A memory of Bunty Eccles, Freshford

The death occurred in December of Irene (Bunty) Eccles, Killashulan Cottage, Freshford. Following her passing, a former neighbour penned this tribute in her memory:

We built a new house in Kilrush, a couple of miles out the Johnstown Road from Freshford, in the late 1960s. My mother, a keen and knowledgeable gardener, was anxious to make something of our large new site. I remember her spending many afternoons with Mrs Eccles in her beautiful garden up the road.

She lived with her husband and daughter in a sort of fairytale cottage with a verandah, flowering climbers all over it, and a mature garden filled with flowering and fruiting trees and colourful flower borders, and she was generous with her time and advice.

We kids seemed to always be welcome there too, I remember the most delicious lemonade she would give us – I think she made it herself. We never tasted its like before or since.

Bunty would be there sometimes too, but usually not. She would have been around 20 and seemed to come and go freely, maybe to college, but I think also at times to England where their roots were.

Her father, always known as the Colonel, was a small, dapper, cheerful man. I remember once I tackled him about a 10-mile sponsored walk I was doing. His response, so different from the usual ‘how much do you want’ was ‘Gosh, that’s jolly energetic of you!’

Bunty was a quiet and self-contained sort of girl, and not one to fuss over the neighbour’s children. But she seemed so much at home, so much part of that warm household, reading her book in a deck chair in sun dappled shade in that lovely garden. I often ran into her around Kilkenny in recent years and she never seemed so much at home, belonging in the city as she did in her young days.

She never married or had a family of her own, but she was very devoted to her father. His passing left a big gap in her life. She kept her love of the outdoors, of plants and animals. Her manner was always gentle, quiet, kind, and self-sufficient.

Bunty passed away in December. It was only when I heard about the funeral that I realised her given name was Irene. People in Kilkenny might remember her as an elderly woman in outdoor clothes, her gentle face lined and weatherworn. But our memory of her is as a mysterious, rather glamorous young woman in a summer dress, in a beautiful sun-filled garden.

- PD