My Irish Granny

This is one of only two photographs I have ever seen of my Irish Granny and it's on her In Memoriam card.  I never got to meet either of my Irish grandparents, they both died before I was born and sadly I know very little about them.  It's the old story of never asking the questions when the right people were around to answer them.

However, I did ask my dad one day years ago, what his mother's maiden name was and what the names of all his siblings were in age order.  Her maiden name was Molloy.  Ellen Molloy.  Don't you think that has a nice ring to it?

The little white-washed, thatched cottage over on the right is where my Irish grandparents lived and where my dad was born.  As children, my brother, two sisters and I, would be taken for our summer holidays to Ireland.  We would spend a wonderful week in Dublin with Aunt Mag and her family and then a magical week in the country staying with Uncle Tom, one of my dad's older brothers who had inherited the old cottage.  There was no running water, no plumbing of any sort and no electricity.  It didn't matter to us though, it was all that kind of thing that made it so different and exciting for little kids like us from a town in the north of England.  Happy memories... but it's late now so I'll have to stop there.

Click on the photo to enlarge it if you'd like to read the card.