Where is Yonda?

Photograph taken in 12 Wyckham Park, Dundrum, Co. Dublin circa 1953 or 1954.

 

         Where is Yonda?

In the summer of 1952 we had departed our leased home on the Rathgar Road in Dublin City as our parents had purchased a new house in Wyckham Park just outside the village of Dundrum in County Dublin in the shadow of the Dublin Mountains. I think my parents paid two thousand pounds back then. Recently a similar houses in this neigbourhood at 22 Wyckham Park went for 522,000 euros! Thanks be to Google. Today Dundrum is built up and the surrounding farmlands of our childhood have long since vanished to make way for advancing suburbia.It is now part of the city as "Dublin 14" and no longer "County Dublin". At least that is how I remember Dundrum back then. There was some local government housing further up towards the mountains at Ballinteer which was then the terminus for the 48A Bus. In time we would engage our enemies the "Ballinteer Brats" in territorial wars with stone throwing between the opposing sides on opposite banks of the Slang or Wyckham Stream , a stream which was a tributary of the Dargle.. I'm not sure what  the Ballinteer lads called us. The Wyckham Park Warriors? Somehow I doubt it. More of these internecine struggles anon if I may be permitted to use a wee bit of hyperbole.

Wyckham Park was to remain our home until the summer of 1957 when we moved to Thurles, County Tipperary where my father had been transferred but we had five happy years in Dundrum and we all had happy memories of the place. It is going to take a few posts to describe the happenings  during our sojourn at 12 Wyckham Park outside of Dundrum Village off the Ballinteer Road with a  view of the Pine Forest and the ruins of the Hell Fire Club  in the adjacent Dublin Mountains. The Hell Fire Club was situated at 1275 feet near the summit of Mount Pelier. The site was originally a passage grave dating from the Neolithic Period(4500-2000 BC) . Speaker William Connolly built the house which was to become the Hell Fire Club on Mount Pelier in 1725. After his death  the house was acquired by the notorious Hell Fire Club. The club was associated with outrageous behavior and debauchery by the young bucks of the ascendancy class. Richard Parsons, the first Earl of Rosse and two time Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge in Ireland, established the Hell Fire Club in Dublin in 1735. The president of the club was known as "The King of Hell" and was dressed like Satan, adorned with horns, wings and cloven hoofs. A story we were told and believed back then involved a poker game at the club on a dark and stormy night. One of the card players was Catholic   which was unusual at that time with the Penal Laws in force but apparently he had been invited by a Protestant friend. During the game a stranger entered the building and asked to join the poker game. As the game continued the Catholic participant dropped a silver coin on the floor and when he bent down to pick it up he got a shock. The stranger had cloven hoofs instead of human feet . Immediately the Catholic man got up from the table, blessed himself and fled the building. As he looked behind him he could see the Hell Fire Club in flames. As the story was related to us there were no survivors.

The Hell Fire Club in the Dublin Mountains. Note the hound , an Irish version of Cerberus.

 We were among the very first occupants of the housing estate. The houses were built by a gruff Corkman by the name of Jack Barry and construction was ongoing during the five years or so we spent there. He lived across the road from us with his wife and children: Oliver, Anne and Nick Barry. They were far older than us so they never became part of our gang subsequently. The other people living in Wyckham Park initially were named Kenny, Mooney, Cahalane, Cord, Davis, Hensey, Enright, Monks, Brennan, Higgins, Keating and Quinn . I may have missed some. Over the years other families would move in and they will be mentioned in future posts . We had great sport playing in the half built houses, negotiating the scaffolding, and running errands for the "navvies" as the constructions workers were called. We would be their "nippers" as those who ran errands for them were called i.e. we would nip up to the shop in Ballinteer and get them sugar, tea or cigarettes. In return they would give us a few coppers(pennies) and from time to time let us drive the "dumper"which had only two gears: forward and reverse under their tutelage of course. One of the men we would act as nipper for was called "Kaiser" by his workmates. I think this was because he wore a threadbare Irish Army overcoat replete with brass buttons. At the edge of the development was an electric fence to keep the cows out of the slowly expanding estate. Across the Ballinteer Road from Wyckham Park was farmland including the house of a cattleman named Byrne with several kids most of them with red hair. We did spend some time at their house over the years.There was also a Carmelite priory called "Gort Mhuire" further up the Ballinteer Road towards the mountains. "Gort Mhuire" means "Mary's Field" in the Irish language. I believe this is still in the hands of the Carmelites to this day. They had a football field with goal posts and I remember we practiced our goal kicking skills such as they were there on occasion.

Wyckham Park was our abode when we five Kent children attended at various times the Dominican Convent School  mentioned in my original post. As stated in my previous post I had been laid low with rheumatic fever and was under the doctor's order to rest and not to do any walking. This went on for a few months and had its pros and cons. In order to get some fresh air I had to sit in a go-cart in the back yard which for a 6 year old was to my mind going a bit too far especially when a neighbor boy named Eddie Keating came into our back yard and gave me an unmerciful slagging . As soon as I got on my feet I ran into him coming into our back yard and sent him packing with a bloody nose. Subsequently we let bygones be bygones and I was a frequent visitor to the Keating  playroom which had a superfluity of toy and games of all sorts including electric train sets. Eddie had a brother Gerald, a sister named "Boldy" and a foul tempered terrier we called Willie Keating. Family pets had the same surname as their owners. Thus there was a German Shepherd named Fiona Higgins with the Higgins family. I remember this animal was pretty rambunctious and knocked Anne down on one occasion but generally was well behaved. Willie Keating however was another story. He bit my finger at least once although maybe I was asking for it. The Cahalanes had a cat we knew as Bobby Socks Cahalane and this animal lived like a king. He even had his own door built into the larger door which served as the the back entrance to their garage where no doubt his food and litter box were situated and where  he slept in regal splendor. Both the Kennys and the Henseys kept hens in the back yard in those days. We would buy eggs from the Henseys. Mrs. Hensey's father who we dubbed "Foxy" lived with the family and generally tended to the needs of the fowl. The Kennys ate their hens from time to time. The Kennys were good friends of our family. The mother and father were from County Clare originally. I believe they hailed from Cooraclare and had as a frequent visitor an Aunt Aggie who worked at Dublin Airport. The children were Brian, Barry, Rory, Brendan,  and Mary in chronological order. Brian loved to use big words for a lad of his age. I remember we were playing in the fields one day when a young lad named Frank Free came up to us looking for his older brother Billy. Brian told him "he is over yonder". Frank asked in a flat Dublin accent "where's yonda?" Shades of Tony Curtis in the movie Ivanhoe: "yonda lies the castle of my fadah"

Getting back to my brief time as a semi invalid due to the doctor's orders to remain off my feet as much as possible, there were as hereinbefore mentioned some cons to be sure but a few definite pros. One was getting to stay up and listen to Radio Luxembourg while my siblings were upstairs in bed for the night. Hit songs which caught my ear at the time included "Lay Down Your Arms" by Anne Shelton, and "A-Round the Corner Looking for Henry Lee" by Jo Stafford.

A-round the corner, ooh-ooh,
Beneath the berry tree
A-long the footpath, behind the bush
Looking for Henry Lee.

Eventually I got back on my feet and joined the real world going off with Anne and Geraldine to

the Dominican Convent to prepare to for my First Communion. John was just a toddler and not ready

for scholarly pursuits while Eddie was still a wee lad in the pram. Later they would in turn enter the 

 gates of the Dominican Convent at Muckross Park.

I have included the photograph above for two reasons. First of all it was taken at 12 Wyckham Park

and secondly there is an amusing story behind it. One will note that my youngest brother looks 

none too happy and that the photograph appears to have been doctored. Eddie did not want to have

his photograph taken in the hand-me-down corduroy trousers he wore that day presumably since 

when he came across the photograph later he attempted to scratch out the hated corduroy britches.

In later years Anne, as keeper of the family photographs, wanted to get copies made. She artfully 

drew in some new trousers for Eddie. No doubt Eddie had a good laugh at it all in later years. God

be good to him.