Cork pharmacy marking 100 years of service to local community

Not a lot has changed in the past 100 years at the Thornhill family-owned pharmacy and opticians on Main Street, Kildorrery.

Tom Thornhill, optometrist, and his mother, Cathy, head honcho and head bookkeeper, are still welcoming people into their premises. They are still answering the doorbell after closing time to assist people who may be in trouble needing a prescription filled, or for people seeking useful advice. And the kettle is still on the boil!

“Mam still won’t give over the books to me!” says Tom, enjoying a bit of banter, and who is the third generation of Thornhills involved in the business in the North Cork town.

The kettle is steaming on the hot plate of the range in the cosy kitchen at the back of the two adjoining shops.

“You are welcome as the flowers of May,” says Cathy, 80, who always makes sure the kettle is on the boil and is very knowledgeable about the Thornhill family history.

“William Richard Thornhill lived here since 1921,” says Cathy. “He married May Fitzpatrick, from Kanturk, who worked here with him. When May got older and infirm, we minded her here. William Richard and May had three children, Suzanne, John and Carey.”

William Richard was a scholar.

“He was a very clever man, qualifying as a pharmacist at the age of 21,” says Cathy.

“William Richard was very good at maths and his best subject was Botany. He went to school at St Colman’s, Fermoy, where he achieved an award for Irish.

“The first pharmacy William Richard worked in was out the Limerick Road. He built this pharmacy which was an old quarry from scratch in 1932.”

Times were different back then.

“Regular customers were mostly farmers who came to the pharmacy for veterinary purposes,” says Cathy. 

“Veterinary was a huge part of the business and farmers from all over North Cork and beyond came to Thornhills for supplies for their animals.”

Customers availed of a one-stop shop.

“It was very seldom that doctors gave out scripts for medicine. Trained pharmacists made up the medicines themselves,” says Cathy.

How?

“They made up eye drop mixtures and if anybody complained of a cough or sore throat, they made up cough mixtures to treat the condition.”

Back in the day, pharmacies were known as apothecaries, where the trained/qualified pharmacist used lotions, pastes, pills, suppositories, tablets and ointments to help all manner of ailments.

There was one thing they couldn’t do.

“They couldn’t sell sanitary protection to a man!” says Cathy. “Could you believe it!”

In 1961, Cathy’s husband, John Thornhill, who trained in Dublin, took over the family pharmacy. His father William Richard died in 1974, age 85.

“John trained in Dublin and was offered a job in Donnybrook,” says Cathy.

He didn’t take up the offer.

“John was an out-and-out Kildorrery man,” says Cathy. “Whenever we were on holidays in Donegal and John and I were out for a drink and he was asked where he was from, John always replied, ‘I’m from Kildorrery’.”

He was loyal to his roots and to his business.

“Even when people introduced him as being from Mitchelstown, he wouldn’t have any of it,” says Cathy. “

He was a community man and a big GAA man who liked his pint. Doing the crossword in the Examiner was always part of his day. John was never without ‘de paper’.”

The business was in safe hands.

“John built up the business, especially in the veterinary side of things,” says Cathy. “And he started doing optics from the sitting-room by night. He was doing that since before we got married. Locally there was no optician nearby. The nearest optician was in Clonmel. John loved optics and he did very well at it.”

Christmas time was lucrative.

“If you made £100 on Christmas Eve in 1970, that was a lot of money,” says Cathy.

Where did Cathy Fouhy meet this accomplished and ambitious man?

“We met at a Macra na Feirme social in Kilcoran,” says Cathy, beaming at the memory of meeting the love of her life.

“I am from a farming background. John and I got married in 1970.”

Cathy was transported into a different world.

“I was mad for farming,” she says. “When I met John, I forgot all about it! I’m still working. John trained me in very well. When we had young kids, people called all hours of the night to get medicine. We sorted them all.”

John answered the call.

“He never refused a person calling to the door,” says Cathy. “He never minded disturbance. And he always welcomed the medical reps selling their wares. He knew them all.”

He never needed his own wares.

“John never believed in taking tablets,” says Cathy. “He enjoyed good health and good living until he got dementia.”

People remembered how John looked after them so well.

“Optics was John’s baby,” says Cathy. “And people attending his funeral who I never met before spoke about how he helped them.”

The couple had four children. William Richard, Mary, Tom, and John.

“I think the right man stayed at home,” says Cathy referring to her youngest son, Tom.

William Richard, named after his grandfather, followed in his grandfather’s footsteps.

“Will qualified in Brighton and works at Guys Hospital London,” says Cathy. “Mary is a GP. Tom is an optician, and John is a consultant specialising in infectious disease in infants.”

Cathy was challenged calling her son William Richard. “The nuns in the Bons said, ‘that is a very English name!”

Tom says that is quite possible. “I’d say we were here before Cromwell arrived!”

Cathy always keeps the home fires burning, chatting with the customers and the staff in the pharmacy and the opticians. Tom is a chip off the old block.

“We are really loyal to our customers, and they are really loyal to us,” he says. 

“The community here in Kildorrery is great. We’ve had regular dealings with generations of the same families. Dad was great for advice, and he loved that people came to us for a good reason. I like that too.”

Lena Lane, who has been working at Thornhills Opticians for 40 years, says it is like home-from-home.

“I love the atmosphere and the family environment,” says Lena. “Getting to know the Thornhill family members and the customers over the years has been just great.”

Tom and his supervising pharmacist Michael Hayes, from Mitchelstown, can very often correctly diagnose their regular customers regarding common medical conditions.

“We nearly can do that because we know the local families so well!,” says Tom. “We can always advise. We can suggest, take this, not that.”

Does he think loyalty and community spirit is a good mix, aiding the amazing longevity of Thornhill Pharmacy and Optician?

“Absolutely,” says Tom, whose wife Mary, is also involved in the Thornhill business. “We are all like one big family here. We are a great community.”

Tom, like his late father, John, had ambitions too. “The new chemist shop was built in 2008,” says Tom, who worked in Egans Opticians, Cork, to gain experience for a time. “Optics operate in the old chemist here.”

“Many, many people through the ages have walked through Thornhills for optics or for prescriptions and medical advice,” says Mary.

They walked in for other things.

“We keep the keys of the hall here too,” says Cathy.

The pharmacy is old-world and unique.

“You walked in here today and stood on the original floor tiles put down in 1932,” says Cathy. “It is the original footprint.”

She often attempted to sort out the aesthetics of the two departments. “Remember those little old brown drawers in the old dresser? Well, I took some of them away by night and John would put them back in the morning!”

She sometimes got her own way.

“I began ordering the frames for the glasses,” says Cathy. “I added a bit of glam!”

Cathy, at 80, has amazing skin. “It’s genetic,” she says.

So she never had to raid the make-up counter? Cathy laughs. “Sometimes I remember to put a bit of cream on my face!”

The worlds of pharmacy and optics is in the Thornhill genes.

“Mary’s daughter, my granddaughter, Siún O’Rielly, is in second year in UCC studying Pharmacy,” says Cathy, full of pride.

Going over the decades of the Thornhill’s business success and longevity, this lady must be glad that she didn’t stay farming?

“Chalk it down!” she says laughing.