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Angela Power Disney
(This will begin by just a simple outline of some family history and I wish to make it clear that as far as I know, there are no allegations against most of these people, and even where allegations are later made, they are frequently sustained by only one person, and might not be true. This family history is outlined here though because its impossible to make sense of the account without these facts, and because the allegations are of such a serious nature that wider society needs to hear about them and hopefully have them addressed.)
Power family of Dungarvan Co. Waterford/Crossdrum Co. Meath
The story begins with the marriage of Thomas Power, of Ballylynch, Kilmacthomas, to Annie Maher, of the Glen of Aherlow, in Bansha Church in 1916. This Thomas Power got a job on the railways in Dungarvan Co. Waterford, first as a porter and retired in 1960 as a signal man, seven years before the station closed. They lived for a while in St Thomas’s Terrace in the town but in time they went into the lodge at Shandon to the North of the town, over looking the railway and later called the Railway Lodge. They are reputed to have had 13 children, including Sr Mary, a nun based mostly in France, and a son, Sean, who served in the American army.
One son who also served later in the armed forces was Nicholas who after leaving school got work looking after horses for the master of the hunt in the area, and from which he gained great experience in the field and was notably skilled at this, and with dogs, all his life. Then he left to join the RAF and spent 25 years with them, in Tuddenham in Suffolk, in Germany, in Hereford, in Gibraltar, in Rudloe Manor, Corsham, Wiltshire, and finally in RAF Masirah in the Persian Gulf, on an island off Oman, and approximately in the early 70s retired from this life.
He then purchased a listed building in Bradford-upon-Avon in England, 35 Market Street, and with his experiences as a chef in the RAF, opened the Shandon Steakhouse therein. Then in 1981 he bought a house and farm in Crossdrum Lower, near Oldcastle Co. Meath and lived there until his death in 2022 when just shy of 96 years old. As aforementioned, during that time he was particularly noted for his breeding, training and racing, of dogs and horses. He had married a lady from Essex in England, Dorothy “Dot” DuPrée, a sometime poet who predeceased him by a few years, and had five daughters in this order, who to a varying extent, were brought up in Bradford and later lived or live in Crossdrum or nearby:
Catherine, the mother of Louise Kizzy Prince and involved in the local hunt scene, including as a photographer.
Fiona, born in RAF Wegberg in Germany c.1956, she worked in England for many years, in child protection and psychiatric counselling, including in the Isle of Wight and Manchester, and came back to live in Crossdrum to look after her father sometime before she died there on the 2nd May 2015.
Angela, born in Wegberg in 1957, of whom more to follow.
Sharon, in 1985 she married Paul Terence Hopkins, Cavan Road, Virginia, son of William (Sonny) Hopkins, and both lived together for a while in Crossdrum and have a daughter, although they later separated.
Ann Marie, who married Phil Galligan and who are now the main owners in Crossdrum, which is known as the Rainbow farm, with a well known mural of same painted on a barn there, and which sometimes operates as a guesthouse with many outbuildings.
Angela Power Disney
Angela, as stated was born in Germany and then has many memories of being with her father in Gibraltar, in Morocco, which is obviously a short distance from Gibraltar, and RAF Rudloe Manor. She then worked for many years in that restaurant in Bradford-upon-Avon, living with her family above it. After this she got a job quite young in London with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), during which she worked at a surprisingly high level for one so young and through this, and the Church Commissioners, she got a very good deal on a lease of an apartment in Marble Arch, central London, and lived there, or lucratively let it out, for some time.
Then in her very early 20s she enrolled in Warwick University studying English and Drama, graduated in 1981, and followed that up with a post graduate course in journalism in 1983 and she has stated that she was widely published in England and Ireland as a journalist in 1984.
In 1985 she went to California and it seems spent some time on a house boat in Sausalito, just North of San Francisco across the Golden Gate bridge, and worked in the Irish American Spinnaker restaurant there. While living there she became friendly with Antonio Strano, a High School teacher across the Bay in Oakland who it appears had left that profession – in which he had a passionate interest, including publishing a book on education and being interviewed in the New York Times on the subject – and became pregnant by him. It seems then at this time she went to live with a ballet dancer in a small house in that town, called Quentin De Chalfont-Mymms, and married him. Later her daughter Gabriella was born in Marin, just a little further up the coast, and she has in recent years become a very successful hair stylist and influencer.
In the early 90s she returned to Crossdrum but then shortly afterwards left for England and for a time lived in rural Suffolk with her daughter there. Then in 1993 in Suffolk she married Paul Disney and returned to Ireland, for a while to Crossdrum, where they got planning permission for a house, but later to Dundalk where she and her husband became very associated with an Evangelical Church there at that time. They had apparently a lot of plans for developing a housing estate at this stage but it seems were misled by their colleagues in that Evangelical Church, left and returned to Crossdrum/Oldcastle.
There she fostered a number of children, had two sons with her husband, and got a government grant to look after some vulnerable youths, early teenagers. Unfortunately her marriage fell through though and it seems Paul Disney left that area, but retained visiting rights over his sons. Later on she got disability benefits and a council house in Oldcastle, for herself and as the carer of her two sons, one of whom is reported to have had ADHD and the other an eye condition.
Thomas Power, signalman in Dungarvan, Co. Waterford
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