The Post Men and The Post Office

 He arrived, or at least passed by, each morning at about 10.30 or 11.00 on a busy day. His route was always the same. You would see him at Fahy’s house first, but, if you happened to be outside you would get an earlier clue of his immanent arrival as all of the dogs further into the village would be barking. It was of course, Jack Dempsey, the Postman. He hated dogs and was afraid of them. He never made a secret of that fact and everyone in the parish was aware also, as was every dog – and the dogs were not sympatric towards his daily plight. This is a picture of a typical postman of the time.

Jack travelled by bicycle and wore the obligatory uniform and cap of the time with his mail sack on his shoulder and often a load of parcels on the carrier on the front of the bike. One day when Jack arrived his pants were torn. He informed my mother “that bas***d of a dog belonging to so and so in the village caught the leg as I was passing. I’ll tell you Missus, t’was a good job I had no letter for them cause I’d have no trousers at all now !”.

Before Jack, my Grandfather, Michael Costello, was the local postman. In his time the Postmen walked as this was the rule at the time. He cycled to Menlough each morning, collected the mail and worked his route out from Menlough covering Pollnabrone, Upper Ballagh, Sunhill, Derrylissane, Ballinamona, Clooncurreen, Garbally, Skehana, Guilka and then had to return to Menlough with the empty post bag. The route had to be completed on foot and inspectors were plentiful in those days.

After Jack retired the position was filled by Michael Fahy from Ballinalahy who cycled the route for some years before leaving for employment in the UK. After that Eugene Devaney covered the route for many years and in his time a van was allocated to the route and the route was expanded to the whole parish on the retirement of Joe Kelly from Menlough Beg who used to cover the Menlough side of the parish.

Above we see L to R Michael Costello (Esker) and Joe Kelly (Menlough Beg) who were past postmen of the parish. 

When Eugene retired the vacancy was filled by Des Doherty from Woodlawn who was with us for a few years but is now also retired. Today The mail is delivered by Mary Collins and the route and mode of transport has changed a lot since the days of Michael Costello and Jack Dempsey. Other postmen from the area were Martin Joe McGrath, Colemanstown, who had his route from Colemanstown Post Office and Patrick Commins, Skehana, worked out of Brierfield Post Office. The postman carried a supply of postage stamps and in some cases had to empty and take back mail that was posted in some remote boxes to the post office,  to be processed through the system.

The postman in the early days, and even to this day, was often the only person who visited remote parts of the area on a daily basis. In the early days he was also the carrier of news – being the first to find out who may have died locally overnight or heard how the local fair was on the previous day and other bits and pieces of news that were of local interest.

The Post Office:

The local Post Office for this area was Menlough which seems strange seeing that a post office existed in Colemanstown  and Brierfield also. There used to be a post office in Guilka  but it seems that it was closed and business dispersed. In my young days, Menlough Post Office also housed the local telephone exchange similar to the one in the photograph. The Post Office was run by the Collins Family. Old Mrs Collins, as we knew her, was appointed postmistress in Menlough in January 1934 out of twenty applicants. She also operated the telephone exchange which was manual in those days. The telephone service closed down when the post office closed and was not available at night. At least each telephone customer had their own line (pair of wires) directly from Menlough exchange to their house or business as it was not unusual up to the mid 1970s to service a complete area with one line. Telephone numbers were also different in those days. The post office itself was Menlough 1, Costello’s Pub was Menlough 4, Harry Mellody was Menlough 7 and Lyons Garage was Menlough 26.  Menlough Post Office has now ceased its operation.