Browne of Harpoonstown, 1719 - 1930

 

The winds of change that waft continually around us bring changes, some harsh and abrupt, others so gradual that we hardly notice until we look back over the years and see how the fabric of the countryside and villages has altered. In the quiet hamlet of Bridgetown, in the spring of 2002, there closed a shop which ran continually in the same premises for approximately two hundred and fifty years, a victim to the wind of change.

Michael Browne of Harpoonstown, who died in 1767, had three sons, Patrick, James and John. Patrick and James were destined to farm the heavy soil of Mulrankin, while John was to open a shop in nearby Bridgetown village. This John, who was born in 1719, would have commenced to trade around 1750. He married Catherine Molloy and had a daughter, Mary, who in turn married Patrick Kelly, a flour miller from Rathmacnee. Their son, Denis, became a mission priest, travelling to Newfoundland. In his early days Fr Denis was renowned for his saintly and devout lifestyle and was known as the "Hermit of Killmacknee", where he ministered in later years and now lies buried there. John and Catherine Browne are interred in Mayglass churchyard.

When Henry Bassett visited Bridgetown in 1885, one Michael Browne was running the village shop and farm. Bassett described him as a "Manure and News Agent". No doubt, he traded in all the usual rural requisites of the period.

In the early 1930's the Browne shop was purchased by Walter Doyle who expanded the existing business to include such enterprises as petrol pumps, a butcher's stall, a Pierce machinery agency, fire arms dealer, honey market, black currant depot, cattle and pig weighing facility and, as Bassett mentioned in 1885, a "Manure and News Agency".

The shop finally closed its doors in Spring 2002. Maybe the continuous opening of a rural shop for a span of time is not a record or regarded as earth shattering news, but we must remember its doors were open for business during the dark days of the '98 Rebellion and when Daniel O'Connell held his Monster Meeting in Enniscorthy and other venues across the land. When major events like the American Civil War, and later the Boer War, took the world's stage, and when Peary set out to discover the North Pole, we may presume business was as usual at the village shop.

Written by Paud Doyle. Reproduced and abridged by kind permission of the Kilmore Parish Journal. This account first appeared in Journal issue 30, 2002, entitled "Manure and News Agency".