Christmas Morning 1943 Under 21 team Mount Merrion Standing left to right: Paddy, Mick Keogh, anon.other, Tommy Keogh, anon.other, Paddy Monaghan, anon.other, Liam McDonald, Joe Murtagh, anon.other.   Front row left to right: Jimmy Keogh, Gerry Smith, Gerard O' Kelly, anon.other.
	Christmas Morning 1943 Over 21 Team Mount Merrion Left to right standing: Christie Doyle, Eddie Byrne, Des Cunningham, Joe Shannon, Kevin Barry, Tony O' Farrell, O' Dwyer, Vincent O' Duffy.   Kneeling left to right: Jackie Downes, Ned Doyle, Jimmy Burke, anon,other, Jack Doyle, Manager

During the Second World War, 1939-45 people made their own entertainment. There was a strict limitation on anything that needed to be imported into the country. Residents in Mount Merrion were really confined to a few roads near the N11. John Kenny, Irish Homes Ltd, had commenced building in 1935 but had stopped in 1939. One of his foremen, Christy Doyle purchased a house on Trees Road in 1936. Christy had two sons Jack and Ned and both of them also worked for John Kenny. Christy was one of the founders of Mount Merrion Football Club and both Jack and Ned played for the club. At the outbreak of the War Mount Merrion FC were accepted into the Athletic Union even though they had no pitch and had to play their “Home” games in Ballybrack. They lingered around the lower reaches of the 3rd division of the league without much success, until 1944. In 1944 the team struck a bit of a purple patch and found themselves in the quarter final of the Cup, having won all 5 previous rounds much to the delight and amazement of their players and followers. Their 6th round, Quarter Final, opponents were Spa Rovers from Lucan, the champions and hot favourites for outright glory.

The Manager of the Mount Merrion team in 1944 was the bould Jack Doyle from Trees Road. Like the rest of the small Mount Merrion community he was basking in the glory, so much so that he decided to play an unregistered but lovely footballer called O’Connor against Spa Rovers. Young O’Connor lined out as Jackie Downes and as luck would have it Jackie supplied the sublime final pass to the centre forward who buried the ball in the Spa Rovers net for the only score of the game, bring on the Semi Final. But Spa had other ideas; they objected to the Athletic Union accusing M.M.F.C. of fielding an illegal player and so Jack was summoned to appear before a tribunal in Parnell Square. Jack duly attended and denied all knowledge of any illegality. He was asked if he knew Dan O’Connor and he said yes of course he knew him. He was asked to produce him at the following week’s meeting, which he did. Now the O’Connor chap he produced actually drove a horse and cart for the building company they both worked for and in truth he wasn’t much of a footballer.

The Spa manager got hopping mad when they saw him and accused Jack of trying to hoodwink the proceedings. The Committee said they would deliberate and give their decision during the meeting on the following Friday at which meeting representatives from both clubs were requested to attend. Jack and his fellow representatives arrived in town early and adjourned to Mooney’s for a few jars before the meeting. There they lost track of time and by the time they got to the meeting the judgment had been passed and Spa Rovers were on their way to win the Cup. The outcome may not have been the best but Mount Merrion Football Club surely enjoyed their cup odyssey of 1944. One of the seasonal events was the Christmas Day Football match between the Under 21s and the Over 21s. This was played on the pitch where St Therese Church, North Ave. car park is now built. As can be seen from the attached photographs the Under 21s were a better organized outfit in 1943. We think this was due to the extraordinary organizational skills of its captain Gerard O’Kelly.

 

 

THE MAGIC  OF MOUNT MERRION

 

There was always a touch of magic about the woods in Mount Merrion when I was growing up there during the years of "the Emergency" (1939-45).Always referred to in the plural, the woods had been neglected for more  than twenty years and it was an exciting wilderness of stately beech and pine trees, overgrown laurel bushes and entangled undergrowth. To a boy  who was absorbed in the adventures of Biggles, the escapades of Richmal  Crompton's 'William' and the daring pursuits of "Dick Barton, Special  Agent", it was a place where all these could be re-lived and re-enacted  in boyhood games.The woods also had its treasures which were often hidden in a jungle  of briars and holly  bushes. Not so the granite pillars of the octagonal  summer house which was in an open space and the focal point of a number of  overgrown pathways.

We called it the 'fairy rath', a name which added to  the magic of the place. There was also a small obelisk which marked the  animals graveyard and a sunken pump house hidden in the undergrowth. An  arched tunnel, cluttered with decaying branches and debris, burrowed into  the earth and enticed us with its unknown mystery. Outside the southern enclosing wall and facing remote Mount Anville was a water tank on brick pillars, now the site of Deer Park tennis club pavilion. The open space beyond was known as the 'tank field' and on its edge, overlooking an incipient Deer Park Road, was a granite quarry which had been mined in the past. One side was particularly dangerous -as it had a sheer rock wall descending into a bottomless (or so we believed!) pond.

 

 

The woods of Mount Merrion Estate must have enchanted many a child since they were laid out some two hundred years earlier. They exercised their magic one fine summer day in 1906 on the young daughter of Sir Neville Wilkinson, owner of the estate. Standing beside her father, who was drawing an old sycamore tree in a comer of the woods, she told him excitedly that she had seen a fairy disappear into its moss-covered roots. This incident provided the inspiration for the creation of Titania's Palace, the hone of the fairy queen, a project which would absorb Sir Neville's artistic talents for the next eighteen years. He would enflesh the imagined home of the fairy queen under the sycamore tree and, with all its contents and furniture true to scale, the palace would delight all the young at heart in the many countries in which it was exhibited.

 

It is not, perhaps, out of place to relate here how Titania's Palace  was lost to Ireland and found a permanent home in Denmark.Although born  a Londoner, Sir Neville remained in Ireland after the disposal of his  home in Mount Merrion and he died in Dublin in 1940. It was his dear wish  that Titania's Palace would remain in Ireland and be used to raise funds  to aid handicapped and needy children. His widow, who married the Earl of  Wicklow in 1942, had it on display for many years in her home near Gorey.  I remember going to see it there with my parents as a young boy. It then  passed to their daughter, Gwendolen (the little girl of 1906, who did not  marry). She wished to have the Palace on permanent display in the R.D.S.  but the required funding could not be found. In 1967 the Palace  was sold to an English lady for the paltry sum of £3I,500. It again came up  for auction a few months after Gwendolen's death in 1977 and this time it  fetched £135,000. By then its value had been better appreciated and there  was an Irish bid of £127,000. It was too little and too late and Titania's  Palace was soon on its way to an exhibition centre in Denmark.

 

 

To add insult to injury the sycamore tree which was the inspiration  for this masterpiece was felled during the development of Mount Merrion  estate about the year 1950. It must have been a bitter blow for Gwendolen  for, in an article about Mount Merrion published in 1925, her father had  written:

"If fate decrees that the woods of Mount Merrion must fall, let us hope that this one landmark may be preserved to end its days in peace."