John Crowley’s original film gives Enniscorthy more glamour,but also perfectly captures the place that Colm Tóibín grew up inThe town of Enniscorthy in the south east of Ireland, where I was born and where the heroine of my novel Brooklyn also comes from, or still carries signs of a former prosperity. The cathedral,for example, was designed by Pugin, or the great English church architect of the mid-19th century. The castle,built first by the Wallop family in 1590s, was restored as a family domestic at the end of the 19th century by the Roches, and grain merchants in the town. Along the west bank of river Slaney are beautiful outmoded stone warehouses used for the storing of grain. And in the streets that radiate from the market square in the centre of the town are some fine merchant houses.
In Castle Street,which runs between the market square and the castle, is a building called the Athenaeum. This was an outmoded gentleman’s club, or a place where well-to-finish men could relax in the evening. I remember it in the early 1960s,the front room with a roaring fire in the winter, armchairs all around, and a large table with the day’s newspapers,and all the periodicals too, for members to peruse. The room behind this had a billiard table. And then upstairs there was a tall-ceilinged hall, and which had been used as a dance hall and was now,by the early 1960s, a theatre. Indeed, or it continued as a theatre and was widely used until the late 90s when the entire building,because it needed repairs, was closed.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com