Anyone
know
exactly where Linford is? It's near Sallagh Braes. John Steen my
g-grandfather lived in Linford in 1901/1911 while his father Jacob
Steen was in Sallagh in the 1850s.
Posted
on Facebook August 2014
Linford, Sallagh Braes and the surrounding area
In
the census years
1901 and 1911 my
great grandfather John Steen was living
in Linford. John Steen was a shepherd and he
and his family were the only people in
that area. He worked for a landowner
Campbell
Tweed whose descendant, also called Campbell Tweed,
still owns and farms the land. Linford
is a hilly place not far from the
Sallagh Braes. I was curious as to what
it must have been like to live
and work
in that bleak country.
Lonely and
bleak it may have been where
the Steens lived but Linford and
the surrounding area is now designated an area of outstanding natural
beauty.
I
got a few responses from my Facebook post but the most helpful was from my cousin Clare who
put me in touch with local historian, Felix McKillop. I spoke to
Felix on the phone a few nights ago. The first thing I learned was
that he is kin to me. His grandmother and my great grandmother, Rose
Steen nee Campbell, were sisters and that makes us second cousins,
once removed.
I
also learned that the herd's house
where John Steen lived
is still there, the only dwelling house
in the townland.
I had
imagined it fallen down
but remembered
that the house belonged
to a gentleman farmer and that the
gentry do
not abandon their properties. It
is very likely that the house
where Granny spent her childhood
was pointed out to me when I was a child for
we were often
taken for
drives through the Glens of Antrim.
Sadly I was not interested then and
consequently have no real memory of it.
Ancestral
tales did not make much of an impression
on me when
I was young. John Steen was a shepherd.
That was all.
Johnny's
brother Father Joe Byrne was a Catholic
priest and in 1911 he was living in Altmore
Street in the village of Glenarm.
Felix told me that Father Joe was a
regular visitor at his father's house where friends
and neighbours would gather together to
play cards. John Steen would also have been part of that group. That
is probably how Johnny came to meet Jeannie. I cannot be sure when they met but they got married in 1913.
Hugh McKillop (Felix's uncle) and Jeannie's sister Agnes were their
witnesses.
Jeannie
Steen was only eighteen
when she
came to live in the
comparatively lush pastures of Lisnevenagh.
Johnny was twelve years older.
She
was, by all accounts, very
innocent when
she married. Matty told
the tale that when she first became pregnant she had no idea how long
it would be before her
baby was born. Yet
she was an intelligent woman and had been a pupil monitor at her
local national school in Feystown. That would be a post similar to
that of a classroom assistant today.
It was an unpaid position but it offered
her the
opportunity to continue with
education.
Johnny, Jeannie and their first born son
Coming
from where
she did, it is no
wonder that Granny was so austere. She
abhorred waste and despised new clothes. Yet
going by the only photograph I have of
her as a young woman, she could
dress well and she
had a tiny waist but I only remember her as
a big woman
who wore a man's grey gaberdine coat for
Sunday best.
Matty
had a very telling story. Once, during my parents courtship she was
visiting his home place and wanted to help out. It was a busy farm
and pub and there was always plenty to do. She noticed the scullery
sink could do with a clean and set to with a cloth and scouring
powder. The job was completed and the sink gleaming when her future
mother-in-law crashed through the back door, Jeannie was wearing a
hessian bag as an apron and was carrying a big creel of freshly dug
spuds. She looked at the sink, scowled, elbowed my mother out of the
way and tossed the potatoes into the sink, clods of earth flying
everywhere.
Granny
was such
a
fierce woman. And
fiercely nationalist. She'd quiz us on the
history
of the Easter Rising and cried bitter tears that our
knowledge
of
Ireland's
martyr's
often
fell
short. She blamed the educational
system for that. She
spent her latter years keeping a petrol station (always called The
Pumps) where she sat with a huge stick at her side and if we annoyed
her she'd wave the stick at
us.
I made sure never to get too close to her. I
was
so
scared
of
her.
I
certainly
never
felt any love either
for her or from her.
She had 26
grandchildren
and
I
always felt that our
part
of
the family
came
far
down
the
pecking
order.
Granny at the Pumps
Both
my
grandmothers had large families of their own and lots of
grandchildren. Jeannie had her 26
living grandchildren and Granny Mac had
more than 40. Each
granny seemed to have their
favourite family of grandchildren. It was never us so I did not have that experience of grandmothers being very special
people in a child's life. Perhaps it's a generational thing for both my grannies had hard, hard lives. My own children had loving grandparents as do Martha and Evie.
Some of these days I'm for driving to Linford and I'll have a good look around and I'll remember my cross old grandmother. I may even take a walk. It's a beautiful part of the world.
Sallagh Braes
P.S. Attention Game of Thrones fans - apparently they were shooting in this area today. Brienne of Tarth and Pod were being filmed riding down the Braes.
