Sheep travelling in style in Howth.

Mutton from Sutton

sheep1.jpg (29779 bytes)As mentioned before, the tram personnel were as loved and as much missed for their courtesy as the trams themselves when the Hill of Howth system was closed down.

During the difficult war years, coal from the Sutton power plant was ‘borrowed’ and distributed to elderly folk and special cases around the hill, and poor people were carried free of charge. The tradition of one crew to each individual tram ensured that each conductor had the same passengers each morning at the same time and conversations continued in piecemeal fashion for up to twenty years at a time.

The conductors knew all their regulars and, indeed, their business, very well. It is said that “Showery” O’Brien could tell each regulars’ seed, breed and generation and for a nip of the creature, give up-to-date information on business and financial affairs. With so many students completing their homework on those early morning trains, the conductors were often as qualified in school matters as the teachers themselves.

One little known duty of each conductor and one taken very seriously indeed was related to me by Billy Rankin, reputed to be the most courteous conductor of all.

The area now covered by Carrickbrack and Offington estates was once lush meadowland used in Spring for the fattening of lambs. Unlike their hardier mountain cousins, who foraged along cliff edges and rocky mountain streams the Sutton sheep were thoroughly spoilt. Each lowering of the head provided rich mouthfuls of grass in abundance, so they became very fat.

Now everybody knows that fat, self-indulgent sheep tend to become lazy and rather helpless and once they roll over on their backs, they are very often unable to roll back on their feet again. The rich pastures of Sutton were very conducive to this lethargic and helpless condition and many of the fatter sheep would lie for hours, waving their spindly feet in the air and bleating pathetically. They were easy prey for any marauding dogs and many died in ditches in this manner.

It became the profound duty of all conductors to exercise vigilance from the vantage point of the upper deck to ensure that all woe-stricken sheep were up-righted. It was not uncommon for Billy to clank the emergency signal, scale a fence and roll over lethargic lambs to the cheers of an entranced upper deck. Occasionally stray lambs were carried on the tram back to their flock and it was, I am assured, not too uncommon to sheep among the passengers: a rather confusing situation for the drowsy morning passengers, who were, so to speak, still counting sheep.

Sheep were not the only animals to avail of the trams. George Scott of Carrigbrack Road -a survivor of the Lusitania, who once won an award for the most unusual household object by entering the life-buoy that had saved him - had a collie dog called Spot who would wait every day from the tram to take him to Strand Road where George’s son, Denis, lived and back again in the evening. The crews made sure that Spot was never short of a bone, and needless to say, he always travelled Scott-free.

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