McGuire, Julia Sheila (Sheila) (nee Owens)

Date of Birth: 9th February 1931

Place of Birth: Tacumshane, Co. Wexford

Date Interviewed: 1st November 2008

Summary: Sheila McGuire and her brother Billy lived with their mother and grandparents in a small cottage near Tacumshane in south Co. Wexford. She remembers well her teachers at school – Miss Lucking and Miss Wilson. She and her fellow pupils were actually locked into the school by the teachers for their protection on a day during WW2 when a German plane crash-landed on a nearby beach. Sheila describes what life was like when water was drawn from a well down the road, a dry toilet was used in the bottom of the garden, and oil lamps and candles used for light. She recalls how dark the countryside was then, with no other lights visible for miles around. Scary incidents with ghosts and a skull in a graveyard are vivid memories. Her first job was in O’Sullivan’s Drapery Store which was situated almost opposite St. Iberius Church on Wexford’s main street. She loved working there and talks of the pulley system used to transport cash between the counters and the accounts office. Sheila remembers the plain, wholesome food that people lived on such as real country butter, pig’s maw and pig’s feet. She tells of an amusing incident where she was asked by her mother-in-law to buy a pig’s head for cooking. Looking back on her childhood she tells how her grandmother would rent a place in Rosslare strand serving teas to holidaymakers while Sheila would spend the entire summer on the beach “brown as a berry”.