Seatown
Tune into Dundalk FM on Saturday at 9am on 21st June and a further selection on Saturday 28th June (repeated on Sundays at 5pm).
The Seatown Series, a collaborative project between, residents of Seatown, past and present, Upstate Theatre Project, An Tain Arts Centre, Louth County Museum and Dundalk FM is coming to fruition. The project includes oral testimonies and reminisces from Aileen O’Donoghue, Alan Moore, Assumpta Gray, Brendan Lennon, Carlo Cristini, Eileen Connolly, Eileen McCann, Ian Bridges, Jinx Lennon, Martin Shields and Michael Stafford.
Declan Mallon of Upstate Theatre Project recorded conversations over a number of months with contributors who reflected on personal and social histories of the area. Martin Shields, born in Broughton Street, recalls growing up in the street;
‘ It was a nice place to grow up and nice, decent, old-fashioned families you know. Family values and everybody got on. People just got on with their own thing. There was a great sense of community and at times here you didn’t have to lock your door. Everybody’s door was open you know. You just waltzed in and out it didn’t matter who you were. Everybody was everybody’s children if you know what I mean. So good times. good times here.’
Brendan Lennon, who moved to Seatown when he was one year of age in 1929 says that ‘it was called Seatown because the sea came up that far. So it was mostly down at the lower end of Seatown that I grew up. And we grew up acknowledging the fact that Seatown was somehow special. It was a very happy kind of an area. Neighbours used to come in and out. If you were short of a sugar or tea or butter or whatever. Neighbours would just say to them, you know, you just go across the road and get something there.’
The series of recordings covers a multitude of topics from work experience, schooling to social histories. Assumpta Gray talks about the day the descendant of the Jewish family who lived in her house called to the door and how she and Peter Kavanagh of the Dundalk Democrat delved into the history of ‘Little Jerusalem’ as Broughton Street was once referred to.
The recordings are being passed over to the Louth County Museum where they will be made available for the public to listen back to. Excerpts from the recordings will be broadcast on Dundalk FM on Saturday at 9am on 21st June and a further selection on Saturday 28th June (repeated on Sundays at 5pm).
Declan Mallon spoke about the hope that people in Dundalk might begin to add to this small collection and begin donating their own recordings to the museum. ‘Oral histories hold a great wealth of knowledge and specificity that compliments the more general histories that are so well documented. But with each generation you find that those stories can be lost and simply not recorded. It is ironic that we have the technology literally in our hands but haven’t used it in this way to any great extent. So start recording those recollections is the message’.
The project partnerships were crucial and special thanks go to Brian Walsh of Louth County Museum, Alan Byrne of Dundalk FM and Sophie Coyle for all their help in seeing the idea realised.
Eileen Connolly grew up in Broughton Street and remembers… ‘ just so kind and neighbourly and there were a couple of houses here in the street who kept pigs for to pay the rates. Not pigs, a pig for the rates and you know you’d be giving the slop to the ladies who had the pig. Great animal lovers great, great people. It was magical.’
