Trade Names: A family pharmacy in Roscommon reflects the friendly, small town values of its community, writes Rose Doyle

Roscommon, according to those who live there, is the only town of its size in Ireland where car-parking remains free on the main street. This may change, in the way that other things are changing in Roscommon, but not yet. Roscommon seems to have a talent for the sort of change that stays reassuringly the same.

McGuinness Pharmacy, Main Street, Roscommon, is a case in point. Looking much as you imagine it must have done in 1891 when it began life as Phillips Medical Hall, it has all the while kept pace, with stylish inexorability, with the times that were in it.

McGuinness Pharmacy is still what Oliver McGuinness calls "the first port of call in the medical ladder" and still, since 1958, has Simon McGuinness in caring daily attendance.

Workers tend to stay indefinitely in McGuinness Pharmacy too. Oliver, in situ a mere six years, puts a third generation of McGuinness's safely in place. His tenure's as nothing compared to Mary Lane, with McGuinness Pharmacy 26 years, or Assumpta Lennon's 18, Patricia Coyle's 13 years. Shirley White has clocked up eight years and Edel Burke's on the starting block with two.

"We've always been extremely lucky with staff," Simon says. Mary Lane nods agreeably.

There's a gentle stream of custom and chat in the long, bright, many-shelved and rigorously stocked interior. We are sitting, Simon says as he begins on the early part of the McGuinness story, in an extension to the Phillips Medical Hall his father took over in 1923. Oliver, with gentle good humour, picks up on latter day points.

"My father was TJ (Thomas John) McGuinness, a pharmacist from Monaghan. A fella called Phillips started here in 1891, calling it Phillips Medical Hall. It was called that until 1972; there was a verbal agreement made with my father that no change would be made to the name. That was common in the country at the time."

TJ McGuinness served his time in Monaghan where he got a pair of boots and 2/6 in return for his first year's work. He studied in Dublin too; his student notebook is a pleasure to peruse.

"My mother," Simon says, "was Cait Comer from Kiltimagh. She was teaching in a convent there when TJ heard her clipping along and liked what he heard. She was in the old IRA and gave classes in Irish at night time. He decided to learn. When they got married they moved here to Roscommon town; there were three pharmacies in Galway at the time and TJ thought that too many."

Cait and TJ McGuinness had seven children, all of them born in the rambling rooms of the McGuinness home over the pharmacy.

"I was the second last," Simon says, "and Ollie's father was the last born. He was named Oliver as well. This was a great house to grow up in, always full of people. TJ was a personable kind of person. Roscommon was a lovely town to be born into, too - the only mortal sin I every heard of growing up was someone stealing a bike. There was no crime and no snobbery. People helped one another an awful lot. It's still a lovely town."

The word, unconfirmed, is that the original Phillips went to Jersey and is buried there. Simon McGuinness went there once, looking for his grave. He didn't find it.

Years ago, too, Simon came across the prescription given his mother Cait before the births of her children, his own included. "The date's a give-away," he grins, "she was to take two teaspoons morning and evening. It brought on the contractions and I was born next day."

TJ McGuinness did a lot of veterinary work, "dosing for cattle and horses", Simon explains, "he'd a farming background so he knew a lot, especially about horses. People came from all around for their horses. I gave up the veterinary work about 10 years ago."

Simon McGuinness qualified after studies in Dublin, an apprenticeship in Ballygar, then another stint in Dublin. He'd wanted to do science but TJ died, much too young, when he was 60 in 1952, so it fell to pharmacy. "I've no regrets," Simon says, "none at all. Two of my sisters qualified before me. Mairead is dead now, may she rest in peace."

He and his wife, Pauline, had four children - Mark, Aengus, Maeve and Polly. None of them chose pharmacy but three of them, Simon grins, "have made a grandfather out of me".

We look through prescription books beginning in the 1890s, stopping at a couple of McGuinness specialities. Their American Cough Elixir "used be made up in two gallon lots", Simon explains. "I made it myself until 20 years ago."

The secret lay in a mixture which included tinctures of such as camphor, scillae, liquorice and capsici (the active ingredient in red peppers) as well as raspberry vinegar and infusion lini.

Then there was Harrison Stomach Mixture in which the ingredients included sodium bicarbonate, tinctures of ginger and rhubarb, aromatic spirits of ammonia and, of course, cascara. It remedied stomach ills until about 30 years ago and a proud and handsomely Victorian picture of the said Dr Harrison hangs in the dispensing part of the pharmacy.

"We've a house full of old things like this," Simon holds aloft a thick glass bottle with the legend TJ McGuinness MPSI emblazoned. "We do a window using them every second year. We've given some of the prescription books to the national archives."

Things have changed in the pharmacy business. Products come ready packed - handier though Simon's not convinced they're better. "People kept asking for the old mixtures but the ingredients became too difficult to get after a while. I was trained to compound and dispense but things are different nowadays."

The business has been enlarged twice, in the 1970s and again in 2000. With a lot of latter-day glamour cosmetics and scents on shining counters, Simon remembers their first "perfume cabinet; a small box really. We sold Ashes of Roses and Evening in Paris for 1/6d in a little blue bottle."

He works part-time. "Oliver is the incumbent now," he draws Oliver into the telling. "I used come to work here during the summers when I was at school in St Mels in Longford," Oliver says. "I liked what I saw, went to study pharmacy in Aberdeen, in Scotland, and here I am. I'm back since 1999."

"He's learned a lot since 1999," Simon laughs and voices some regrets about changes in the pharmacy business. "I hate to see the unique relationship between patient and chemist passing. I don't see how the chain stores can build up the same relationships. We knew whether a fella was taking his tablets or not, and whether he could read the label or not, all very important."

Oliver says things are "probably moving more from the area of dispensing to medical management. It's not only family pharmacies which are declining; all sorts of family shops are going as the multi-nationals move in."

Mary Lane, benignly energetic, remembers the family-style pharmacy that was McGuinness when she first came to work there 26 years ago. "Simon was the only pharmacist in town with a family and Cait was still here then. She was a lovely, lovely woman and fantastic with advice. We'd a lot of our own stuff on the shelves at that time."

Mary Lane works in the photography end of things now, and loves it.

Everyone agrees the biggest change is in the customer base. Roscommon's growing status as a commuter town for Athlone and Galway means more custom and new people all the time. "The pace of life has changed," Ollie says, "but this is still a town where, if you're in trouble, people will help. It's still a lovely town."

Mary enthusiastically agrees. "When you walk up the street people say 'hello'," she says, "and this is still a personal, family chemist, especially when it comes to children. No child ever leaves here without a lollipop."