My Great-grandmother's silver watch

Tom and Bridget Hurley.

Following my Dad's passing last year, my Mum surprised me one day in Ballingate by showing me three old-style pocket watches. They had been in a drawer in our house since the early 1960s. When my O'Loughlin grandparents left Tomacork for Dublin, these watches were part of left over material that they gave to Dad. Nothing has been done with them for over 60 years. Even before the 1960s I suspect that they were not used for much. I offered to see if they can be fixed and/or cleaned up, and took them away.

The photo to the right is of Thomas Hurley (1868-1921) and his wife Bridget (née Murphy, 1868-1916) - they are my grandmother Kathleen (Hurley) O'Loughlin's parents. I believe the photo was taken in 1910. The watches belonged to them - you can see a watch chain in Tom's waistcoat, which matches that of the large watch in the photo below.

I brought the watches to watchmaker Mark Wilkes in Ballinaclash, near Rathdrum. He agreed to quote me a separate price for the repair of each watch to get them back to working order. He told me the watches were definitely either early 20th or late 19th century - two of them were not in good condition. He also told me that they were quite ordinary and not valuable.

These watches are over 100 years old. The first watch was is a lovely gold plated Waltham timepiece - it needs repair work plus parts which made it very prohibitive to fix. It was going to cost up to 300 times its value to fix - apart from sentimental value, it was just not worth doing. The second large watch no doubt belonged to Tom Hurley. It has a separate key to wind the watch and to change the time. It is in poor condition and according to the watchmaker, it would not keep good time even if fixed. The third piece, which belonged to my Great-grandmother, is a silver Omega watch in good condition - it was still working according to the watchmaker. These sell for between €200-€300 online, and it would cost about this to fix. I agreed to get this last watch repaired and cleaned up - Mark did a wonderful job on it. If I sold it I would be lucky to get back what I paid to have it repaired. It is really only for sentimental value that I got it done - maybe I'll wear it on the few occasions that I wear a suit.  All these watches do is tell the time - no step counter or text messaging available! 

I don't own these watches - for now I'm merely their custodian. I'd like to keep the silver Omega and hopefully nobody in the family will object to this. I will pass it on to the next generation. Neither I nor my Mum have any plans for the other two as they would cost far more to repair than they are worth. They are in my drawer now.

Dad singing Fr O'Flynn

In 1990, my Dad took part in a recording of an album with members of the Askamore (Co Wexford) Choir. On the album, Dad sang two solos. The first was If I can Help Somebody which I have published previously on this site. The second was a song called Fr O'Flynn, which was not really one of his party pieces (at least I don't recall him singing it much). 

The song was written by Alfred Perceval Graves (1846 - 1931) who was an Anglo-Irish poet, songwriter and folklorist. He was the father of British poet and critic Robert Graves (Wikipedia).

Accompanied by Lar Duffy on piano, here is Dad when his voice was probably at its best: