It probably happened all over Ireland at the time. Sean Cloney, a Catholic, and Sheila Kelly, a member of the Church of Ireland, were neighbours near the Co Wexford town of Fethard-on-Sea, and had attended the local Catholic school together. Their families, both farming, were friendly. The two young people began to go out together.

The local curate pressurised Sean to break off the relationship. This might have been the end of the matter for some young men in 1940s Ireland, but not for Sean Cloney. He recognised the difficulty of their marrying in Ireland and they went to England, where they married in a register office. Later they married in a Catholic church, where Sheila signed a document promising to bring the children up as Catholics.

They returned to Ireland some months later, where their two daughters were born. In January 1957, when their eldest daughter, Eileen, was coming up to her sixth birthday and would have to go to school, Sheila received a visit from a priest. He informed her that the child would go to the Catholic school and there was nothing she could do about it.

"Sheila didn't fancy being ordered," said Sean. "She developed the frame of mind, `we'll see what can be done about it'. "

The pressure on Sheila grew over the following months, and Sean knew she was thinking of leaving. "It was not up to me to restrain her," he said. One day at the end of April he came in from the farm at lunchtime to find her and the children gone.

A few days later he received a visit from Desmond Boal, a Belfast barrister and associate of Ian Paisley. He presented him with an ultimatum: if he wanted to save his marriage he would have to emigrate to either Canada or Australia, agree to his children being brought up as Protestants and consider changing his own religion.

He refused, and began legal proceedings for the return of the children. The story then took a bizarre turn, when Boal and his associates moved Sheila and the children to the Orkney Islands in Scotland. They had become hostages in a bitter sectarian battle.

Back in Fethard-on-Sea feelings were running high, and the boycott of local Protestant businesses began. One of the first victims was Sheila's father, a cattle dealer, who found people would not sell cattle to him. He had given his daughter u40 £40 before she left.

Sean feels particularly strongly about the attack on Mr Kelly - he was close to his father-in-law who was, he said, an outstandingly generous man. "What they overlooked was that this same man gave a blank cheque to a local Catholic boy who lost an arm so that he could buy a business. He was ruined and he later died of a broken heart."

Sean fought the boycott, with the support of a few Old IRA men who had fallen out with the clergy during the War of Independence, but their efforts failed. A few months later Sheila's father and the local TD, a Knight of Columbanus, issued a joint statement, the local priest went into the shop most affected to buy a packet of cigarettes, and the boycott was over.

It took longer for Sean to extricate his wife from the grip of the Paisleyites, but they were reconciled, and after some time in England, they came home. The matter of the children's education remained. "Whether they went to a Protestant or a Catholic school would have been seen as a victory for one side or the other, so they never went to school and we educated them ourselves," he said.

Reconciliation came more slowly to Fethard-on-Sea. Again, it came through the two families who had been such close friends and neighbours.

Sheila's brother had a little girl who was born with a hole in her heart. She had to go to London for an operation, where she died, aged three. Her body was brought home for burial.

Two of Sheila's sisters had also married Catholics, and so three of the child's pallbearers were her Catholic uncles. They walked up the avenue towards the Protestant church, where Protestant men were waiting to take the coffin, because at the time Catholics were not allowed enter a Protestant church.

"That little coffin had a three-year old child in it, our niece," said Sean. "I went into the church with the coffin and the other two men followed suit. When they saw that, other Catholics came in. It was a milestone."