Cabra History.Com

Now, I remember as a young fella and the Da’ sending me around to the Deaf and Dumb as we called it back then to get a pair of his shoes soled and heeled. To some of us little kids it was a terrifying ordeal to go anywhere near this place. I suppose in some way it was all connected to the haunty pictures we’d see on the Cabra Grand with the great big old mansion towering up into the sky. If the side gate on Ratoath road was closed you’d have to walk all the way along the full length of the tree lined avenue from the gate-lodge at Cabra Cross up to the main building. Sometimes you’d hear the  sound of young boys roaring and screaming in a strange way that was totally different to our way of carrying on. In the very early days of Cabra West the Ma’ and Da’ used to go to Mass here because it was nearer than Christ the King church. And if you were spotted trying to rob their orchard or their rhubarb the Christian Brothers would unleash a gang of his boys after you and they howling and screaming at you in that strange way that they had. There’d we’d be roaring for the Ma’ to save us from a faith worse than death and we’d be promising God if he helped us escape that we’d never do it again, until the next time that was. You see, we didn’t know or understand anything about this school, nobody ever told us. Looking back now I think it might have been a good idea to knock down the wall and open up the place to us Cabrarian kids and families. Our teachers in school should have arranged for us  kids to visit each others schools and educate us in the ways of these boys from St. Joseph’s. In more recent years of course most of the original building was knocked down. A new modern place has been built on the site, The Deaf Village of Ireland it’s called and what a great place to visit as I did recently. As I walked around the grounds I could still feel all those fears from years ago in the back of my mind but they didn’t stay for too long. The new place is beautiful and very welcoming too…