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Seven or eight generations of Moores have lived here in Robinstown Great. I’ve been collecting things since I was a chap. I was born in 1943 and can remember when I was 10 years of age, a steam engine belonging to a neighbour, Mosie Doyle, being cut up and I thought it was shocking to see her falling asunder. I wished I had the £25 to buy her. I’ve always loved old things.
My father, Paddy Moore, was a man who could turn his hand to anything. After stonemasonry died out, he did maintenance work, carpentry and all, around the country, fixing stuff, making up horses’ carts, whatever needed doing. I learned a lot from him.
My schooling was very bad. I used to get lost in the fields. When an uncle of mine bought a diesel Ferguson tractor in the late 1950s, I was mad to drive it and I went to work for him at 10 shillings a week. Over the years, I’ve worked on the New Ross docks for Staffords, on the Great Island power station and on the building of a new chapel and the new railway station in Waterford too.
I drove a stone grader for John A Woods for 20 years and hauled sugar beet for the 30 years after that, along with my brother, Patsy. We had 20ac of sugar beet here ourselves too.
Life-changing events
Ann and I got married in 1966, when I was working in Great Island. We had a terrible house fire in 1975. We had four children at the time. Kate was 18-months-old and she was upstairs in the cot, and Ann got her out in time, climbing up on a flat roof to do it. Padraig, the eldest, spotted the smoke outside, so he saved us. We lived in the bottom part of that house for three years until the bungalow here was built. A good neighbour, the late Dick Wadding, gave us the field to build it on.
Life changed a lot for me in 1994 at the age of 58, when I lost the sight in one eye. I was mending a tyre and a bar I threw hit the tyre and flew back and hit me. The road was out for me then. We had seven children at the time. I said I’d have to do something or I’d go cracked, so I took the Farm Retirement Scheme and set the land, and started collecting stuff in earnest then, going to auctions all over the country with a friend of mine, Jim Rochford.
I still go to the Unyoke Inn car boot sale every Sunday and to a vintage one in Ardattin, near Tullow, a few times a year. I don’t spend a lot – maybe €20 or €25 each time – you have to stay on budget. You never know what you’ll find though. At auctions over the years, I’d often bid for a box of stuff, which led to the lads christening me ‘Buy The Box’.
Collecting in earnest
It was a different fire, a shed fire, in 2004, that led me to decide to collect stuff in earnest though. The crackling noise woke us at 2am. It was a whole mess, but I salvaged the bits I could and built a big shed then and filled it with old stuff of every description. I could be out there until 10pm at night. I still could be. Ann has often said I should put a bed out there. I try to display the stuff as well as I can.
Anything I buy I’ll clean it or fix it up. I make things too, like garden seats for all the family and a model cannon one time too, out of a small pump and some teak. I made about 20 pikes for the 1798 commemorations too. An ancestor of mine, another John Moore, was a leading rebel and was killed in a battle in Wexford town. They were sad times. I often think of how bad it must have been.
When the pandemic hit I was in the shed all the time. In a way, after the eye accident, I was in lockdown most of the time anyway so it was nothing new.
Lately, my daughter, Mary, has been helping me label things. It’s a work in progress. I’ll never sell anything I’ve collected. The lads can do what they like with it when I’m gone.
Collecting stuff is just a hobby, it’d be too expensive to open this place to the public, but I enjoy people coming to have a look by invitation. There are still some tools here and I don’t know what they’re for. If I don’t know what they’re for, I’m even more interested and I’ll keep on trying to find out.”
Farm tools to toys
As far as what I’ve got goes, I’ve binder seats galore and a bit of the trap that we used to go to mass in. I’ve stuff belonging to my uncle Nicky Devereux, who was a blacksmith, and a scuffle that my grandfather made. I’ve my grand-aunt Kate’s shop scales too. I’ve any amount of water pumps and a pump for spraying whitewash, and what I think is the oldest forklift in Ireland, a revolving portable elevator made in New York.
I’ve more wrenches and screwdrivers than I’ll ever use, and a lot of signs and badges, and a 56lb weight (half a CWT) that we used to compete at the crossroads with to see who could throw it the furthest.
When the pandemic hit I was in the shed all the time. In a way, after the eye accident, I was in lockdown most of the time anyway so it was nothing new
I’ve a pit saw too – you’d earn your dinner pulling that. I’ve a beet sprong [the one I made my fortune with] and beet snaggers, and stone and potato forks, and a pestle and mortar that my grandfather used to mix up cures for the skin infection, erysipelas, in.
I’ve stonemasons’ and shoemakers’ hammers, and a little one I used for tapping in wedges on the railway tracks too. I’ve oil cans and dinkie toys and my mother’s sewing machine, and the can that she brought the sup of cream to Redmond’s Cross in [to sell].
One of the things I like asking people to guess about, is an old tool that’s like a big fork with a ring in the middle of it. That was for taking turnips out of cows’ necks.
I’ve my father, Paddy Moore’s, saw collection too. When he was done with them, he’d play the fiddle for you too. I’ve the pipe he smoked and the toolbox of course, with all the bits and pieces. Small things last longer than the man.
Right now, I’m running out of space. I’ll have to put on an extension. My next plan is building a shed for the bigger stuff I have though – vintage tractors and mowing bars, and hay rakes and so on, so there’s lots to do yet.
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