Little did teenagers Maureen Breslin and Sheila Hayden know the day they started working in Ballynahinch Castle seventy years ago that one day they would be special guests at the hotel for afternoon tea. The women, who have both raised families in their adopted Connemara, remembered the hustle and bustle of getting ready for the hotel’s opening day on June 9, 1946.
The hotel was then the property of the State and Eamonn De Valera himself presided over the official opening. It was his vision that it would be a beacon for international tourists in a new Ireland.
Maureen, from Ballinamuck in Co Longford and Sheila from Ballinaheglish, Co Roscommon had just finished their training in two separate Tourist Board colleges, set up by the new government to train people who would build up a tourist industry.
They were thrown in at the deep end of their daily duties – Maureen as a waitress and Sheila as a cook – but their youthful enthusiasm eased the six-and-a-half-day working week.
On Thursday, surrounded by family members and hosted by the hotel’s General Manager Patrick O’Flaherty, the women regaled the company with memories and yarns.
They spoke about being excited at being away from home and involved in a new venture but the realities of the post-war rations were still part and parcel of their lives.
Maureen remembered how the tea was rationed and how a colleague tried to sneak a cuppa for himself one day only to be disturbed by the then manager, a formidable woman. The young staffer was told to run an errand and, on his return, discovered the manager had discovered the tea pot and probably had the tea herself as she never mentioned it!
Maureen, an elegant woman surrounded by four of her nine children and a number of grandchildren, laughed when she remembered some of the high jinks of staff, especially the younger ones like herself trying to steal away for a few hours.
“We used to bicycle all over the place, so it was no wonder we met local lads. We covered the whole of Connemara on those bikes,” said Maureen who met and married John Davitt from nearby Ballinafad.
John passed away forty years ago when Maureen was still in her fifties and, for a time, she became the postmistress in Ballinafad.
Her son Peter joked about the jam being served in a cup for the afternoon tea and that it might not live up to his mother’s standards, but Des Lally of Ballynahinch Castle explained the cup, part of a Blue Willow collection, was now considered ‘contemporary chic’.
Des has been part of the hotel’s fabric for 33 years and has known Peter for years so the banter is good natured, adding to the homely atmosphere of the informal but special event as he encourages everyone to have seconds of the fresh open crab sandwiches, the tenderest of beef, also on brown bread and Coronation chicken sandwiches which are possibly a nod to a certain Queen’s 90th birthday but most definitely in honour of the two former staff members who could match the Royal member in years and style!
Even the hotel’s new chef, Galway city native, Ultan Cooke came out of the kitchen to see the special guests, legends among staff.
Maureen and Sheila certainly enjoyed the food, which also included carrot cakes, scones, macaroons and chocolate mousse and the champagne, but it was quite obvious they enjoyed remembering old friends and colleagues who had since passed away, including Sheila Stanley, nee Moore, Frank Cummins, John Luskin, Gerald Nee, Bina Nee, Eddie Joyce, Michael Vahey, Josephine O’Keeffe, Mary Battle and Charlie Cummins.
Herself and Sheila remembered someone buying their first car – an Austin Cambridge for £200 – but both women mostly remember going everywhere on bicycles. They lived in staff quarters in the courtyard, near the pig styes and the barns where the cattle were kept at nighttime. It was so different from the hotel’s extension, which they were shown including the new staff accommodation which features its own restaurant.
They remembered the Queen of Tonga visiting for lunch on a visit to Ireland following Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation in London.
Maureen recalls: “She was a fine woman dressed in wonderful cololurful clothes. I had never seen anyone like her.”
She also remembers many guests coming over from Ashford Castle including actors John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara while they were filming The Quiet Man.
The women and their families looked at old photographs from the hotel’s archives and laughed as they were shown black and white images of themselves in uniforms holding up fish as big as 14 pounds caught in the river on the grounds. They also studied old tarriffs and posters advertising the hotel. One from 1961 showed that it cost £19 and 19 shillings to stay in Ballynahinch for a week. That was an all-inclusive rate. Bed and breakfast was just £2 (about €52 in today’s money). The use of the bathroom was extra as rooms then didn’t have ensuites – a far cry from today’s luxury rooms.
The hotel now boasts 48 rooms thanks to a recent extension and revamp which has doubled the size of the bar – still the only local bar for miles. There’s a new patio off the dining area and the hotel has been re-decorated without losing its old world charm.
That work was undertaken after billionaire Denis O’Brien and a regular to the hotel for years, bought the hotel for a reported €6.5million in 2013.
“Oh, it’s all changed since our day. There were only about 24 bedrooms then, but we were kept busy. They were great years. I enjoyed every minute,” says Maureen, who, like Sheila, has seen her own children and now grandchildren working in the hotel.
Des points out that even when the women left the hotel to get married and raise families, they continued to promote the hotel in their own way – Maureen as a postmistress for a while (Ballinafad 2 used to be the hotel’s telephone number, Patrick reveals as he reads from an old advertisement) and Sheila through her sons, Michael and Eamonn Nee, as bus operator and postman respectively. Sheila’s late husband, Eddie, passed away a number of years ago.
The women were presented with bouquets of flowers while Patrick’s wife, Cliona took photographs and later they were interviewed by Josephine de Courcey for her Sunday night programme, Senior Side of the Street, on Connemara Radio, which will be broadcast in a few weeks’ time.
In raising a glass of bubbly to the women and their families, Patrick joked how they had “rescued two wayward Connemara men” which probably hadn’t gone down well with the local girls.
He said they had both contributed to the fabric of the local community and the region by having arrived at the hotel when they did but also by their continued association with the hotel through their families.
Everyone agreed that paying homage to the two former staff members had been a lovely way to celebrate the opening of Ballynahinch as a hotel 70 years ago.
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