forces bullets could not curtail the dancing of Paddy White, shot at Bedford, 103 years ago.
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Reminder of Another Age
My crib figures were passed on to me in this box by my late mother in law.
Lamb Brothers had a jam factory in Inchicore. It was still run by the Lamb family when it rebranded a Fruitfield in The 1950s or 60’s. Before the business was acquired by Jacobs, Fruitfield it was owned for a time by Nestle and the brands were incorporated with those of Little Chip and Chef.
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A Fact
Gmail launched for the first time on April 1 2004. The timing was unfortunate as many people believed it was an April Fools’ Day prank.
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KEN DUCKETT
‘Oh for the days of the Kerry Dances’ your piece took me back to boarding school in Reading at Presentation College where our caretaker used to do his sweeping of the school rooms singing this song continually. He certainly was Irish and my bets would be he was from Kerry!
Best wishes,
Ken