"A farmer's daughter"

Not many Athlone residents were born in the year of the 1916 rising, but Nellie Gough was, and she has worked and lived in the countryside and town throughout the many decades since. She was born Ellen Mary Naughton in Ardmullen, Curraghboy on September 8th, 1916, and is proud to call herself "a farmer's daughter who worked as hard as the men". "We had bad roads then and I went to school in Famore National School in my barefeet if the weather was fine," she said. In Nellie's days of the 1920s, the school was one big room, with girls and boys of all ages in the one area. The school was approximately one and a quarter mile from her family's farmhouse in Ardmullen. "Every family left a cartload of turf at the school gate, and people had to either do that or give money for fuel for the school," she said. "We sometimes went to school through the fields if we wanted to eat hazelnuts in the wood." Nellie was the youngest of a family of six of her father, Michael Naughton's first family. Nellie's mother Catherine died, when Nellie was a baby, and Michael re-married, and had six more children with his second wife. Today, Nellie has one sister alive, and three half-sisters, and a half-brother. "I was very fond of my father's second wife, Sarah Meara, and she looked after me when I was a baby," said Nellie. In the 1920s, Nellie and family travelled to Athlone by horse and cart, and by pony to the fields, to gather potatoes and vegetables. "We'd put a bag on the pony's back and ride down the field, but we'd fill the bag with vegetables, and put it on the pony's back, and then lead him back up the field," said Nellie. Donnelly's travelling shop came once a week to Ardmullen, and Nellie's family often sold hen eggs to the shop, and exchanged them for groceries. She remembers the lorry with sideboards inside, and local man Johnny Cunniffe as the driver. "There was two shops in Curraghboy when I was a child, Kelly-O'Briens and Kilroys," she said. She enjoyed Harry Bailey's travelling shows that took place in a field in the vicinity in the late 1920s. It cost six pence to see a show that involved singing, dancing, comedy and drama. Nellie's farmwork began before she walked to school in the morning. From an early age, she had to go out and help to milk the cows, and then to hold a bucket and feed the calves. She had to bring in potatoes for her mother when she came home from school in the evening, and help prepare them for the dinner. "In the wintertime the cows would be left in at night, but of course they would dirty the shed and that would have to be cleaned out, and the cows would have to be milked again for the second time of the day," she said. "We had hundreds of hens laying eggs, and we had pigs and a sow, and ducks, turkeys and geese." The Naughtons had more than 80 acres, and Nellie's said that they acquired some of the land from the Land Commission in the late 1920s. "We used to fish in Lough Funshinagh - the vanishing lake, but that was long before it started vanishing," said Nellie laughing. Nellie left Famore School aged 14, and went working with the family of Superintendent Thorne in Auburn Villas, Athlone. She had the job of looking after the two children, Bobby and Renee, and her duties included washing, ironing and cleaning. She baked bread for the family and was sent by the family to two night classes per week for a term in Athlone Technical School, to learn about further cooking methods. She used to buy gooseberries from Fair's Farm in Auburn Villas to make jam, and this was a time in the early 1930s when there was just two houses and a field in the area. SS Peter's and Paul's Church opened officially in June 1937, and Nellie managed to get a ticket for the opening ceremony, which cost the princely sum of £1. "There was five different altars in that church then, and Supt. Thorne was a Protestant but bought a ticket from the organising committee, and gave it to me, and I was proud to go there, because £1 was a fortune to spend back then, and very few could afford that," she said. "You wouldn't get standing room in the church that day, and there were no loudspeakers there, but there were hundreds of people there, totally silent." In those years, Nellie used to dance at the crossroads in Carna, and fondly remembers dancing to the music of local native brother and sister, Jack and Babby Shortt. Nellie also used to dance at the Gaelic League in Glasses Lane (Griffith Street), and she said that dances used to be introduced in Irish there. The last Sunday in July, when Nellie was a teenager, was well known for two events, the climbing of Croagh Patrick and for the Pattern in Brideswell. Nellie was 13, the first time she climbed the peak of Croagh Patrick, and she remembers that it rained that first time, and after the climb, she managed to make it back to South Roscommon for the Pattern. The Pattern was a family day, which featured all kinds of fun and games. "I met my husband Jack Gough in the Savoy cinema (Fr. Mathew Hall) in the late 1930s, and I was in the place first and he came in and sat down beside me," said Nellie. "I don't remember what the film was, but I know it was a romantic film, possibly 'Romeo and Juliet', or 'New Moon'." By this time, Supt. Thorne was transferred to Sligo, and the family wanted Nellie to go with them, but she wouldn't because she would have missed her half-day off every week to cycle out to her family in Ardmullen. She was now working in another house, Lysters, the family who owned a large hardware shop in Pearse Street. Jack Gough was a native of Main Street, and in his lifetime he worked in Butlers and Priors. The couple went on to have three daughters, Bride, Patricia and Evelyn. Nellie and Jack lived in two rooms in a house in Parnell Square when they first married, with a woman who lived alone and worked in Athlone Woollen Mills. The couple went to live in rooms in another house in St Anne's Terrace, with another elderly woman who lived alone. Afterwards they got a house in Lyster Street, before finally moving in 1949, to Parnell Square, and the house where she still resides today. Nellie was an active member over the past 20 years of the Athlone Active Age Group, and with the group,got involved in performing in plays and playing bowling and pitch and putt with other members. Jack died in 1990, and he and Nellie would have been married 70 years, in February 2010, if he had lived. Time seems to have stood still for Nellie, because she shows no sign of slowing down, due to her zest for life. She is almost 94 years old, and tells her life story most clearly and coherently, and has a great sense of humour. She has beaten serious illness over the last few years and refuses to acknowledge the aging process, and her plan for continuance of that has to date, worked out successfully.