Evelyn Kennedy (née Quigley) (b. 1918)

Track 1: Her family background in Portumna, her father’s emigration to America, and his return after a short time to purchase a property in Banagher, where he set up a tailoring business. Track 2: The history of this property, which had been a Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) barracks. Her father built a dance hall adjoining the property in the 1930s. Memories of her education and her work in the family drapery business. Track 3: The complexity of the tailoring business, the fashions in clothes of the 1930s, and the journeymen tailors who came from Artane, Dublin to work for her father. Track 4: The brisk business carried out in the family premises during the years of World War II. The social life of the time and the bands that played in her father’s dance hall. Track 5: Memories of a number of townspeople in Banagher, and the contented lifestyle they enjoyed. Track 6: Her grandmother, who lived with the family, and who had spent some time in the workhouse in Portumna at the end of the nineteenth century. Memories of her uncles’ involvement in the War of Independence and the Civil War.