|
 |
FRED (born 1936) Fred grew up in Rabbit Hill
(Keepers) lodge before |
Kells Archaeological & Historical Society |
|
|
FRED (born 1936) Fred grew up in Rabbit Hill
(Keepers) lodge before |
Interview with Fred Ireland |
DC:
This is Danny Cusack, I’m here on Thursday 17th
February 2011 at 33 Balrath Wood in Kells and I’m talking to
Fred Ireland. Fred, thanks for agreeing to talk to us
today…I believe you grew up on the Headfort Estate but we
will come to that…, could you just say a wee bit about your
family and your background, where you grew up and perhaps your
schooling ?
FI:
My father was the head keeper of the Headfort Estate in Kells. He
came to it....I think it was 1934. They got married and had
two sons; I was the eldest…my brother George died when he
was 44 so he is gone this good while…his wife died eight
years after him both from cancer. They lived in the keepers
lodge as it was called…. the first lodge on the left hand
side as you are going out the Headfort road out of Kells. I
had an idyllic lifestyle really…idyllic bringing up, one
couldn’t live in a nicer place than Headfort…. we had
the woods, we had the fishing, we had the river, everything about
it was just beautiful … it was a lovely place to live unlike
a lot of the other big estates… the Headforts were terrific
landlords, respected by everybody, they were very good to
everybody... which is more to be said about the other big
landlords in the area. When I grew up I went to the Carrick
school in Kells, I left it when I was 12 and went to the
Christian Brothers … I stayed there for one year or term and
left because of the … brothers were so sadistic, beating
people around the place … I couldn’t stick it any
longer I left there and went to the technical school which I
really enjoyed it was terrific … left there and went to
Dublin to work … but then came back from Dublin after about
a year and a half and worked in Doyle’s garage in Kells for
about six months … that s where Supervalu is now. I
went to
DC:
That’s a very good summation of a lifetime and very well put
together …. So you were childhood sweethearts…
FI: Oh
very much so…. Still are.
DC: If everyone
could boast that now!
FI:
Actually last year we were on a cruise, the royal Caribbean
… the table we were sitting at in the Dining room…there
were two other couples both Americans, one was living in Bermuda
because it was a tax … he was a tax exile he had so much
money and the other guy was also a very rich American living in
America… between them that had being married seven times.
……between the two families and they couldn’t
understand how we had been 52 years married…..they just
couldn’t understand it.
DC:
This was beyond their conception. Well buck fair play to
you I think that is a record out of all the interviews …the
people I have spoken to so far…yeah that’s wonderful.
FI: Well
I’m not telling you anything about Kells; I have just talked
about myself.
DC:
That’s a good start; we want to know about you first. Perhaps
you could say a little bit more about growing up it seemed to be
an idyllic lifestyle on the Headfort estate…if you say a
little more on that.
FI:
Back in those days Headfort estate was still one of the big
estates…there were a lot of people working on it...in
Headfort house you had the butler, the valet, the chauffeur and
all the maids working in Headfort House…and when you had to
go up to deliver a message or anything you had to go to the
tradesman entrance you couldn’t go to the hall door. As
I said before The Headforts were very good landlords, they were
nice people. As I grew up in Headfort fishing was my main
entertainment I did a lot of that….my father been a game
keeper was a terrific fisherman and a terrific man with a gun.
In those days there were lots and lots of trees, beech trees and
oak trees and that in Headfort….you could climb up one
beside the house where I lived and go nearly half a mile, up in
the air 100 foot up in the air 200 foot up in the air going from
tree to tree before you came down again….but then one of the
Headforts, Geoffrey his son Terence married an Australian lady
… she wanted to have Headfort looking like
Australia…where it was flat and you could see for miles and
miles…so she started selling off the timber in
it….mostly to Mc Gee’s of Ardee and they spent years
and years drawing all the lovely big oak and beech trees out of
it and in fact all she done was make a mess of the place. I
remember all the timber men working there and the big lorries
coming in and the tractors …you would see a lorry going out
with a lump of the stump of a beech tree on it which would
probably have been 15 or 16 foot long with a diameter of about
maybe 7 or 8 eight feet on the back of a truck and the truck
would be way up on one side with the weight of it… I
don’t know it could have been nine or ten tonne weight
…that really is my…..
DC:
She has a lot to answer for that Australian woman...if its any
consolation there is another Australian woman Jan Alexandra came
to live here I think it was in the late 1980’s. She
set up an organisation called “Crann” which was to
re-forrestate
FI:
Then after Geoffrey died, I remember him, I remember his
funeral… he was the first of the Headforts to be involved in
a mixed marriage. He was there as a Protestant and he
married a catholic….there was a Mausoleum in Headfort where
the Headforts were buried.. because it was a mixed marriage
seemly they couldn’t get buried in it so… there are two
Islands on the Headfort estate 22 acres on one and 18 on the
other…. You can see the small island the 18 acre island from
the road bridge if you look up the river…. They got a small
section of that maybe a rood of ground….they were using it
for a burial ground…so they got the parish priest out and so
he blessed one half of it and they got the Church of Ireland
rector out and he blessed the other half of it, so when they died
they were each buried in their one half, side by side…. that
was Geoffrey. Terence came after him I remember him well.
There funerals were big funerals, they coffins were brought down
in gun carriages…..the union jack was over them cause that
time we were still part of the British Empire and then the
Bugler, because they were both the army I think they had a Bugler
standing at the last post….I can still remember the last
post, I think I was probably about four years of age when the
first Headfort died and then the next Lord Headfort was Michael,
he is not dead all that terribly long now he died abroad
somewhere. He was married; his first marriage was to a lady
from the
DC: Imelda Marcus,
yeah I knew that..
FI: That’s
right. Well that’s all I can tell you about the
Headforts.
DC: Was he the last
of the dynasty there…I think he was more or less.
FI:
He was the last of the dynasty there his son Christopher, who was
a lovely guy…he worked on the farm for a good while…he
lived in one of the houses on the farm yard…he got married I
think they had four children, I’m not dead sure about
that… his wife died not so long ago…..she died of
cancer not so long ago…I didn’t know her. They are gone
out of Headfort…..now Headfort is broken up. Greenbelt has
the forest in it…the school has about 60 or 80 acres the
house and the grounds and the farmer has the rest which he has in
tillage and that.
DC: That’s
right and then you have the residences in there to, don’t
you. The Courtyard…
FI: That’s
right, that’s the new thing.
DC: Growing up on the estate…did you mix…were there other children on the estate…..or other families? Did you have much to do with them…
FI:
Yes we had our own gang that played together and Lord Headfort
played with us as well…he was only three years older than
what I was ….yes we had…like in those days we all had
our bicycles…that was all we needed. No one had any money
but sure we had nothing to spend it on anyway. In the
summertime I used to get a job up in Headfort garden…. My
brother and myself picking fruit, we got a penny a pound for
picking fruit and at the end of the week we could have a few
shillings…that was a very handy job except where it came to
picking the gooseberries with all the thorns on them…your
hands would be torn asunder picking them ……we never
liked picking them…strawberries, raspberries and
blackcurrants…. There was a big tank up there a big concrete
tank that held thousands and thousands of gallons of water and on
a real hot day we would swim in it. Headfort was an ideal
place to grow up.
DC:
Sounds like it.
FI:
I was very very lucky to have the opportunity to do so.
DC:
Absolutely, sounds idyllic alright.
FI:
Another of my memories of Headfort……..its much later
its in the mid 1950’s…..is coming home from England
with all my possessions in a brown leather…in a brown
cardboard case up on my shoulder walking out the road from Kells
looking out and seeing the……you couldn’t see our
house cause it was in the middle of the woods, but you could see
the blue smoke….that bright blue smoke of a timber fire and
it going straight up in the air…..after coming from London
and nothing but smog… it was lovely to see it. It’s
a memory that will always stay with me.
DC:
Great home coming image isn’t it. You said your house
was in the middle of the woods, I thought you were at the lodge
at the gate as you came in. Did you move?
FI:
Sorry it was the lodge at the gate, but there was woods all
around it there were woods on both sides of the road…there
were woods north south east and west of it…you had the road
which sort of went through the woods…..the main road...those
trees are cut out of it now you see and everything looks so much
different now.
DC:
That wouldn’t have occurred to me now...but now that you
have explained it.
FI:
The house we lived in was the house before you came to the bridge
on the road. I think the last keeper that was there lived
in the house after the bridge……but ours was the Gate
lodge before the bridge…ours was the first one…Ormiston
owns it now.
DC:
Oh I see so if you’re coming from Kells it’s actually
before the bridge.
FI:
It’s before the bridge yes... for the wall is on the left
hand side where Headfort starts…..opposite Tony O Connors
house….its opposite Tony O Connors house.
DC:
Is the house still there?
FI:
Its still there.
DC:
I must look out for it.
FI:
Its still there…….there is the two gates one opposite
each other as you go out the Headfort road, just after where the
wall starts…it was in on the left there. But those big
trees are all gone out of it now. I can remember actually two
plantations of green spruce trees planted there and cut out of it
commercially.
DC:
Growing up on the Headfort estate were you much aware of…
sort of social hierarchy between families or between the families
and the Headforts or was it all fairly galleterian …I’m
trying to get a sense of ….
FI:
Are you referring to the Headforts themselves…
DC:
Yeah the Headforts,
FI:
Oh yeah they were the big people….they were the big people
and people didn’t go up there unless they were
invited…by invitation only…I have known of people who
have went up there and short-shift. Then there was the golf
links there….I remember back when I was quite young, seven
or eight years of age playing golf there….the clubhouse that
time was just a green galvanised house….it was a nine
course. Well that’s another thing too there
wasn’t many people playing those days…..the number
three course went down beside the road…and people would be
out on a Sunday…….most people would be out on a Sunday
playing golf...if they slice the ball it would cross the road
into the Bal Reilly field…. The was the field that down the
other side of the road from the golf links…when I came home
from school on a Monday I would get the dogs of my
father…two or three or maybe four Labrador dogs and go down
that field with the dogs and just set them out…..they would
pick up the golf balls and bring them back to me….I would
have a bucket…fill the bucket with golf balls and sell them
then for six pence each in the clubhouse
DC:
A handy little number.
FI:
The golfers were happy and I was happy.
DC:
So everyone gained.
FI:
Everyone gained.
DC:
Living out there by the bridge…..was your life fairly
self-contained …I suppose what I am
asking is did you interact much with the town itself did you
socialise much in the town…
FI:
Yes, I had my friends I went to school with I would go into the
town to play with them and they would come out to Headfort and
play with me. I did a lot with boats ….I love
boats…there were I think about three good row boats out
there in Headfort…they had a pud a log pud…it was
beautiful a work of art the way it was made with lovely
mahogany….. the Headforts would go out …I can remember
the Headfort family and their friends being out on it on a
Sunday…..all very low seats in it and cushions on it
…they would have a man standing up at the back with a
long pole, he would push them around the river and in those days
the black water……. the Headforts ….the way the
river flows at the moment now it didn’t always flow
that way….the Headforts had it changed, they had two islands
made…those two Islands they actually had made there. You
could go out and the boat would row all around the islands
…. You can’t do that anymore its all filled in,
it’s a pity. In those days you could I’m sure it
could all be opened up again quite easily…there are other
little small islands there as well….we spent a lot of time
on the water swimming and fishing and boating, that was really
the biggest part of our pass-time certainty in the summer time.
The winter time it was reading and listening to the radio.
DC:
You were held up inside! Hibernating as they say. Your
father was head game keeper would you say just a few words about
his role on the estate ……did he have much problems with
poachers for example….did he have much to do…
FI:
My father didn’t have much problems with poachers. He
caught every poacher once and had a chat with him…that was
it…he never once brought a poacher to court which is a lot
to say for the 45years he was there…all the other game
keepers have the steps of the courthouse worn out with bringing
people to court….but he never brought anyone to
court…he was able to persuade them not to come back in
again…that was that. He was also in charge of the
forestry….there is a very interesting thing I wouldn’t
say very many people know it….maybe even the people who own
Headfort estate at moment don’t know it……as you go
out the Headfort road and go across the bridge there is a gate on
the left into Headfort that belong to the main gate go on past
that and there is another gate with a door actually…….
where the farm machinery …tractors and horses and that used
to go in to the farmyard…go on a little after that before
you come to Wrights….there is a wood on the left hand side
known as the Dempsey wood…now Headforts being very crafty
rented the Dempsey wood…it wasn’t a wood then it was
just a field….rented that field from the
Dempsey’s……I think they are the same
Dempsey’s that are involved in the Catherine McAuley centre.
DC:
Yes that started the school
FI:
They rented it from them for one crop and put a crop of beech and
oak trees in it ….which you are talking three hundred
years… where as the Dempsey’s probably thought it was
for one year. but anyway I can remember Lord Headfort selling the
last beech trees in it I think there was six of them…..he
told my father he had sold them….my father said to him
“If you sell them that part of the estate is gone because it
reverts back to the Dempsey family…....so he had to buy the
trees back of whoever he sold them to and give them a nice bit of
money for their trouble as well….so the last I heard those
trees were still there. That area was probably sold by the
Headfort estate but the Headforts never owned it. I
don’t know how they would work that out
legally…that’s an interesting one for you.
DC:
It could be. We might keep it under our hat it could raise all
kind of conundrums legal conundrums…
FI:
It could do…..well they probably would have squatter’s
rights anyway
DC:
There is still woods there all right despite what your woman did
FI:
Oh yes there are…the American garden, Headfort garden was a
fabulous garden…..I don’t know how many acres were in
it…..I suppose it was four acres in the garden…..a big
wall…a high wall all around it, massive glasshouses,
beautiful glasshouses…they had their own central heating
system for it.. it must have cost a fortune....and then around
the inside of the walls they had pear trees and apple trees
growing up against the wall held onto the wall with
wires…they had every type of fruit you could think
of…….they had ewe trees down each side of the centre
walk…they were hundreds of years old…… it’s a
pity you didn’t see them. I haven’t being up
there in a while they could be cut out of it I don’t
know….but I know where the gardener’s house was, sorry
the Botti they called him ….it was next door to the
gardeners house …that was knocked down and you could get
into the garden the whole thing was let go to wreck and
ruin….just let go to wreck and ruin. They had huge big
avenues in Headfort, they had a scuffle, that was pulled behind
two horses...all those avenues were scuffed every week and each
side of the avenues back maybe four foot from each side of the
avenue they had grass and that was cut every week…so there
was something like 22 or 23 men working just on the maintenance
of the estate …which one couldn’t afford to do
nowadays.
DC:
Not at all …..That’s remarkable.
FI:
Then in the farmyard in Headfort…beautiful old
farmyard…. You went in through the arch and the far arch out
the far side there was a big clock over it and a bell on
it…the bell would ring at eight o clock in the morning for
the men to start work and would ring again at one o clock to
finish work….they could go down to a little canteen they had
in the farmyard and have their meal there…it would ring
again at two o clock and they would go back to work and ring
again at six O clock and they would finish.
DC:
They would mostly be day labourers and that … how many
people roughly do you think were living on the estate at the
time….when you were growing up… Any idea…
FI:
At that time …it was called the cottages they were up past
rides on the left hand side….they are all knocked down
now…..I think their were seven cottages there…..so
there would have been seven families there….also if you went
out the Navan road Lislan field is on the right hand side where
the roundabout is at the moment…there were two, two storey
houses on the right hand side they belonged to employees of the
Headfort estate…..the other houses were scattered through
the estate....there were possibly 9 or 10 houses in the
farmyard……they were occupied…the other houses
scattered throughout the estate like the Keepers house, the house
at the front lodge, the herds house at the north lodge…there
were two houses out past the garden…..there were a few
houses scattered around the estate alright…and then the
number of people that lived in houses…I couldn’t
honestly say ……but there were quite a lot of people
DC:
It’s a revelation to me I wouldn’t have thought it was
that many….that totals up to maybe two dozen.
FI:
Of I would say that if not more…….sure there were
twenty something men just doing the maintenance on the estate and
working in the garden. As I said the garden had its central
heating there….it was run by coal and sticks and that there
was a man that went up to it every few hours and stoke it up
seven days a week in the winter time.
DC:
So your connections severed when you went off to
FI:
Yes it did…..I also had a job there every Saturday evening
one of my jobs was…we had the key of the Mausoleum in
our house….it was my job to go up and open the door of the
Mausoleum and brush it out, sweep it out and make sure it was
kept clean…because birds were able to get in up at the
top….hawks used to nest up there crows and that ….they
floor would be dirty... so it was my job to sweep that out
DC:
Difficult job…
FI:
Never got paid for it! No it wasn’t difficult ….there
was a brush up there and you just sweep it out the door and also
beside the Mausoleum there was a swimming pool it was all an
island in the centre of the river ….a bridge came into it
from either side…it was a green galvanised structure lined
on the inside with timber with seats around it the whole way,
carpet on the floor of the seats and there were two diving boards
there ….low spring boards about three foot over the water
and a high dive board which was six or seven foot over the
water…….we spent ages up there as well. In those
days Headfort did a lot for the scouting movement…there were
hundreds of scouts that came to Headfort every year from all over
Ireland and the north of Ireland and from England and from the
continent and from the time that they would come to stay there my
father was in charge of looking after them as well……he
gave me the job of looking after them so I would go and camp out
with them and I would spend a couple of months there in the
summer just camping out with the scouts…..and I would
have a great time I had a lot of friends…..
DC:
You got to meet people from all over the country…
FI:
Yes all over the country and all over England…In fact when I
went to London the first person I went to…meet over there
was an old friend from the scouts who came from Greenock in
Scotland he was working in London and I’m still
corresponding with him….I met up with him. The lawn
where the scouts camped it wouldn’t be unusual to see 7 or 8
groups camping there at the one time…there is a huge big
sandpit and all around the sandpit there was beech and oak trees
and at night time they would have a campfire down in the middle
of that sandpit and everyone would be sitting around it
…like a natural theatre and singing songs and that
……the big bonfire cooking sausages on sticks…it
was fabulous.
DC:
It sounds great…so far from having an insular upbringing,
there you had …should we say open upbringing…you met so
many and a variety of people….
FI:
And in fact the first time I came in contact with an electric
fence was coming home one night on my bicycle…. I was coming
along by Lady Adele’s pond as it was called….coming
home there…I ran into something I didn’t know what it
was…..I went head over heels off the bike…it was quite
dark….I went back to pick up the bike and every time I went
to pick up the bicycle I would get a shock….I didn’t
know what it was so I left it and went home. I went up the
next morning with my father and saw what it was. That was
my first contact with an electric shock.
FI:
My father had an assistant keeper working with him….a very
great man according to himself…he had been everywhere and
done everything but hadn’t been anywhere really….he was
saying how great he was but my father said to him would you go up
and knock on the door of the Mausoleum at 12 O Clock at night
…he said yes of course I would knock on the door of the
Mausoleum at 12 O clock at night ….my father said well
I’ll give you a pound if you do…a pound was a lot of
money in those days….so he said yes I’ll do it and my
father said just to prove it …..here is my penknife if that
is stuck in the door of the Mausoleum when I go up there at eight
O clock in the morning I’ll give you your
pound……this individual I wont mention his name he came
in …..my father went up and hid in the rhododendron bushes
beside the Mausoleum at around half eleven and be sure at 12 O
clock this individual came up … he had the knife open and he
holding it in his hand…god help anyone who came near him he
would have stabbed them…..he went up to the Mausoleum
looking around him very cautiously turned around with his back to
the door of the Mausoleum and got the knife and stuck it in the
door of the Mausoleum and went to run and wasn’t he held
there, wasn’t he after sticking the knife into the tail of
his coat….my father said he let out this greatest scream I
ever heard, peeled off the coat and ran…..and the coat was
still stuck there the next morning….but he got his pound.
DC:
He got his pound…that’s a great one…they were game
for playing tricks on people in those days.
FI:
Headfort also had a cricket club in those days…I can
remember playing cricket up there. I still have some very good
friends going back from that time…. Brendan Heary from
Kilmainham…Brendan and his wife
End of Interview.
