Proud community acquires new centre
THE tight knit community of Garrienderk over the Cork/Limerick border, within a mile of their Cork neighbours in Charleville town, have a great sense of pride in their own place and have come together to beautify and enhance their area of South Limerick.
Garrienderk is half of the Effin/Garrienderk parish, which is divided by the Cork/Dublin rail line, and the community started some years ago by setting up a Community Development Association, the members of which declared war on the unscrupulous people who dumped rubbish on the two km stretch of roadway from their village almost to edge of Charleville town.
The Association got the buy-in and support, financial and otherwise, from everybody in the community, and having successfully cleared up the rubbish problem they set about levelling and lawn seeding the grass margins on both sides of the busy roadway to prevent a recurrence and to discourage future offenders.
They have now added flower beds and other planting to brighten up the area, and acquired a vacant house in which they intend to create a centre for the use of the local community to come together for meetings and other activities.
The very active committee is headed by chairman
Jim Pitman with Joe Power as the very efficient secretary and the treasurer/accountant is Mike Murphy. There are two trustees in Dermot Kelly and Ger Prendergast.
The area around that side of the parish is steeped in local history and an aural version of this is presently being recorded by members of the older generation going back to the 1920’s after the War of Independence, the Treaty and the Civil War, when unemployment was rife and life was tough with the only work was with the farming community.
But the people were resilient and made do with little until their children came of the age when the emigrant ship and England beckoned, and it was there the majority went for the work they could not get at home. Very few returned save for the odd holiday at Christmas, and so the Garrienderk lost many of its sons and daughters to emigration.
The Garrienderk Bridge over the Cork/Dublin rail line, which was blown up by the IRA during the Civil War, was viewed by General Michael Collins on his way to West Cork, just two days before he was shot dead at Béal na Bláth. The photograph of Collins on the bridge was taken by local man Owen Hickey and was the last picture of him taken alive. Other prominent local people from the area were Peter O’Farrell and Dan Browne, who were prominent in the fight for independence, Rev. Brother Stephen Russell, a native of the area who was an Alexian Brother, and William Blakeney of Mount Balkeney, to mention a few.
Their stories, which give a fascinating glimpse of how people lived in the 20th Century, will be available when the community centre has been developed, so that local people may delve into the past, and get a flavour of what life in this part of rural county Limerick was like, and contrast it with how the present generation live their lives today.