BUNGALOW BLITZ

Excerpts from an interviews with Danny Gillespie, Rolagh (Kilcar) , 2001.

Interview by Joanne Lacey. Click here to hear short excerpts from these interviews as read by Michael Sherrin.

Joanne: Your pictures are great. She is going to send them to us. We are using one of yours for the exhibition flyer, for the publicity.

Danny Gillespie: Is that it?

Joanne: Really, really good.

Danny Gillespie: They obviously came out well.

[edited here]

Danny Gillespie: no shelter you see, still you can’t have everything…

Joanne: What I wanted to find out just as addition to the photographs really is if you could just tell me about the history about the house, how the site came to be chosen, where you got your plans to build… those sort of things really, the changes to the house. When was this house built?

Danny Gillespie: 17 years ago, exactly.?

Joanne: Where did you live before that?

Danny Gillespie: At home

Joanne: How long did it take to build.

Danny Gillespie: I suppose about a year.

Joanne: So you built it because you were getting married?

Danny Gillespie: Getting married yeah.

Joanne: And was this family land or did you just choose it?

Danny Gillespie: Family land. It was my mothers at that time because my father had died a while back. It was under my mother’s name. It wasn’t under my mother’s name it was under my grand fathers name. My father died in ’59 so nobody bothered much in those days about changing the title of the lands. So when they you know, at that time it was something not …The site… I couldn’t do that unless there was authority and she’d agreed to it. So the fact that it wasn’t in our name, it had to be in our name.

Joanne: Because I don’t know how that works, so if you could just tell me. Did all the people, did all the siblings get given a piece of land to build on?

Danny Gillespie: Well, if they didn’t do it like that. They didn’t do it like that well I’d have had to go and buy a site somewhere else… It didn’t make economic sense. Because I was only starting off working, well 9 years, but the pay wasn’t good, so it made economic sense.

Joanne: And you wanted to stay close because…

Danny Gillespie: Stay close because I was working here… and the piece of land wasn’t of any great value farming wise, the piece of land was made of a couple of rocks, that’s where the house was and we had a couple of cows and sheep and the cows would be here, the cattle would be here grazing and… It was very wet there, and I drained it. So its changed the look of the place completely. I have no photographs of the place before. It’s a pity. I always think that, even if I’d had a little photo of the place before it changed, just to show the change you know. We don’t think of it.

Joanne: Was there a house on this land before, a very old?

Danny Gillespie: Yes, that’s back here behind, it’s still there. The remains are still there. Now it’s a lovely spot too, access from the road is difficult, and in those days there was no great access, there is only a track, a walking track. To make access to this would have been expensive.

Joanne: Because your house got built a lot quicker than some of the other houses we’re looking at. Because you were here because a lot of the other people worked away obviously. At that time so people coming back in the summer to do…

Danny Gillespie: I think about a year it took, more or less from the start.

Joanne: And you build it yourself?

Danny Gillespie: Well I would have got a man to build it, to plaster it, got somebody else down to do all the roofing you know. Got somebody else to clean it out originally with a machine, a digger .Would have been here most of the time myself helping….I wouldn’t have had any great knowledge of building or anything…

Joanne: What do you work as?

Danny Gillespie: A teacher. A secondary teacher.

Joanne: So you’re on holidays

Danny Gillespie: Holidays yeah. I also help to work the farm, looking after the cattle or the sheep. Its not a one man job anymore. There’s always something to be done.

Joanne: So you still have the farm?

Danny Gillespie: Yeah my brother and I, he lives in the home, looks after it . That’s not a one person job anymore. We are needing plenty of hands.

Joanne: Because was this an emigrant community here?

Danny Gillespie: Oh yeah, men and women. All the time, to England that stopped about around…1986.It stopped

Joanne: So that’s changing now, people are starting to come back?

Danny Gillespie: Yeah over the years it people started to come back. There’s more work now, different work.

Joanne: What industry is there locally?

Danny Gillespie: One of the industries that has developed is the fishing industry. Woodwork. The young people are moving away more for different reasons, they go to third level, and not coming back. And they are not going that far, they go to Dublin or Limerick, get jobs there. They’re not really, they are emigrating but it’s easier to get back home. But in general now, its mostly older people here…

Joanne: Does everybody build their own house?

Danny Gillespie: Ah yeah, they do, yeah. But now with the planning restrictions you see, its much more difficult to get permission to build. People were coming in, the Germans and Northern Irish and buying up land for holiday homes. They were toys, just toys, just something to play with, but pushing up the prices of the plots, and local people couldn’t afford to build. So now only sons and daughters can build on plots.

Joanne: Will it help?

Danny Gillespie: Ai, yes it should, because they can’t say I’m buying this for my son or daughter and then sell it on a year later. You know if you go to xxxx there’s houses everywhere, built everywhere.

Joanne: So these building regulations are just for this bit of the headland?

Danny Gillespie: _Ai, just on the coast. I’m not sure about in land. This area here. This is where our sons and daughters will need the land. _

Joanne: Because I’m staying with Nuala Mc Devitt…

Danny Gillespie: Up at the forks in the road,

Joanne: Someone’s just build upon this and they are building right of the fork of the road.

Danny Gillespie: Just as you go left on

Joanne: Madness Yah, yeah,

Danny Gillespie: They had planning permission to go there, it’s ridiculous.

Joanne: How did you choose your house, like the plans for it.

Danny Gillespie: Well a friend of mine in the school with, he teaches building construction and he would have all the plans You call it Bungalow Bliss, but when you are looking for something to build, you just want something simple that doesn’t cost that much. So you look through all the plans and make certain modifications…

Joanne: So is this from Bungalow Bliss plan?

Danny Gillespie: Well you look through the books, I mean where else where were we goanna go? I mean the houses that were in before us were just small cottages like houses you know, two rooms, three rooms. We wanted something a bit better. Where we goanna get the information about… we didn’t know that was gonna cost

[...]

Joanne: Have you added onto the house at all or you built it like this?

Danny Gillespie: No, no. The only thing we built on was this little room, the door had opened up straight into the house.

Joanne: Have you got photographs? Photographs of the house or documentation.

Danny Gillespie: No…. we won’t find them now you know, maybe to find them now we would be lucky you know. Whereas if I had maybe this evening or so I might. I know I had a few… before.

[...]

Joanne: Did you take photographs as it was being built?

Danny Gillespie: … There are boxes of photographs. There is a box and we were looking through it one day… didn’t find them but there was one or two. Remember the day we were to check the site… but there was snow and it was nice and calm.

Danny Gillespie: There was a house behind here, and that was left to my great grandfather. They moved then to the house just off the road down there – built that house. That used to be thatched – was thatched until the mid 80s, then they modernised it. I’ve a photograph of that. It was taken by a postcard photographer – they never got permission or anything like that.

Joanne: So is this your mum?

Danny Gillespie: That could be my mother but I’m not to sure or it could be somebody.

Joanne: When was this taken?

Danny Gillespie: That would have been taken, in the 60s.

ENDS

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