Kilmessan set to celebrate Alice Montague's 100th birthday

Almost 40 years ago, Alice Montague was among those who made their way to the Phoenix Park to hear Pope John Paul II (hear him rather than see him,  after walking from Mulhuddart, such were the crowds, she recalls.)
This weekend, much as she would love to be travelling to Mass celebrated by Pope Francis, she has an important event of her own to take part in – her 100th birthday celebrations. 
The Kilkenny native Kilmessan woman who is still active in her parish and community is looking forward to meeting neighbours and friends as she reaches her century.
The family moved to Navan from Cuffesgrange, near Callan in Kilkenny, when she was around 14 years old – but not before she had a scare in a shoot-out by the Black and Tans, sent over by the British Government a decade earlier to put manners on the rebellious Irish.
Alice and her mother were both ill, and the local doctor sent them into the hospital in Kilkenny. While they were there the Tans began shooting at the hospital.
“There was blue murder after it,” she recalls. “The nurses were all worries about ‘the baby’ (the young Alice Holden herself). And they weren’t supposed to shoot at hospitals. All the Tans involved were brought back to England after it.”
She moved with her family to Navan, and as a young girl found work in Hill’s clothing factory, in New Cornmarket.
“There were lots of clothing factories in Navan at the time,” she says. “Marshes and McCabes were others.”
“Mr Hill was an Englishman. We were a gentleman’s clothing factory, and also made small boys clothes and army uniforms.”
She explained that there was a lot of unemployment in Ireland at the time, and young men who couldn’t get a job had to leave Ireland. 
“Eamon de Valera was in power at the time, and he decided to expand the Army, creating more employment. These men were getting a decent wage and were better off. And we got a contract to make the new uniforms.”
Others she recalls working there were sisters, Nancy and Gretta Cottrell from Dunsany. When she moved to Ennistown, Kilmessan, she cycled the seven miles to and from work each morning and evening.  And there were late nights if a big Army order came in.
However, if the Army kept them going, war brought them to a stop. The outbreak of the second World War meant a shortage of material for clothing, and the factory had to close. The women were dispersed, many having to emigrate for work.
However, Alice had invested in a sewing machine, and found that she was able to keep going doing sewing work for many people around Kilmessan. She made confirmation and communion clothes, and the altar servers’ vestments for the parish church.
She still makes brown bread and jam, and during the war was able to keep the family fed by buying a bag of wheat from local farmer at threshing time, and bringing a small amount on her bicycle to Bective Mill to be ground each week, ensuring that brown bread was plentiful at home during rationed times. 
Alice recalls the switching on of Rural Electrification and the opening of the mineral factory in the village, in 1954. "Before that, you’d be lucky to have one candle for a week,” she says. 
She remembers  working many nights by bicycle lamp light to make a dress for a lady who had got a last minute invite to a dance. She was handsomely paid for her overtime, and the dance went well too, she was told!
Other sources of income where her hens, and she sold eggs, and cyclists coming on trips to Parkes’ Hotel in Kilmessan would stop and buy eggs and flowers from her while passing. 
The big snow of earlier this year was “only a few flakes” she laughs – she remembers having to come home from Navan on the top of hedges following a snow storm in 1933.
“It didn’t last as long, but there were shocking floods afterwards,” she said.
She also remembers walking with a friend across the frozen Boyne in Navan in the big freeze of 1947, when they could see the water flowing under the ice. Her brother, Tom, was also out on the river, cycling his bike in circles on the ice.
“Another lad saw him from Spicers Mill, and came down with his bike to join him,” she says.
In 1957, she married Michael Montague, a Kildare man who was working at Ringlestown House, and they had a family of three at Ringlestown – Dominic, Joe and Mary.  Michael died in 1991.
Alice was very friendly with Bective writer, Mary Lavin, as she did all her sewing work for her, and her husband, William Walsh. Another great friend was the late Fr Paddy Ronan, a neighbour from Kilkenny who joined the Columban Fathers. “I’m the same age as the Far East,” she adds.
She is still an avid reader, taking a daily newspaper and the weekly Meath Chronicle. As well as an old favourite, Ireland’s Own.
“My mother used to read it to us by the fireside when we were children,” she recalls. 
And she has the Kilkenny People on order in Tierney’s of Navan. “They’ll be back in the hurlingnext year,” she says.
Alice has been a reader and Eucharistic minister in the local church, and was a founder member of Kilmessan’s  St Joseph’s Young Priest’s Society, still going strong, in 1985. 
She has been on several trips to Lourdes, the last one two years ago, where she took part in the gruelling outdoor stations of the cross on the hill.
“When I was going to school in Cuffesgrange, the teacher Mrs Commons, called me up from the catechism class. I didn’t know what she wanted, or why she chose me. She took my hand, and she said ‘When you grow up, I want you to pray for me in Lourdes. I was only about 10 then. But I remembered her, and I did it several times.”
A once-familiar sight on the local roads on her bicycle, Alice Montague only stopped cycling when the roads became more dangerous in recent years. But she is still busy sewing and baking, and is well minded by her children and grandchildren – five in Ireland and three in England, where her son, Joe, lives in Swindon.  She also has two great grandchildren.
And of course, for a lady with such a deep faith, she is thankful to our Lord above for providing her with such longevity and good health. “I’ll be here as long until Our Lord decides my time is up,” she says.