Where is Congress Terrace in Mayo county town?

by Auld Stock

NAMES are often given to streets which never catch on with the public.

An example of this is Congress Terrace, Castlebar, now St. Joseph’s Terrace, part of Station Road.

The International Eucharistic Congress was held in Dublin in 1932 and this is where the street name came from.

Many years ago a man named P.T. Moran lived on Station Road.

I passed his house each day on my way to school as P.T. sat in a chair in the front garden of his home.

He was a keen angler and it was said of him he knew every inch of Lough Carra and Church Island in the centre of the lake, a mysterious spot. P.T. was father of Kathy Moran who married Michael Dever who had a butcher shop on Ellison Street; the couple had two in family, a boy and a girl.

Another resident of St. Joseph’s Terrace in those days was Séamus Dempsey who played the fiddle at feiseanna throughout Mayo. He was a close friend of Martin Ruane. Rush Street, who also played the fiddle.

There has been much talk over the years as to where the name Rush Street came from.

There was a lady in Castlebar in the 1870s named Molly Rush who ran a small school, in those days known as a hedge school.

The name Tinkers Boreen has long vanished from the local scene, a few hundred yards below the Sacred Heart Hospital. Jim McNeela, known as ‘Big Jim,’ lived in the boreen in the 1960s.

I regularly met Jim in Paddy Moran’s, Rush Street.

The majority of the McNeela family emigrated to America.