Remembering my mum: 'Her life was looking after all the men around her'

Continuing her series about the memories people have of their mothers, JENNIFER HORGAN chats to Mick Batt about his mother Hannah Batt, known in Fairhill as ‘Nana Batt.’

We often joke about people being ‘blessed among women’.

What of a woman who spent her life in the company of men?

Such was the fate of Hannah Batt, who came to be known as ‘Nana Batt’ to her 19 grandchildren, and to many others.

Her son Mick retraces her 90-year life, and her years marked by a commitment to the men around her, and to her beloved sister Nellie.

Until the age of two, Hannah grew up ‘in the lanes’ just off Shandon Street, along with her sister and three brothers. Her father was from Skibbereen and worked in the docks.

“I never asked him too much about his move to the city from West Cork,” said Mick. “You don’t think to ask these things when you are young, but I wish now I had.”

Time passes quickly. His grandfather is long dead and their home ‘in the lanes’ is gone.

“It was called Fair Lane back then, where my mother was born; it’s just off Wolfe Tone Street now.”

In the 1930s, as part of the city’s efforts to clean up the tenements, young Hannah, a toddler, and her family moved to Gurranabraher, bringing their extended family along with them.

“They lived on Orrery Road. She spent most of her life in that house – over 80 years,” said Mick.

He describes a family-filled community, with children growing up alongside cousins and relatives.

“My mother’s sister Nellie lived directly across the road with her ten children. And her aunt and cousins were right next door. We were all together.”

Mick’s father, hailing from The Lough, eventually managed to move her back towards the city - but not for long.

When Hannah’s mother died, she returned to Gurranabraher to look after her father and brothers.

“Her life was in the home, looking after all the men in her life: her father, her brothers, husband, and then her own four boys.”

Mick’s father was happy to move back to his wife’s neck of the woods, her son explains.

“He opened what was a well-known shop on the northside, Tim Batt’s Electrical Supplies.

“In a funny turn of fate, it was on Shandon Street, from where my mother’s family had initially moved. It would have been quite a well-known shop on the northside.”

Mick says his mother lived a happy life, and his childhood was full of fun and laughter.

“She loved serving everyone, and she had great fun with her sister. I remember the two of them going to the shops on Shandon Street every morning. There were no fridges back then, so shopping was a significant part of every day.”

His mother was a healthy-living woman. She never smoked or drank, but enjoyed music and was, as Mick puts it “a bit of a rogue”.

One of her regular pastimes was to sit down with The Echo. She would always turn to the second page to go through the death notices, to see who had died and to whom she would like to pay her respects. “It was a ritual,” Mick says.

“She was absolutely in charge of the house. My father was a quiet man really. And then there were us boys and my grandfather, Pop.”

Some key memories stick out for Mick as a boy.

“My father was off working, and my mother would take us up the baths, where The Kingsley is now. It was an outdoor swimming pool. We loved it, and after we’d go to Fitzgerald’s Park, then we’d walk all the way up the hills home. It was a fair trek. I wouldn’t be doing it now, I can tell you.”

Sunday was a special day, especially during the summer when they would all go for a drive in their small Morris Minor car.

“There’d be my mother and father, three kids and two aunts. I remember my father putting a cushion over the handbrake so one of us could sit there, we’d head to Red Strand beyond Clonakilty. My father had a one-ring gas primus, and he’d cook us sausages and beans. I can nearly taste them now.

“I carried on the tradition and brought my own kids to the beach too. They were special times.”

Sundays were special for another reason. Their grandfather would insist on cabbage and corn beef.

“My mother knew we didn’t like that meal once we became teenagers, so she made a deal with us,” said Mick.

“Pop would want it on a Sunday and a Monday. If we had it on the Sunday, we were allowed chips on the Monday.”

The deal seems symbolic of the life his mother lived – negotiating the care of different generations of men around her. And there was great joy in it.

Mick’s brother Sean also had a grocery shop in Fairhill and on Wednesdays, Hannah would help behind the counter.

“She loved interacting with the local kids who would be buying sweets. She became well known in that area as Nana Batt as well. My brother used to joke that sometimes my mother ate more sweets than the kids were buying, and he never made a profit on a Wednesday afternoon – that was a running family joke.”

Hannah also loved going dancing every Saturday night with Mick’s dad. They would head to the Cork Boat Club in the Marina, or the Lee Rowing Club.

“Every Saturday night without fail, even if she didn’t feel up to it, she would go dancing, along with my dad’s brother Paddy and his wife Breda.”

Hannah Batt outlived her sister Nellie by ten years and moved to a nursing home in 2018. Covid was tough for the family.

“We didn’t see her at all for about seven months. She couldn’t manage the technology to use an iPad or anything, covid upset a lot of things, and it was hard.

“She wasn’t one to complain and thankfully she got through it, and we got to see her again for some time before she died in 2022.”

Mick Batt has carried on his mother’s tradition of looking after the men around him.

He is Chairman of the Men’s Shed in Cork City and of the City of Cork Male Voice Choir, a group that has been meeting and singing together since 1968.