Author: Finola

. . . And Hello Schull!

First of all, a HUGE thank you to all the readers who sent me such kind messages of support on my last blog. I am normally very good about responding to comments, but moving house took its toll on my time and energy and I just never got to it. But I want you all to know that I read and appreciated SO MUCH every single message and I felt totally supported by this Roaringwater Journal community we have built together. 

So here I am now, happily settled in Schull, looking back on what we have written about this wonderful village over the years. And what we have eaten as well.

Robert did a series called West Cork Towns and Villages and he wrote about Schull in 2021. (Don’t be confused, by the way, by the fact that the author is given as “Finola” on the top of many of these posts: now that I am the sole administrator of the website, WordPress has automatically assigned all authorship to me and I can’t seem to change it back.) It was during Calves Week in August and Schull was en fete and looking sunny and busy and gorgeous – as it is all summer anyway.

One of the topics Robert tackled was the name – Schull, or Skull as it is invariably given on old maps. In two posts he traced the possibility that somewhere around here was an ancient ecclesiastical settlement named for Mary. In the first one, he referred to the The National Monuments record which states: According to local information, this is the site of Scoil Mhuire or Sancta Maria de Scala, a medieval church and school that gave its name to this townland and to Skull village . . .

In the second, Schull – Delving into History, he charts the various evidence, or mythology, that gave rise to the ‘local information.’ As a corrective, he urged the reader to also look at John D’Altons’s sceptical take on the placename. I also urge you to do so: it’s here.

Robert re-visited St Mary’s church in 2022 to write about the ship graffiti in the porch. Subsequently our friend Con Manning wrote an erudite piece for the 2025 Skibbereen Historical Journal on the same graffiti: The ruined church at Schull, Co. Cork, and its ship graffiti

Before we leave St Mary’s I will mention it is the final resting place of many anonymous souls who died during the famine, as well as the Rev Robert Traill, about whom I wrote in my series Saints and Soupers. Traill’s story in Schull started out as that of a typical evangelical clergyman, despising the Catholics and railing against Popery and its thousand forms of wickedness, but ended heroically as he laboured night and day to feed the hungry all around him, dying himself of famine fever. Read more about Traill here and here.

And of course, this is Robert’s final resting place also, with his beautiful hare headstone. I love it that, at the entrance to the Graveyard, is a Fastnet Trails informational board written by me and designed by Robert, about the history of this important place. The watercolour is by Peter Clarke.

Like all the West Cork villages, Schull is also a haven for wildflowers, although you might think they are only weeds. We had a very enjoyable Guerrilla Botany session in early June in 2020 wandering around and chalking in the names of all the plants we found. Time to do that again this spring, I think – who’s up for joining me?

The train used to come to Schull – the Schull and Skibbereen Light Railway came all the way down the Pier and Robert wrote about this rail line in a series of posts. The Schull-related one is here – a set of reminiscences about the stops, the engines, the buildings and the people who made it all run. My personal favourite was Gerry McCarthy who was known as ‘Vanderbilt’ from the careful way he had with money. 

One thing Schull people love to do is walk and there are several lovely walks that start or end right in the village. You can walk from Schull to Castlepoint, or from Rossbrin to Schull. You can do the Butter Road – a green road for much of the way. If you have limited time, you can do the foreshore walk from the Pier out to the graveyard and back (below). Or just keep going out to Colla Pier.

Best of all – you can do Sailor’s Hill, and hope to Catch Connie Griffin so he can explain his stonehenge to you, or lean over the wall and admire Betty’s garden.

Regular service will return soon – I’m already planning my annual Brigid post.

Our Lúnachán.

Farewell Nead an Iolair, and Finbarr and Ferdia and. . .

. . . and that view!

Yes, after 13 years of owning this special house, I have sold it to a lovely couple who I know will treasure it like we did. I am moving into Schull (all of 8km away) on Thursday, and I am looking forward to being able to walk everywhere, especially to Amar’s cafe.

Nead an Iolair – it means Eagle’s Nest and was Robert’s choice of a name for the house – has been the subject of many of our posts and as a final honouring of the house and the acre it sits on, here is a round-up of some of the posts we have written about it all, over the years.

Although we have kept no pets, we are far from deprived of the company of animals. Finbarr the Pheasant, for example – our heads tell us it cannot be the same bird all these years, but our hearts just think that we have looked after him so well that he has adopted us. He has had up to four wives – there are currently two and it has kept him busy, herding and courting them and fending off other males. All played out in front of our living room window.

And let’s not forget our other Finbarr, Our Lockdown Mascot, the bug hotel designed and installed for us by Kloë and Adam, of Two Green Shoots. He’s still there – say hello if you pass.

And we still miss Ferdia – the friendly fox who would eat out of our hands (anything except broccoli) and who loved to sit on the terrace while Robert played his melodeon. Occasionally another fox trots by but none have taken Ferdia’s place as a constant visitor.

If I come home in the evening, rabbits are leaping into the hedges as I drive in. When I throw open the curtains in the morning, they are sitting outside my window.

Robert was a hare fanatic, and we did have a brief dalliance with a young hare we called Berehert (below), but they have become quite rare now in our neighbourhood.

The choughs are wheeling overhead all day, with their distinctive call and their aerial acrobatics.

Small birds come to the feeder, and there is a robin that I am this close to coaxing onto my hand.

And although we don’t see them, the moths are everywhere – from hardly visible against a stone wall to spectacularly coloured.

It has been a joy to discover the beauty and variety of these silent creatures of the night.

Every now and then a bird or animal will appear for a brief time to grace us with its presence – like Spiro the Sparrowhawk, who perched outside our bedroom window and cased the joint before swooping off low over the back wall.

Or like this bundle of ferocity – The Wild One – a stoat who terrorised the pheasants, despite being a lot smaller than they are.

One acre – that’s what we have here. I documented the wildflowers that have popped up all over the acre, both in my wildflower patch and just on the land on general.

The chamomile is spreading and every now and then, something really unusual shows up  – like this tiny sharp-leaved fluellen that has managed a toe-hold in my driveway and came from God knows where (below). My slideshow, Lying in the Grass, will give you an idea of the variety of plants I have found here.

The storms that sweep through in the winter can do some damage. When we moved in, we had the gorse jungle in our front haggard dug out.  All that did was expose our pine trees to the winds and each of them toppled in turn. 

The lovely wall surrounding our property also gave way over time, leading us to get Diarmuid to come and Build a Stone Wall. Watching him, we discovered that this was a craft and a skill that hasn’t changed in hundreds of years. 

I will miss our amazing view across Roaringwater Bay. We can see several medieval castles, the Baltimore Beacon, the Fastnet Rock, most of the islands. We hear The Roaring on a calm day after a storm. We see the sun going down further and further south each day as the year turns, sometimes sinking into the sea and sometimes dropping behind an island or a hill.

And even though Robert is gone almost two years now, I still find myself saying we, because his presence is so palpable in this place that he loved, and all my experiences here were shared with him. I know his benign spirit is coming with me to Schull: he would have loved the new house and totally approved of my move.

And yes, don’t worry, his Finola Window is coming with me

Roaringwater Journal 2025: My Favourites

As it happens, the posts on the Goat and Skeam Islands, and the others listed last week, were also among my own favourites this year, but I want to concentrate on posts that didn’t get a look-in then. Be warned – some of them tap into my nerdy side.

Readers will know how I love some meaty research, especially if I can combine it with photographs,  and I started off the year with a bang with two posts on the Anglo-Normans in West Cork: Hiding in Plain Sight. I had the huge advantage of piggy-backing on the work of Con Manning, esteemed medieval archaeologist, and together we looked at sites that might give us clues at the presence of the Anglo-Normans in this part of the country. This was particularly significant because they have left behind so few clues to their presence – or so it seemed. Turns out we were looking in the wrong places after all. One of the sites we think is an Anglo-Norman Ringwork is at Cnockeens, across from Dunmanus Castle (above), currently labelled a cliff-edge fort in the National Monuments records.

I also loved a three part examination of a book, discovered in Inanna Rare Books, about the voyage of St Brendan. What made this book special was that it contains a facsimile reproduction of a 14th century illustrated manuscript which takes us through the Navigatio, incident by incident, with subtitles in Gothic-script Latin and ‘joyful’ pen-and-ink drawings. 

A highlight for me this year was my visit to Owen Kelly, Stitching and Storytelling Among the Rocky Fields. To hear Owen talking about his practise, his inspirations, his methods and his stories, is to spend time with a master craftsman – it’s humbling and elevating all at once. The mermaid in the lead photograph is his work, as is the cheerful fellow below.

I did a ‘co-op’ blog with Amanda Clarke of Holy Wells of Cork and Kerry. We went to the end of the world – well, the far reaches of Kerry, to look for a sacred site that hadn’t after all, as she was afraid it might have, dropped off the cliff. This was a journey into the realm of Punishment and Pilgrimage in 16th Century Ireland and I don’t think I will ever forget Amanda’s excitement at what we found.

Also with Amanda, we had a day on Sherkin Island in May, and as these things tend to do, it turned into a three part blog exploring the Island, the Castle and the Friary. Despite having been on Sherkin many times, I had never managed to get inside the Friary before, but this time we found an open gate (shhh) and had a good old explore. The feature photo at the top of the post was taken by Amanda that day – coffee break on Sherkin.

And – although it wasn’t my blog post, I really enjoyed being on the podcast Cork Chronicles with Shannon Forde. We drove out to Toormore and talked about Rev Fisher, the protagonist of my Saints and Soupers series, and the firestorm of accusations and counter-accusations about his actions during the Famine. You can listen to the podcast by clicking on the image below.

I am thankful to Rev Terry Mitchell who facilitated my access to the vestry so that I could photograph this original portrait of Rev Fisher. Isn’t it wonderful? It’s probably an albumen print , dating to the 1860s or so. It’s been hand-coloured and although most of the colour has faded, the gold-rimmed spectacles remain as well as those startling blue eyes.

And on we go to 2026! This will be the 15th year for the blog – our first post was in Oct 2012 and garnered 5 views. Just an advance notice that operations may slow for January as I am moving house. Details to follow as sorting and packing allows. Don’t worry, I am staying in West Cork, not far from where I am now. But I sure will miss this view!

Happy New Year to all my wonderful readers – you are why I do this.

Season’s Greetings from Roaringwater Journal

Details from a set of stained glass windows, all by George Stephen Walsh in the Nativity of Our Lady Church, Loughmore, Co Tipperary, dating to 1977. George Stephen apprenticed under Harry Clarke, presenting himself at Harry’s studio 100 years ago, in 1925. The family story is that when Harry saw his portfolio, he said Can you start at 10:30? George Stephen was 14.

George Stephen went on to have a long and distinguished career as an artist, and his son, George W Walsh carries on that tradition from his studio in Dublin.

Wishing all our dear readers a very merry holiday season and all the myrrh and frankincense you desire.

Roaringwater Journal 2025: Your Favourites

Each year we (now I) go back through the posts from that year and pick out our favourites – or your favourites, as shown by our stats. As predicted in my musings on the future of blogging in the age of AI, our overall views have gone down this year by about 12%. Of course that can also be partly explained by the fact that there are half the number of posts now that I am blogging on my own, I so perhaps it’s not a fair statistic. At any rate, your encouragements for me to look at engagement not numbers turned out to be bang on, as the number of likes at the end of posts is up by 50%! (But, as a reference to that post, I couldn’t resist asking ChatGPT to generate an image for me. Sorry. And no, I am not left-handed.)

Everyone loves Crookhaven, it seems and my post, Crookhaven Through Time, with its marvellous evocative images, captured your hearts this year and received the most views.  Thanks to James Goggin, who provided photos and who alerted me to the movie that supplied the images of Crookhaven in the 60s. This month, we were saddened to hear of the death of Billy O’Sullivan, the iconic and beloved innkeeper of O’Sullivan’s Bar in Crookhaven where you can get the most southerly pint in Ireland. That’s Crookhaven in my feature photo, above.

Your attention was also caught by the trip I took through the Goat Islands with my friend Nicky. This had been a long-held ambition of mine – to sail through the cleft that separates Greater and Lesser Goats Islands, and on a sparkling day in October we did just that. It was all I expected it to be and more, especially when Nicky took us through the Grey Seal colonies in the Carthys on the way home, and we heard the otherworldly song of the sea.

Your next most viewed post was The Return of the Earls – the one about the Crowley Clan Gathering, which featured seventh cousins embracing on the quay at Baltimore in a reunion 300 years in the making. Pedro Alonso O’Crouley was born in Cadiz in 1740. His parents had come from Limerick, Cork and Clare and his great, great (not sure how many times) grandson was carried in on a traditional wooden boat as we stood on the quay and waved flags and cheered. It was spine-tingling.

Believe it or not, although it might seem a little niche, a very popular post was Dublin’s Stained Glass, a Review. I suspect many of our viewers may have had Christmas presents in mind, and what a gift this would make for anyone living in or visiting Dublin.

If post views are anything to go by, you are all enjoying my series on the tiny island in Roaringwater Bay, the Wester Skeam. I am up to four so far, thanks to Cormac Levis and his generosity on bringing me there, and to Hester’s Memoir, Misty Memories, shared with me by her daughter, Brenda, and to Mary Mackie who transcribed her interviews with Hester’s brother, Joe, and published them in the Mizen Journal. 

I did a round-up of many of the posts we have written over the years about the Mizen (Mizen Magic Miscellany). I started off with reviewing its archaeological landscape and then concentrated, over three posts, on The Far End – it is truly unbelievable how many unique and fascinating places we have written about just in the final few kilometres of the Mizen Peninsula.

Finally, you loved, as I hoped you would, Robert’s headstone, which we unveiled in April, just over a year after his passing. Carved by Victor Daly of the Sheeps Head, it features a marvellous leaping hare – Robert’s spirit animal. If you are ever in Schull, drop by St Mary’s graveyard along the Colla Road and say hello to Robert – his benign presence will linger in these pages forever.

Next week, for the last post of the year, my own favourites of 2025. Meanwhile – the Best of the Season to you all!

Back to the Skeams: 81 Men Left the Island

Fishing was a huge part of how the islanders made a living and fed themselves and their families. For how this was conducted I am relying on Hester’s detailed account. She writes about her parents’ generation and also about her own – her husband, Patsy, also went fishing. I will use Hester’s words, from her memoir, Misty Memories, lightly edited for a bit of brevity.

Most of the men from the islands around went Lobster fishing every Summer. There were 27 lobster boats in Heir Island when I was ten years old and at school there. Each boat had a crew of three men. That meant that 81 men left the island from May to September and went to Kinsale and Cobh – a long journey along a rough coastline in very shallow sailing boats.

A traditional Heir Island Lobster Pot. © National Museum of Ireland*

Lobsters were caught in baited lobster pots, made of willow twigs and anchored in deep water. The men made the pots themselves during the winter months. Some were very skilled and others helped them – they worked as a team or ‘meitheal’ as it is called in Irish. They had special tools for the job and a sort of mould around which they wove the twigs so that the pots had the proper shape. Rowing for miles to the other islands and to the mainland to get enough twigs, they carried big bundles on their backs, often having to walk four or five miles back to the boat. 

The authority on traditional Heir Island boats is Cormac Levis, and this book is a must for anyone interested in this topic. It is currently out of print but you might be able to find a copy online. Cormac is planning a second edition for 2026.

Lobster boats had three sails and the smallest one of these, called the ‘Towel Sail’, was used to make up a sleeping tent over the boat’s stem. Just as with the lobster pots, the men made the sails themselves. There was a lot of work in them and some of the men were really expert at it. Sails for the lobster boats and other bigger boats were made of canvas with a rope sewn firmly all around the edge. They made special eyelets across the sail to hold the reef cords so the sail could be made smaller in high wind. 

Cormac’s own boat, the Saoirse Muireann, is a traditional towelsail yawl, built at Hegarty’s boatyard

There were lots of preparations to be made for going lobster fishing. When pots and sails were right, the boats were filled with ballast and sunk in deep water for two weeks to close the seams after winter dry dock. Then they were taken up, painted inside and tarred outside. The three-man crew came together to put in the ‘pig-iron’ – slabs of iron for ballast to keep the boat from capsizing. They then put in the steer and the helm and a big anchor. Special ropes and stones were prepared to tie the pots deep in the fishing ground. They called these the ‘Killick rope and stone.’ Next, they added the utensils – a tin basin for washing and for making bread, pots, a kettle, tin plates and mugs. Foodstuffs, including the flour for making bread, were kept in the little cupboard built into the stem of the boat. Drinking water was stored in a ‘breaker’, a round wooden barrel that held a few gallons. They also brought potatoes and coal for the fire.

This photograph shows the relative size of the three boats used in the Heir Island fishery. Left to right is the Saoirse Muireann, the Saoirse and the Hanorah

They had an iron bastible pot they called ‘the oven’ to hold the coal fire. The set-up for the fire had to be very carefully and safely arranged. A thick piece of cast iron was placed on the thwart mid-way in the boat and the fire pot was put on top. All the cooking was done on this fire. A pig’s head, potatoes and vegetables were all boiled together in an aluminium bucket. They also cooked fish. One man was in charge of the bread-making. They made white soda bread – very thin cakes that baked quickly. Bits of soot sometimes got into the white flour and the bread would have black streaks in it.

This is the largest of the boats. This is the fabled Saoirse, a replica of the boat sailed around the world by Conor O’Brien is 1923-25. It is a 42′ Ketch and the design was based on a traditional Roaringwater Bay fishing boat

There was smoke and soot everywhere and the men’s skin and clothes were black on their return home and took weeks to get clean again. The combination of soot, salt water and the hauling of ropes caused the skin of their hands to crack. Their ‘intensive care lotion’ was to ‘pee’ on their hands to toughen the skin. They all put on lots of weight during the lobster season and when they came home and their skin cleared of soot, they had a great healthy colour.

Joe says in his account In 1934, when I was thirteen, we got a boat built by Harry Skinner at Baltimore.This was a small light boat, not the boat above, but I am including this image as it is of a Skinner-built mackerel yawl. It’s from this source.

Washing and shaving were done by sitting the basin of water into the open end of a lobster pot to keep it steady. The same tin basin was used for everything – washing, shaving and making bread. Three towels had to do them for the whole time they were away and these towels were jet black when they came home. They wore flannel underwear – ‘the wrapper’ was a thick vest top with long sleeves and ‘the drawers’ were full length long-johns. The women made all these by hand from their own patterns. All the seams were sewn by hand – herringbone stitch to make sure they never ripped. The younger men didn’t like wearing this heavy underwear but they soon found they were so cold out at sea that they were glad to have them. Each man had three sets of underwear kept in a flour bag with their other clothes and a small bottle of Holy Water.

The Hanorah is another traditional boat built at Hegarty’s – this one was used for mackerel fishing

The lobster-men were really skilled at their job. They knew exactly where to get the lobsters and how to handle them without getting bitten when moving them from the pots to the storage basket. This basket had to be kept submerged under a buoy until they went ashore and sold their catch to buyers along the coast – lobsters had to be sold alive. 

A closer image of the Laveneer loaded with lobster pots

The three men had to get on with each other in a very small space and co-operate together for their own safety. They said the Rosary together every evening and used their Holy Water to bless themselves, their boat and their pots. Patsy’s father, Mike O’Neill (called Mike, the Laveneer or Mike Mary Harte) was considered one of the best boatmen around. He was described in Heir Island as “the safest man going out the harbour mouth” (Baltimore Harbour).

This is aboard Cormac’s Saoirse Muireann this summer – it will give you a feel for the kind of room we had in the boat

Hester’s memories above were of her father’s generation, but her husband, Patsy also went to sea when he needed to and it was an anxious time for Hester.

In the last few winters before we left Heir Island Patsy went herring fishing to Dunmore East in County Waterford. He went with a crew from Cape Clear in a small trawler called ‘The Radiance’. Herrings were in great demand in those days and when they had a week of good catches, he sent the money home in a registered letter. I tried to save some of it for the day when we might be able to get a place in the mainland. I remember how the children and I used to write letters to him and address them to ‘Boat Radiance’ c\o Dunmore East Post Office where he picked them up when they landed their catch, and wrote back to us. He could be away for up to three months in the depths of winter and I was always worried for his safety in the stormy seas on those cold winter nights.

It might be a while before I get back to Hester and Joe, but there is lots more to tell from their accounts on life on a small island in Roaringwater Bay