I returned recently to Roundwood, Co Wicklow, where I was stationed in my Garda service close on 40 years ago. I was there at the invitation of the excellent local Historical and Folklore Society to talk about a co-operative movement which mushroomed in the community in 1964.
Willie Doyle was the local hackney man who in the 1920s bought a secondhand bus and named it for St Kevin. He painted it by his own hand in the familiar blue and white livery and drove it himself, travelling the Glendalough road when it was little more than a mountain pass.
He had heard of advice I had given to a small holder in the Glenmacnass valley not to sell scrub land for tree-planting, but instead to apply for the Government grant to grow his own trees. Willie decided I was the man to get something started in Roundwood. I had no difficulty in persuading some of our neighbours to co-operate; which proved Willie's sense that the parish was ready to join the national movement inspired by the Tostal festivities in the 1950s.
First meeting
Those who attended our first meeting in the early summer of 1964 were Willie Doyle, who preferred to be described as a farmer; James Doyle, county council overseer; Eddie Heatley, postman and local historian; Andy Kavanagh, county council ganger and bee-keeper; Tom Timmons, forestry worker; and Michael Fanning and Pat Malone, progressive young farmers. The Irish Countrywomen's Association was represented by Julia Power and Nancy Connolly, farmers, and Mary Pierce, housewife.
We met in the Garda station, which was unorthodox. But I felt justified by the contribution we were all making to Garda/community relations. Our immediate aim was the Tidy Towns competition. Looking to the future, we debated the cultural activities we might foster to put Roundwood on the map. There was a proposal for a cottage industry with locally produced wool as the principal raw material.
In the meantime, with the encouragement of the county manager, Michael Flannery, we launched a modest programme to provide nothing more imaginative than roadside gardens. A local sculptor, Frank Morris, contributed designs. Frank resided on Calary bog with his partner, the painter, Camille Souter. He was making a name for himself when he died the following year, before his time.
Clean-up
The county engineer, J.T. O'Byrne, sent a bulldozer to clean up rough ground on a site at the north entrance to the village. Through the good offices of a neighbour down the road in Annamoe, the Minister for Local Government, afterwards President Erskine Childers, an unsightly telegraph pole was moved out of the way. We collected all the materials we needed locally, the county council supplying cement and gravel. From Roundwood Park, ex-President Sean T. O'Kelly sent his tractor and trailer to draw donated granite from the ruins of an old dwelling in the Glenmacnass valley.
We were a tiny meitheal, setting out with picks and shovels. Our first helpers were local stonemasons, now employed as forestry workers, who seized the opportunity to show they hadn't forgotten their old craft.
The newspapers picked up the story, and RTE sent a camera crew. We organised a visit to a Cottage Industries Exhibition at the Country Shop, St Stephen's Green. Candida's Irishwoman's Diary reported the invasion from the Wicklow mountains.
"Miss Violet O'Sullivan fights a hard battle to raise the standard of souvenirs in Ireland. She tells me that one of the most heart-warming experiences she has had since the exhibition of souvenirs was opened was the arrival of two coach-loads from Roundwood. They were not tourists. They were virtually the entire population of one Co Wicklow village who came to see what they could learn from a display of the best in Irish souvenirs. You'll have read of the wonderful spark which has been lit in Roundwood and the discovery of an unparalleled spirit of do-it-yourselves throughout the village . . . They are giving a practical demonstration that they mean this for posterity by a tree-planting ceremony.
Trees
Commenting on our plans for an Arbour Day, another of our distinguished neighbours, Robert Barton, was critical of the trees we intended to plant. "Lombardy poplars have not prospered with me, and the silver birch is a short-lived tree. I would favour oak or beech or even ash as indigenous trees, well tried out since primeval days."
On a damp Sunday afternoon early in October, as the sky darkened, people from every townland flocked to the village for the celebrations. Home from Austria where he had won the world ploughing championship, the Enniskerry ploughman, Charles Keegan, planted our tree. We had the Gorey Christian Brothers fife-and-drum band for the great day. That night, the parish hall was packed for a glorious free-for-all by musicians of Comhaltas Ceolteoiri Eireann.
Shortly afterwards, I was ordered on transfer to Garda Headquarters, where I was to spend the remainder of my service - but not before the civic-minded citizens of Roundwood had discovered the sense of their native strengths, and contributed greatly to the realisation of my own.