Episode 5

A brilliant sunny day and here was me thinking the Irish were a pretty hardy bunch, but I seem to have misjudged them, they just can't hack it when the sun comes out. All day the sun shone and it was pleasantly warm and we merely encountered 4 cyclists, 2 joggers, and 4 walkers, only one of them with a dog and 75% were oldies who are certainly a more hardy bunch than these youngsters.

We called at the beach at Ballyheige, admittedly it was in the earlier part of the day but the place was as good as deserted. It is one of the places that was used to film the 1970 film 'Ryan’s Daughter’. We had passed other sites that had been used on the ‘ring of Kerry’.

The cathedral ruins at Ardfert are quite impressive. It must have been a lovely building when still intact. The western end has undergone major surgery in recent years because it was subsiding. Before it fell down, it was pulled down with meticulous care and work done on the foundations to stabilize them then carefully reconstructed using mortar as near to the original stuff as they could get. One transept has been fully restored and now houses a small museum but it’s not yet open for the season.

At Tarbert we visited a ‘Bridewell’ prison courthouse. This is a particular style of prison named after the one in London. It has only a few cells and there is also a courtroom where I sat with the judge for a photo, no way was I going to sit in the dock with the prisoner, he got transported to New South Wales for offending some nobleman. Upstairs was the prison officers quarters where he and his family lived. In the mid 1800’s in the time of the Irish famine he got paid £10 a year and accommodation, it was good pay then. The Irish population during that time were in dire straits and many committed offences that were punished with transportation to the colonies as a way of escaping almost certain starvation. Of course during in that time vast numbers of Irish emigrated to America. Smuggling incurred a £100 fine and selling illegal booze a £20 fine, being drunk and disorderly was a fine of a shilling or so, it was stealing food and insulting nobles that got you sent to the colonies.

At a Flying boat museum in Foyne I got to try a flight simulator but had to rely on David as my arms and legs are just not up to pushing pedals and manoeuvring levers. As for L she just couldn’t get the knack of it: Foyne for a few years from 1935 to 1946 was very important as the European base for trans Atlantic flights using flying boats. The Shannon estuary at this point is very sheltered and although it was only a temporary measure to use Foyne while they developed the area that later became Shannon airport, the base was never moved from here. The flying boats flew from here to Newfoundland then on to New York. Commercial flights lasted less than 10 years, from 1937 to 1946 because by that time many land bases were available having been well developed during the war years. Both Pam Am and Imperial (later to become BOAC the forerunner to British Airways) both flew out of here. The biggest aircraft was the Boeing B314, she carried 34 passengers and 9 or 10 crew. Even had a honeymoon suite:

It was in one of the rooms in this building that after a particular harrowing flight a passenger asked for a coffee and the bar tender made him one adding a good splash of Irish whiskey, then when asked what sort of coffee it was he told them it was Irish coffee. The name of the bar was B O’Regan’s.

It was still sunny when we visited Adare Castle with the frist tour of the season. Fortunately there was just 6 of us. Our lady guide was very good and told us a lot of the history of the castle and the town. Construction started on the castle soon after the Normans landed in Ireland in the late 1100’s. It is one of about 1200 they constructed here and it took around 30 years to build. It’s situated right on the bank of the River Meigue. The river is tidal at this point but the water is fresh being some 10 miles inland.

Very little of what we can see is the original castle, like most castles it was continually altered and added to by each owner over the centuries and much was destroyed by Cromwellian forces in the mid 1600’s. It has been partly reconstructed but only to an extent that it holds together what is left. Similar materials were used wherever possible.

The impressive oak doors are new but are said to be almost identical in every way to the originals. Each door weighs a half ton and each hinge 200lbs (90k’s). There was both and outer and an inner moat.

Archaeologists found small pieces of pottery in places and decided that it was made here in the castle kiln, and they identified what area must have been used as a sunroom by the ladies because of the pieces of board games and other incidentals that only the women of those times used.

After quite an interesting tour we exited under the portcullis and through those great oak doors, the same way as we had entered. Fortunately no-one is above anymore to pour boiling water or hot coals down upon us as they may well have done centuries ago, I could have become very soggy or burnt to a cinder, nasty!

There are three priories in or close to Adare and a huge manor house that is now a luxury hotel that we certainly didn’t stay at. At the Trinitarian Priory there is a stone dove cote where the friars used to raise pigeons for food. Stone dove cotes are very uncommon.

We drove on down to Kilmallock and had a walk around that town. There is quite a bit of the old stone wall still standing though it certainly doesn’t look very impressive anymore. A couple of old town gates that seem to be more traffic obstacles than tourist attractions, we were the only tourists about or so it seemed. There was also a Dominican Friary and the Collegiate church of St Peter and St Paul. A Collegiate was a place of learning but not run by a religious order such as a monastery or friary. There was a priest of abbot or some such person in charge.

There isn’t much to see apart from four walls at Moors Abbey but we had a look around none-the-less, L really enjoys visiting old things, but then she’s getting a bit of a relic herself. At Clonbeg church there is a sacred well dedicated to St Sedan it is reportedly good for eye ailments so both L and I gave it a go, needless to say neither of us can see any better than we did before, still no harm in trying. I think what we were lacking is a nice embroidered piece of Heather’s nightie (a clootie) to tie onto the birch tree beside the well. Shamanism isn’t dead yet!

We really though it was going to dump rain on us again in Cahir and I very nearly go confined to the car again though I did manage to scramble inside L’s jacket so we all set off together to see the sights. There is a castle here overlooking the river Suir. Another Norman castle from the 12th cent; It was attacked by Oliver Cromwell in the mid 1600’s which left it in a state similar to what we see now. The castle had belonged to the Butler family for many centuries until the last of the line died in 1981, and they had lived here in the private apartments. As castles go there really wasn’t much to see. However, the family had a quirky summerhouse about a mile or so along the river and that was really worth seeing. It was also a very pleasant walk along a path lined with Ash, Beech, Horse Chesnut and Sycamore trees. .

Nicknamed ‘Swiss Cottage’ it was designed by the same fellow who did Brighton Pavilion and it was built in 1810 or there abouts. After the last of the Butler family died it was sold to a Canadian who didn’t even visit it with the result it was used by squatters, hippies, drunks and all other down and outs and got into a very sorry state of disrepair, even horses were stabled in it for a while. Then some American woman donated a vast amount of money for its repair and the state took charge of it. The basic cottage is original, the roof being thatch would have been repaired and rethatched many times over it’s 200 year history, most of everything else has been replaced. The yew tree beside it is said to be at least 1000 years old, there had been a monastery here in very early Christian days.

Although it was used as a summerhouse for picnics and shooting parties and other gatherings and did have two bedrooms no one ever stayed overnight there. It looks bigger than it actually is, inside there are only two rooms on each of the floors. There is actually a third floor, sort of below ground but because of the slope of the hill on one side there is ground level access and it now serves as the entrance, it used to be the kitchen.

Along the river as we meandered past we saw a heron fishing in the water flowing over the barrage, a pair of swans with 4 cignet, L can’t remember the last time she saw cygnets. There were many ducks and a goose with goslings. L will try and load a video of the swan and cygnets;

When we visited the Rock of Cashel there were hoards of tourists. This seems to be where they congregate. When I sat in places to get my photo taken I ended up in the photos of several other people, so now my face will be seen in even more places, perhaps I should start charging an appearance fee:

The history of fortifications of this limestone outcrop goes back to prehistory probably; certainly from the 4th century AD it was very important as the seat of the Kings on Munster, this part of southern Ireland. St Patrick visited here in about 450AD and in 1014 AD the King of Munster repelled an attack by the invading Vikings.

In 1101 the then King of Munster handed the ‘rock’ to the Catholic Church and it flourished as a religious centre until Cromwell sacked it in 1647. At that time the towns people had taken sanctuary in the cathedral and Cromwells troops set it alight, burning to death around 1500 people it is believed. The roof and much of the interior was timber; the ruins we now see date from that time.

The round tower is the oldest of the building having been built just prior to it being handed over to the church or very shortly after. Towards the end of the 12th Century the St Cormac’s Chapel was built; in the 1960’s when some repair work was being done it was discovered that the ceiling had all been painted with frescos, they had been covered with layers of plaster and paint, sadly very little remained to be seen once all that stuff had been removed. This chapel is built of sandstone and is in serious decay. That is the reason there is so much scaffolding about. A temporary roof has been placed over the chapel so that the sandstone and the interior can dry out and essential maintenance work done.

In the 13th Century the Cathedral of St Patrick was built in the Gothic style with the slightly pointed arches. Two stone faces high up on the pillars are believed to be the stone masons self images.

In the 15th century a bishops house was attached to the cathedral but the bishops didn’t like living there and soon moved down into the village into another house they had built. The last building to be built on this site was the Vica’s choral, this was dormitory style accommodation for the choir for the cathedral. Then it all ended with Cromwell’s invasion and destruction in 1647:

We have visited a few other priories and abbeys but really they are all very much of a muchness so there really isn’t much more I can say about them.

© Lynette Regan May 30th 2014