Murray family bid farewell to Athy's Leinster Street

THE MURRAY Family bid a fond farewell to their premises and home at 6 Leinster Street on Wednesday 9 July after over 120 years there in business and residence.

When I turned the key for the last time at No 6, I reflected on the changes that have occurred in Leinster Street during my childhood there.

From the Murray sitting room, the Murray children, (six in total, three boys and three girls) could observe the various shops and enterprises that provided a living for their neighbours and families living in the street.

On the opposite side of Leinster Street O’Mara’s pub and grocery was in easy sight. A thriving business run by two O’Mara brothers in succession.

The business was buoyed up monthly by the animal fair days which took place at the ‘water trough’ which divided the “dual carriageway” of Athy well before the Naas Dual Carriageway was born.

On fair days O’Mara’s provided sustenance to farmers and dealers who came to buy and sell their fatted animals. Other days remembered were pig and the turkey fairs at Christmas. Great sadness was felt and tears shed by the Murray children when their pig Joey was walked to the fair for sale.

A big loss only made easy by the adoption by their mother Katy of a pet lamb aptly named Paddy Lamb.

Directly across from No 6 you had two Daly families selling sweets separated by Mr and Mrs Flynn and their family.

Ned Wynne, the Cobbler next door, and Cash’s sweetshop followed by Mr Egan, the tailor who made suits, overcoats and very grand items of clothing for the townspeople.

There was another sweet shop and then Jackson’s Hardware which was a thriving business.

While not visible by the children at no 6, they knew that their friends Stynes’s lived at the same side further down the street.

Mr Stynes had a petrol pump and an undertaking business while Mrs Stynes was a dressmaker who made wedding, communion dresses and suits and habits for the undertaking business.

At no 5 right next door was Power’s betting office and of course at no 6 our own shop which was run from 1901 by grandfather Matthew who sold bicycles and gas fittings. He died in 1939 at the beginning of the second World War.

My own father Matt, then took over and started his own successful plumbing and heating business which sustained our family until he retired.

Sadly, he passed in January 1996 having collapsed following a win by one of his beloved greyhounds at a coursing meeting in Rathangan. At one period my mother Katy ran a grocery, vegetable and sweet shop on the premises at the same time as rearing six children.

So many families lived on Leinster Street resulting in lots of children to play with in the public park, to play handball against the side of No 5 and of course in what was our Tir na nÓg, Blanches yard.

Children played for hours in the yard among the chickens, ducks and other farm animals. The annual orchard robbing was a highlight of the autumn from whose garden I am not permitted to say.

On cold frosty winter nights, the older boys poured water on the terrace side of the dual carriageway to ensure that we had an ice slide downhill in the morning, not interrupted by the few motor vehicles in the town.

‘Progress’ happens, and change is inevitable. We are now parents and grandparents.

Regrettably, only a small number of children now live on Leinster Street and the enterprises that sustained the families are gone.

They are replaced by nail bars, hairdresser, supermarket, takeaways and a gym serving the present day needs and wants of the Athy community.

The town looks forward to a resurgence with the renovation of the Town Hall and expansion of the Shackleton Museum.

Let’s hope other children will spend time playing there in the future and their happy voices will ring out as ours did there in the 1950s and 1960s.

‘Don’t let it be forgot that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known at Camelot’