A Ramble about Tallaght

The Yellow Prefab Church of Mountain Park-   Our Lady of Loreto On the 10 th December 1969 the Most Rev John Charles McQuaid came to Tallaght to dedicate and bless a large yellow prefabricated structure recently set down and assembled on the Old Bawn Road (Mountain Park).   It was a temporary prefab Church erected to serve the faithful of the district on an interim basis, while greater plans were being advanced for the building of more permanent churches all over, what was soon to become Tallaght New Town.   There were plans for the construction of 7000 new houses in the district over the following seven years and a rapidly growing flock, estimated to be 40,000 souls would soon need ministering to, some it was felt, rather urgently. The Catholic Church in Ireland had discovered the merits of prefabricated Churches in 1961 when the first two prefabricated churches manufactured in Ireland had been erected on Achill Island. The Most Reverent Dr. McQuaid, Archbishop o...

Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saggart Village The Last and Lonely Days of Minnie Hunt On the evening of Saturday 17th August 1907, Mary Hunt, a young domestic servant living in Saggart, made her way on foot to the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the centre of the village.  Passing through the pointed-arched door she ascended the great tower of the Gothic revival Victorian Church.  Mary Hunt had been ‘peculiar in manner’ in recent days. She had, for reasons known only to her, resolved that her twenty five years was long enough on this earth. A quiet and well conducted woman, Mary, affectionately known as Minnie, had originally come from Oghill, Monasterevin Co. Kildare where she had lived with her mother, before taking up employment as a parlour maid and domestic servant.  She had for the previous 18 months been in the employment of Mr Hugh Hutton, then resident in The Lodge in Saggart ...

The Memoirs of Matty Dunbar of Bohernabreena Matty Dunbar, 1999 (Photo: Mr. Louis Fagan) Matty Dunbar was born in North Mayo in 1915 and came to Tallaght as a young man.  He married Doreen Murray from Balrothery before settling in Bohernabreena.  After serving his time as a boiler maker with Hubert’s Engineering firm on Cork Street in Dublin, he worked in Woodtown and DeSelby quarries for a shilling an hour. "When I first came to Tallaght there was still the remains of many little houses on the top of Tallaght Hill. They were the ruins of the weaver’s cottages.  A hundred years before my time a community of weavers  had come down from the north and set up there.  They would work away there for months, then go off around the country selling their wares.  The Night of the Big Wind (6th January 1839) smashed all their looms, knocked down their houses.  The next day they all packed up and left, never to be seen again.  There was an a...

The Blacksmith's Daughter- The Memoirs of May Delaney ( nee Kelly) May Kelly (Centre) with Friends Maggie Barry and Mary Manning (circa 1924) May Delaney ( nee Kelly) was born in Balrothery in 1914 and moved to Tallaght village with her family shortly after.  Her mother (Mary-Ann Reid) worked in Boardman's Mill in Glenview before marrying the village Blacksmith, John Kelly from Firhouse.   May had six brothers and two sisters, Jude and Jane who were known locally as The Tallaght Twins.   After marrying Bill Delaney from the Liberties in 1949, May moved to Walkinstown. In the late 1990s she still visited Tallaght at least once a week, for the Senior Citizens Club and to play bowling in the Leisureplex, where her back garden once was! Mary's Sisters- The Tallaght Twins Tallaght- It's a changed place now!   You wouldn't know where you were.  I can hardly tell one road from another, but I suppose it's a good thing, now that life is easier. ...