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SUNDAY
PRESS EXTRACTS |
| Extracts from an article that appeared in the Sunday Press about 20 years |
| ago. The article was written by Cormac McConnell and recalls the |
| reminiscences of the late Sonny Finnegan, RIP and Cissy Martin, RIP, a |
| returned emigrant from New York. |
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| Over a century ago Aughris had a population of hundreds, shops, craftsmen, a live |
| community and a crammed schoolhouse, but now it is a dead town. Sonny recalls. |
| " Just before my time there were hundreds of people here. Emigration killed the |
| place. It began before my time, but all through my time people kept leaving it and |
| few came back. They went, one by one, mostly to New York, sometimes whole |
| families". It is an eerie place now. Most of the house, the little shop included |
| have lost roofs. The windows are empty and the doors rotted away. Grass grows |
| down the centre of the single street up to the hilltop. Of the shops in Sonny's |
| time the best known was Michael Nevin's. Before that there were other shops |
| and a few sheebens. Michael Nevin was also the town tailor. His shop sold |
| everything. The townspeople had all their needs catered for except for the |
| the major purchases, which had to be made in larger towns further away. But |
| with Nevin's supplying light hardware, like lamp oil and groceries, it was often |
| unnecessary to leave town for a whole week. |
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| "It was a great town when I was a child" recalled the late Cissy Martin, "there |
| were lights in every house, music and a game of cards. There was plenty of craic. |
| It is a lonesome place now". |
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| The following family names were familiar in the area; the Goldens, Mullaney, |
| Higgins, Geoghans, the Connors, McGarrys, the Sleaters, Dunnes, Kelly's and |
| Mannions. Sonny remembers them all and can relate family histories for each and |
| every house, unfortunately each story ends with "and the went away to America, |
| the whole family". |
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| Back to History |
