Thirty-five Acres, A Spade And A Fork

I am a Londoner, but I married an Irish orphan brought up by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity in Stillorgan, which is now just a suburb of Dublin.

When he was fourteen, they considered their obligation finished and sent him to work in Offley on a farm owned by Mrs White. She was a good Roman Catholic and needed transporting to St Joseph’s monastery in Tipperary every Sunday. The monks there realised that a lad of fourteen still needed a father figure. The monk in charge of the dairy took ...