Murphy builders were given unusual task at Calvary

NO doubt there are some relations of the Murphy Brothers, the builders once based at the Old Abbey, out there.

They would have been involved in a lot of jobs but hardly none more unusual than in September of 1961.

They were asked to exhume two bodies close to Calvary cemetery on the orders of the British War Graves Commission and the Board of Works.

The story began in March 1941 when the trawler ‘Aberdeen’, a steam vessel out of Lowestoft, was attacked by a German plan, both bombed and riddled with gunfire, in Cardigan Bay.

Some time later, two bodies were washed up near Drogheda and taken to the burial grounds at Calvary.

They were the skipper of the Aberdeen, John Charles Barber and second hand, William Coe.

John Barber was 56 and lived in Grimsby while William was 34 and lived in Milford Haven.

It had been decided that two decades after they were buried in Drogheda, the pair would be removed to the military cemetery in Grangegorman.