In 1989,when we bought the restaurant premises in Mary Street, over which we were to live, we were naturally curious about its history.
Its most recent occupant, other than a few brief months as a putative restaurant, had been as a Credit Union.
It had, we discovered, been let out in flats for some time before that and in the sixties and before it had been used as the offices for the Sack and Bag company, manufacturers of hempen sacks.

In time we came across an old street census of Mary Street and it was from this, dated in the 1890’s, that we discovered that at this time the building was an RIC barracks.
The building itself went back to the 1790’s we discovered from city records, but we never did find out how long it had been owned by the RIC.
The entry for the street gazetteer from the 1890’s stated that the occupants were “Sergeant and Mrs. Waldron and nine constables”
We often imagined the nine constables sleeping in the large attic at the top of the house which we used as our living room but which would easily have accommodated nine constable sized cots.

Sile’s sister Maire is married to one Padraic de Bhaldraithe, (his father wrote the English/Irish dictionary we all had to buy for our Inter Cert.)

When I told him this story he was surprised, his great grandfather had been in the RIC and, he thought, stationed somewhere in Waterford.
De Bhaldraithe is, of course the Irish for Waldron.
His Great Grandfather had not it turned out been stationed in Mary Street we discovered, our Sergeant Waldron, was in fact this man’s brother, Padraic’s Great Grand Uncle.
He was even able to produce a photograph of the same man.
Small world, even across one hundred years.