THE 1949 FIRE

Dear Pattrick,
I'd be interested to hear of other people's recollections of the fire that burnt down all the shops from the corner of Clark Street through to the Tudor Hotel. I think it was a Saturday night late in January 1949. I would have been 8 years of age and remember the adults talking about how John Ingram and some other adults left the pictures ( movies ) and raced up the street to get the cars out of the garage. My mother had put our school tunics in to be drycleaned in readiness for the start of the school year. A lot of goods were saved from the Haberdashery store ( including our tunics ) but they were not found for a couple of weeks and we had to start school without the correct uniform. If anyone has a school photo - taken in the February of that year they will notice the three Buckley girls sitting in the front row with ordinary dresses on. Even though we were in different grades the nuns would not let us go in separate photos as they thought we would ruin all the school
photos!!