Strandhill Caravan Park, County Sligo, Connaught

                

Our last two days around County Sligo have been wonderful, but then so has every day been so in Ireland; we are absolutely enchanted with the place.

Yesterday morning we set off down N4 into County Roscommon, pausing to admire the lakes we passed on their western shores; Lough Arrow and Lough Key. We stopped on our outward trip to snap a few photos before continuing on and turning south on the N61 through Boyle, an attractive town that invited further exploration but we had a different destination in mind.

Near Tulsk we were distracted by an impressive sculpture up a side road which we subsequently discovered to be a memorial to those of Roscommon blood who lost their lives in the Republican uprising of 1916.

Back on the road we soon turned eastward on the N5 for the few kilometres to Strokestown, our destination for the day. Here is Strokestown Park House & Famine Museum, the house, an 18^th century mansion which has been restored to a state suitable for visitors.

This was the seat of the Mahon family from its completion in 1696 for almost three hundred years.  Nicholas Mahon was granted approximately six thousand acres for his services during the Cromwellian “invasion” of the 1650s, the land confiscated from the Gaelic O’Conor Roe family. The new settlors were securely established by the beginning of the 18^th century and a period of relative peace began. It is interesting to note that following the Cromwellian Plantation of the 1650s, Catholics owned approximately one tenth of Irish land.

While many of the landed gentry merely exploited their tenants for rental income, “improving” landlords sought to modernise agricultural and industrial production on their estates by encouraging tenants to modernise their holdings, adopt new, scientific, farming methods and put their families to work in the cottage linen industry. Incentives were provided in the form of reduced rents, loans and free distribution of fertiliser, tools, looms and spinning wheels.

During the 18^th century, the Strokestown estate, under the management of Thomas Mahon, was regarded as a model of good husbandry. Landlords lived in great luxury and spent lavishly on their houses, demesnes and lifestyles. However, the massive expenditure which the economic prosperity of the 18^th century had enables could not be sustained in the next century. By the 1840s a large percentage of the Irish landed estates had borrowings well in excess of the value of the property, and the popular stereotype emerged of the Irish landlords as a rapacious, heavy-drinking, gambling class.
 

And it was into this already strained circumstance, when the landholders were already trying to maximise returns from their land by changing the tillage style of farming to a larger scale pastoral grazing approach (similar to the “revolution” that went on with the Scottish land holders earlier in the century that lead to the Clearances), that the potato famine arrived.

Part of the estate, the stables, has been turned over to the Irish National Famine Museum, opened in 1994 and more recently renovated to include a more modern approach as is required by museums of this technological age.

The Great Irish Famine of the 1840s was the single greatest disaster of 19^th century Europe. Between 1845 and 1850, when blight devastated the potato crop, in excess of two and a half million people, over one quarter of the entire population, either died or emigrated.

The Famine Museum is designed to commemorate the history of the famine and in some way balance the history of the “Big House” which is also open to the public as part of the three way or combined ticketing arrangement.

The story of the famine starts with a look at pre-famine life in Ireland for those who lived in the “Big House” and the ordinary poor. Much of the information is drawn from the Mahon estate office archives, a unique collection of over 40,000 letters, accounts and administrative documents. The museum is twinned with the Irish Memorial Historic Site in Grosse Isle, in Canada’s Quebec, where 5,500 Irish emigrants from here and close by are buried in mass graves. This is all part of the hideous story that is revealed here, that the least work-able were “generously” given free passage to North America, and already half starved, caught typhus on board the ship or immediately in arrival, and perished in an absolutely ghastly manner; all this revealed here in the museum.  

Denis Mahon inherited the estate in 1845 from his cousin, for whom he had acted as proxy for some time given the incapacitation of that cousin, Maurice. The Strokestown estate agent, John Ross Mahon, convinced his boss that emigration on an extensive scale was the only way to bring the estate into order, because the maintenance of the destitute for which the landowner were responsible through in the workhouses and other various assistance packages that were trialled, was a lose-lose situation. Offering a ticket to leave and a generous box of goodies to help them en route, worked out as a far more economically viable option. And on top of that, those that were left were more likely to be in better working order than those that were shipped off with no genuine bill of health. Denis Mahon dug deep and provided £4,000 for the passage of more than 1,000 Strokestown tenants. Added to these were another large group from the Gore-Booth estate, that which spawned Constance Markiewicz who subsequently turned against the regime that she had grown up and became such a champion of Paddy Irish (or more particularly, Patricia Irish).

Of course there is so much more to this story and it goes without saying that we found it all very interesting and further evidence of the British yet again failing their Irish constituents.

One could only be buoyed to learn that Denis Mahon was assassinated within two years of his taking over the estate in his own name, and while many of the atrocities were conducted by his agent and henchmen, in the end the buck has to stop somewhere and that was with Mahon. There are several accounts of this execution, some which suggest that it was a case of mistaken identity, but I prefer to believe that this man got his come-up-ance.

Mahon’s daughter had been married off well, and with her husband, Henry Pakenham Mahon, they continued their land gathering ways. Finally the last of this Mahon line sold the property in 1979 and that is a story all by itself.

A local entrepreneur who had done well building his car, tractor and commercial vehicle sales businesses wanted extra land to expand. His business backed on to the Mahon estate and he and the Pakenham Mahon survivor had not seen eye to eye for some time. When he learned the estate was for sale he approached the vendor to ask if he could buy a small holding; the answer came back, all or nothing. So he stuck his neck out and bought the whole estate, the land and the house for about £400,000, excluding contents which he has rescued through various channels over the intervening years at exorbitant prices. Now in his very senior years, Jim Callery admits that it was a crazy project especially since he has since had to weather other economic storms. He opened the house to the public in 1987 and since then, the museum, the walled gardens and a woodland walk.

The walled gardens were a disappointment, given that we have seen so many very beautiful 
examples of these over the years of our touring through these isles, however when we came upon the photos of the garden as it was before the work that was started, we appreciated better the work-in-progress state they are currently in.

The house has not been restored to any glamour status, and is in fact a little shabby. Entry is by guided tour only and our guide, a delightful young man who has travelled extensively doing what he does here, gave us a highly entertaining and exaggerated spiel. We prefer serious historical fact, with no elaboration when there are gaps, so this was not really for us. However in the context of the museum and the rest of what was on offer, I was glad we had taken the three-in-one ticket. 

Annoyingly when we exited for lunch, we found that we should have paid less, taking advantage of being aged, although I guess we should be glad the other young man on the counter never guessed that we were over that threshold of age.

The woodland walk is an opportunity for a bit of exercise and some fresh air, and if you are in the company of wee ones, a delightful journey through fairyland. Many of the trees have little doors at their base, some with ladders and other paraphernalia to excite the imagination. This has all happened through the inventiveness of a woman whose daughter has suffered cancer for some years, and the decorations are part of a fundraising operation.

Well satisfied with our visit, especially given that our focus had been all about the Famine Museum, we set off around and north to Carrick-on Shannon in County Leitrim, keen to check out the Shannon waterway. Here like so many areas about Ireland, there are chains and patches of lakes. Somewhere I read that the soil in County Leitrim is exceptionally retentive of water, which accounts, with its many lakes, for a standard joke that land in the county is sold by the gallon rather than the acre. 

Actually the same could be said for much of the country because if you examine a map of this island carefully, one has to wonder whether it is a lake of many islands, or an island of many lakes. It reminds me of the paper decorations I made with my granddaughters some years ago: we folded an A4 sheet of paper, into four, then four again, then cut into it with scissors, this way and that, then opened it up discovering a “snowflake”, which now I think of it, closely resembles this Ireland in its entirety. A quick question to Google suggested there are more than 12,000 loughs; this I can believe.

Here at Carrick-on-Shannon, we learned that that goods transportation on the river ended after one hundred and sixty years in 1959 when a barge made its final delivery of twenty tons of flour from Limerick to this spot.

We parked up by the marina and spent nearly an hour walking along the river, checking out the boats and remarking that most of the watercraft were either motorboats or adapted barges rather than narrow boats, of which in fact there were none. We thought it a rather charming spot however the afternoon was moving on and we still had far to go. With that we set out Tomtom for home and headed directly back along the N4 until we reached the turnoff for Strandhill. En route we did pull into the lookout near Lough Key near Boyle to check the rather impressive equestrian statue out, that named The Gaelic Chieftain inspired by the Battle of the Curlews fought in 1599. 

Much later in the evening, far later than we would normally venture out for dinner, we walked up to The Venue at the top of the village, and partook of an excellent dinner. The food was superb, the service equally so and our position beside the large windows looking out over Sligo Bay could not have been bettered. We lingered over the meal, our bottle of wine, the coffee and a carafe of water, then finally moved into the bar to listen to some traditional Irish music, the whole point of the exercise given that we had only recently splurged out for a restaurant meal.

The singer accompanied on his guitar, Kevin McManus, was very talented, but sang country numbers, including a few John Denver hits with an couple of Elton John compositions thrown in. Alas this was not what we had expected. We hung about for three quarters of an hour, one of three couples seemingly doing the same, in the company of another six portly middle aged regulars holding up the bar, who might once upon a time have been rockers. 

We walked home in the dark, heels clattering on the pavement, a few lights shining through the curtained windows and arrived home safely far way beyond my normal bedtime.

Despite the late evening, we were awake early this morning and ready to head off for the last day out of Sligo before the children had started their school day. Today we headed west, along the southern edge of Sligo Bay, passing through some lovely lush farmland on the N59 to Ballina, where we stopped down by the quay, the boat ramp on the river that runs out into Killala Bay. After a brisk walk out in the even brisker wind, we continued on, now on the minor 314, through Killala, soon passing through the more barren bog land I had expected earlier on.

This is the Ceida (pronounced cage-a) Coast, a bog land where Stone Age settlement has been revealed beneath the metres of bog land. Here there is a visitor centre built in the early 1990s, inserted into the landscape with a viewing platform perched on high. The structure won several architectural awards subsequent to its opening and I have to say it fits into the landscape very well. But today the winds were ferocious, and we chose to remain in the centre rather than venture out onto the fields, where one can either take a guided tour or make one’s way around oneself. Had the weather been better, it might have been interesting to search for the plants growing along the surface, and of course the views out across to the sea cliffs are spectacular, with the added wonder of the high rocky stack standing a little off the shore edge.

The bog over Ceide Fields has preserved the landscape as it was when it was first farmed five thousand years ago. Excavations in the tomb and enclosure show both by objects discovered ad by radiocarbon estimates that it dates back that far. The survey of the field walls where the bog has been cut away showed an intact structured landscape. Probing extended the fields tenfold to give the one thousand hectare monument which makes it by far the most extensive Stone Age monument in the world.

The archaeologists have arrived at the following conclusions from the evidence here:

• ·         That it was an organised community capable of carrying out well planned projects.
• ·         That it was a large community able to clear massive tracts of forest and then divide up the entire area by building a quarter of a million tons of stone into mile after mile of walls.
• ·         That it put a lot of effort into building permanent “houses of the dead” which suggest the people had strong spiritual beliefs.
• ·         That it had a mainly pastoral economy with the fields used for year round grazing of cattle.

This really is a most fascinating place and we were delighted we had bothered calling even if we only took advantage of the static displays in the “museum” and the film which is run every half hour.

We continued on west from here, delighting in the landscape, the heather covered bog amazingly grazed by pockets of sheep and cattle, who all obviously know the safe trails about the landscape. Human habitation is sparse, as you would expect, although dense enough to warrant a school at Falagh near Carrowmore Lake. Here we took a short cut south back to the N59 and headed back east toward Ballina.

We had considered crossing the Ox Mountains east of Ballina, however by now the weather had closed in and we saw little point in climbing high into the cloud. Instead we took the coastal route along the R297 past Enniscrone and Easky, and on back home.

After unpacking the day’s bits and pieces, I headed across to the reception area for the last time and posted photos to my Facebook page and picked up emails. I only hope that I am able to access my own O2 internet tomorrow when we settle into our camp in Northern Ireland.