ABSTRACT
The creamery community transcended parish boundaries, most creameries serving several parishes or portions thereof, while parishes were frequently divided between different creameries. Limerick creameries have been closed and the records have disappeared. The destruction is linked with the issue - that of confidentiality and local sensitivity. The creamery memories cast much light on the parameters of the Irish rural world from the 1930s onwards. Creamery workers, however, could forge links between the local and the wider world. Most of those who shared their memories moved from the specific creamery issue to the wider role of women in rural society, and, even more importantly, to the perceived qualities of a 'good woman'. From the historian's vantage point, therefore, they provide a lens through which to review social gradation, community solidarity, gender relations and local pride in a world changing immeasurably in the last three decades of the twentieth century.
