A Ramble about Tallaght

  Albert Joseph Marcel Folens Folens One of the later and more interesting companies to relocate to Tallaght as part of its rapid industrial and commercial development in the 1970s was Folens Publishers in 1974.   The previous year, Folens began developing a printing works in a 42,000 Sq ft purpose built factory, constructed on a 4.5 acre site on the Airton Road, Tallaght, at a cost of £250,000. The land had previously been part of the Urney complex, and the development of Airton Road as a business park had been part of the vision of Redmond Gallagher, son and heir of Urney Chocolates.  In the summer of 1974, Folens moved their operations from their six year old factory in John F. Kennedy Drive on the Naas Road to Airton Road in Tallaght.  For the next few decades, school children throughout Ireland would come to know of Tallaght, as the place from which many of their school text books came.  But few school children or teachers, knew that their history book, and many others, was publis

  Born in a Biscuit Tin- The memoirs of Peter Nicholson   Peter Nicholson was born in Aungier Street, Dublin in 1940. His father had worked in near-by Jacobs Biscuits since he was 13 years of age.  In 1954 Peter followed his father into Jacobs at 14 years of age and gave just short of 40 years service to the company.  His mother was from a large Tallaght family, the Mullallys and Peter spent most of his childhood weekends and the school holidays out in Tallaght with his mother’s family. Both his mother’s and father’s family had been active in the Republican movement.  Peter moved with Jacobs out to Tallaght in the 1970s.     “I was born in a biscuit tin!  I was born in Aungier Street. My father’s father was from Baltinglass.  They moved into Dublin, beside Burdocks on Werburgh Street, and moved across the road to the first house on Castle Street.  His sister was in the Cumann na mBan, and his brother was in the Fenian Boys (Scouts).  My father went in as a messenger boy, into Jacobs

  The Sayings of Malachi Horan of Killinarden Hill, Tallaght     Malachi Horan was born in the year 1847 on Killinarden Hill, Tallaght, and lived for almost 100 years.  In his mid 90s he related his memories and stories to Dr. George A. Little of the Old Dublin Society.  They were published as ‘Malachi Horan Remembers' (1943).  Malachi died in 1946 and is buried in Saggart Graveyard.   “Maybe someday you will wear his shoes,  but you will never have the head to fill his hat”.   “He heard them warn him not to open his grave, with his mouth”.   “Mercy was out of town in those days”.   “Hard times breed hard men, and hard men make rough manners”.   “If people, in those days, had no great caring for the law, the law had now great caring for them”.   Ay, times change, but I doubt if we change with them”.   “There be men fit to travel the mountains and there be some whose foot should never bruise heather”.   “If no man laboured the land, the mountain would take back its own”.   “The drin

  The Memoirs of Fr Pat Carroll O.P   Fr Pat Carroll was born in Rathkeale, Co. Limerick and joined the Dominican Order in 1945.   He came to Tallaght in 1947 and was ordained a priest on the 13 th July 1952.   “I was very delicate with illness when I was first born and nearly died because of it. I had forty-five visits from the doctor as an infant.   My father would catch my little finger and say to my mother 'That child is not dying. Feel the grip of that little hand!’ My mother's name I can no longer remember, but she worked for the Munster Institute and became the poultry and dairy instructress for the county of Kilkenny.    There she met my father who was seventeen years older than her, while he was working in the bank there. The banks shifted them around a fair bit in those days.   I was only a few months born when we moved to Claremorris for three years before moving to Cashel for a year and then to Dunmore, Co. Galway. We spent ten years there- most of my chi