Recent warm weather brings back summer memories of 1970s Athy

The sunny spell over the past few weeks put me in mind of the summer of 1976, one of the hottest summers in living memory. On a number of days from late June until the middle of August, the temperature pushed the mercury above 32°C at locations right across the country. On 29 June, the temperature reached a scorching 32.5°C near Ferbane in Co Offaly. 

I have a clear memory of the time because I started my first job that summer, working for Paddy and Anne Lambe in their public house on Duke Street.

Lambe’s pub, later renamed the Mansion House in recognition of Cuddy Chanders winning the local lord mayor charity election, was located on the shady side of the street, as were all of the butchers shops in town at the time, and so enjoyed a slightly cooler interior to the business premises on the other side of the road. 

Duke Street at that time was a busy commercial street, with Kane’s sweetshop, Dympna O’Flaherty’s bookie shop, Ernie Glyn’s, Basil Boyd’s shoe shop, Barney Dunne’s, Gaffney’s, Coyle’s Jewellers, McHugh’s chemist, the Gem and Sound Value record shop. But most of all I remember the customers in that wonderful oasis on the corner of Duke Street and Green Alley.

The singing voices of Eamonn Walsh, Denis Chanders and Siki Walsh, the accordion playing of Ambi McConville, the stories and yarns told by the many characters who came in on a daily basis, Wexford Foley, Eugene Doran, Jim Delaney, Barney Whelan, Johnny Moore and 100 others who streamed in from Tegral and Minch Norton’s to quench their thirst with pints of Harp, Smithwick’s shandy and porter when the factory hooter sounded at 4pm each evening.

It was a life affirming experience; I learned a lot that summer under the watchful eye and quick tongue of Anne Lambe, whose grave I visit any time I pass through The Pike of Rushall. Sadly, all of those great characters are now long gone, as are so many of the shops on Duke Street, but the memory of that fine summer and the people who opened the eyes of a 16-year-old barman to the world live on.