School: Castletown
- Location:
- Castletown, Co. Meath
- Teacher: Owen Maguire
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0711, Page 302
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- XML “Famine Days”
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- (continued from previous page)and ordered them out. They had all their corn crops in stacks in the haggard and he told them to leave it all for this man. The night before they left they gathered all the neighbouring men and with flails they threshed all the corn in the house. They gathered up all the grain and put it in sacks and brought it in their carts that night and sold it through the country. They then put the straws back in the stacks again.
- The Famine years were a great scourge. People emigrated to America and sold their homes. The people of Ireland depended too much on the potatoes and when they rotted, the people starved. Many eat turnips uncooked. My parents knew of a poor woman who died from starvation. Her husband got simple with hunger and his two little children lying on the floor with nobody to heed them. Their names were Walshes. The walls of the house are still to be seen.
- Collector
- Michael Shalvey
- Gender
- Male
- Informant
- Mrs T. Shalvey
- Gender
- Female
- Age
- 50
- Address
- Leggagh, Co. Meath
- The people around here died with the hunger in great numbers during the Famine years and were buried uncoffined in Castletown Churchyard. One of the last men to succumb to the cholera was(continues on next page)
