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The Bridge House, Baltinglass: This was my
granduncle Joe's pub. The photograph must have been taken
in the late 1920s or the 1930s. I believe the people in
the photo to be his widow Bridget Hutton (née Quinn),
her unmarried sister Mary, and my mother. Because of Mrs
Hutton's republican loyalties the pub was a target for
both British army and Free State army reprisals during
the War of Independence and the Civil War which followed
the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the establishment of the Irish
Free State. In the 1920s my grandaunt employed a woman
whose husband had joined the British Army and been killed
in the First World War. This woman was placed in a
dilemma each year as Armistice Day (11 November)
approached: when the purchase - and wearing - of a Poppy
from Empire loyalists like Colonel Dennis of Fortgranite
(one of the 'big houses' near Baltinglass) was likely to
incur my grandaunt's anger. |
