Catherine Foley Archives

24/04/202024/04/2020

Recalling Geneva Barracks

Deena and myself have found many ways to endure the Covid 19 lockdown, good food, plenty of exercise and some other daily habits such as watching the 9pm news to be informed and remembering to keep in touch with family and friends to break the isolation. One daily ritual that has emerged specifically during the lock down is an evening reading by Catherine Foley from her book Beyond the Breakwater. A chapter each day as been a welcome distraction as is her witty, heartfelt and often melodious memories of life in the area that we call home. One that stood out was her reading of Geneva Barracks and the colour and drama of a sports day from the 1960’s held in the grounds there.

Catherine reads Chapter 15 – Geneva Barracks. Filmed by her sister RoseAnn

Now I always thought that Geneva Barracks must sound almost exotic to anyone who has never heard of its history. And the childhood memories of Catherine certainly paint a vibrant and dynamic community scene. I had never been to events there however, but It brought to mind recollections from the late 1970’s walking with others from Cheekpoint to Lynches farm at Parkswood and a newly mown field filled with stalls, people, animals, running races and all manner of entertainment.

Fintan Walsh explained to me yesterday by email, that events had a long association with the Barracks. “Since the early part of the 20th century lots of sporting and musical activities took place there including Feis’s with singing and dancing, bands came out from Waterford, games of football and hurling would be included, football between Dunmore and Wexford teams, between Passage and Kilkenny teams and billed as Inter Provincial games. My father told me these would be packed from all over the South East. When Passage Hurling club was formed in 1935 they used Geneva for most of their matches until 1950 or so and Gaultier also used it for football games. In the 1940’s Passage Hurling Club organised sports with many events there. I remember being in Geneva for horse racing in the late 1940’s, I remember a Passage youth riding a horse called Movita. Woodstown played many soccer games there in the fifties. The sports you mention were organised by a local Parish Committee in the 60’s up to the very early 70’s.”

Catherine Foley with her mother at the sports day

Catherine also sings in that reading a song entitled “the Croppy Boy” a song synonymous with the 1798 rebellion and the dark side of Geneva Barracks – An Internment camp. According to Jim Hegarty a fort had been established on the site in 1790. He describes it as an enclosed 14 acre site surrounded by 18ft walls and with four look out bastions on the corners with gun loops. A Chavaux-de-frise was built to guard the front entrance which was built to accommodate 1500 troops.

A hand drawing of what the Barracks looked like

After the 1798 rebellion the Barracks was used as an internment camp where the conditions were described by one, Colonel Thomas Cloney, as “The filthiest and most damp and loathsome prison, devoid of any comfort.” Abuse was frequent, torture, whippings and executions. Those that survived had a few options, none of which were very pleasant. Press ganged to the navy, service with the army or to face transportation for life to Australia or the West Indies.

A few years back at a Barony of Gaultier walk in the area, Richard Corcoran explained that the troops stationed at the Barracks were despised in the area due to their viciousness and violence towards locals. In fact many of the homes of that era didn’t have windows that opened onto the road, so common was it that troops would fire musket shot at homes.

the bottom left look out bastion (based on the sketch above) as it looks presently

Richard also explained how the prisoners were marched down the Passage Road under musket and bayonet guard to be filed onto ships at transhipped to Cork for deep sea ships and transportation. Jim Hegarty mentions three different battalions of troops – The Devon and Cornwall Fencibles, the Dumbarton Highlanders and German Hessians. Paul M Kerrigan in Decies 28 remarks on a Royal Navy 64 gun ship named the Admiral de Vieres that arrived in Passage East in February of 1799 to provide escort to troops who were embarking from New Geneva for Ebgland aboard commercial sailing ships. No mention is made of the regiment however.

I could find little more about the barracks and its military use. According to my cousin James Doherty one of the reasons for the siting on the Barracks was that ‘…British authorities ( rightly as it would turn out ) feared that Ireland would be used as a stepping stone to Britain by the French, these fears became reality when the French landed in Bantry in 1796. Earlier in the same year a senior British engineer had inspected the Irish defences and had commented on the strategic importance of Geneva Barracks but its lack of strength, Charles Vallancy noted ” Geneva only mounts two 12 pounder cannon ” and recommended the strengthening of the garrison.’

Obviously the insurrection of the united Irishmen of 1798 changed its focus. But as James points out ‘…The battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and the complete defeat of the French Navy would see a move away from coastal defences with the military focusing towards large central barracks in the population centres.” According to Jim Hegarty plans were drawn up to convert it to a military hospital which never came to pass. According to Patrick C Power it was abandoned in 1824.

But why the name Geneva Barracks? Well that as they say is a whole other story but briefly it goes back to the year 1783 when the Irish Parliament of the time provided money towards the relocation of Swiss artisans to the Waterford harbour area. The plan was a grande one which was to see the making of watches on the site, along with accommodation, a university and associated industries to support the work. It came to nothing but I can’t help by think that the scene as captured by Catherine in her story and Fintan in his recollection gives a small indication of what could have been – a vibrant, bustling and lively location filled with drama, laughter and shouts of joy.

References used:
Jim Hegarty. Time and Tide. A short history of Passage East
Catherine Foley. Beyond the Breakwater. Mercier Press
Decies #28 Spring 1985. Paul M Kerrigan. P 5
Patrick C Power. History of Waterford City & County. 1998, Dungarvan

For the readings by Catherine Foley you can use this link to RoseAnn Foleys You Tube Channel. You can also subscribe for notification of the daily uploads . And she can be contacted for copies of her book by email to: catherinefol@gmail.com
The book costs €15 and the postage is added to that – in Ireland it is €3.40. It’s €5.70 to the UK and it’s €7 to Australia.

30/11/201813/12/2018

Joe Walsh of Passage East

Catherine Foley, the author, has kindly submitted a second guest blog feature to the page. It follows a hugely successful initial guest blog some months back, entitled Beyond the Breakwater which brought us back to the Passage East of her youth and Waterford city. For this blog, Catherine remembers with a loving fondness her uncle, Joe Walsh.

My uncle Joe was often with us when we came together at important family occasions in our aunts’ sitting room in Helvick. He was an integral part of family life, spending every holiday with us. He’d lock up, leave his home in Passage East for a couple of weeks, get the bus to Waterford, catch the outgoing one to Dungarvan and we’d drive in from Ring to collect him at the terminal.

He was a merchant seaman who went to sea as a young man. He spent many years working on ocean liners and oil rigs. In later years he fished out of Passage East. He was a gravedigger in Crooke for a while too.

He was my mother’s brother and he was my godfather so there was a special link between us, not that I appreciated him when I was a young scamp with no time to listen to the cautionary voice of Joe.

Yet, I always knew he was my greatest ally, and as I got older I came to realise that we were alike in many ways.

In his downtime with us, I remember him working with rope. Even in the end when his mind was gone and he lay in a hospital bed, his hands working, tying imaginary ropes, repeated the same actions in the same sequence over and over until one of us caught and held them still.

Joe in later years

Once he arrived, Joe would take on all washing-up duties, and being a sailor through and through, he was far better than any of us girls: when he’d be finished the place would be gleaming, ship-shape and clean as a whistle, everything tied down and shining like a galley.

He often gave us money too, he’d bring us presents and he had all the local news for my mother, Ena, who had grown up in Passage and loved to hear stories about her home place.

And so on Christmas morning we’d all set off for our aunts’ house, which overlooked the fishing pier of Helvick in west Co Waterford, where us young ones would get presents, we’d get to listen to the adults talking about old times and to top it all off, we’d have a singsong.

My aunts always had Barley’s Lime Cordial as a treat for us, Cherry Brandy liqueur for my mother and Guinness and whiskey for the men. My aunts only drank tea.

Joe was usually called on to sing first because he loved to and because his voice was rich and melodious. He relished singing and he had a store of favourite songs that he’d learned from listening to artists like Johnny Cash and Jim Reeves.

He used to sing Roger Whittager’s The Last Farewell as well. After a swallow of Guinness to slake his throat, he’d put his glass down carefully on the coffee table and compose himself. His face would take on a dreamy, serious expression. Then he’d lift his head and begin: his deep, rich voice filling the room with the music and the story: “There’s a ship lying rigged and ready in the harbour, tomorrow for old England she sails.”

From the start we’d be hooked by the song. “Though death and darkness gather all around me… and the taste of war I know so very well,” he’d sing, his shoulders rising philosophically on the crescendo.

We loved this one because it told a story and we all knew the chorus with its lilting, easy melody: “for you are beaut-i-ful, and I have loved you dearly, more dearly than the spoken word can tell.” We‘d join in at that point and sing along with Joe.

Walsh children 1930’s

His own life at sea seemed to give the song an added pathos. He had never married, and I always felt that those songs of lost love were heart-felt in some way. I had a sense that there was some hidden trauma but I could only guess at what that might be.

A ring of stout around his mouth was a sign that Joe was truly in the moment. The sadness in Joe that us young people could never miss but never understand seemed to add to the piquancy of the words.
As he sang, he’d lift his head up at certain parts almost in sympathy with the fate of the tragic sailor and time would slow down as his voice filled the room.

He had a head of rich black hair, a strong jaw-line and a fine profile. He was a very handsome man. He smoked Major cigarettes – the tops of the fingers on his left hand were brown from years of holding the stubs in the cup of his hand. His masculinity and strength coupled with an incongruous vulnerability could leave me feeling slightly embarrassed. The angelic quality of his voice and his open trusting eyes seemed to pose a question that I could not fathom.

Joe had thick black eyebrows and his dark brown eyes would hold your gaze with a look of honest appraisal while speaking to you.

He walked with a limp: one shoe was always built up by the cobbler to compensate for the shorter leg that had shrivelled as a result of excessive cycling and hurling as a young man. Because of this, he sat in the armchair in his own characteristic way, almost in a kneeling position as if genuflecting, the shorter leg folded underneath him, his knee nearly touching the floor.

Catherine’s dad Joe left and her uncle Joe

Those times remain clear in my memory now, of Joe singing with emotion of other worlds and times. Looking out the window in Helvick, I remember the grey-green sea stretching off down the coastline to the east, towards Hook Head in the distance with the town of Dungarvan visible to the west.

He always favoured songs about loneliness, about drinking and about disappointment. I remember him singing about the man sitting in a honky in Chicago when he sang Little Old Wine Drinker Me. “I asked the man,” he’d sing, “behind the bar, to play the juke-box, and the music takes me back to Tennessee”. He used to lift his shoulders in a semi-shrug as he sang the last line: “When they ask, who’s the man in the cor-ner cry-ing, I say little old wine drinking me.” Unhurried, he’d pause like any singer if a long breath was required. He’d often close his eyes but sometimes, he’d look into the near distance as he put his heart into the words. Now the words and the music of those songs merge like a collage of melodies: the notes unfolding slowly in my head, Joe’s voice rising effortlessly.

He died in his late sixties in the hospital in Dungarvan. We buried him on an icy cold, wet day in Crooke in January 2004 alongside his parents, Joe and Mary Ellen Walsh (née Martel). There were hailstones and freezing rain on the day and it seemed fitting. As the coffin was lowered into the ground; it was as if whatever he’d endured was blanched away and his life was purified by the freezing downpour.

I’d like to thanks Catherine for providing this tweaked extract from Beyond the Breakwater, Memories of Home. If you follow the previous link you can buy it online, or as a kindle. Its published by Mercier Press and is available as they say in all good bookshops, including the Book Centre, Waterford. If you need any more convincing about this wonderful book Manchán Magan gave it a “rave” review in the Irish Times.

A tweaked extract from Beyond the Breakwater Memories of Home
By Catherine Foley (c) Published by Mercier Press 2018.

27/07/201806/12/2018

Beyond the Breakwater

Catherine Foley is a proud Waterford woman who grew up initially in the city before moving to An Rinn in the Waterford Gaeltacht. Deena and I had known of her before, through her contributions to RTE Radio 1’s Sunday Miscellany. However it was her cousin, and a regular contact of tides’n’tales on facebook, Mary Chaytor nee Rogers who alerted me to her recently published book; Beyond the Breakwater, Memories of home. The memoir takes us from her early days in Lower Newtown, a move in 1970 to the Gaeltacht, her career in journalism and as a carer for her parents in later years. But as this is a maritime blog, Catherine decided to share some recollections of regular visits with her maternal grandparents in Passage East; Joe and Mary Ellen Walsh. I think you will enjoy them.

My maternal grandmother, Mary Ellen Walsh, was a tailoress who lived in Passage East in County Waterford, all her life. She wore her grey hair tied back in a bun at the base of her head. She had deep-set dark brown eyes – a link to her Corsican ancestry. She wore a navy wrap around apron that had a pocket at the front in which she carried her beads, a few stray hairpins, sometimes the stub of a pencil or a spool of thread and maybe a little ironed handkerchief.

Catherine as Little Red Riding Hood with her mother Ena Foley nee Walsh

I remember her sitting at her Singer sewing machine, her upper body curved over the machine as she swayed back and forth in time with the motion of the wheel and the foot pedal underneath, all aligned and working with clockwork-like syncopation and co-ordination. I remember her starting the machine when she pressed down on the pedal underneath and then gave the wheel at her side a bit of a push. With nicely timed and precise movements, she’d crank up the beast and like a great steamboat it would all start up, and the whole machine would trundle into action, the needle ratcheting along. Then my grandmother’s highly controlled and beautifully intense dance would begin in earnest.

As children we stayed with my grandparents Joe Walsh and Mary Ellen in Post Office Square in Passage East throughout the 1960s. The noise of the Singer was like the sound of a great farmyard contraption clattering along. It had a rhythmic beat, a battering ram of a tune that carried a message of great condemning conviction and certitude, both satisfying and mesmerising. It was like hearing little hammer blows falling, cascading, tumbling down through the needle onto the fabric.

In the midst of this mechanical mayhem, she’d sometimes give the wheel at her side an extra little encouraging lash of her hand to speed up the sewing and that’s when she’d travel into the stratosphere of sewing wizardry. With her head bent low and her hands over the dress, she’d be flying along, concentrating fiercely, united as one with the powerful engine, her needle jabbing in and out of the material. At such moments, she was completely focussed, having to keep the seam in its correct place, the pressure up and the momentum going, pacing it, weaving it, all the parts moving in one great headlong rush. She was the seamstresses’ version of Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Mary Ellen Walsh and Catherine as an infant

The Singer, coming to a temporary stop for a moment, used to sound exhausted as it wound down, the frantic energy seeming to dissipate while my gran readjusted the fabric and fixed it under the needle. Then I’d see her thread the needle, holding her breath like a tight-rope walker, her glasses half-way down her nose as she tried to hold the cotton between her thumb and forefinger and direct it through the eye. It seemed to me as if she was facing down the beast, and a dual of two wits, a fight to the finish, would ensue until she’d threaded the needle, and once again bent the automaton to her will…

Her father was Joe Martel, a Corsican who ran away to sea when he was sixteen. He left either a year before or a year after a full census was conducted in Adjaccio in 1873 and although my sister and I went to Corsica years later and combed through the census returns in the heat of the National Archives we found no trace of him or his family. His father was Bastien Martel, a stone mason.

Joe Martel secured a job as a sailor on board a ship and sailed out of Adjaccio and thus he became a merchant seaman. In time, he became a bosun. On one of his voyages, he met a Captain William Ryan, from Passage East, and the two became friends. They must have been in their twenties when they came home to Passage on leave, Captain Ryan showing him his home place, where small fishing boats were tied up along the quays in the village, at a narrow stretch in the River Suir before the estuary widens to flow out to open sea. It was here that Joe Martell met Willie’s sister, Mary Ryan.

We have a photograph of Joe Martel with his drooping moustache and a slouched soft cloth cap, very much in keeping with the manner of his countrymen back in his native Corsica. His eyes are deep-set under the brim of his cap. The two were married in Crooke Church in 1883 – the same place where my parents married in 1958.

Catherine as a toddler with her grandfather Joe Walsh

Joe Martel and Mary, his wife, had four daughters – RoseAnn, Maggie, Angela and Mary Ellen Martel, who was the youngest and my grandmother. Ena, her daughter, and my mother, remembered Joe Martel even though she was only a little girl when he died. They used to walk along the cockle walk together, chatting away, hand in hand. He had black hair, dark brown eyes and sallow skin. He used to make model ships, which he moored against detailed miniature piers, all set against the painted background of the river estuary with detailed scapes of Ballyhack, Arthurstown, Duncannon and Cheekpoint all easy to pick out. These elaborate seascapes were housed in great display cases made of glass. He used Mary Ryan’s grey hair for the wisps of smoke coming out of the funnel of the ships. He was the first seaman to bring a gramophone home to Passage East from one of his voyages.

I have photographs of the times when we posed in the lee of the derelict Geneva barracks at a summer fair. I remember the swinging cots, the sandwiches and the cups of strong tea from wobbly tables in the field. Different years, different photographs. In another I am a child with my mother kneeling in the grass beside me, smiling. I am dressed as little red riding hood – in a kind of djellaba down to my sandaled feet. I have a basket on my arm but my tear-stained face shows what an unwilling participant in the fancy dress of the early 1960s I was. I can remember being afraid because I thought I was going to meet the wolf. But tear-stained or not, I came away with first prize. Some of those memories are still vivid. Here’s an extract from Passage, a poem, that is part of my recently published memoir, Beyond the Breakwater.

Their words are in my head today,

they echo back and forth

lulling me into a half-remembered time

when I was four and younger

in my pram

outside on the footpath

looking up at Canacanoe Hill.

…

The pump in front of Connors’ house.

The shop. Ice-cream,

Did they get a salmon?

No, they’re very scarce.

Crabs, gulls, stones, herrings.

The smoke house, shells, rain.

Get up to bed,

…

The Men’s Walk, the dock, evening,

The Blind Quay,

The slip, the steps, the gunwale.

We all grew up but their words are in my head today.

They echo back and forth.

I’d like to thanks Catherine for providing this tweaked extract from Beyond the Breakwater, Memories of Home. Its published by Mercier Press and is available as they say in all good bookshops. (I got my own in the Book Centre, Waterford). There were many stand out pieces in the book for me like her wandering up Alphonsus Road on her communion morning knocking on doors, or the deeply poignant Ardkeen Visit. And I was delighted to readt her perspective on the visit of Jackie Kennedy to Woodstown which featured in another recent guest blog by Joe Falvey. If you need any more convincing about this wonderful book Manchán Magan gave it a “rave” review in the Irish Times.

Community Notice: Free Concert at Faithlegg House Hotel. Booking essential…

Finally from me just to say that I’m delighted to get contributions for the guest blog, especially from a female perspective. This is blog post 241 and only the third guest blog since we started in late 2016 from a woman. So if any others out there would like to contribute, I would love to hear from you. The bref is 1200 word count, on a theme of the three sister rivers and harbour maritime history by email to russianside@gmail.com. Next month will feature a well known Dunmore East personality.

I publish a blog about Waterford Harbours maritime heritage each Friday.
To subscribe to get it to your inbox email russianside@gmail.com

For daily events/updates https://www.facebook.com/whtidesntales https://twitter.com/tidesntales