Pipes and parades bring back memories of a bygone era
By Sean Heffernan
A PICTURE taken by photographer Arthur Fields – The Man on the Bridge – has resurfaced online, on a Facebook page dedicated to the legendary snapper, who used to ply his trade on O’Connell Bridge in Dublin city.
The photo is thought to have been taken in 1942, and shows a few members of St Dominic’s Pipe Band returning home over the bridge from a marching band parade in Croke Park.
The band was based in Tallaght, but had members from Clondalkin and Templeogue too.
Back then there was one bus to Tallaght, the 77, and another went to Clondalkin, the 51. Both departed from Aston Quay. It is thought that this is where the men were marching to as they made their way home.
Both towns were very much rural locations back then, mostly made up of farmland, with just ahandful of commercial premises operating out of a single main street in both locations.
Brendan Kennedy, whose late father Jim was one of the people in the photograph, spoke to The Echo.
“My father was a member of the Tallaght Pipe Band, and at the time the photo was taken, they would have played before and after matches in Croke Park. He left the band not long after he got married.”
Mr Kennedy was born and reared in a house attached to The Cuckoo’s Nest Pub, and then moved to Clondalkin when he got married.
He joined the CIE Inchicore Works aged 14, and worked there for an impressive 51 years.
As Brendan recalled “His trade was as a Tuber, which related to work on the steam trains. It was his job to make sure the implements that allowed the steam to properly go through the boiler, the engine and out the chimney, were working okay.”
With the advent of diesel, and now electric trains, this led to the phasing out of the steam engine, and Jim was transferred to work in the store room at the Engineering Works, a job he carried out dutifully until he retired aged 65.
He enjoyed 21 years of retirement, before passing away at the age of 86, and what an impressive life he lived.
TAGS Tallaght
