A Holy Place of the Druids: A Stone Circle Mystery

A painting by Edith Somerville* is the subject of this week’s detective story – we know it is a West Cork stone circle – but which one? [See the end of the post for the proper citation for the painting.] In a recent piece in the Irish Arts Review, Michael Waldron, Curator of Collections & Special Projects at the Crawford, wrote about Edith Somerville as a painter. We are so used to thinking of her as a writer, especially in her collaboration with her cousin, Violet Martin, (they wrote as Somerville and Ross), that we forgot that she was also an accomplished artist (and a Master of the Foxhounds, as in this portrait).

She had trained in Dusseldorf and Paris. The DIB entry says 

In the second half of the 1880s she was active as a professional illustrator for the Lady’s Pictorial and the Graphic, later illustrating some of her own prose and that written in collaboration. She had exhibitions at the Goupil Gallery in London (1920), Walker’s Gallery, London (1923, 1927), and the Ackermann Galleries, New York (1929).

Edith’s favourite brother was Boyle, about whom I have written here and here. Boyle had gone to sea at the early age of 13, eventually rising up to become a Vice-Admiral. He had, in retirement, come back to live in Castletownshend in 1924.

He was an experienced surveyor and had become fascinated by archaeology, and particularly the investigations of the astronomer, Norman Lockyer, who had established the solar orientation of several ancient monuments around the world and had shown that the stone circles of Scotland were oriented towards celestial events such as solstices or towards bright stars. These stone circles were very similar to West Cork stone circles, in that they had recumbents and portals, establishing the alignment of the circle. Boyle had done the first accurate survey of the Callanish Stone Circle (below)*, before he turned his attention to West Cork.

Edith accompanied Boyle on many of their expeditions, as she had when they were children. While he was busy with his chains and theodolites, she set up her easel and sketched or painted. One of the paintings she produced was titled A Holy Place of the Druids or Grave of a Chieftain. This painting, which Michael used in his article for the Irish Arts Review, is in the possession of the Crawford Art Gallery, and I have been given permission to reproduce it for this blog post. It is my lead image, and below is a detail showing her signature.

In chatting with Michael about his article, I discovered that the monument she had painted had not been identified. Some were convinced it was Drombeg Stone Circle, while others thought it might be the one in Reenascreena. I was pretty sure I knew which one it was, but told him I wanted to visit the site to be sure to be sure, before I committed myself.  

The site I had in mind was Bohonagh (above), one of the stone circles Boyle surveyed for his paper Five Stone Circles, in the 1930 edition of the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society. The thing is, it doesn’t look now the way it did when Edith painted it, so unless you knew why this was, you were unlikely to see it as the subject of her painting. Here is Boyle’s plan of the monument as he surveyed it.

And here is the photograph that accompanies that article taken from behind the recumbent, looking towards the portals. Both the plan and the photograph show 6 erect stones.

Bohonagh Stone Circle was excavated by Edward Fahy in 1959. The report of his excavation was published as A Stone Circle Hut and Dolmen at Bohonagh, Co. Cork, in 1961, in the same journal in which Boyle had described the monument 30 years before. In that report, Fahy describes how he re-erected three orthostats for which the evidence was clear, in the form of the stones themselves, now fallen forwards, and their sockets (the cross-hatched stones in the plan below). So now, instead of six orthostats, as depicted in Boyle’s photograph, there are 9 tall stones. 

He also, as he had at Drombeg, placed shorter ‘marker stones’ to indicated the positions of missing orthostats. Although he did not document it in the text of his report, we can see the marker stones clearly in his photograph below. The Bohonagh Stone Circle, therefore, now has the full complement of all 13 of its stones, with no signage at the site to help the visitor identify the differences between all those standing stones. 

A few weeks ago I went out there with my friend Adrienne to see if we could clarify the situation. Using both Boyle and Fahy’s site surveys, Fahy’s report, and our own observations regarding the marker stones, we made a short video.

Note the height of the bracken – it made photographing the circle impossible and I wished I had brought a machete.

Next we stumbled around the site outside the circle, beating our way through the bracken, until we located the exact spot where Edith had sat to paint the scene. Remind yourself of the painting and then watch this short video.

Note particularly how accurately she captured not just the stone circle but also the surrounding landscape. 

So we have identified Edith’s Holy Place of the Druids. And perhaps, despite this being a cringe-y title, it’s not all that far off the truth. There is some evidence at Drombeg and at Bohonagh that the site was used for ritual purposes and that implies a priestly class. Edith used the word Druid, not unusual for her time, although that idea that Druids built stone circles is really an 18th century invention. 

We know the word originally from classical writers: Caesar for example used it to describe learned men encountered through the Roman conquests who functioned as priests and judges. ‘Druid’ was revived in the 18th century by antiquarians: William Stukeley popularised it when he proposed that Stonehenge and Avebury were the religious products of an early ‘Celtic’ Druid culture. They were druidic temples, he said, and even though he was wrong (being out by a couple of thousand years), so persuasive was he that the romantic idea of druids has persisted ever since in the popular imagination. Our old friend Vallancey was also fond of druids.

Spectators gather at Stonehenge to watch a group of Druids carry out the Dawn Ceremony on the summer solstice, or longest day of the year, © 1956 Getty

So there was Boyle with his instruments, his rigorous measurements and his archaeological knowledge, using evidence-based methodology to come to conclusions about solar alignments. And there was Edith with her paints and her canvas, painting what she saw, but labelling it as the work of a putative priestly class. What is amazing, actually, is that none of that interfered with her ability to produce on canvas a hyper-accurate treatment of the Bohonagh Stone circle as it was before her eyes. And perhaps her second title, Grave of a Chieftain, is a more prescient one, since Fahy did find cremated bone in a pit within the stone circle.

Both Boyle and Fahy identified Bohonagh as an equinoctial circle – that is, on the spring and autumn equinoxes, if you stand between the portals you will see the sun set over the recumbent – just like at Drombeg except that Drombeg is a winter solstice alignment. Several years ago, we met with Ken Williams of Shadows and Stone at Bohonagh to photograph that phenomenon. Here is his photograph, from our original post and used with permission. 

Many thanks to Michael Waldron, Angela Fahy, Billy O’Brien, Adrienne Harrington, Ken Williams, and to Nigel and Claire Vickery, on whose land Bohonagh stands.
*Edith Œ. Somerville, A Holy Place of the Druids or Grave of a Chieftain, undated. Collection Crawford Art Gallery, Cork
**The copyright on the image of Callanish is owned by Tom Richardson and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

Wholly Family: The Bandon Nativity Window, the Brennans and George Stephen Walsh

I love it when a stained glass window has a story and I think this one has the backstory to end all backstories. It’s in St Patrick’s Catholic Church in Bandon, Co Cork, on the west wall and it’s enormous.

My previous posts about windows with stories are One Window, Eight Stories, about the Bobbie Bole window in Drogheda Grammar School, and Watson’s Brian Boru: One Window, 7 Stories. They followed a pattern of one-story at a time so I will follow that again, and see how many stories this turns into.

Story 1: Joseph Sr

Let’s start with the person who commissioned the window, and the church into which it would be set. Joseph Brennan Sr was a Bandon businessman, distinguished and universally respected, and head of a large family. He died in 1948, having established several businesses in Bandon, including a bakery and mill.

According to his obituary:

for several years he provided the town with light until the service was taken over by the ESB. He was also a promoter of a woollen industry in Bantry which you later sold. As well as being the prime mover in all these undertakings he was a director of the West Cork bottling company and several other firms. (June 5 1948, Southern Star)

He was also a devoted family man, living in Kilbrogan House in Bandon (above). His wife, Mary, died in 1896 at the early age of 37. He never remarried and outlived her by more than 50 years. All of his children were clever and highly educated and he had a clatter of grandchildren of whom he was very fond. He was a stalwart member of the Catholic Community in Bandon and conceived the idea of a stained glass window for it, in or around 1940. Having determined on the window, he turned to his son, Joseph Jr, to manage the business.

Story 2: Joe Pound Note

Joseph was the oldest of his seven children and the most successful. Read his biography in the DIB (no, really, do read it – it’s fascinating). A graduate of Clongowes and Cambridge, he rose through the British civil service in Ireland, transferring, it appears, seamlessly into the Irish civil service after the treaty and working closely with Michael Collins to establish a department of finance and (in particular) set up an exchequer. His experience and advice was invaluable to the new state and eventually he was appointed Chairman of the Currency Commission (1927–43) and then Governor of the Central Bank – here’s their first meeting. 

In that capacity, his signature was on our banknotes, and that sealed his fate to be known in his hometown ever after as Joe Pound Note. 

The correspondence between the Josephs Sr and Jr and the Harry Clarke Studios has been preserved in the Joseph Brennan Papers in the National Library of Ireland. The extracts and photos from that collection that follow are used with their permission.

Story 3: William

After Harry Clarke died the Studio continued until the 1970s, and as of 1940 the Manager and Chief Designer was William Dowling, about whom I have written in the post The House Style: William Dowling and the Harry Clarke Studios. So it was William Dowling who negotiated with Joseph Jr (on behalf of his father) and it is also William Dowling who is credited with the design for the Bandon Window, the original of which is located in the Harry Clarke collection at Trinity College. Here is that design, but to have a really good look at it, go to the TCD source and enlarge it so you can see the lovely pencilled details.

Dowling’s letters make it clear that the studio was very anxious for this commission – it was large and prestigious. Joe Jr’s advice to his father includes the recommendation not to haggle for a cheaper price, as he was convinced they would get a better outcome by paying what was asked: Joe must have known his father’s propensity for driving a hard bargain.

One of the interesting aspects for me was the Studio letterhead which contains the footer: CLIENTS ARE RESPECTFULLY REQUESTED NOT TO ADDRESS CORRESPONDENCE TO INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS OF THE STUDIOS. I have been studying the fierce competition for business that went on among the stained glass studios, and the loyalty that was demanded of employees – the fear that they were doing side deals was real.

A price of £500 was agreed. Much wording was expended on whether or not the window should have ventilation (no) and/or a wire guard (yes, for an extra £8). Fr Scannel arranged to have a plan of the window frame sent and there was a mysterious reference to ensuring that photographs would be supplied.

Story 4: Helen

The photographs were of Joe Sr’s grandchildren, and also of himself and possibly his long deceased wife, Mary. He wanted them incorporated into the window as a long-lasting memorial to his family – a highly unusual, but wholly delightful idea and one that has fascinated Bandon people to this day. Enter one of Joe’s great-grandchildren, Helen Twomey, still resident in Bandon and a friend of my sister-in-law’s sister, Yvonne Coakley. Yvonne and Helen came to visit me, bearing gifts and treasure – the treasure being a family tree and Helen’s knowledge of who was who in the window.

An article in The Holly Bough of 1971 had named the grandchildren but not their position in the window.

Another article in the 2007 Holly Bough had gone further and asserted that although the 1971 article had claimed that the face of the Blessed Virgin was based on a photograph of a youthful Mary Brennan, in fact Mary was the seraph at the top right. The author says that this information came from Ruth Brennan, Joe Jr’s daughter. It went on to list other grandchildren and between us Helen and I made this sketch of who was who. 

As you can see, it was not an easy task and it differs a little from the Holly Bough account. I’ve decided to leave it as is to show you how we pored over the images, identifying and correcting. Jerry has the exclamation mark as he was Jerry Calnan, Helen’s father. I do not think the Virgin Mary was Joe Sr’s wife, Mary as her face is very Clarke Studio and does not have the appearance of having been taken from a photograph.

However, take a close look at some of the cherubs, and the two angels, and you will see instantly that these were real people. In fact, the Baby Jesus looks like a real person as well, although not identified in any of the accounts. 

The Studios were proud of this window and exhibited it prior to it being shipped off to Bandon.

Story 5: George Stephen 

As is plain to see – there are differences between the design and the window. If William Dowling designed this window, did he also paint it? We can answer this question – no, he didn’t. In fact the artist behind this extraordinary window was George Stephen Walsh. George Stephen had apprenticed under Harry Clarke, starting in 1925 when he was fourteen. He had five years of Harry’s supervision, tutelage and encouragement, until Harry died in 1931 (Harry was away in the Davos sanitarium for the last year). He was known in the studio for his talent with faces, so he was the obvious person to whom to assign this window, in which faces were crucial.

But we have other evidence. In George Stephen’s archive, kept by his son, George Walsh, is this photograph. On the side it says ‘painted, Clarkes.’ It’s a photograph (George Stephen was a keen photographer) of the finished window, taken probably when it was on display in the Studios before being dispatched to Bandon.

It was one of the last windows George Stephen painted at Clarke’s since he left in the early 1940s, frustrated by the house rules that refused to allot credit to the real artists behind the windows. He went on to have a distinguished career and produce many brilliant windows. This is him in later life, with a set of designs destined for a large American church.

Next time you are in Bandon, drop in to see this window. Take a pair of binoculars so you can see the tiny faces and ask yourself – how would you like your family album to take the form of a magnificent stained glass window? 

Head and Heart: Esk Mountain and Derreen Garden

I have had two experiences in the last couple of weeks that have both been outstanding, instructive, beautiful and unsettling.

Let’s start with Esk Mountain. Long term readers will remember Finbarr, our Bug Hotel and lockdown mascot (not Finbarr the pheasant, that’s another story). This Finbarr was designed and built for us by Kloe and Adam, the Two Green Shoots. We visited them in 2020 and were hugely impressed by what they were accomplishing in their gardens and their passion for conservation.

Kloe is now immersed in an enormous and significant undertaking, having expanded her holdings and diversified into animals. What I saw on the walk-and-lunch I did recently is her transformative vision in progress. Her project is called Esk Mountain and you can find it and read all about it here: https://eskmountain.com/.

But you can do better than read about it – you can stay here in an utterly charming studio apartment with the best accessory to a B and B I have ever seen – a nest swing! This is typical Kloe – full of imagination and using materials that would otherwise go in the landfill. 

Kloe has 270 acres and it was set up over 100 years ago with tree species to attract deer and provide good habitat for hunting. Then the rhododendrons arrived, smothering everything in their path. Her work now is restoration and it is very hard work indeed. She and her workers and volunteers have been clearing rhodos and felling trees and letting the light in so that the native species have a chance to grow – and they do! We saw all kinds of oak and holly seedling as we wended our way through the trees.

There are bridges and planks and stone steps and trails – the sense is of winding your way along magical little paths through the forest. Kloe is a great guide, stopping to tell us what we were looking at, pointing out plants, old walls, new shoots, old water courses. And then we reached the place where the mountain comes into view, green and dramatic – and being grazed by Dexter Cattle! It’s all part of the plan – the Dexters came from Derry Duff Farm, about which I wrote in my post Miracle in the Mountains. 

We could see them far away – but Kloe showed us how you do this now with Technology. Each animal wears a collar, so it’s always findable on your phone and you can move them around from grazing spot to spot, using this technology. Amazing! 

The walk ended with home made pizza in the outdoor pavilion, using a pizza oven and wood fire. We all made our own, using some of the materials we had foraged along the way, and very good local meats and cheeses. The most delicious pizza I have ever eaten!

Kloe’s aim is to restore Esk Mountain to a natural and healthy habitat. It’s a daunting task but if anyone is up to it, it is Kloe. Her passion for the forest and the land is obvious, as is her commitment to getting the job done. 

(Photo below courtesy of Esk Mountain)

If you would like to help, book an experience or if you can’t do that, sponsor a stake to help build their deer fence – after all the early years of trying to attract deer for hunting, it is now imperative to keep them out. That’s a lot of fencing! 

After that inspiring visit, it was an interesting contrast to drop into Derreen Garden on the Beara, with my friends Peter and Amanda (the Holy Wells champion). This is the other side of gardening. The home page describes it thus: A network of winding paths passes through a mature woodland garden laid out 150 years ago with subtropical plants from around the world and incomparable views of the sea and mountains. 

This is where the ‘unsettling’ part comes in – I am not sure I should have enjoyed Derreen as much as I did. After all, it is the antithesis of a place that seeks to regenerate and restore – Derreen is a celebration of the ambition of wealthy Victorians to create an exotic garden from imported and unusual plants. These kinds of garden were status markers, providing gentlefolk with a designed landscape full of meandering strolls and lovely vistas. 

Rhododendron, the same plant that Kloe’s team is exhausting themselves felling is, at Derreen, doing the ornamental job it was planted for, and in the brochure we are encouraged to spot the Sika Deer. So – one century’s status symbol becomes the next century’s problem and my head tells me I should be reserved about this.

And yet, and yet . . . To walk among these towering trees, every now and then coming upon the sea lapping at the shore, with views across to the Kerry mountains offers a sort of transcendence. It reminds you of your place in the world, and that we are as humans driven to ‘improve’ our own part of it. It’s the kind of setting where you want to settle down with your back to one of those giant cedars, gaze across the water, and write poetry. And in among the foreign plants native ferns and wildflowers are also flourishing, like the Sea Asters and Sea Lavender below. Whatever about my head, my walk through Derreen did my heart good.

It strikes me that both places are someone’s answer to what do we do with land we love, as it is now? Esk’s answer is restoration and participation; Derreen’s is curation and contemplation. I am definitely still unsettled, with my head and my heart jostling for my attention.

PS  I am hoping for a response from my friend Paddy Tobin, An Irish Gardener. I KNOW he will have opinions about this piece. 

Fastnet Trails: The Butter Road

Every now and then I like to re-post one of our older pieces and this one qualifies – most of it is from 2014! Robert and I have walked the Butter Road many times since, so I am updating the post with newer photographs. The Butter Road is a mostly green road, and there aren’t a lot of those around, so that makes it a special experience.

The old Butter Road runs between Schull and Ballydehob
The old Butter Road runs between Schull and Ballydehob

The Fastnet Trails have a snazzy website, which didn’t exist in 2014 – it will give you all the information you need and show you where to start. However, note that this route is designed as a ten km linear walk, ending in Ballydehob. We have never done it that way, preferring to walk to the end of the green stretch and back again, or come back along one of the parallel roads clearly marked on this map. You can start just outside Schull, at the Mill.

The rest of this post is a lightly edited version of our 2014 post, with some newer photographs.

For most of its history, roads were a hit-and-miss affair in Ireland. We didn’t get the great Roman road builders, and anyway, it was easier to get around on the water. Some routeways led to Dublin or Tara in the early medieval period, but a real road system didn’t develop until the 18th Century with the building of turnpike highways between major cities. In the 18th Century, Cork became the largest centre for the butter trade in the world and needed transportation corridors to ensure butter could get from remote rural areas to the Butter Exchange (now a museum) in the city. The Butter Roads were built from the 1740s on, and provided an efficient and speedy (for the time) route to market. Butter was packed in firkins (40 litre barrels), stacked onto carts, and transported from West Cork and Kerry to Cork City to be loaded onto ships for Australia and America.

The Old Mill
The Old Mill

Here and there, traces of the old butter roads remain. One stretch runs between Ballydehob and Schull and in the last few years a project to open it as a walking route has been spearheaded by students of the Schull Community College. It starts at the Old Mill, now open as a gallery by our friend, the esteemed wildlife photographer, Sheena Jolley. Sheena has enhanced the mill stream and stabilised the workings, still intact in her basement. If it’s open, a visit to her gallery is a great way to start or end your walk.

Robert on the stepping stones
Robert on the stepping stones

Setting out from the mill we were immediately on the old green road, soft underfoot, running between hedgerows alive with wildflowers, winding gently uphill. A plaque tells the story of the butter roads and of the current project. Gurgling and murmuring, the mill stream is on your right until you come to cross it. This is accomplished on stepping stones where we found it impossible not to linger and contemplate the gentle water. 

The mill stream
The mill stream

Onward and upward, passing an abandoned farmhouse, and marvelling at the variety of flowers along the route. Having been presented with the superb Zoë Devlin’s The Wildflowers of Ireland (thank you, Amanda!) I can now identify most of them, so here is a selection – captioned, by dint of my new-found knowledge. (Mousing over the pictures will bring up the captions, clicking on them will take you to full size images.)

tutsan
oxeye daisies and foxglove
meadowsweet
marsh woundwort
marsh thistle
fuchsia
bindweed or morning glory

As the road ascends, we could look back towards Schull and Long Island, or north to Mount Gabriel. The sense of peace, of being in a place of age-old tradition, is palpable. 

Mount Gabriel
Mount Gabriel

Near the top of the hill we met the Newman family, setting out from their farmhouse to walk down to Schull. John and Helen grew up in this house, walking to school in Rossbrin (about 4 km away) every day and John still lives in the house. He has a fascinating collection of old tractors and an obvious interest in farm machinery of every kind. They told us they had the butter road all to themselves in the old days, but now it’s quite popular and they are glad to see it used and enjoyed. A Mr Henry Ford once lived in the farmhouse, related to THE Henry Ford, whose father came from Ballinascarthy, near Clonakilty. 

Three generations of the Newman Family
Three generations of the Newman Family

The Butter Road is an ancient right-of-way, but access depends on the goodwill of those, like John Newman, and like Paddy Hayes whom we met on the way down [now sadly deceased], whose farms and fields lie along the route. This is a marvellous resource for the people of Schull and Ballydehob and we are grateful to those whose vision and hard work and generosity of spirit have made it a reality. 

Old friend
The Atlas
Keeping it handy
Old barn

If you want to experience the tranquility of the deep countryside, lovely views, and a sense of how the making of a road could connect far-flung communities to the wider world, we recommend an afternoon spent on the Butter Road. 

We used to use this gallery format a lot in the old days, so here is a new set of images in the old gallery format.

And a second set of some of the wonderful old equipment we glimpsed along the way.

Walking back down: Long Island comes into view
Walking back down: Long Island comes into view

PS: I can’t believe how little I knew about wildflowers in 2014. It has since become one of my abiding passions.

Calf Island Middle, Part 2

If you’ve read Part 1, you will know already how enchanted I was with Calf Island Middle, or Middle Calf as it is more familiarly known. In this post, I want to give you a flavour, via a slideshow, of what is it like to wander on this little paradise in Roaringwater Bay. The slides are fairly randomly ordered, but I hope they will transport you to the island. The music is by Enya, As Baile (Away from Home) from the Shepherd’s Moon album, used with permission.

Cormac and Áine are scientists and have systematically set about restoring the island to the habitat that it deserves. This has taken many years of experiment to find the right balance. If you do nothing, the bracken, gorse and brambles take over. If you overgraze, much of the biodiversity gets no chance to flourish. The trick is finding the right mix of herbivores to graze the island meadows. This they have accomplished with a judicious mix of horses (3), Kerry Bog Ponies (9) and sheep (40). Horses are heavy enough to trample the bracken and sheep devour the young ragwort that could harm the horses.

And the Kerry bog ponies? Well they are the magic in the mix. Light enough not to damage the meadows, sturdy enough to withstand island winters, and hungry and strong-jawed enough to devour the gorse and coarse heath grasses. Being a native Irish breed, they are uniquely adapted to Irish conditions and they are often used in conservation projects. The Calf Island herd has now expanded to other islands and habitats.

Cormac and Áine have shown us how to manage a delicate ecosystem and their careful stewardship of Middle Calf is something we can all be grateful for.

Calf Island Middle, Part 1

Last week I had the immense privilege of sailing to the Middle Calf with its owners, Cormac and Áine Crowley. This island is an outstanding example of what can happen when committed owners take on the task of restoring a habitat to what it should be. That habitat will occupy Part 2, but for this post I want to concentrate on the island and its story.

Infomar is a joint initiative of Geological Survey Ireland and the Marine Institute, established to publish detailed mappings of the sea bed and make the results freely available to all. Their map of Roaringwater Bay is spectacular, and it reveals the underlying geology of this part of the coast. The Calf islands are all that is left, along with Heir Island, of what was once a peninsula sticking out into the sea, just as the Mizen and Sheeps Head still do.

Middle Calf has probably been occupied since prehistoric times, situated in what was, for most of the last few millennia, an extraordinarily rich fishing ground. No prehistoric remains have been found on the islands, but some of the field fences may indeed be very old. 

The only archaeological site identified in the Sites and Monuments Record is a small promontory fort – perhaps the cutest I have ever seen, above. For an explanation of promontory forts, see this post. Promontory forts are believed to be Iron Age (about 2000 years old) but some may be older, and some, we know, were occupied right into the medieval period. This one is so small it is hard to imagine how effective it would have been as a defence against attack, although of course it may have been larger originally.

The Elizabethan mapmakers did not do a good job of drawing the three Calf Islands in any kind of distinct way – they either attached them to amorphous blobs (see this post on the 1560 map), or included them in a random scattering of islands (like Joan Blaeu’s Atlas map of 1655). Or this Dutch Pirate map (above), which gets some things right, but is quite higgledy piggledy.

But the Down Survey, completed in the 1650s post-Cromwell era, with the aim of identifying land to be confiscated for new settlers, was a quantum leap ahead in mapping in Ireland. Petty’s map of Schull civil parish (above and below) shows the Calf Islands, not perhaps as accurately as they should be, but clearly in their general location.

Not only that, but the Down Survey terrier (a description of parcels of land, their owners, and values) shows that the Calf Islands belonged to the Bishops of Cork (West Calf) and Ross (Middle and East). 

The next account we have is Griffith’s Valuation, the massive survey undertaken by Sir Richard Griffith just before the Famine. This is a much more accurate map, probably using the same advanced measuring techniques that the Ordnance Survey would employ starting around the same time. 

Griffith’s terrier shows four families occupying the Middle Calf – two Crowleys and two Scullys. The landlord was Daniel Welply, although Daniel Scully paid rent to Mary Scully. So Mary owned some of the island independently or she sub-let her rented land to her brother (or brother-in-law). 

Daniel Welply was from Skibbereen and a Catholic. He was secretary to the organisation formed to bring Daniel O’Connell to Skibbereen for a Monster Meeting. So, somewhere down through the centuries the land had passed from Church of Ireland ownership to the hands of a private, Catholic, landowner. That was still not common in the first part of the 19th century – Daniel Welply must have been an exceptional individual.

When Cormac Crowley’s father was a boy, those same four families – the Crowleys and the Scullys – lived and farmed in the Middle Calf, as they had done almost 100 years earlier. Cormac’s father was John Joseph – and you can find him here on the 1926 census.

Still to come in the family, in 1929, was the late Dan Crowley – I had the honour of meeting Dan, then aged 97, last year, in his Youghal care home. He told us about his life, and Sharon Whooley, who was there too, captured it for the Museum of Birds and Beasts. He and his family were the last to leave the island, in 1937.

He had very specific memories – going for water, drawing sand up from the beach, thrashing with flails. His mother died and he was sent off to school on Cape Clear (he hated it) and then to Schull, where he was boarded out – I felt the sadness of that as he was telling us about it. His father, he said, in 1937, was glad to go at that stage, it was hard going. They were rough old days. I was eight years old then.

The ruins of the Crowley and Scully houses still stand on the Middle Calf – substantial houses grouped in a neighbourly way close together in the middle of the island – a hamlet, or chlachán. 

One of the houses consists mainly of a striking gable end, used as a landmark by sailors. Cormac explained to us that the rest of the building (it was a barn) had disappeared because it was made of wood. The wood came from a shipwreck, the Savonia. The other thing that came from the shipwreck was a cat, who made his way up to Cormac’s grandparent’s house and into their hearts.

I will leave it there for this week. Part 2 will look at how the Middle Calf Island is now, under the amazing stewardship of Cormac and Áine.