Kathleens Got Out

On the fruitful Irish grapevine I was able to make contact with another
Absent friend from Belfast . A lady called Kathleen Loughran who originally came from a village called Ardoyne was delighted to share her memories of Ardoyne and beyond with me .

Kathleen was the first child born to Sarah and John Loughran who lived in 39 Chatham Street . She was followed by five other children ,
Andy, Estelle (Stella) , Sadie , Rosaleen and Frank .
Sarah and John were married at the turn of the twentieth century in Holy Cross Church in Ardoyne .
They were in their twenties when Kathleen arrived in 1925 .
John had served with the Irish and British Armies in the first war and afterwards . The world then was not an easy ride and one had to scarp an existence any way possible .
There were many Irish people who fought for England and won medals during the war years . Regardless of what they thought ,there were many Irish people who fought for England and won medals during the war years .

When I asked Kathleen about her childhood memories she recalled some friends and neighbours in Chatham Street .
“The Walsh family were our immediate neighbours , Margaret , Mary Billy and Winnie . Across the street were the Kerrs and the Lees , Tansy Lee the Father was a mad Celtic football supporter . He used to go to Scotland to see the Celtic and Rangers matches . When Celtic lost the whole street hid .
He was a gravedigger and a grand man . I was very fond of Mary and family . “

Most families in Ardoyne were very close . The district stood together in the hard times omne . The street were Kathleen lived was divided into three parts . There was an upper a middle and a lower . The tiny little terrace were made of brick and mortar and connected by this thick fabric called the community spirit .

Kathleen recalls another memory from Chatham Street .
“Mrs O’Hara who lived at the end of the street had bought a statue of the Blessed Virgin as a wedding present for my parents . “
As Kathleen grew up she became involved with the labour movement as her Dad worked for them . She told me about one election when two Scottish women Renee Houston and her sister came over to canvas for the labour candidate and had everyone in the district singing ,
“Vote, Vote, Vote for De Valera and other well known tunes like Barney Hughes Bread , stocks to your belly like lead and so forth .

“There was lots of singing in those days .“
Says Katheleen .

Around the little streets of Belfast corner boys would stand singing the latest hits . They would also stand slegging passers by . It was all done in innocent fun .They would share jokes and stories of days gone by probably
Told to them by their own Fathers who may have been corner boys in their youth . The corner boys around Ardoyne were some of the finest singers you would ever hear . They sung in harmony the like of which was as professional as you would hear . Out it came as natural as conversation .
High unemployment was the main reason that a lot of lads hung around the corners . They had nothing better to do and it became a habitual existence for some young lads . Singing on the corner as the girls walked by .
Singing in the rain was a daily way of life for the corner boys .

Looking back at her childhood Kathleen remembered some of the Mothers who were unmarried , fostering their children out so they could go to work in England to earn a few shillings to feed and clothe their children .

“Hard time indeed .”
She said .
“And bread and butter wasn’t easy to find .“

Yet through it all the humour survived and the singing continued .
Kathleen looks back at the daily life then i and around Chatham Street
and Old Ardoyne . She said to me ,

“Women used to sit outside on their steps of their homes on summer nights passing remarks on the young ones . I cringed when I walked past them but we really had some quips . We used to play marbles on the cobblestone streets round Herbert Street and Chatham Street . We rarely moved from there .“

In 1932 there was a Eucharistic congress in Ardoyne and the gable walls of some houses were painted with religious themes and there were parades and decorations everywhere . The life of the district revolved around the church . Kathleen mentioned an incident about a lady called Sarah Burns .

“I can still hear this beautiful soprano voice . It belonged to Sarah Burns and she sang at the celebration of the Eucharistic congress in Holy Cross church . Later on after that Sarah went to England and had a tragic accident . She was in London and died in a fire that engulfed the house she lived in . It was a horrendous death . Many people in Ardoyne were shocked to hear what happened . “

Kathleen went to Chief Street school and was taught by Bernadette Daley in an overcrowded classroom with fifty pupils . the last teacher Kathleen had was Miss Hansen .

Kathleens Father had a great appetite for reading and she said ,

“I remember getting the Sunday papers . We exchanged with the neighbours and got more for the price of one .“

She also had a hunger to read herself as she tells me ,

“I joined the Oldpark library and trotted down there every week for the annuals . They were my favourite .“

Her Dad was a great chanter and after a few pints in Kilpatricks
(or Killies as it was called) he would recite by heart ,
The green eye of the little yellow God and another piece called Dangerous Dan McGrew .

”There were some strange names of places my Dad could talk about in the poetry he read . I loved to hear about them .“

Later on in Kathleen’s life she would actually visit many of the very places he spoke of .

Kathleen’s Mother worked in the Irish Linen Mills and she spoke of the wake up man .

“It was a skilled job to be a weaver in the Mills .All around the girls went chattering off on their heels to the Mills after the wake up man had been . He came around knocking the upstairs window . I suppose that’s one way of not sleeping in .“

Back them Belfast was a port city and a merchant place for trade and
making a living . There were markets all around Belfast . In the early days in Belfast there were the Weighbridge market men who pushed their hand carts into town each morning and set up their wee stalls selling things like hot mutton pies and chelsea buns or loose potatoes out of a sack even soup bones and bacon slices were sold .There was a great sense of a wider family experience between merchants and their customers . That’s what made the trade unique .

Kathleen backed this up by saying to me ,

“We often bought wee buns from Rosie Nugents a little shop at the end of the road . Just how she ever made a living I’ll never know .All the lads bought five Woodbine at a time . Mu Mum ran a small club for Miss Forrest the Chemist where you got lipsticks and perfumes and paid them off at thruppence or a tanner a week . The other Miss Forrest had a baby goods shop and Mum ran the club for that as well .“

In the days when Kathleen was growing up she remembers how the face of Ardoyne often would take a face lift or a change in its appearance .
The building of Glenard and the war brought changes to the district .
By the time Kathleen had left school her first job was at Gallaghers . She tells me ,
“I used to stand waiting for a tram at the depot opposite Stewards store on the front of the Crumlin Road . The trams were always overcrowded .”

When Kathleen left Gallaghers she went over to England to work in a war factory in Stevenage , Hertfordshire . She worked there for a while and then returned back to Belfast to work as a ward orderly in the Union hospital .
She also worked in Robinson & Cleavers but hated it .

In 1954 Kathleen was in Rome for an audience with the Pope at the Vatican and to her surprise she heard this Belfast accent in the crowd . It was the voice of a catholic priest from Ardoyne that she had known growing up but his name had somehow slipped from her mind .Then when she went to Paris she was going up the Eifell tower with a group of tourists when she heard this voice scream out to her .
“Hey Kathleen, have you got your parachute with you ?”
The voice was that of one of the Alexanders from Herbert Street in Ardoyne who was in France studying Cordon-Bleu cookery . Kathleen remembers him being with his Grandmother in Chatham Street .
The brief but welcome encounter had to end as the tour she was on travelled on to Belgium .

In 1959 Kathleen was married to Londoner . They were married in Islington and their first child was a boy Christopher . He was born in Lambeth hospital where Kathleen says .

“There were an awful lot of West Indian Mothers there in the ward .“

The next children that arrived came when Kathleen was living in Malta .
Penny and Patrick . Then when Kathleen was living in Lincoln , England another child Dominic was born .

In 1960 Kathleen’s Dad went into The Royal hospital in Belfast and died from Leukaemia .
So with four children and a husband , Kathleen went to look after her Mother . Moving from place to place she said ,

“In 1967 I joined my hands to pray novenas but never got to finish one.”

She joined the J.O.C. ( Jocists ) a Catholic organization that had been started by a Belgian priest .

Kathleen fondly remembers the bonfires and the singing in the streets around Ardoyne .

Bonfire Night
By Paul McCann
There’s always a chair no one needs
and there’s a door that’s no use anymore .
We’re looking for some wood ,
it’s Bonfire night ,
And time we went knocking the door.
Hey missus do you see that old gate there ,
Well can we take it off your hands ?
The Belfast sky needs lit up tonight ,
And that old gate there could be your mans.
There are flames that leap up from Belfast streets ,
As a strange kind of magic glows .
Burnt toast and charcoaled spuds have a taste of their own ,
why ?
Sure only God knows .

She mentioned ,
“ A lot of my school friends went to America as G.I. Brides . Phylis went to Philadelphia and Agnes to Central America . I often wonder who is left at home now ? The motels and launderettes have become the new accent and attitude .Mc Donalds and shopping Malls are everywhere now . “
After two years in Singapore Kathleen and her husband met some New Zealanders who were talking about Australia and all of its free lifestyle and open environment . So in 1971 she and her family came to Australia for a look and see project and it wasn’t long before they decided to stay .
Kathleens daughter went back to Ardoyne in 1987 for a visit and dropped in to Chatham Street which had been demolished to make way for a new estate . Town houses had replaced the very old terrace houses . New street names and new people had now taken up residency there .
Kathleen had made a lot of new friends in Australia and looks back at Ardoyne thinking to herself ,
“Ah well nothing ever stays the same “.
In her farewell she made one statement ,
“I can’t understand why people can’t see eye to eye . Sure we all have our differences but we can also laugh at then and try to known them dowm the barriers that divide us . God bless me and Jenny Todd . Jenny is a Prod but she can’t help it Mother of God .”

By Paul McCann

The End