Paul Doolin

'We were a community within a community'

My Memories... Paul Doolin

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Health and safety issues weren’t a major concern for Paul Doolin and his gang of mates that grew up in Ginnell Terrace in the 70s.

“The banks of the canal down beside where Mick Flanagan is from are very sheer. During the summer time the grass would grow high so we would go down to Kilroys and get the boxes of the television and use them as a slide and down the hill you’d go. That was your fun, that was your entertainment. There was no such thing as television, if we weren’t out playing sport or acting the goat you had nothing to do.

“In the winter time you threw water on the hills and they were covered with ice. You’d throw water on it around four o’clock in the evening and then around seven or eight o’clock and then there would be a hundred kids out on the street sliding down the hills. I don’t think I ever remember anyone breaking anything.

“The hill outside my house if you went too fast coming to the end of it you had to cross the road at the bottom. There were very little cars and the only thing that would stop you was the gate on the house at the far side.

“Then we had go carts. We made our own. We made our carts from timber from Coroons saw mill and wheels of prams. Then in the summer time when the grass was cut you made grass forts, you were out 24/7.”

Paul, one of the organisers of next month’s Ginnell Terrace - Living History event grew up in estate in the 60s and 70s and has great memories of the period and the “sense of camaraderie” that existed between neighbours in the “community within a community”.

“Most of the houses were two and three bedroom semis and they had seven or eight kids in them. Nobody had anything, they talk about recession now but we had nothing.

“It was hard going but it never bothered you and you had great neighbours. My mother never locked her door until the mid 80s. She never locked her doors because her neighbours the Kennys or Newmans or the McCormacks would be in. That was the way it was, you lived in each other’s houses. Our kitchen could have 20 people in it on a Sunday morning after Mass, people would come down for a cup of tae.

“I would say the vast majority of houses into mid 70s had no television, you made your own crack.

“The bonfire on June 29 was huge. There was mobile dances and everything. The Times played one year as far as I can remember. There would be a massive bonfire in the centre of the green. We begged, borrowed and stole (laughs) for the bonfire. Where St Paul’s is was a wooded area, or so they taught until bonfire night.

Sport also played a huge part in the lives of the children that grew up in Ginnell Terrace during the 60s and 70s, Paul says and helped forge the strong sense of identity that residents had.

“The green area in the centre of the terrace that was our play area, soccer pitch, Gaelic pitch, most of us also played Gaelic with Shamrocks and hurling with Pearses or Oliver Plunkett.

“At the time community games was huge. Austin and Mary Murray organised it and every child in the place was involved in it. It was a big thing to represent Ginnell. We won the Westmeath U13 football Community Games title in ‘78 or ‘79, for a small area like Ginnell that was great. Louis Kenny was the 10,000m Irish record holder for 15 years, Frank Kavanagh was a world handball champion, Jimmy Horan played with The Times and The Drifters - he was well known all over Ireland, Billy McCauley sang with the showbands, there was so much diverse stuff, because you didn’t have anything else.

“You would have rivalry between the kids at the front and the kids at the back. In the summer you would have games and it would be like a Manchester derby. We had a soccer team for donkey’s years we won the Towns Cup and Towns League. Donald Nee, one of the residents, had a trial with Manchester United but he wouldn’t go because he wanted to teach. We had wonderful soccer teams, all my brothers would have played. The man that kick started the soccer in the terrace was Bill Collins he was a Dubliner.

Paul says that the response from residents, old and new, since the idea for A Living History was first mooted at the start of the year has given him and the rest of the organising committee a much welcomed trip down memory lane.

“These were two and three bed terraced houses with huge families maybe 12 people living in them but it never bothered anyone. Nobody ever starved, nobody ever went without. We looked after each other as well.

“There was no blackguardism, if someone house was broken into they didn’t break into the second a second one because they were caught in the garden in the first one because the neighbours were looking out for them.”