INTERVIEW: 'I was there about six weeks when a bomb landed quite close to where I was living'

She survived the bombing in London during the Second World War before returning to Ireland. She ended up on a farm in Meath and worked as a pharmacist in Navan Hospital. Burga Monaghan spoke to JIMMY GEOGHEGAN about life and reaching the milstone of being 100 years young.

It's a Wednesday morning and Walburga Monaghan is up and about, ready for another day.

A couple of weeks ago Burga, as she is usually known, celebrated her 100th birthday.  She looks great we tell her - and she does especially for someone who has passed such a significant milestone. 
Until recent times the mother of three, grandmother of 12 and great-grandmother of six used to tackle the two Irish Times' crosswords every day - the simple and the cryptic.
Now her eyesight is not as good as it was so she has had to give that up. "I really miss that dreadfully," she says in an accepting, not despondent way. 
She used to love reading also. That too has had to go by the wayside yet she's bright and bubbly and full of memories, most happy, some sad.
She lives now in part of her family's lovely old country house a mile or two from Walterstown Church where she still attends Mass regularly. Her son Michael (who has spent much of his career as a veterinarian in the Veterinary School in UCD) and his family, live in the rest.
Michael sits with us for a time and tells a funny story. It concerns someone he knows who used to say how there are three stages in a person's life: “When they are young, when they are middle-aged and when they are looking great.”
We laugh heartily at that including Burga. A good laugh is something she clearly enjoys. You wonder if that is one of the reasons why she has reached the stage in life where she gets a letter from President Higgins congratulating her and a cheque of €2,540? Why she made the big 100? 
 

NOVEMBER 1918 - CLANE

Just a few weeks after the end of the World War One had ended a child was born to Larry and Tess Fullam, who lived in Clane at the time. They already had three sons but this time a girls arrives - and they call her Walburga. An unusual name but therein lies a tale.
The Fullams, who later moved to live in Sallins, went on to raise a family of eight and Walburga found herself slap bang in the middle. All her life she has explained to people how she got her name but she doesn't mind; she says it's a "great handle, " a subject for a conversation when she meets people for the first time.  
"My eldest brother had a lot of health troubles as a child and he lost one of his eyes. Things might be different these days, they might have saved the eye, but he was very sick and there was a convent of nuns in Clane and they were praying for this child. Some of the nuns had a devotion to St Walburga, a Bavarian saint, so it was decided when I was born to name me Walburga but I was called Burga all my life." 
Burga recalls going to school in Sallins and been thought by a brilliant teacher - a Mrs Lyons - who had a big influence on her young life. Burga was clearly clever too. She says she left primary school with a good grounding in subject like algebra, geometry and Irish. When she went to secondary school she could afford to skip first year and go straight into second. "I didn't feel left behind," she recalls. 
"Now Mrs Lyons was a cranky lady and she'd give you a clatter but she was a very good teacher," she recalls. 
Burga became a chemist serving an apprenticeship by working in a shop as well as studying in Dublin in the evenings. It made for a busy schedule and it was demanding but she was determined to get a qualification.  
"There were no anti-biotics in those days, it was mostly chemistry stuff. I made pills and mixtures, the doctor came in with a prescription for medicine, you had to make it up, you were responsible for it. If he made a mistake and you didn't notice it, it was your responsibility."  
 

JANUARY 1945

As part of her unfolding career in chemistry Burga spent time working in various jobs in Dublin. She landed a "prestigious" role with a company that had connections in England. As part of her training Burga was sent to England which was fine except for one small detail - the Second World War was still raging. 
"So on the 2nd January 1945 my mother brought me up to the boat and I went off to England. I will never forget that day, it was cold, cold, the coldest day (she closes her eyes as she recalls that bleak day long ago as if it was yesterday). I arrived at Holyhead, the coldest place, not a sinner around, not a bit of light or bit of life of any description. Dreadful." 
She recalls how she spent the day on a train getting to a London, a city besieged by the flying bombs - the dreaded 'Doodlebugs' - that constituted one of Adolf Hitler's last efforts to demoralise the population of the English capital. 
"I got to London and if I was at home  I would have stayed at home I can tell you. Blackout. Black, dark, oh it was cruel." Burga worked with the pharmaceutical company in their plant in Dagenham and lived nearby "not far from Romford." They arrived when the war arrived at her doorstep - literally. "I was there six or eight weeks when a bomb landed quite close to where I was living. The windows were blown in, the place was shaken up, nobody was hurt but there was damage to the house.
"The people got frightened so they decided they better let me go home. The sea was dangerous because of submarines. We went by train to an airfield in Liverpool and flew back to Ireland from there, it was the first time I had ever travelled on a plane." 
 

JUNE 1957 

In time Burga was to return to England to continue her education as a chemist. She also spent a short time working as a pharmacist in Scotland before going back to Dublin to continue her career. Part of her duties involved explaining the wonders of newly-discovered drugs to health professionals. 
Then she fell in love. 
Burga met Bart Monaghan in 1950, they were married a year later. He was a Galwayman and an engineer. The young couple settled in Galway. They had three children Michael, Mary and John. They were happy out west but fate intervened to change their lives; or at least change where they were living. 
Bart Monaghan also had a dream. He loved farming and had some land out west. He used to rent some land in Meath to fatten cattle. 
He often talked of a farming life in the fertile lands of the Royal County. In June 1957 that dream became a reality. "I used to go to Mass in the mornings and bring Bart the paper and one day he spotted a place in Meath that was for sale. 'God isn't that a lovely place?' he said.
"It's where we are now and he bought it, for 15,000 pounds, a huge amount of money at the time, 200 acres. My parents were in an awful state. 'In the name of God, Burga, how are you going to pay for that?' Nervous? I suppose I was in a way but we were young, in love, everything was rosy - and we worked well together. It worked.
"Bart was a very good judge of cattle and he was one of the first farmers to import Charolais into the country."
Bart passed away in the mid-1990s. He was 78 but he had worked hard to build up the farm he left his beloved west of Ireland for, his fishing and his boats.  
In the 1960s Burga also returned to work as a pharmacist. "Mrs Loughran the pharmacist in the hospital in Navan arrived at the door here one day and asked would I do some locum work in the dispensary, the dispensary system was in Navan then," recalls Burga. She spent happy years working in the hospital got to know many of the doctors in the area. 
The years passed. Burga retired yet she was kept quietly busy with the day-to-day running of the farm, something she did up to a few years ago. Time moved on and suddenly she found herself the centre of attention. She had made it, THE birthday had arrived. 
She had reached the big 100.

 

WALBURGA MONATHAN ON .................

..REACHING 100

"I suppose I must have the genes, my mother lived into her nineties, all her family lived to be into their nineties. I always kept working, I used to read and do crosswords, the Irish Times crosswords everyday, the two of them; that kept my mind active. I smoked for a while but never liked it so I gave it up."
 

...ON A PRESENT SHE RECEIVED FOR HER BIRTHDAY 

"There is a book written by one of the Jesuits about Fr John Sullivan, he's up for canonisation. Everyone knew For John Sullivan, I knew him is used to see him walking down from Clongowes College to Sallins to catch a train. My mother is quoted in the book as one of the people he cured. She had pneumonia, it was fatal then. She was dying, practically dead and my father went down to Clongowes and asked Fr John Sullivan would he come and see her and he did - and she got better. 
One of my nieces got an actor to read the book onto a CD and she gave to me for my birthday - and it was a lovely present. I never lost my faith, faith has been a great anchor for me."
 

...LIVING IN DIFFERENT WORLDS

"It's a different world now, of course, I don't know if it's a better world, sometimes I think it's worse, sometimes I think it's better but it's certainly different. I had Mass for my birthday recently and it occurred to me that was our pop music, the music in our church. 
"I never drank, never went into a pub. I take a glass of wine now but if my parents thought I went into a pub as a teenager or even after I got married it would be considered a disgraceful thing to do. I'm not sure if women are more liberated now than they were. I felt I was respected certainly. If a man was sitting down and I was standing up he would stand up and let you sit down. Maybe it's silly to say those things now but I felt respected."  
 

...AS A CHILD AT CHRISTMAS 

"It was a religious festival then. I can remember we got a present for Christmas, it would be something useful. It would have been a new jumper or something like that, maybe a small toy but there were eight of us. We always got something but it was always something practical."