Hairdressers which had a few close shaves with Tans

Trade NamesThe Byrnes of Navan have attended to the town's and county's coiffeur for over a century, writes Rose Doyle

Jim Byrne knows a thing or two about haircuts, and about Navan. He should. Man and boy he's been cutting hair in the Co Meath town, just like his father before him, and his father before that.

Cutting hair can be a reasonably intimate job, especially when customers become regulars, hold meetings with other customers and discussing life and sport and politics while you're snipping away. It happens.

The Byrnes have been cutting hair in Navan since 1898, since Jim's grandfather, Robert Byrne, came to Navan from Dundalk and set up shop. All of which sounds fairly straightforward - until you find that the Byrnes had been cutting hair long before that and in other places. Jim is, in fact, the fifth generation of Byrne hairdressers.

He tells the story with the air of a man who has all the time in the world, just the sort of person you'd be reassured to have cutting your hair. It's hard to keep him on the subject; his story is the story of Navan too.

He begins at the beginning, more or less. "My grandfather came from Dundalk, where he was a hairdresser. He was called Robert Byrne; his father was also called Robert Byrne and he had come to Navan from Dublin [where his father, Jim's great-great grandfather, was a hairdresser] some years before, and married Annie Power, from Navan, before moving off to Dundalk. In Dundalk they opened a hairdressers and had nine children. My grandfather Robert was the eldest of these and when he came back to Navan he married Bridget McGovern, a Navan woman."

Jim's grandfather opened on the square in Navan, in a building from which Charles Stuart Parnell, just a few years earlier, had addressed a crowd of 5,000. The Byrne business has stayed put in Navan ever since.

"He put the name 'Byrne, Gents Hairdresser' over the door," Jim says. "He and Bridget had four children, three boys and a girl, and the business went very, very well. It carried out most of the hairdressing needs in the county. Their three sons, Bobby, Willie, my father, and Peter eventually joined the business. The girl, who was called Lily, didn't join."

The family lived over the shop, as was the way, and customers came from "all over the county as well as everyone in town. Priests and bishops, you name it. Giving shaves was a big part of things then. People came three times a week to be shaved, often they just didn't know how to do it themselves."

Those early years of the 20th century were, Jim reminds, "very troubled times in and around Navan. My father's brother Bobby became involved with the IRA and used to carry messages. The family were badly treated by the Black and Tans who would come in for a shave, listen to what was being said and come an hour later to wreck the place. They'd even go upstairs and wreck the living quarters."

He tells a wealth of historical anecdote, all tales which connect for brief, telling minutes with Byrnes Hairdressing. He gets back, eventually, to the business end of things.

"Haircuts at the time were very, very basic, not much style about them: get the hair off and that was it. A haircut used cost 6d, a shave 4d. A boy's haircut cost 2d and my father would give them back a 1d for themselves."

Jim Byrne's father, Willie, married his mother, Madeleine Butler, in 1927 and opened his own place in Watergate Street, off the square and about 50 yards from the original shop. "There was plenty of business for both places at the time," Jim says.

Willie and Madeleine Byrne had five children; Jim was their youngest and the family lived over the shop. "It was great," Jim remembers, "there was a piano in the house and we were always queuing up to play. My father had about 60 regular customers in the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s. The same people would come at the same time, forming almost into clubs. Pat Quilty, who used to be editor of the Meath Chronicle, presided over a group called Grattan's Parliament; they'd argue football and politics while being shaved and it would get very heated. They all died off until Pat was the last of the group."

Talk of the Meath Chronicle, their back-yard neighbour for many a year, reminds him how Pat Quilty, between haircuts, "turned out a succession of fabulous journalists". He lists this paper's Jack Fagan, RTÉ's Charlie Bird, and Willie Kiely and Liam Hayes among others.

Jim and his older brother Robbie were the two of Willie and Madeleine Byrne's offspring who joined the business.

"The first real change in mens' styles came in the 1950s," Jim remembers, "when the American crew-cut came in. Before that it had just been short back and sides with Brylcreem. The 1950s were when teenagers were invented too, they'd never been heard of before that! In the 1960s you began to see stylish styles as crew cuts grew out: DA and Elvis cuts. At the end of the 1960s there was flower power and a slightly looser look. When the long hair came in the 1970s a lot of people in our business dreaded it; my father hated it!"

The three of them; his father, brother Robbie and Jim worked together for a few years before Robbie "went into the ladies side altogether, though in the same premises.

"My father and I divided our time between the premises on the square and Watergate Street with my father doing his own customers until three days before he died, 22 years ago when he was 80 years old. When he died I carried on the business.

"Robbie's business had become too big for the area upstairs and in 1969 he moved down the street. He's since moved to Cornmarket where he's set up Robert Byrne Hairdressing. His sons, Liam and Tom, are with him."

Jim Byrne stayed with men's hairdressing and in Watergate Street. "My wife, Margaret, came in with me. She cuts hair as well. She's a lyricist and has worked with me for years."

And so the other side to the Byrne family is revealed.

"We've always been evenly divided between arts and music and hairdressing," Jim says.

Proving the point are his and Margaret's seven offspring. Paul, their first born, works in the family business - when he's not conducting the local brass band. Colm, next in line, is co-principal trumpet in the National Symphony Orchestra. Carol works in the family business. Brian composes music for films, lives in Los Angeles and conducts regularly in the National Concert Hall here. John is a professional musician, Jim is an architect and Kevin, the youngest, is studying accountancy.

Jim Byrne himself plays the piano and the trombone, was for years musical director of "almost anything that moved" in the area - which was how Margaret the lyricist came to work with him.

All this talent and creativity hasn't in any way interfered with the business which is, Jim says, "going from strength to strength. The look now is natural, textured, slightly layered. Fellas take better care of themselves than they used to and are rightly fussy about their hair. So they should be; they're paying for you to cut it the way they want it."

Navan has changed, greatly. When he was going to school "there were 4,500 people in the town and everyone knew everyone. The population is over 30,000 now with more on the way."

But Navan will deal with growth and change, he's sure of that. "The proximity to Dublin means it will spill outwards and the good land around means we'll always have farmers. When the M3 is completed it will help too."