CAPPENCUR WAS THE NAME of the district in Tullamore where we lived from November 1920 until the summer of 1923. Cappencur is about two miles outside the town on the Daingean road. At that time Daingean was more often referred to as Philipstown. In our time there was only our house, Daly’s farmhouse and three or four small houses farther down the road in Cappencur; now it boasts a factory. The two miles of road into Tullamore was as straight as a rush – you could even see some of the town’s buildings indistinctly from our gate. Travelling from Tullamore I do not remember any other houses on that road until you reached our house. That house, which is still there but greatly changed, is on the right-hand side of the road. It was called ‘The Copper Beeches’, an apt name as the avenue leading up to the house was lined with big, majestic, red-leafed beech trees. A spacious lawn in front of the house hosted a weeping willow and flowering shrubs. The house had a garden and a large orchard on one side with a smaller garden on the other. There was a large farmyard at the back which included a hay-shed, stables and other outhouses with a lane at the side for carts. ‘The Beeches’ was rented from the Odlums.
It was dark when we arrived at ‘The Beeches’ on that first night in November. There was a huge blazing fire on a big, wide hearth to greet us – a turf fire. We were, of course, right in the heart of turf country.
One of the first things our father did when we had settled in Tullamore was to buy a car. A car was necessary as his work took him to places like Kilbeggan (Locke’s Distillery) and Edenderry. The make of car he chose was the Overland. One of his duties was to visit farmers all over the county who were growing tobacco. He often took all three of us. I remember visiting Birr. Another time it was the nursery in Geashil, where seeds and plants were purchased. Brian mentions Geashil a couple of times in his writings – it must have been this trip which left the name in his memory.
I will not attempt to describe the Overland. But if the difference between the car of the twenties and that of today is great, the change that has taken place on the roads during the same period is equally dramatic. An uncle of mine held the view that the greatest revolution of the first half of the century was the macadam method of road-making. In 1920 and for years afterwards every road in the country was a kind of ‘dirt’ road. There are a great number of words in Irish for mud – clábar, Iábán or Iáib, lathach, draoib, puiteach, greallach. Perhaps there was a need for all of them at one time but there is scarcely any need for even one of them today, for mud has largely been banished from the roads. At that time if you looked along a stretch of road on a wet day, it would seem as if there were scores of basins of water laid out as far as the eye could see. These were round holes filled with rain-water, potholes they were called, and the surface in between was covered in a thick skin of mud.
While the roads were muddy and dirty on wet days, they were no better on dry summer days. Every car or lorry that passed raised a cloud of dust that would smother you. The dust was so thick that the vehicle raising it would disappear in a cloud. Experience taught you to have your eyes half closed to keep the dust from blinding you.
The Overland had to be washed on Saturday, and father would bring it to the farmyard where there was a large trough of water and a water pump. After its week’s work on mud roads it was sorely in need of a wash and we had to lend a helping hand.
During the early twenties the motor-car was not the usual mode of transport in Offaly. Getting from place to place was more commonly done by donkey and cart or by pony and trap. You could hardly come across a stretch of road without three or four donkeys and carts carrying their loads of turf. And at harvest time there were queues of these carts carrying turf everywhere you went with the driver sitting on the shaft, or, if the cart was empty, the driver standing on it doing great feats of balancing as the donkey trotted.
On Sunday the two miles of road into Tullamore was thronged with people going to Mass – in donkey carts, in traps and on bicycles – with the odd motor-car.
The bicycle was very popular in the country in the twenties. There can scarcely have been a farmer who did not have one, even if he had a pony and trap as well. The traffic on the road to Mass would include scores of bicycles, with straight-backed farmers dressed up in their blue suits. Many of these bicycles were of Irish manufacture – Pierce or Lucanta; they seemed like tanks compared with bicycles of other makes because of their weight and the thickness of their frames.
In those days an elderly person or even a middle-aged man would never dream of mounting a bicycle by throwing his leg over the saddle as a younger person would. Instead he would use the ‘back-step’, as it was called – a steel bar about three inches long that extended from the hub of the back wheel on the left-hand side. To mount the bicycle using the ‘back-step’ you took a firm grip of the handlebars, stretched your body back so that your legs were to the rear of the bicycle and you began to run, pushing the bicycle in front of you. When you had achieved sufficient speed you stepped onto the ‘back-step’ and let yourself down into the saddle. There is no ‘back-step’ on bicycles now so that method of mounting will never be seen again.
There are some things in life that can only be learned by taking a chance: swimming is one of these, cycling another. I remember seeing an example of this when visiting a friend’s house. A middle-aged woman, who had bought herself a new bicycle, was sitting on it ‘learning’ to ride. Casual observation suggested that she would never succeed in doing so. Another woman was walking beside the bicycle lending support and bearing most of the learner’s weight on her shoulder. Whenever the bicycle was straightened the learner would become terrified and give a little scream. That was the sign for the instructor to take charge and restore the equilibrium. They went up and down the yard three or four times while I was there and for all the progress they made it might as well have been a sack of potatoes that was on the bicycle!
Early in 1921, before Lloyd George’s offer to de Valera in June of that year, the fight for freedom was at its fiercest and we knew all about it in Tullamore. The Black and Tan lorries often flashed past our house at great speed. Those rascals always sat back-to-back facing outwards with their guns on their knees. One evening when we were having dinner, one of the lorries stopped directly outside our house and a couple of men got out and began to lift stones from the low boundary wall between our lawn and the road. One of us asked our father, ‘Why should we let them do that?’ He answered that it did not matter and that we would not dispute the territory with them at that time.
When travelling with our father in the car we often met Black and Tan lorries, and wisdom dictated that one drew into the side of the road to let them pass as they never reduced their speed. At the time you would never travel far on a main road without encountering a bridge over a river or canal that had not been blown up overnight. Temporary repairs would be in place to give you access but there would always be officers and soldiers there to question you.
During that time I remember lying awake at night and hearing the sound of trees being cut down by volunteers so that they would block the road between Daingean and Tullamore.
The soldiers came to our house on two occasions. The first time was at night shortly after our arrival in Tullamore. I do not know what they wanted, but when they were leaving they took away a sword belonging to the Odium family which was hanging in the hall as an ornament. On the second occasion they were looking for help to clear a tree that had been knocked down near the house. This was a ploy to gather men and force them to do the clearance work.