Cork Views: Centuries of life and history... now this house will be no more

It happened on a sunny, summer Sunday morning.

My neighbour, the late Jim Ahern of Hightown, remembered it well and reckoned it might have been around 1944 or 1945 - “it was definitely during the Emergency -World War II - and the same Sunday the chapel was full”.

Back then, Sunday Mass was attended by nearly everyone in the parish who was able to walk. I often heard old-timers talk of the main aisle and the two side aisles being full – as well as the two galleries - and then the usual suspects would be kneeling on their cloth caps in the two porches and outside the doors of a fine Sabbath!

Jim, who was in his twenties then, recalled of that particular Sunday: “The chapel was full with the three doors open and just before the consecration everyone heard a woeful bang, like a very loud explosion just above the chapel... it was deafening and I suppose we thought it might be a German bomb or something like that.

“Anyway, everyone rushed out and looked up to the cross where a cloud of dust was rising.”

Many of the younger cohort ran up the road to investigate the cause of the noise and the dust. Thankfully, the Germans hadn’t bombed Bartlemy!

What caused the terrific noise was soon to be seen - the entire gable end wall of Spillane’s house, next to Woods’ shop, had collapsed into the garden, leaving just the front and back walls supporting the galvanised roof.

Mike Spillane, then in his thirties, his mother Julia, and aunt Hannah Kilroy, lived in the house at the time and were, like everyone else, at Mass so no-one was injured.

After Mass was finished, the crowd gathered at the house once more. In a true ‘meitheail’ fashion it was agreed that the gable wall could be rebuilt - no need for Engineers or Quantity Surveyors in the 1940s.

So, that summer Spillane’s house was repaired and a strong buttressed stone gable was erected and stands to this day.

I write of the incident now because, in a few days, the old Spillane household will be totally demolished as part of a new housing development which is to commence in the nearby Old Bartlemy Fair Field.

James Spillane was a shoemaker at Hollyhill, Bartlemy, in the mid- 1800s. In 1870, his son Michael married a local girl, Mary Mackey, and they came to live in the little thatched house situated in the corner of the Fair Field in the townland of Ballinakilla.

He worked as a farm labourer locally and then started in business himself as a grocer, egg and poultry merchant. His son, James, followed in his father’s footsteps, working on the McAuliffe farm nearby.

James’s sister Hanorah, like so many others at the time, emigrated to America. In the States, she married a Kilroy man and only returned to Bartlemy after her husband’s death in the late 1930s.

Meanwhile, Jim Spillane married Julia Barry in 1904. They covered the thatched roof of their two-roomed house with galvanise, or ‘iron’ as ’twas called.

In reality, the 1920s was the Golden Era for the village of Bartlemy. Jim Spillane was grocer and egg merchant, Michael Ahern was a grocer also, as was Batt Arnold (also a publican), Pats O’Brien was a vintner and grocer and John Woods was a grocer, egg and butter merchant.

Jim Spillane died in 1942 and his wife Julia in 1949. Their son Michael, or Mike as we called him, was born in 1912. His long life centred around the Cross of Bartlemy.

He worked for Batt Arnold on his farm and later, when Batt’s nephew Denis Barry took over the farm and public house, Mike stayed on, doing jobs on the farm and around the yard. His aunt Mrs Kilroy, the ‘retuned Yank’, lived on until 1952 when she died in Fermoy Hospital at the age of 82.

After the curious case of the falling gable wall, Mike Spillane spent years living in the old family home. As a child growing up in the 1960s, I always think of Mike Spillane, Paddy Ahern ‘Fagin’, Tom O’Brien and Dave Ryan as being ‘pure Bartlemy Cross’ men - they always seemed to be around.

Of the quartet, Mike was the quietest, he spoke little enough and never wasted five words if four would do! He kept to himself more or less as he went about his agricultural duties. He seemed a bit hard of hearing, but it could have been a mixture of deafness and heedlessness in reality.

He was a great man to eat and even in his old age he loved his food. Six o’clock in the evening was his finishing time - supper time.

There’s a story told that once, when working over in fields near Ballyda at hay or the like, he was working with a few others and about half-four in the evening they all took off their caps, dropped to their knees and - as if they had just heard the bells ring out for six in Bartlemy Chapel - started saying the Angelus. Off with Mike like a shot, thinking it was suppertime!

When Mrs Alice Dooley bought Woods’ shop in the 1970s, Mike was in his element and still did his few daily tasks whilst enjoying the homely atmosphere with the Dooley household – he was truly like one of their family.

On one occasion, Mrs Dooley said, ‘Mike, would you bring in a bag of coal please?’ No action and no reaction! She repeated the request a little louder the second time, ‘Could you bring in a bag of coal please, Mike’. Same response and no action.

For the third time, she implored him, ‘Mike, can you please bring in a bag of coal? – to which came the instant reply, ‘I’ll have a cup so if it’s made’!

He was a character in his own right, a man who never harmed anyone, and was truly part of our little village. Mike died in 1995 at the age of 83 and was buried with his parents and aunt in Ballinaltig cemetery.

Soon, the old house with its rusted iron roof will be demolished. Yes, I’ll miss it, but life moves on and it’s nice to see new homes in rural villages.

It’s been well ‘snapped’ and the pictures will remain, and maybe still in 50 years’ time people will say, ‘That’s where Spillane’s old house once stood, ah yes, I remember it well’.

As I walked close to the building the other day, I imagined I could hear the voices from yesteryear as tay and butter and eggs and fags were sold over the little counter here.

I can hear too the great John McCormack singing The Old House, written by Frederick O Connor

Lonely I wander through scenes of my childhood

They bring back to memory the happy days of yore

Gone are the old folk, the house stands deserted

No light in the window, no welcome at the door

Here’s where the children played games on the heather

Here’s where they sailed their wee boats on the burn

Where are they now? Some are dead, some have wandered

No more to their home will the children return