Born in a Biscuit Tin- The memoirs of Peter Nicholson

 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 Biscuits at 13 years of age, and he died in 1955 when he was 64 year old.

I went into Jacobs in 1954.  When Jacobs moved out here to Tallaght in 1970 I moved with them.  My father and I had almost 90 years’ service to Jacobs between us. I know families that had three generations working in it!  When I went into Jacobs in 1954, they had in the middle of the factory a terrific swimming pool. When you came out of the swimming pool, you went into the bake-house- all big ovens all around you.  Across the road they had a recreation hall- where they had gymnastics, basketball, badminton, a temperance club, snooker and billiards and table-tennis.  At one time Badminton Internationals were held in that hall. They had football grounds up on Rutland Avenue. Jacobs had a great tradition of soccer. And they had camogie teams; sewing classes for the girls working in Jacobs; Irish classes. They had a full time school teacher- a man by the name of Mr. Taylor.  At the time people came out of school at 12 or 13 or 14, and when they went into Jacobs, they had to do two hours of Maths, English and Irish every week. 

 

Badminton was run at that time really by the Church of Ireland. I think it was brought in by the British Army.  If you were seen with a Badminton Racquet you would be called all kinds of names.  Badminton- It wasn’t a thing that was known among the common people. It was an elitist sport at the time.  I remembering going out to Dún  Laoghaire for a game and the club was called the Kingstown Men’s Institute. The people there wouldn’t actually talk to you when you went there! You just went in and played your match and then you went home.

Jacobs fell on hard time and started selling.  They sold the football grounds and then they sold the recreation hall.  But they survived and pulled through it!

I lived in a “Jacobs house” on Summer Street in Dublin and that street was known as “Scab Alley”.  In a strike around the year 1936, there were people who worked for Jacobs that got loyalty money during the strike. They used to get an extra shilling, if they didn’t go out on the strike, and some of them got houses. As a result, where I lived was called “Scab Alley”. We didn’t go in there until about 1942, five or six years after the strike, when I was two years of age.

 

I was born in Town but my mother was from Tallaght so I would have been out in Tallaght every weekend. I was always in the Oldbawn road (house).  And in the summer my mother would always say “I am going home”, and so we would come out to Tallaght for the summer.

 

 My mother’s brother, Bob Mullally was a detective and had been interned in the Curragh.  They (the family) used to go down to the Curragh to visit him.  I think they used to walk there from Tallaght.  When they would get there they could see Bob behind the bars, behind the railings.  They would throw a bit of brown bread they had brought, over the railings to him.  When they would get back home to Oldbawn their mother would ask “Well? How is he?”  “Ah he is fine Ma.  He looks very well” they would tell her.  It was far from the truth!

My mother’s other brother Michael Mullally died at 27. He got pleurisy from lying out in wet fields. They would go on the run from the Tans, and sleep up the mountains in the featherbeds. My mother was down in Kilmainham for the execution of Kevin Barry.  She could remember every detail of that day.  She would describe the clouds in the sky over the prison. 

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As kids my mother and her friends would have played up in Oldbawn house. They would be banging on the door and sliding down the bannisters of the staircase. And their aunts  had worked for the owners (McDonnells) back when it was a paper mill.  They knew the maids that worked in the house.  The owners of Oldbawn House weren’t very good to the people that worked for them. Every Friday the owners would go into Dublin- by pony and trap- in to do their shopping, and the maids would go down to the ragstore (Because it was a paper mill it had a rag store). The maids would go down to the girls in the ragstore, and they would gather up fleas and put them in a match box, and bring them up and let them out in the beds, to get their own back on them!

 

As a kid I used to go up to Byrne’s- Glenville Pitch and Putt- and I would carry their clubs. I thought I was a caddy and sure they would only have two clubs!   Byrnes used to have a sweet factory in the back of Glenville. They used to make hard-boiled sweets! An uncle of mine, Willie McCauley, who was married to my aunt Alice, was the first treasurer of the club. He had come down from Urney in the North with Harry Gallagher to set up the factory. He worked with Urneys until he retired.

 

Jack Aherne’s pub was a tiny little pub called the Tap. The men would go into The Tap after their game.  A man by the name of Dowling had The Tap then. He kept greyhounds there. It was only a tiny little bar then. Beside that there was two little cottages and an entrance into a farmyard.  I think that is where my mother was born and they moved across the road to a lodge facing Aherne’s Pub now. There was another little house beside Austin Muldoon’s cottage at Oldbawn Cross and Donoghues lived there.

The four cottages on the Oldbawn Road (Facing Mountain Park) had Mullallys in the first, Buggys in the second, Crowleys in the third and Bennetts in the fourth.

 

During the summer when I would be out in Tallaght (1950s), myself and Tom Bennet would go over to do work for Austin Muldoon. After doing a few days’ work for Austin he would say, “Now! I will only pay you if you can spell “Constantinople”.  Five-shillings a week is all he would pay, but he wouldn’t pay you if you couldn’t spell “Constantinople”. Tom was a couple of years older than me and Tom used to have murder with him over it- to make him pay it!  Maybe he (Austin) was having us on because we were only kids!

 

The Stone Crusher

Jackie Doyle, a cousin of mine used to work in the stone crusher. The crusher was there into the 1950s before it was knocked down, on the Kiltipper side of the Oldbawn Bridge right next to the river; a big big monstrous thing it was. He was the youngest man in the photograph (of the gravel men at the stone crusher). He ended up living in California. He was 86 in 1998.  A lot of the men who worked there were from Saggart. Jack could name every man in that photograph 60 years later.! 

My father used to come out from Town to camp on the banks of the Dodder and that’s how he met my mother!  A crowd from Jacobs would come out to Tallaght for the weekend during the summer, camping on the banks of the Dodder.  There was loads of little shacks on the banks of the river- Tintown they called it.  Upstream towards Glenville there was ‘Holes” in the river.   “Molly’s Hole” and “Molly’s Legs” were places on the Dodder.  I remember the army used to blow them up!  They used to blow holes in the river bed.  I don’t know what they were doing. These holes would fill up and they were a great place to fish or to swim.

 

We used to go up on the bikes to St. Colmcille’s Well with Willie McCauley.  Martin Molloy (of Molloy’s Bar and Grocery) used to visit that well.  He was starting to go blind and he got partial sight back. He used to put it down to the water in St. Colmcille’s Well. The fella that opened the Candyman Shop in Colbert’s Fort, used to work for Martin Molloy. Colbert’s Fort was originally houses for the British soldiers from the aerodrome.  I think they held prisoners there at one time!   They used to deliver all around the mountains delivering in the van.  I used to go with him in the van during the summer, to deliver up to all the old houses up in the mountains.

Irish Biscuits (Jacobs), Tallaght, 1975 ( Copyright: Dublin City Libraries)

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When they were building Jacobs on the Belgard Road it was held up for months. There was a Fairy Ring in the middle of the field and they couldn’t get anyone to dig it up! The move of Jacobs from Town to Tallaght was done gradually over about seven years. Mallow production was the first department to move out to Tallaght.   A lot of staff from Jacobs on a Friday night would go over to Jacobs Social Club, and they would have to be signed in by a staff member from Urney.  Urney’s had a Pitch and Putt course, where Jacobs is now (1998).   I retired in 1995 after 40 years’ service. We had a great time in it.  I enjoyed working in it.

I always loved Tallaght and I still love Tallaght.  I think it is a great place.  The facilities we have now are second to none. There is everything you could want.

The amazing thing to me is the number of people who live in Tallaght and if you ask them “have you ever been in Bohernabreena Waterworks?” they say they don’t know where that is!

 

Memoir based on audio interview with Peter Nicholson recorded in Glenview Lodge, in Glenview, Tallaght, Dublin 24 in 1998
 
 Albert Perris.
A Ramble about Tallaght

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