For much of the twentieth century, two small shops served the Ballyoughter community. Murphy’s Grocery Store, established during the 1920s, and Carter’s Shop and Petrol Station, which developed later, provided far more than groceries. Between them they sold animal feed, fuel and household goods, extended credit to local families and, in Carter’s case, provided services ranging from a public telephone to a hackney car and petrol pump.
These shops were also important meeting places. Customers came not only to collect provisions but to exchange news, meet neighbours and conduct the small transactions of everyday rural life.
Drawing on family photographs, newspaper material and oral-history recollections preserved by the Murphy, Crean and Carter families, this page recalls a form of shopping that remained part of life in Ballyoughter until the 1980s.
On This Page
Shopping Before the Supermarket
Shopping in a traditional rural grocery store was very different from the self-service experience familiar today. Customers generally gave their order to the shopkeeper, who selected the goods from shelves behind the counter, weighed items where necessary and prepared the order for collection.
Many products were sold loose rather than pre-packaged. Goods could be weighed on shop scales and wrapped in paper before being handed to the customer. Familiar sights included tins of biscuits, jars of sweets, weighing scales, meat slicers and shelves filled with groceries behind a high wooden counter.
Regular customers could also purchase goods “on tick”. Their purchases were entered in an account book and payment was made later, often at the end of the week or month. As a result, the relationship between shopkeeper and customer depended to a considerable degree on familiarity and trust.
The local shop was also a social centre. A visit provided an opportunity to meet neighbours, exchange news and catch up on events in the surrounding community.
Murphy's Grocery Store
Murphy’s Shop was established by Patrick Murphy in the 1920s and was managed on a daily basis by his wife, Margaret Murphy. For almost 50 years, the business supplied groceries and animal feed to people living in Ballyoughter and the surrounding area.
Supplies for the shop were delivered on a weekly basis by Buttles of Enniscorthy, usually on a Thursday or Friday. Patrick’s son, who worked in O’Connor’s Wholesalers in Gorey, eventually took over the running of the shop and subsequently used his employer’s company as a supplier for the family business.
When O’Connor’s later ceased trading, supplies were delivered weekly by Mr Hanlon, who worked for Herbert Murphy Wholesale. Buttles also continued to supply the shop, with deliveries arriving by van towards the end of each working week.
Source: Brennan Family Photographic Collection
Source: Newspaper image is reproduced with the kind permission of MediaHuis (formerly Independent News and Media PLC) and Wexford County Council Library.
Everyday Life in Murphy’s Shop
The goods stocked in Murphy’s reflected the everyday needs of the local community. Meat generally consisted of sausages, rashers and slabs of bacon, catering for a period when bacon, rashers and sausages, together with potatoes and cabbage, formed a staple part of the diet of many Irish families.
The meat was stored in a specially designed timber box unit. Its door contained a fine mesh, which provided ventilation while also acting as a barrier against insects.
Bread could be purchased in the shop, but because it was a perishable product, it was much more usual for customers to buy flour and wheatmeal and make white and brown bread at home. Some customers also made further use of the cotton flour bags once they were empty, stitching them together to make bed sheets.
Animal feed was supplied by Davis Mill in Enniscorthy. The range included chicken mash, pig meal and cattle meal. One cattle-feed brand sold in the shop was Presto, an American dried corn or maize product which had an appearance similar to popcorn.
There were two sets of scales in the shop: one light and one heavy, depending on the goods being weighed. This was a period when pre-packaging of food was rare and many products were weighed and packaged on the premises.
The weights used with the scales were checked at random by an inspector to ensure standardisation. The inspection also verified that the lead seal in the base of the scales remained intact and carried the correct official marking.
The shop was busiest on Saturdays, at the end of the working week and particularly after pay day. Customers arrived with their list or order and waited while the shopkeeper assembled it.
The order was then recorded in the accounts book. Regular customers could operate on credit, paying for the previous week’s order when they returned to collect the next one. This system depended heavily on the personal relationship and trust that existed between the shopkeeper and the families who used the business.
Source: Recollections recorded by the author in conversation with Ger Crean, grandson of Patrick Murphy.
The End of Murphy’s Shop
Murphy’s Shop continued in business until 1968, bringing to an end almost 50 years of trading in Ballyoughter.
Its closure came at a time of considerable change in rural life. Improved access to transport made it easier for people to travel further afield, while the growing attraction of supermarket shopping in Gorey changed long-established shopping habits.
The shop and adjoining animal-feed store no longer survive. A dwelling house, owned by the shop owner’s grandson, now occupies the same site.
Carter's Shop and Petrol Station
Carter’s Shop and Petrol Station was built in the late 1930s by Peter Carter. Peter was born in the neighbouring townland of Ballygullen on 2 April 1898. His civil birth registration was recorded in the Gorey registration district and gives his mother’s maiden surname as Cosgrave.
Source: Civil registration of the birth of Peter Carter, 2 April 1898, Gorey Registration District.
The surviving registers of Ballyoughter National School provide an indication of when the Carter family became established in Ballyoughter. Peter’s sister Mary Carter was recorded as living in Ballygullen when she entered the school in October 1899, while his sister Johanna Carter was recorded in Ballyoughter by September 1900. Their parent was described as a railway labourer.
These records suggest that the Carter family moved from Ballygullen to Ballyoughter around the turn of the twentieth century, when Peter was still a small child.
By the 1901 Census, three-year-old Peter was living in Ballyoughter with his parents, Peter and Elizabeth Carter, and a large family of brothers and sisters.
Source: National Archives Census 1901.
Peter entered Ballyoughter National School on 15 October 1902, aged four. His residence was recorded as Ballyoughter and his parent’s occupation as labourer. His younger brother Walter Carter, aged three, was enrolled the following day.
The 1926 Census provides an important glimpse of Peter’s working life before he became a shopkeeper. Aged 28 and unmarried, he was living with his parents, Peter and Elizabeth Carter, and gave his occupation as “Boot & Shoe Maker”. He was working on his “Own account”, showing that he was already operating independently in a trade more than a decade before Carter’s Shop was established.
Source: Census of Ireland, 1926.
Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, Peter purchased a thatched house and an adjoining piece of land in Ballyoughter for £20. Having bought the house and land, he used the remainder of his savings to build a general provider’s and grocery store on the site.
A record survives from 1930, when Peter Carter of Ballyoughter applied to Wexford County Council for permission to add a room to his dwelling house beside the road. Although it has not yet been established whether this was the property on which the later shop was developed, the record confirms that Peter was already established in Ballyoughter by that date.
Establishing the new business was not easy. When Peter needed to stock the shop, he approached suppliers in Enniscorthy and Wexford seeking credit. He initially found it difficult to secure financial backing for the venture, but eventually reached an agreement with Stafford’s Providers in Wexford town, who extended him an initial credit facility of £5.
In later years, stock was also purchased from Armstrong’s in Enniscorthy. When Armstrong’s ceased trading during the 1970s, supplies for Carter’s were subsequently obtained from Garvey’s Cash and Carry in Enniscorthy.
Source: Carter Family Photographic Collection.
Inside Carter’s Shop
Entry to Carter’s was through the single door at the front of the building, located second from the left in surviving photographs of the premises.
Immediately inside the entrance, on the left, stood a tall glass-and-timber display unit stretching from floor to ceiling. Some of the more expensive goods sold in the shop were displayed there.
From this unit, a high counter extended along the full length of the shop floor, separating the customers from the shopkeeper and the goods behind the counter. The shopkeeper entered the working area through a hinged flap built into the countertop.
Shelves behind the counter displayed the wide range of goods available for sale. Once an order had been assembled, purchases were carefully wrapped in brown paper and neatly tied with string on the counter before being handed to the customer.
To the right of the entrance was a small separate storage room used for non-consumable goods. This room also contained the shop’s public telephone.
For many years, this was the only telephone available in the area. Part of the personal service provided by Peter involved ensuring that neighbours were quickly informed when telephone calls arrived for them from relatives elsewhere in Ireland or abroad.
Everyday Life in Carter’s
By the 1970s, one of the great luxuries for younger customers was the addition of an ice-cream fridge, positioned close to the hinged flap in the shop counter.
Children could order a “penny wafer” from Peter and watch closely as he cut a slice from the block of ice cream, hoping that the portion might be a little larger than usual.
The more experienced young customers knew a particular trick. If only a small amount remained in the block, they would order the smallest-value wafer in the hope that their order would “finish” the block, leaving Peter little choice but to give them a considerably larger slice than usual.
The informal nature of the business was also part of everyday life in Carter’s. Quite often, a customer arriving at the shop might find it temporarily unattended. They could wait patiently at the counter or pass through the cold room and knock on the side door of the Carter family residence to seek assistance.
On other occasions, customers simply had to wait until Peter had finished whatever work he was carrying out in one of the nearby sheds before he could return to serve them.
More Than a Grocery Store
Carter’s extended well beyond the grocery counter and provided a wide range of goods and services to the local community.
Beside the ice-cream fridge, a door in the rear wall of the shop led into the cold room. Meat was stored there in a concrete vat covered with fine mesh, which protected the contents from insects and other creatures.
The cold room was also where Peter’s wife, Mary (“Molly”) Carter, made local “farmers’ butter” each week using a churn. The cream used to produce the butter came from the Carter family farm at Ballyeden. Once the butter had been churned, wooden paddles were used to shape it into rectangular slabs, which were then wrapped in grease-proof paper.
Adjacent to the shop was a grain and fuel store, which formed another part of the business. The store could hold as much as 12 tons of pig meal and cattle meal. Among the animal-feed products sold at Carter’s were the brands Pollard and Bran.
A coal-delivery service was also operated as part of the business, with the coal stored in a lean-to shed adjoining the grain store.
Beneath the grain store was a garage, where Peter kept his car. At a time when private car ownership was still uncommon in 1940s Ireland, Peter provided another valuable local service by operating a hackney car for the community.
During the 1940s he drove a Hillman Minx, while in the 1950s he changed to a Ford Consul purchased from Donohoe’s in Enniscorthy.
Peter’s car also occasionally served the local school community. It was sometimes loaned to the local schoolteacher to transport children to underage inter-schools matches.
Source: Ballyoughter ICA Guild.
The Petrol Pump and the 1970s
Around 1960, a petrol pump was installed beside Carter’s Shop, adding another service to the growing business.
The pump was a Munster SIMMS model manufactured by the Northern Ireland engineering company of the same name.
Under normal circumstances it was unusual to see a queue for petrol at Carter’s. An exception came during the global oil crisis of the 1970s, when fuel supplies became more difficult to obtain and the Ballyoughter pump was suddenly very much in demand.
The sight of cars queuing for petrol outside the small rural shop was therefore an unusual feature of an exceptional period.
The End of Carter’s Shop
Peter Carter died on 15 December 1977, aged 79, and is buried in Ballyoughter graveyard. The business nevertheless continued for a further seven years until 1984 with his son Michael at the helm.
By then, the traditional rural grocery business was facing increasing pressure from narrow profit margins and growing competition from the modern supermarket.
After several decades of serving Ballyoughter and the surrounding area, the business finally closed.
Its range of services had been remarkable. During its lifetime, Carter’s had operated as a grocery and general provider’s shop, animal-feed and coal supplier, public telephone point, hackney service and petrol station, while also providing the highly personal service associated with the traditional rural shop.
The buildings survived after the business itself had ceased trading, preserving the physical outline of a shop that had been part of everyday life in Ballyoughter from the late 1930s until 1984.
Source: Carter Family Photographic Collection.
Source: Recollections recorded by the author in conversation with Michael Carter, son of Peter Carter.
The Changing Face of Rural Shopping
Murphy’s and Carter’s shops operated during a period of enormous change in rural Ireland. Both began in an era when many families relied heavily on businesses within their own community and when the relationship between shopkeeper and customer was often personal and long-established.
During the second half of the twentieth century, improved transport, greater car ownership and the growth of supermarkets gradually changed these shopping habits. Customers could travel more easily to larger towns and increasingly had access to a wider range of pre-packaged goods in self-service stores.
Murphy’s Shop closed in 1968, while Carter’s remained in business until 1984. Between them, the two businesses preserve the memory of more than half a century of everyday commerce and community life in Ballyoughter.
From Another Era
No photographs are known to survive showing the interiors of Murphy’s or Carter’s shops while they were operating. The images below are representative examples of some of the objects remembered from the two businesses. Except where specifically stated, they are not photographs of the original Ballyoughter items.
Sources and Further Reading
- Ger Crean — oral-history recollections relating to Murphy’s Grocery Store, recorded in conversation with the author. Ger Crean was a grandson of the shop’s founder, Patrick Murphy.
- Michael Carter — oral-history recollections relating to Carter’s Shop and Petrol Station, recorded in conversation with the author. Michael Carter was a son of the shop’s founder, Peter Carter.
- Brennan Family Photographic Collection — photograph of Liz Brennan, Kathleen Lawlor and Eileen Lawlor outside Murphy’s Shop, c.1937.
- Carter Family Photographic Collection — family photographs and historical material relating to Peter Carter, the Carter family and Carter’s Shop and Petrol Station.
- MediaHuis / Wexford County Council Library — newspaper bereavement notice relating to James Crean.
- Ballyoughter National School Registers — pupil records relating to members of the Carter family, including Peter Carter and his siblings, and providing evidence of the family’s residence in Ballygullen and Ballyoughter around the turn of the twentieth century.
- Census of Ireland, 1901 — census return for the Carter household in Ballyoughter, recording three-year-old Peter Carter living with his parents and siblings, NationalArchives.ie.
- Census of Ireland, 1926 — census return for the Carter household in Ballyoughter, recording Peter Carter, aged 28, as a “Boot & Shoe Maker” working on his “Own account”, NationalArchives.ie.
- Irish Civil Registration Records — civil registration of the birth of Peter Carter on 2 April 1898 in the Gorey Registration District.
- Wexford County Council Minutes, April 1930 — record of an application by Peter Carter of Ballyoughter for permission to add a room to his dwelling house beside the road.
- Ballyoughter ICA Guild — photograph of Mary (“Molly”) Carter with members of Ballyoughter ICA and their bus driver on an outing, c.1973.