Remembering the Mayo bingo boom of the 1980s and 1990s

A cultural history rolled out in Ballyhaunis

by Mark Godfrey

Who remembers the bingo boom of the 1980s and 1990s? Tom Finn does.

Hundreds would come through the doors of the parochial hall in Ballyhaunis every week for the bingo sessions which he ran alongside Pat O’Connor.

“I ran bingo in the Star Cinema on Clare Street for Gael Linn but there was also bingo in the hall at that time so I became a second caller,” he explained, a reference to the calling of bingo numbers. And then I graduated to looking after the box office and to looking after things.

“There was a committee set up and ran bingo here quite successfully for several years. Tuesday night was our night. And then when things got better bingo died off. Bingo was big in the seventies and eighties and then started to die off in the ‘90s. People said bingo is a bad times game!

“And then someone handed me the keys and said ‘will you mind them Tom?’ so that’s how I got involved in this place.”

Finn has been an unpaid and low key but widely respected keeper of the hall over several decades, a master of ceremonies operating from his own business, Finn’s Footwear, on Main Street.

Memories of the bingo nights were stirred again recently as the hall, a long rectangular structure built on the eve of World War Two, opposite St. Patrick’s Church on Main Street, is undergoing its biggest face lift since it was built in 1939. A €400,000 renovation project supported by the EU’s LEADER rural fund alongside local donors is underway at the building, now run for the local community by Ballyhaunis Community Council.

As part of the works the maple-wood stage is being extended and the main hall floor re-done. The works have stirred memories in those who treaded those boards.

Like Pat Doyle, long an actor with the St. Patrick’s Drama Society in the town. He too recalls large crowds coming out for the productions like Many Young Men of Twenty and Dancing at Lughnasa which he helped stage as an actor and director with the society.

“It’s more than 45 years ago since I made my first appearance with the Good Council Players, as the local drama group was then known, in The Field. It was produced by Seamus Durkan who had a great cast at the time.

“I played Tadhg with no less a man than the great Tony Carney in the role of Bull McCabe. I can still see Tony coming down on the counter with his ash plant as he put the fear of God into the auctioneer Mick Flanagan who was played by Frank Leonard.”

Doyle recalls other local actors like Jimmy Cribbin played the Bird and Peggy Curran who played the long suffering Marie Flanagan in his debut performance in the Field. He remembers as a director productions like Wake in the West.

“Such was the success of the production we were compelled to stage an extra night to facilitate the crowds that turned up. Adrian Murray rose like Lazarus from the dead helped by Rose, played by Jack Caulfield.

“I had many enjoyable years with St. Patrick’s Dramatic Society in Ballyhaunis, which is still going strong. Sometimes casting a play could be difficult, we wouldn’t have the numbers. But with my good friend Kit Keane we would search the highways and byways, bringing new people in and somehow keeping the show on the road.

“I was lucky in the later years as director to have much talent at my disposal. Jim Donnelly and John Caulfield were a great team. Year after year they built the stage and everything would be right on the night.”

In a Netflix era of instant access to films on mobile devices the traditions and entertainment of rural towns have survived, but are changing too. One of those traditions, Irish dancing, has grown in popularity, and embraced a more diverse population in Ballyhaunis today.

Over twenty years practising steps and putting on shows at the hall, the Elwood School of Dancing expects to have many children back when the Covid-19 restrictions are lifted, said founder Mary Elwood who teaches with Lisa Hunt.

“When I started teaching at the hall the caretaker and key holder was Kitty Keane who was a well known personality locally. I remember Kitty from years before when I myself started attending dancing classes in the hall at the age of four under the tutelage of the wonderful Seamus Forde.

“The parochial hall was the perfect location for dancing classes. It has a stage with an ideal floor surface for heavy dancing, and the main hall had a sprung floor. Rooms out front and upstairs allowed dancing classes to continue while other events were going on in the main hall.”

Elwood remembers her dancers performing for GAA personality Michael O’Muircheartaigh at the hall in 2007. Children from the direct provision centre in town have also learned. “Many of them have succeeded in grade exams and attended feiseanna.”

A widening of the stage forms part of the works at the 80-year-old hall. Builders from the Cummins & Cummins company will also build an extension running along the western perimeter of the rectangular shaped building which will accommodate a new kitchen and bathrooms. Also new exits, disabled access and fire escapes will bring the building up to modern standards.

Behind the stage door meanwhile the old cloak room has two long tables running at right angles along the walls.

There’s also a large box in the corner storing oils and canvasses for painting classes held for two decades under the tutelage of Reg Smith who drove from Kiltimagh. Formerly the art teacher at Davitt College in Castlebar and a Londoner by birth, Reg moved to Mayo in 1970s. “We moved up to the hall in the early 1990s when the Scout’s Den was closing,” he explained.

“I taught the weekly class there for twenty years, we always had a good trickle of students. The hall was a good venue.”

When the Covid pandemic forced his students to stay at home Smith closed the large box of art supplies he kept in the room at the back of the hall and had it trucked home. He was 89 in early April and now contents himself with gardening and sketching at home. His students painted oils from landscape images provided by Reg who offered them advice on technique.

The well-seasoned floors of the hall also played host to visitors to the town: it was the site in 1985 for the official twinning of Ballyhaunis with the town of Guilliers in northern France. Louis Ballard, then mayor of Guilliers, a town of 1,500 in Brittany, presided at the formal event alongside then Senator Jim Higgins and Dr. Michael Brogan, president of Ballyhaunis Town Twinning Committee.

“Kevin Flanagan was the master of ceremonies and Rene Burke was official interpreter for the evening,” recalls Pat Higgins, an organiser at the event.

“The ceremony ended with an acclaimed recital by Cantóiri Beal Atha hAmhnais and then an official reception. The refurbished hall will be a great asset for an increasingly international and multinational town.”

The bingo nights may be over but other pursuits have moved in. Like a table tennis club that’s particularly popular too with the local Slavic and Syrian community. A ping pong training programme for women this year supported Mayo Sports Partnership aims to bring more players into the club and give local ladies new sports options. The diversity of the Ballyhaunis population was one of the reasons why the national Foróige youth service has located a full-time outreach project in the hall.

Artists, dancers and dramatists will all be welcome back at the refurbished hall when works are completed early next year, explained Ballyhaunis Community Council secretary Mary Donnelly.

“The hall will be run by the community for the community and we hope to reopen the balcony which still has the old cinema style seats from back in the day when the hall was also a cinema.”

Memories and modernity will coincide when the newly modernised hall reopens.

Pat Doyle recalls ‘outstanding actors’ in the town, some of whom have passed on, but he also recalls the stage crews and the make-up artists and raffle ticket sellers. “They made an immense contribution to entertainment in the town over the years.”

Tom Finn will also be retiring from his valued role as hall gate keeper, caretaker and overseer but he has high hopes for the hall. “It was always a nice community space.

Down through the years there were big nights here, and it needs renewing now for a new lease of life.”