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Memories of the Hammer and the Old Lodge Road
I was born in Osborne Street in the Tigers Bayarea of North Belfast in the year 1926.However my earliest childhood memories only begin when I was around four yearsold and my family had moved to Twickenham Street on the Old Lodge Road.[/size]
]I spent my boyhood years and my teenage years in andaround the streets of the hammer and the Old Lodge Road and made many good friendsand playmates. As we moved from house to house and from street to street I madenew friends, new enemies, and discovered new ways to survive in a society thathad little to offer.][[size=0pt]On looking back I believe those years were very hardbut because a lot of us were in the same boat the poverty and the dreadfulliving conditions that some of us endured were accepted as normal. Yet throughit all we had our good times and our bad times, we survived the bitter timesand riots of the thirties, the outdoor relief, the Saturday night free for allwhen the pubs got out and we came through the horror and pain of the secondworld war.
]As I record my memories I’m sure a lot of people wouldrecognize the situations I experienced, the games I played, the mischief I andmy friends got up to for as I progress through the years fresh incidents springto mind and old faces come to light and so I have done my best to keep mywritings in some sort of chronological order.
]The Old Lodge Road or the Lodge as it wascommonly known was approximately one mile long and it stretched from the backof the courthouse at the top end of where it joined Peter’s Hill at the bottomend. In between you had a total of thirty four streets, fifteen on one side,than ran through to Peter’s Hill and part of the Shankill Road, on the otherside, the streets ran through to Clifton Street and part of the Crumlin Road,the bottom four streets on that side were occupied by Roman Catholics as werethe streets in between that ran through to Clifton Street. The remainder of thestreets were occupied by Protestant families as were the little side streetsthat ran through to Peter’s Hill and the Shankill Road.
]I think it would be true tosay that the streets on the upper part of the road i.e. Perth Street, BedequeStreet and Court Street etc were considered to be more affluent than most ofthe other streets on the road, mainly because they consisted of the largeparlour houses as compared with the little kitchen houses which filled thestreets on the rest of the road, I would also say there were bigger and youngerfamilies living in the kitchen house areas. [/size]My earliest memories go back to the time when I was about four years oldand living in Twickenham Street, at that time I had an older sister calledMaisie, she would have been nine or ten years old, a younger sister calledJessie who would have been three years younger than me, our youngest sisterLily was to be born about a year later. My Father also called Albert, althoughfor some unknown reason was known to everyone as George, was an Englishman bornin Famham, Surrey. He had joined the Army atan early age and served as a blacksmith during the First World War and as Iunderstand served in the South of Ireland at the Curragh where he finished hisArmy service and to the best of my knowledge remained in Ireland, moved to Belfast where he must have met and married myMother. He initially was employed as a chauffeur come handyman in one of thelarge houses on the Antrim Roadwhere he was regarded as “A good worker and handy with motor cars”, this from areference dated September 1926. He took up the position of gardener in theBelfast Charitable Institution in Clifton Street in 1927 and remained there until hisretirement in 1938. My Mother I believe was “in service” in some of the largehouses and I think that was quite a common occupation for a lot of the youngwomen in those days, I understand she was born in the Ballymena area but wehave no records to prove this, in fact as my story will show we know verylittle of my Mother or her family.
