Family Fortunes: My grandmother ditched the convent for my debonair grandfather

This photograph was taken soon after my grandparents’ wedding in 1927. After matriculating, my grandmother decided to become a nun, and she received a shower of presents from her friends and neighbours. She went to Tramore for a brief holiday before entering the convent, where she met my debonair grandfather.

She abandoned her vocation and married him soon afterwards. They had 15 children. They went to live in the stately family house on the farm my grandfather had inherited from his Fennelly ancestors.

My grandmother had a creative side, which has been transmitted to several of her musical and artistic grandchildren. She used to tinkle the piano keys and develop her own photographs in a darkroom. She loved to read and passed her love of literature on to several of her children.

Due to financial difficulties, they had to sell up and move into the village. My earliest memories are of the three-storey townhouse, which smelled of musty books. On the middle floor, a stuffed otter bared its teeth through a glass display case, as if hissing at his killer. We feared that he would somehow break through the glass and eat us.

The otter was shot by my grandfather’s uncle Richard Fennelly before he started at boarding school. Sadly, an outbreak of scarlet fever in the college led to his death aged 13. The otter was kept in his memory.

We visited them most Sundays, and my grandmother made us oxtail soup, roast dinners and sherry trifle. Then, in the late 1970s, my aunt bought the old house and some of the land around it for my grandparents to live on. By now most of the ancestral house had fallen down.

My grandparents moved into a newly built house on the family land. It had more space and there was room for several families to come for Sunday dinner. We were always excited at the prospect of meeting up with visiting cousins. The otter was centrally placed in the entrance hall.

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