Our new life began in a Cork city hotel in 1950s

You may recall that wonderful tale in Throwback Thursday that we heard recently from Brian Cronin (and Joe Mac) about a certain Good Friday night on the Lower Road in the 1950s.

We were wondering what life was like growing up above a busy hotel and pub, and asked Brian for some details on that. He obliged, first explaining that he and his siblings had been born to farm life outside the city, until the tragic death of his father necessitated a huge change in their lives.

“My last memory of Ballycureen - our home from childhood, until our father’s sudden, tragic death in February, 1950 - was of the five of us kids packed tightly into the back of the old black Ford Prefect, with Mum driving, the remainder of our luggage stacked around us, and the upsetting sight of our beloved sheepdog, Shep, running after our car for several miles until eventually he was lost from sight as we headed into Cork city.”

Oh dear, stop it right there, Brian! No, surely you didn’t leave the dog behind? You couldn’t have!

“It was alright, Jo, really. He wasn’t meant to come with us. My uncle Jack Cronin assured us that the new owners of the farm ‘took on’ Shep with the other animals and would have cared for him. 

He was used to the way of life on the farm after all, and had a lot of useful dog work to do, so it was probably much better than the much more limited life he would have had in the pub on the Lower Road.

Phew! That was an awful thought. But all was well after all.

“We never did go back as I think it would have been too painful for my mother,” said Brian. “Many years later, I was on my way in to visit my sisters in Cork and decided to pop in and take a photo of the Ballycureen farmhouse as I didn’t have another. Would you believe, it was knocked down only a few days later to make way for a housing development!”

Brian resumes his memories from that 1950s journey.

“Well, we eventually arrived and parked in front of the Park View Hotel, which was to be our new home for the next 12 years or so. The traffic was very light in those days and the Lower Glanmire Road was a two-way road so we were always able to park the car on the road side in front of the hotel.”

So began an entirely new life for the Cronin children.

“Initially, all five of us moved into the attic room at the top of the house. We had plenty of fun and games in that room, which was very spacious and had several beds.

“We are at that point all very young - ranging from Denis, aged nine, Rosemary five, Angela three, and Patricia less than two. I would have been six, going on seven.

“The room had two windows - one south-facing towards the railway station, the other - a dormer window - on the northern side. On opening that window, one could see the Christian Brothers strolling around their garden in Gabriel House, above us on Summerhill, reading their ‘office’.

“Denis and I were both enrolled in Christian Brothers College at that stage and the girls would eventually start their schooling in St Angela’s College on St Patrick Hill.

“Thanks to the hard work of our mum, we had a very happy childhood in the Park View, although life was hard for her, who had the combined task of running a business and rearing a young family, whilst also keeping an eye on her ailing father.

Denis, my elder brother, had to take on the role of father of the family - a role he carried out very conscientiously - and was of great help to our mother as he continued to do for many years thereafter. 

"The railway station was very much part of our Lower Road lives. I remember so well our many train journeys to visit our cousins in Carrigaloe (on the Cobh train); the screech of the whistle as the train set out; the rocking on the rails as it gathered steam, with the carriages moving from side to side; the smoke from the engine whipping past our carriage window. Then passing through the various stations on the way down: Dunkettle, Glounthane, Little Island and Fota.

“On one occasion, Denis and I decided to try walking the journey and followed along the railway line (highly dangerous, but it added much to the excitement of it, particularly when a train passed by with the whistle repeatedly sounding a warning).

“Eventually, flushed with success we arrived in Carrigaloe where our lovely aunt - Irene Neville - provided us with soothing bowls of warm water for our blistered feet, then provided us with large glasses of chilled homemade lemonade, plus her tasty lemon meringue pie. (One long walk was enough for one day so we thumbed a lift back to the Lower Road later!)

“The Park View had a large public bar to the front of the building and further in was a room called ‘the Saloon’. We had a snug in one corner of the public bar which was served by a hatch from the counter area. In those years, ladies were not welcome in the public bar, but were accommodated in the snug or saloon, as indeed would be the occasional clergyman.

“Our daytime clientele were mainly employees of the railway station, porters, off duty drivers and signalmen and taxi drivers.

“There weren’t too many trains moving about in those early years so many of the lads would spend a large part of the day in our pub and the other two adjoining pubs - the Killarney and the Station Bar. A large amount of stout was consumed during the course of the ‘working day’, but I never witnessed any of those men getting drunk. Many of them who lived on the Lower Road would reappear later in the evening, having had their ‘tea’, all spruced up and accompanied by their wives.

“As a young boy helping out in the bar, I formed a great regard for these ordinary, decent, working class men and noticed the respect in which they held our mother who spent long hours working behind the bar counter. Bad language was very rarely used, and on the occasion when somebody did, my mother insisted that the guilty party put a few pence in a ‘Black Babies’ collection box on the bar counter.

“Trains were very infrequent in those days, the morning and evening train to and from Dublin and the twice-daily trains to Cobh being the sum total of the frail traffic. The railway men devised a system whereby one man would take up a position by the bar window and if a train was approaching the station master standing on the platform opposite the Hotel would wave a white handkerchief - a signal for the boys to knock back their pints and head over to meet the incoming train.

My brother and I would ‘help out’ in the bar once we had our school homework completed and soon learned the art of ‘pulling’ the perfect pint of stout - no mean feat. 

"We carried the three brands of stout; Guinness, Murphy’s and Beamish - the latter two being from Cork breweries and the former of course from St James’ Gate in Dublin. The large wooden barrels - or firkins - of stout were rested on trestles opposite the bar counter. Each stout had two barrels; one for ‘high’ stout and the other for flat. Three glasses were required to fill a pint. Two glasses would be half filled in turn by ‘high’ and ‘flat’ stout, and the process then required the flat stout to be poured into the glass containing the high stout, with the residue overflowing into the third glass underneath, then waiting a minute or so for the stout to ‘settle’. The whole business took several minutes and would be examined closely by the waiting customer. It was important to get the width of the creamy collar just right and one would often be admonished by the waiting customer not to serve up a pint too quickly or with too high a collar (a ‘curate’s’ collar measuring less than an inch, rather than a ‘parish priest’s’ would be adjudged to be just right.

The sign of a good pint would be the succession of creamy rings left on the sides of the empty glass. Our customers to a man were connoisseurs of the perfect pint of stout!

“The Arcadia Ballroom (next door) also played an important, and whereas the station provided the bulk of our bar business, at the weekends ‘the Arc’ played a vital role with the dancers thronging down from the city.

“The boys’ favourite catchphrase to the girls in the queue in those cash-tight days was usually ‘See you inside, luv’!

“Our bar clientele had many regular customers, many of whom were great characters. One of the more memorable ones was one ‘Padser’ Lenihan. He worked as a road sweeper for the Corporation, although much of his working day was spent in the cosy confines of the Park View Bar in company with many of the railway staff; porters, taximen and the like. 

Padser was a great character and very popular with everybody who knew him. He was a very strong man and also gifted with a melodious singing voice.

“In those days, ‘canned music’ was unknown in bars, and consequently jokes, conversations and frequent sing songs were the order of the day. Padser’s favourite party piece was to stand on his head on one of the round marble-topped tables, supported by his two arms, and sing a popular song ‘When you wore a tulip, a sweet yellow tulip and I wore a big red rose’ to much acclaim and entreaties for an encore (which Padser obliged without changing his position.)

“Many years later, I was busily engaged behind the bar of our Blue Haven Hotel during a hectic Kinsale Regatta bank holiday weekend when I heard a voice hailing me from the back of the three-deep crowd at the bar counter: “’Tom boy, ‘tis me, Padser. I came down to see you boy!’ (Of course he used my original Tom name instead of Brian). I was overjoyed to see him. He hadn’t changed a bit, despite the passing years, had the same boisterous laugh, and still wore a bright checked shirt. ‘I still have de lungs, boy’ he assured me when we talked about his singing exploits. He had engaged a friend to drive him down to Kinsale for the regatta day and had kept track of my movements over the years. I invited him back to the hotel later that evening. The cavalry (in the form of Anne) had by then arrived and relieved me in the bar so I was able to sit down with him in the restaurant while he and his driver demolished large steaks with all the trimmings while downing a pint or two of stout, and I was able to spend time with my old friend chatting about the good old days in the Park View. A lovely, decent man who will live long in my memory.”

Brian, that is so lovely and poignant. Thank you so much for sharing it. We need more of these memories, of people living and working in our city in those harsher economic times.

Let your own minds go back, readers, and send us your own stories. Email jokerrigan1@gmail.com or leave a message on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/echolivecork.