Middle Street, c1920

by Tom Kenny

Our photograph shows Olly Shea from High Street with his two cousins, the Brays from Father Griffin Road. They are standing in Middle Street which looks very wide with nothing parked there. The building on the far left was a tenement which later became a timber yard. Next door was a store which was owned by O’Gormans. The building beside that, with the white gable, was Tim Murphy’s; he ran a second-hand clothes shop there and carded wool. Next door was another tenement which was later taken over by Corbett’s timber yard.

The building facing us at the end of the street was Thomas Clarke’s Woollen Factory which manufactured tweeds, friezes, flannels, blankets, and rugs. One could look in the window and watch people working on the looms inside. This was later taken over by Colie Flaherty, a shoemaker. The building to the right of that was owned by Mike Codyre who worked in Carrs.

The site at the end of the street on the right belonged to Maggie Anne Ashe. It was derelict and for some reason was known as “The Spider Sticks”. The building next to that was Tierney’s, later Simon’s, which had formerly been Bohan’s Grain Warehouse. The next building, on the right (out of picture ), had once been a second-hand furniture store which was later occupied by a number of families including those of Mike Kavanagh, ‘Topsey’ Murray, Kathleen Toole, the Joyces, and the McConvilles.

Pa Hynes, who later owned a garage on this street, used to regularly relate how he saw the ghosts of two nuns, one in black and one in white, walking down Middle Street. One particular night he saw one in white coming towards him, and rather than embarrass her – for nuns were rarely seen in public in those days – he stepped back into his doorway, but she never passed, and when he looked again, she was not to be seen. Margaret Griffin and her sister Polly used to also tell tales of how they had seen nuns, one in black and one in white, on this street. They were presumed to be the spirits of the Augustinian nuns who once had a nunnery here.