The Memoirs of Christy Keeley

Mr. Christy Keeley (Photograph- Louis Fagan)

Christy Keeley was born in Swords, Co. Dublin on Holy Thursday 1930 and moved to Tallaght when he was just three months old. His father was a medical orderly in the Irish Army and was based in The Camp, on the New Lane, (Belgard Road) when he met his future wife from Jobstown.  Christy worked in Urney Chocolates from 1946 until it closed in 1980. He became the first caretaker in Old Bawn Community School.

“When I was a young fella I knew everyone in Tallaght by name and they all knew you. The population of Tallaght was only three hundred and sixty and sure it's 86,000 now! Everyone had a nick-name at that time, everyone.  Mine was Corporal Christy, because my father was in the army. They used to say "Keeley has a feast-day named after him- Corporal Christy".  Everyone had a nick name. There was ‘The Bull Moran' and 'The Bull Carroll', 'Duck-Egg Finnegan'. 'Ducks Watkins', 'Hoppy O' Riordan', 'The Goat Kelly' and The Crab Corrigan'. You wouldn't need to know their real name because everyone knew them by their nick-name. 

I started school in Tallaght when I was six years old in 1936. It was only a new school at that time, the one facing the priory gate on the Greenhills road.  There were four rooms in it, two for the boys school and two for the girls, and three teachers- The Bull Moran, Mrs. Wogan and Mrs. Brearton. I'd walk down from Kiltipper every morning to school in the village, down past the Goose Park Cottages in Goose Park (Oldbawn Road-Watergate).  Those little cottages, on the left after you leave the village: They are there since Adam was a boy!  The Goose Park was so called because at one time every house in and around the village kept ducks, chicken and geese.  At lunchtime each day all the fowl would be walked down to the stream to be watered, and so the area came to be known as the Goose Park.

As a kid, every Friday night myself and my father would walk three miles to go to the sodality. You wouldn't miss the sodality or the devotions. We would get the 6.15 mass up in Tallaght every Sunday.

When I was fourteen I became a committee member of the Tallaght Pioneers.  Father McCarthy was the main man then and he would organise variety shows in St. Dominic’s Hall and ask me to compare.  And I was only fourteen!  There used to be two spinster woman who lived down the bottom of the village- the Dolly Sisters we called them.  The two of them were in the Pioneers and they wouldn’t leave the house without sporting their Pioneer pin.  Now one time Father McCarthy got the tip-off that the Dolly sister were buying bottles of stout in Molloy’s Bar and Grocery so Hoppy O’ Riordan was detailed to go down to the house to confiscate the Pioneer pins! God, that’s years ago, 1947.

As a young fella I would have worked on all the local farms in the district. When I left school at fourteen, I worked for a year and a half on Pa Mooney’s farms up in Springfield.  I worked Monday to Friday, eight to six, and at the end of the week Pa would hand me a pound. I would run home to my mother and give it to her and I would be a hero!  A pound in 1944 was a lot of money.  Every morning at 9.30 I would have to drive a horse and yoke into town, because Pa had done a deal with Massey's undertakers on Cork Street, to swap a jog of straw for a jog of manure, because Massey needed the straw for the horses and Pa needed the manure for the farm. Now I’m glad I was bringing the manure out of town and not out of Tallaght, because there's always a light breeze blowing down the Greenhills Road, down off the mountains, it's always behind you when you're leaving Tallaght so if I had been bringing manure into town I'd have the smell blowing into me all the time. Thankfully it was blowing against me as I came into Tallaght.  Pa's son, Paddy, had the first threshing mill in South County Dublin, so he would have to thresh the wheat for all the local farmers.

Austin Muldoon had a big farm in Old Bawn, where Millbrook Lawns is now- it was a huge farm. During the winter, as young fellas we would go up to Austin's farm to steal firewood. There were huge trees all over his farm, so we would bring a saw and climb up the trees to cut some branches off for firewood. Every now and then Austin would come around with his dogs, and we would have to hide up in the trees until he was gone.

There was some big farms in Tallaght at that time. Vincent Jordan had all the land where Old Bawn and Aylesbury is now. Bagnalls had all the land between the Dodder and Firhouse. A small farmer by the name of Doran had a farm where Gilbey's is now, near Belgard. There was nothing but farms in Tallaght at that time.

After working on Mooney's Farm, I worked as a nipper on the bog on Kippure.  I was only there three months when the word got out that Urney Chocolates were taking people on, so I got in there in 1946 and stayed there  until it closed in 1980.

I was only in Urney, two or three years when I met my wife, Betty Keely from Mount Talant Avenue. For my nineteenth birthday, my mother organised a bit of a party in the house. A fella I was working with in Urney played the accordion and he was coming to play a few tunes, so I said “look, if you’re bringing your Teresa, ask her to bring one of her sisters, ‘cause I’ve no mot at the moment”. Now, her sisters weren't available so she brought a friend from the Legion of Mary, with the same name as my own,  Betty Keely. The 17th of April 1949 that was, and I haven't got rid of her since. The confusion it caused around Tallaght, because my name was Keeley and her name was Keely, and we got married to each other! 

Christy and Betty Keeley, Center

 We used to go to the back room in Molloy’s bar and grocery and have a singsong there every Saturday night. Mr Moran was the compere and there would be another fella playing the piano; great nights they were!

Molloys- Bar- The Back Room

Before I met Betty, myself and the lads would go to Doyle’s Dance Hall, (In the Village).  The lads used to say 'if there wasn't a fight in it, it was no bloody good'. That hall was used for everything over the years: residents associations, Bingo and Record Hops. I was a disc jockey there for the record hop once a week, when I was younger. Jack Doyle had the hall there and a sister of his had the shop on the corner after she married into the McNamara's. Mulligan's Book Makers has the old shoe shop now. A niece of Jack's, Mags had a little hardware down in Balrothery in the early days.

McNamara's Corner- cars coming from Goose Park

Facing the side of McNamara's, was Paddy Mullally's, the harness makers. Paddy Mullally from Oldbawn was the local harness maker, and no better man for putting a stitch in your school bag!  As kids, he would give us Bulls-eyes sweets while he was fixing our school bags, so of course we started deliberately breaking our straps so we could get a few sweets off him.  Paddy had two nick-names: 'Straps' Mullally, because he fixed all the straps and `Waxey' Mullally because that's what he used. Paddy used to rent that room from the Blacksmiths next door, Kellys. Kelly's forge was there for years.  Every horse in Tallaght was shod there and there were a lot of horses around at that time, because motor cars hadn't caught on yet. The Kelly's were all great footballers- Cooser Kelly, Wacker Kelly, The Goat Kelly, and Johnser Kelly. Cooser was as strong as iron, and in a Gaelic match he would always get into a shindig.  Mrs. Kelly would be watching and she would say 'here, will ye move back and make a ring for Cooser'.  A match was never a success in those days unless there was a good shindig.

There was always something on in Tallaght, either a football match or a horse race, or the motor racing. In the early days the Point to Point horse races were held in Tallaght, in Killinarden first and later in Ballycragh or Old Court as we called it. The Point to Point wasn't just a big day in Tallaght, it was a big day for horse racing. As a lad I remember going up to Killinarden to watch the Point to Point, and I looked around, and who was I standing beside only the boxer Jack Doyle and Movita!

The Famous Boxer Jack Doyle- 'The Gorgeous Gael' with girlfriend and Hollywood actress 'Movita' in Dublin.  They were seen in Jobstown, Tallaght watching the Point to Point horse races. Doyle would be charged with assaulting a barman in Delaney's public house in Knocklyon.

Another big day in Tallaght was the Leinster 200 motor bike race. It would start in Tallaght and go down to Templeogue, then come back up through Firhouse, across Oldbawn and back into Tallaght. All the roads would be closed for the day and crowds would come out to watch the race. Stanley Woods was one of the top riders then. He was a flyer and I think he must have won the Leinster 200 a good few times.

Motor Racing -Tallaght Village 1935

Albert Perris

(Memoirs (Edited) as set down in recorded audio interviews over several days, with Albert Perris in Glenview Lodge Day Care Centre, Glenview, Tallaght, Co. Dublin in 1999.  First published by Tallaght Welfare Society in “Since Adam was a Boy- An Oral Folk History of Tallaght (Perris, A., TWS, 1999).

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