WICKLOW TOWN
WICKLOW TOWN
– Stan O’Reilly
‘Under the stairs’: Extracts from the diary of Sheelah O’Grady Sheelah O’Grady was the daughter of Wicklow revolutionary William O’Grady. The following extracts are from the typescript of her unpublished diary.
William and Henrietta O’Grady [My parents] lived and brought up their vast family in Wicklow Town on the east coast, twenty six miles south of Dublin. A pleasant seaport of grey stone nestling around the mouth of the River Vartry and dominated by imposing churches of the Catholic and Protestant faiths perched high on opposing hills. Father had been Wicklow Gaol pre 1950. born and brought up in Waterford further to Photo: Courtesy of Edward Kane the south, and went across the water to London to serve an apprenticeship in a hairdressing salon somewhere in the Pentonville Road. The only reason I know this is that once when we went to London, he pointed out the salon. He hardly ever mentioned his family and did little or nothing to keep in touch with them except when news arrived of the death by drowning, and his bowler hat was taken down from the top of the wardrobe to be given a good dusting before his departure for the funeral. Quiet as he was at home, he found time not only to be a leading figure in Sinn Féin but also to be a well-respected Town Councillor. Unfortunately, the hair dressing salon never made the money hoped for and became more and more of a burden to well beyond his dying day. Mother was the radiant, sustaining one—though none of us children had any real inkling
233
