End of an era for Limerick town as postman retires after four decades

A FAMILIAR face on the streets of Kilmallock for more than four decades, Sean Burchill, the town’s postman, hung up his postbag as he celebrated his 67th birthday on Monday.

Having started with the post office on December 19, 1983, Sean has spent 40 years delivering letters and parcels and becoming a trusted figure in the Limerick town.

He attended Kilmallock National School in the late 1960s before attending the old tech. He left school at 14 and began working in Ahern’s Bakery.

He later worked in a local factory for five years before securing a position with the post office.

“I just applied for the post office then, sent a letter in to the post office in Kilmallock looking for a job. And that’s how I started on the 19th of December, 1983. I’ve been the town postman since then,” he recalled.

His first shift came during Christmas week, sorting mail at night. He spent three years in night sorting, learning the area and working alongside experienced colleagues who helped him settle into the job.

He remembers a time when much of the mail arrived by train, with postal workers travelling to collect it from railway stations. Over the years, he worked at various collection points, including Charleville, Limerick Junction, Little Island in Cork and the Dock Road in Limerick, before taking on the Kilmallock town round.

The job has changed enormously since those early days. While letters have become less popular, online shopping has transformed the workload, with parcels now dominating deliveries.

“The online shopping is gone crazy. It’s more of a parcel service now than a letter service,” he said.

However, for him, the job was always about much more than delivering mail.

“People trusted me. You could leave the door open for me and I would just knock at the door and if there was no answer I would leave the mail inside the door,” he said.

He also became a listening ear for those who needed company, occasionally sitting down for a cup of tea while people shared their worries.

“Part of my job is listening to people as well. Everything that they would tell me would be a secret and I would never repeat what people tell me.”

Outside work, hurling has always been a passion. He played with Kilmallock throughout his career, retiring from playing in 1998 after breaking his jaw in three places, before turning to coaching and training.

He later took up cycling and became one of the founding members of the Southside Wheelers in Kilmallock in 2010.

Still cycling to work every morning, he recently completed an impressive 195km cycle on the Limerick Greenway and takes part in the Ring of Kerry every year for charity.

As retirement approaches, it is the people he will miss most.

“I will miss the job, but the thing that I will miss most is meeting people,” he said.

“For someone to just say hello, how are you, that could make an awful difference to a person. That’s what I’m going to miss, that banter of the job.”