Photos give snapshot into Athy's past
Paddy Murphy's hackney car parked outside his house in Offaly Street
TWO more photographs this week illustrate the many changes wrought by time on Athy.
The first shows Paddy Murphy’s hackney car parked outside his house in Offaly Street next door to Kehoe’s public house.
This was taken possibly in the late 1940s as Paddy emigrated to England to work sometime in the early 1950s.
It caused no inconvenience as there was so little traffic on the street that even into the 1960s I could park outside our front door, at 5 Offaly Street, the Morris Minor bought by my father when he retired but which he soon passed on to me.
The second image shows St Michael’s Parish Church under construction in the early 1960s.
After the demolition of the earlier church built in 1803 a temporary church, constructed from timber, by D & J Carbery, building contractors, Athy served the parish for four years until the opening of the new church on the 19 April 1964.
