My Greystones: Harry Acheson

When Harry met happy

henever GG finally manages to grow up, we just hope we can be like Harry Acheson.

The man loves both company and peace & quiet, the great outdoors and a happy home, he loves sailing boats, walking the dogs, some fine food, some fine wine, and a fine woman…

Jaysus, the man has it sussed.

Billy Thompson, Derek Paine, John Fox, Bob Thompson, Terence Evans, Harry Acheson, Neville Spurling, Derek Ferns, Stan Paine.

Driving up to the Acheson hideaway up opposite Redford Cemetery, the minute you step into Coolagad – imagine Middle Earth meets Woodstock – it’s as though you’ve stepped into another world. This is a Greystones hideaway like no other. A 300-year-old house hidden behind tall trees and a wild garden. A place a child could happily get lost in for hours on end. A child like Yvonne, Harry’s wife of 57 years, who often vanishes off into her beloved garden for entire mornings, and sometimes even afternoons too, before finally emerging, proud and hungry, and sprinkled heavily with freshly-burrowed earth.

Rosi Miller, Jean Simmons, Erika Muller, unknown, Helga Muller & Harry Acheson.

Harry Acheson was born on Christmas Day, 1930, and the fact that he had to share his birthday with a much bigger boy all his life must have given him a fine sense of perspective and that wry sense of humour. “I never had a birthday party,” he smiles now, 86 years later, “and nowhere was open. Other kids used to have a good laugh about that.”

It’s perhaps telling too that Henry William Acheson – the nickname Harry would come later – spent his first six years in a place called Crazy Corner, County Westmeath.

At least it wasn’t Stranagalwilly in County Tyrone. Or Bastardstown in County Wexford. Who knows what effect that might have had on a young, impressionable mind.

It was when his father’s job with Bank Of Ireland saw him being transferred from Mullingar to College Green in Dublin that the six-year-old Harry and the rest of the family moved to Greystones, joining grandparents already here. Back in 1936, Greystones was a village where everyone knew everyone else, their cousin,their cat and their business, and with the sea on one side and the woods on the other, it was the ideal spot for a kid like Harry to grow up.

Harry with a pic of his pop

“Like my dad, I love sailing, fishing, travelling,” says Harry today, “so, I was very happy growing up here. I was lucky too in that I didn’t need to get a job in the bank for security – I could become a marine engineer and just travel the world. So, I did, heading off in 1948. And it was an incredible life. Loving history, I was able to just let the ship take me wherever, and then go and explore the museums, the forts, the ruins… A wonderful time.”

The bould Gary

That love of history Harry passed on to his son, Gary – who writes our regular Blasts From The Past column – whilst the other son, Keith, was the sports nut. So, the coolest of the three Acheson boys, of course.

Not that Harry didn’t have other interests. In 1959, he and Yvonne married in Christ Church, Delgany, moving to the secluded Coolagad and bringing up those two strapping lads. Living way up in Fraggle Rock meant that life was one great big party for the young Acheson family, with Yvonne soon getting into the habit of counting sleeping bags in the morning to gauge how many people there would be for breakfast. And whenever Yvonne would hear any kind of commotion down the town, she would always say, “That must be the Acheson boys again“.

As I get ready to leave Coolagad, I ask Harry if Greystones changed much over those past 80 years. “Well, I now know more people in the graveyard than I do down the town,” he says, “but, thankfully, it still feels like the same Greystones that it always was. I felt blessed to live here as a kid, and I feel blessed to live here today…”

“I did all the wrong things,” he smiles, “but I’m still here.”

You can check out Harry’s great Kodachrome memories of Greystones  here.