John James Kirk (1903-1955)

John James was the youngest child of Hugh & Isabella Kirk – brother of Mary Agnes and Patrick.

He inherited the shop in Main Street from his aunt, Lizzie McGlinchey in 1928. John James never married, none of the three siblings did.

I’m assuming from his Driving License that, by 1929, John James had moved out of the family home in Dublin Street, all the way to Main Street. There was a flat above the shop. Both John James and Mary could drive (not sure about Paddy). Neither will have gone through a driving test – these didn’t start until 1935
John James died on March 1st 1955

The death notice has a couple of minor mistakes – it’s Dublin Street and Glenock.

In his will John James left everything to my dad (who had worked in the shop since childhood) and to his sister Mary. Paddy was long gone, he died in 1931.

One item of interest (to me) in his will – he was receiving £10 per annum in rent from “Stewarts’ property in Main Street Newtownstewart”. I think that might be the house next door – the house I always thought my dad had bought before he got married and my childhood home. £10 in 1955 equates to just under £270 in 2019…

Executors of the will were Francis Kirk, Newsagent and Patrick McGonagle, Merchant (from Ballymagorry)

The Manor of Newtownstewart - 1852 map

Last year, while on an Ulster Historical Foundation Genealogy course, I ‘found’ a wonderful book of bound maps of Newtownstewart & the surrounding area in PRONI.

‘Maps of the Manor of Newtownstewart, in the parish of Ardstraw and County of Tyrone, the estate of Daniel Baird, Esquire. Surveyed by R. H. Nolan & Co. 1852’

The maps are beautifully hand-drawn and coloured. Each house in the town is numbered, with an index that tells us who was living in each dwelling place in 1852.

Names of interest / potential interest in the town for my family tree are:

27	John McCrossan	177	James McGlinchy
80	E McGlinchy	207	Patrick Donnelly
111	Mark Mullan	249	Hugh Tolan
115	Hugh O’Connor	260	Catherine McCrossan
117	M McMullan	283	James O’Connor
168	William McGlinchy

Plots of land outside the town have T. Connor, Hugh Tolan & J. Connor Senior (2 plots) as tenants

Kirk's shop

This is the earliest picture I have of my dad, Frank Kirk, the shy looking boy on the left. I don’t know who the other kid is.

I’m guessing that this was taken on the day of his first Holy Communion, the suit and tie wouldn’t have been his normal outfit. Frankie would be seven in this picture, which makes it 1928. 

The boys are sitting on a bench outside what would soon be known as ‘Kirk’s shop’ in Main Street, Newtownstewart. The shop had been owned & run by Lizzie McGlinchey who died on 14 May 1928. Beneficiaries in her will were her sisters, Agnes Kearney and Bella Kirk. 

The shop then passed on to Bella’s eldest son, John James Kirk. It looks like this photo was taken not long after Lizzie’s death, with ‘J.J. Kirk Proprietor’ added under the ‘McGlinchey’ sign. 

As far as I’m aware, Lizzie always kept shop in the same place but this piece from Barney McCool in the Tyrone Constitution (7 November 1980) suggests otherwise: 

There were a few small shops beside there which have also been incorporated into Hood’s buildings.  Do any of you remember Lizzie McGlinchey’s wee shop or Maggie Mullan’s with its wee bell which jingled every time the door opened?  What memories in a sound!  You could have got brandy balls there – four for a penny, and conversation lozenges as well and washed them down with a tuppeny bottle of lemonade. (‘70 Years ago’) 

I think Barney got that wrong and Lizzie always traded from the same location, on the other side of the road, just across from the Bank. 

My dad worked in the shop from an early age and took over when John James died on 1 March 1955.  

In the early ‘60s Frank bought the house next door and incorporated the living room into the shop as a toy showroom. The shop was a typical village store, one of two newsagents in Newtownstewart. Frankie sold groceries, stationery, greetings cards, sweets, cigarettes, records (for a brief time), fresh fish every now & then, stamps, books, toys, ornaments, cutlery, ice cream – anything and everything. The shop also took in parcels from Ulsterbus – the most interesting for me were cardboard boxes with a couple of ferrets inside and big reels of film for the Gorey Cinema. 

For a while dad had a café in the back of the shop, though that must have closed in the mid-sixties, my memories of it are sketchy. Up until the end we still had a Coca Cola fridge, big globe light shades, a ham slicer and all the shelves were there that had been lined with bottles of soft drink when the café was a going concern. 

Apart from the toy showroom, the shop wouldn’t have changed much from John James’ day, until the early ‘70s when my dad did a little DIY and changed things around a bit, most notably getting rid of a small office that John James had where he could keep an eye on all that was going on. Frank had an architect draw up plans for a bigger refurbishment but that was not to be. My father died on 27 September 1976. 

We sold the shop to the Gallaghers who subsequently sold to Pat McNamee. Pat still runs the shop, it’s now a Centra store, unrecognisable from the days when the shop was Frankie Kirk’s.