In 2012, Paul O’Farrell posted an old photograph from his incredible collection in the Kilmacthomas archive group seeking to determine the identity of a County Waterford pub, which was correctly claimed as the Holycross in Butlerstown.

It piqued my curiosity as to how it came about that the name over the door was “F. Hamm”, namely Francis Hamm, son of German-born Waterford city businessman Richard. Dick, as he was better known in this neck of the woods, hailed from the Black Forest and moved here before WWI via England with his English wife Sahrah and oldest son and namesake.

Dick learned watchmaking as a hobby, having had plenty time on his hands whilst a prisoner of war in the Isle of Man. He was forcibly interned because of his nationality, even though he was married and living in Waterford at the time, working as a sausage skin dresser.

On his release and back on Suirside, Hamm built up a thriving enterprise in the processing of casings used in the booming sausage-making industry. He also opened a bookmakers on Mayor’s Walk in the mid-twenties. He and his second wife, Mollie (née Mary Colfer) were well-got in local commercial and social circles and good friends of Kilmeaden-born Mayor of Waterford, star county hurler, Colr. Patrick “Fad” Browne.

The couple bought Reddys pub at Holycross in the summer of 1952. The old-established premises had previously been owned by Carrigeen, Co. Kilkenny native Patrick Reddy, who farmed at Killotteran, and run with his wife Agnes and family since the early 1900s. Maria Gogarty (née Power) had sold it and seven acres in 1903; a Miss Kelly having been the publican there before that. The Reddys intended to sell up in 1909 but held onto the licence for decades after.

Dick Hamm died in December 1952 and was buried in Butlerstown. His youngest son, Francie, by now operating the gut-cleaning business, took over the pub licence too. Eileen Hunt, Slieveroe, was one of the staff working in the Holy until she got married in late 1960.

Frank — whose siblings were Richard Jr, George in Australia, and Mary, who married into Molloys the butchers — owned a greyhound called “Holycross Rover” in the mid-fifties, around which time he himself became progressively ill.

His stepmother Mollie Hamm died in 1963 and the pub was acquired by her relative, Joseph D. (Dominic) Colfer, a former seaman who also owned a bar called “The Punch Bowl” at Coffee House Lane near the Quay.

On account of Francie’s frailty, his wife Cissy (née Josephine Kervick, of the Ballybricken pig-buying family) ran the sausage-skin business founded by her father-in-law until her husband’s death in 1973.

Cissy was one of 16 children and she had nine of her own. Her son Nicholas then took charge of the pigmeat operation and Cissy helped his brother, Frank Jr, in two of his business ventures, namely the Stonecourt bar and restaurant on O’Connell Street, and subsequently the Old Court, Killoteran; an early-18th century private residence with 20 acres which he bought from builder Tom O’Brien for £150,000 in 1989 and renovated as a country hotel.

Cissy was also laid to rest in Butlerstown in 1993 and the Hamms sold the hotel the following year. After changing hands a number of times since and falling into disuse for several years, happily it was reopened in 2018 as the Greenway Manor Hotel.

The Colfers ran what most locals have always referred to as “the Holy” for most of the sixties, seventies and eighties. When Dominic decided to retire due to health reasons, the Holy Cross Lounge Bar was initially put on the market in the autumn of 1982. Michael Wall, Tom Power and Harry Flynn, were among the proprietors before the current owners, Bobby Bohill and family, purchased it in the mid-’90s.