Kathleen (Kay) McGowan
as recollected by Sonia Kaulback

In the early days of running their amazing hotel Ardnagashel House, my parents (Ron and Audrey Kaulback) spent long hours every single day working hard to train the hotel staff, keep the hotel guests well-fed, happy and cared for, and run the estate. We had our own herd of Kerry cows to provide milk, and we grew most of our vegetables (including items such as garlic and sweet corn, which at that time were impossible to get locally). We also generated our own electricity. I am completely awe-struck when I contemplate all that they achieved, in the face of such difficulties.

By the time the hotel was up and running I was six years old (and my sister Susan was five), and so my parents advertised and found a wonderful Irish woman, Kathleen McGowan (Kay to all of us) to come and be our nursery governess. That meant that she looked after us full-time, teaching us every morning (my goodness, she taught us well!), and supervising us the rest of the time, including of course weekends. She also made most of our clothes, and knitted us marvellous cardigans and jumpers. This was in the late 1940s and early '50s (and I remember she was paid £2 a week, plus her keep - which was quite a princely wage in those days).

There was a period when our morning lessons were joined by Tania, who was about our age and was staying nearby with her aunt and uncle. My father would turn up occasionally, to give us what we called Stiff Examinations! Generally along the lines of How many beans make five? or How many pennies in sixpence? - these always stumped Tania. The question that always baffled me in those days was this: If a herring and a half cost three ha'pence [ie three half pennies], how many herrings could you buy for a shilling [ie twelve pennies]?) A real tricky one!

We loved Kay dearly, and she used to tell us wonderful stories about her home and childhood, and about the other children whom she had taught before coming to us. Sometimes we would go for long walks with her up the drive to the main road and further, to visit local people - and I have a vivid memory of some houses where it was quite normal to see the cooking being done in a big black cauldron affair hanging from a chain over the open fire.

Once a year (I think in September) Kay would take a month's holiday and return to her home in Sligo, and so Sue and I had no lessons for that time and would run free. I remember I was generally to be found up a tree (I had a favourite one, with a makeshift platform half-way up it - I had dragged up a wooden plank I had found - and I would make myself comfy up there, with a book and some barleysugar). If not up a tree, then I might be out in the bay in my canoe, which I had rigged up with a sail, which I controlled by foot.

This idyllic home life had to end when our parents decided the time had come for us to go to boarding school. Sue and I went together, I was eleven and she was ten, so we had had Kay with us for five whole years. I was distraught at her leaving, but she gave me a shilling (a pre-decimal coin, twelve old pennies!) so that I could write to her. A stamp in those days was two-and-a-half pence, so the twelve pence almost paid for five stamps! That was before Christmas, the year being 1952. After Christmas Ron and Audrey drove Sue and me up to our new school, The French School, Bray, Co. Wicklow, just outside Dublin. I realised that my life had changed forever (sounds dramatic, but it was true). Never again would I be at home for longer than a school holiday.