END OF AN ERA AS TOMMY RETIRES
I’VE REARED MY CHILDREN, DONE MY BIT. IF NOT NOW, WHEN WOULD I RETIRE? I WANT TO GET OUT NOW AND ENJOY MYSELF
TOMMY McNulty has retired, and his vintage, historic ‘Executive Barber Shop’ has closed its doors for the last time.
It was his father Barney’s shop before him, then ‘B McNulty Gents Hairdressing Salon’, so was open for more than 70 years.
‘I don’t know life without this shop. I was getting my hair cut here with my dad when I was three.’
‘I’m 72 next birthday,’ said Tommy, who wants to spend more time with family. ‘I’ve reared my children, done my bit. If not now, when would I retire? I want to get out now and enjoy myself. You work to rear your family and pay your mortgage and I’ve done all that. I want to spend time with my grandchildren and enjoy life.
‘ This virus isn’t helping. At my age we’re supposed to avoid people, and you’re right beside them all day. I’d never forgive myself if I brought it home to my wife.’
The town where he and his dad did business since the 50s is much changed.
‘When I was working here with my father I used to go for a swim in the afternoon. There would be crowds of people, you wouldn’t get a bit of space. It’s so much more quiet now.
‘Everyone used to come to Bray to shop - it was a fantastic place.’
His customers over the years have been fascinated by an amazing collection of photographs on the walls, documenting Bray’s history.
They were the inspiration behind a film made in 2012 called ‘A Barber Shop History of Bray’, by David Ryan and directed by Don Rorke.
‘My business is a vintage business,’ said Tommy. ‘It’s older people coming in, and I give them time, and talk to them.
‘ They look at the photographs, and I have a chat with them.’
Another stalwart of the business Tommy Treanor also retired recently, and his customers migrated to his Florence Road neighbour.
‘ The other barbers are modern, their customers are young,’ said Tommy McNulty.
His grandfather was George Wilde, who had a shop at the corner of Florence Road. ‘It was one of the oldest shops in Bray,’ said Tommy. ‘He had a huge big shop, selling tobacco.
‘ The Wildes were all artists, he was an artist. He used to paint sets at the Theatre Royal in Dublin. And he opened the first cinema in Bray in 1933.’
Tommy’s mother was a Wilde, and he doesn’t know for sure, but there could well be a connection to the most famous Wilde of them all.
Tommy’s father started in a shop over the road from the latter business. ‘In 1953 he had to get out, but he had nowhere to go. A woman here called Mrs Byrne felt sorry for him and gave him the place here. It’s only a room! And it’s here ever since.’
A resident of Bentley Road in Bray, Tommy was born and raised in Enniskerry. He was married 50 years last June to Josephine.
‘I started as a barber here with my father,’ he said. ‘I went to Pres and hated it. I said to my dad, look, I haven’t the brains for school.’
That, in point of fact, is very much debatable.
As a young lad, Tommy had a stammer and would get beaten. ‘I used to fret in school. The more they hit me the more I stammered.
‘I’d learn something off by heart, and go to say it and couldn’t get it out, then he’d clobber me with his fist, instead of saying take your time, Tommy, relax.
‘As soon as I left school the stammer left.’
So his father agreed to bring him into the business. ‘I was here until I was 18 then I went to London. I came back after a year.’
He tried different jobs, such as landscaping, to do something different. ‘My dad was always here,’ he said.
He went to Stillorgan shopping centre, and the first hairdressing salon for men in the country, where he remained until his father got sick. Tommy took over in Bray in 1980.
A heavy smoker, his father had emphysema, and didn’t live a long life as a result.
Tommy recalls that his dad and everyone else would smoke in the barbers, people would smoke in the cinema, and everywhere.
‘I smoked once and got sick,’ he said. ‘I robbed a pipe from my grandad and went up the mountains. I thought I was a great lad. I got so sick, I never smoked again.’
He built the business up himself, with new chairs, and the start of a collection of pictures.
‘I started off with four or five,’ said Tommy. Historian and proprietor of what was the Town Hall Book Shop next door, Henry Cairns, gave him more, and then people would bring items in.
A history of Bray was documented on the walls. ‘People would come in for a haircut and love what was on the walls. Even kids of 18 or 19 studying
would love it and be taking photographs.’
On one occasion, an gentleman in his 80s happened to come in to Tommy for a haircut, during a visit home from Australia. He started to weep - on the wall was a photograph of himself and his late wife, taken in Enniskerry before they emigrated.
Both he and his father had their brushes with stardom over the decades.
Barney cut the hair of none other than Laurence Olivier, during filming of Henry V in Enniskerry in 1944.
While the haircut took place on set, Olivier famously used to come down to Bray on a horse.
‘Everyone in Bray got a part in the film,’ said Tommy. ‘ They could be a bow man one day, something else the next. They would sleep in blankets up in the field because there was no bus to get back to Bray.’
The film company paid two and six for the haircut. ‘Olivier gave him five pounds - three weeks wages’.
Tommy showed Ben Kingsley how to use a razor for the filming of the TV movie Sweeney Todd in 1997. ‘I’m a film buff,’ said Tommy, who was made very welcome on-set.
‘I was picked up in a big limousine to go to the film set,’ he said. ‘I met the director (John Schlesinger)’
The driver said he should charge a high price for the work. ‘I said no, I wouldn’t do that,’ he said. ‘We settled on £100.’
He was then invited to sit and watch filming, and got autographs from Joanna Lumley
and Ben Kingsley, before being run back down to The Oldcourt on Vevay Road by limo.
‘It’s sad saying goodbye to everyone,’ said Tommy, but a happy occasion nonetheless.
He has five children and seven grandchildren, and loves to go walking, so won’t be short of things to do.
Family members popped in
during the final week, to collect pictures or tools as mementos, as everything was being taken down from the walls, as an era drew to a close.
Tommy would like to thank all his loyal and generous clients who supported him and his father for the last 70 years, and a special thanks to his wife Josephine and five children.