That’s Keith’s painting – based on the Rock Art at Derreenaclogh, close to where we live in West Cork – on the right, above. It was in the Clare exhibition and also our Cork Public Museum exhibition.
You have the opportunity to see the current show in Schull, as it’s on until Culture Night (Friday 22 September 2023). Early Marks is “…a study of the beginnings of art and the possible source of a prehistoric worldwide visual language…” That’s a huge subject, and Keith (below) tackles it with large, assured and spirited images.
. . . There is no Time associated with any of these works, as Time is a construct invented long after the images on exhibition. Hunter-Gatherers, the makers of Early Marks, lived in a visionary state now lost to western civilisation . . . The language of Early marks consists of imagery, symbols and patterns that have been left in the physical world but created in the ‘other world’ . . . Many of the forms are possible direct projections of electrical impulses from the brain seen during states of altered consciousness . . . ‘Entopic’ images that manifest as points of light in the absolute darkness of the mind in the cave . . .
Keith Payne – from the Exhibition Catalogue
Font Tray – part of a larger work titled The prehistoric development of visual language:
. . . Reading from left to right are the earliest images from South African caves then through Palaeolithic, Neolithic, to a column of Ogham which reads from bottom to top: “Visual Language” . . .
Keith Payne – from the Exhibition catalogue
Empty Quarter (above) – a geographical region in the southern part of Saudi Arabia: the largest continuous sand desert in the world. Now scarcely populated it was in prehistory more temperate and the petroglyphs represent fauna of the time. Keith has painted the images in different colours to indicate the different periods of engraving.
Kakapel (and detail), Chelelemuk Hills, Uganda (above). Keith has travelled across the world to find his inspiration: in this painting – set at the entry point to the spirits living within the rock – are three styles: geometric images by the Twa people, pygmy hunter gatherers; these are overpainted with cattle by later Pastoralists.. The final abstract and geometrical designs were added by the ancestors of the Iteso people who migrated from Uganda.
Lokori (above) – site of the Namoratunga rock art cemetery in Turkana Country of Kenya. Located on a basalt lava outcrop adjacent to the Kerio River.
Left side above: Paleolithic Images – found in paleolithic sites worldwide: Believed to be visual statements perceived during trance states. Right side: Entopic Images – produced in the visual cortex. Often geometric in form and linked to the nervous system, seen as a visual hallucination. Noted during altered states produced by the use of the entheogens and trance states, fasting and the total deprivation of all light.
Schull Blue House Gallery: Keith Payne’s Namoratunga Rain Man petroglyph on the left.
Teana Te Waipounamu, New Zealand
From Signs + Palette of Ice Age Europe: a possible Visual Language.
Waiting Room:
. . . Approaching the mystery of the sacred space one dwells, initially, in the First Chamber. Many caves of the Mid region of France are very deep with passages, rivers and massive chambers which stretch for miles. To enter is to commit to a journey into the Sepulchre. The first chamber is for adjusting to experience ahead, perhaps initiation into the mystery of total light deprivation with the sound of beaten lithophones and flutes, echoing through the darkness. Or the revelation of your totem in a state of trance, to then be led deeper to meet with the serpent force of the mountain and shown the way of the Shaman . . .
Keith Payne – From the Exhibition Catalogue
That’s me – at Keith’s Burren exhibition – awestruck by his Venus of Laussel.
Ronan Kelly discovered Keith Payne’s West Cork studio in this YouTube video
Our lovely friend Leita Camier died this week, aged 92 (although you wouldn’t have guessed it). Leita, and her husband Tommy, who predeceased her, were the marvellous couple who ran, up to a few years ago, the Gortnagrough Folk Museum. Tommy was quiet and gentle, where Leita was outgoing and chatty, and together they built an incredible collection of heritage artefacts. We were lucky we got to visit it before Tommy’s death made it all too much for Leita – it’s been closed for a few years now. In memory of Leita, I am reposting our account of our visit to their Folk Museum. You will see what a special place it was, and why Leita and Tommy were two more in our pantheon of Heritage Heroes.
What follows was written in 2014.
Gortnagrough Folk Museum has been called Ballydehob’s Best Kept Secret, but it could equally be called its Most Delightful Discovery. Leita and Tommy Camier have devoted years to building a huge, quirky, fascinating collection that will transport you back to your childhood, or perhaps your grandparents’ childhood. It’s pronounced Gurt-na-Grew.
While the emphasis of the collection is on local and West Cork history and on farm machinery, many of the items will bring back memories, no matter where you grew up. Close your eyes for a minute and conjure up a picture of the little tin box that your father used to produce to fix the puncture on your bicycle tyre; or the tobacco tin your grandad opened when he needed to fill his pipe for a contemplative puff by the fire; or the funny old caddy your mother kept the tea in, that had belonged to her mother; or, if you’re as old as I am, the school desk you sat at, with the inkwell that was filled by the teacher once a week. You’ll find all of those here.
How many of these do you remember?
How about these?
There are older items here too – eighteenth century bibles, little cages for coalmine canaries, famine soup pots, equipment used by tailors and cobblers, dolls loved by little Edwardian girls and clocks that adorned Victorian mantlepieces.
The Irish, as everyone knows, had a grand tradition of Waking the Dead. The body, first, had to be washed and dressed. Special linens, often passed down through generations and kept beautifully white, were used to dress the body, but also the bed and surrounding furniture. Mirrors and clocks, especially, had to be covered. Leita showed us an old suitcase that contained a treasure trove of this linen.
Among the artefacts are books and books of cuttings, old photographs, recipes, shop accounts, advertisements, journals and articles, all lovingly collated and saved in plastic covers.
Outside is an equally interesting mixture of memories.
Careful – you might get so caught up in browsing among this eclectic collection that the rest of your party has moved on to the farm machinery before you notice.
Tommy and Leita know the use of every item of machinery on their property. A lot of it is still in working order and they bring it to the Thrashing or to country fairs – to demonstrate old winnowing techniques, or to make butter.
Postscript
Looking back on these photos has been a joy, as we remember Leita and Tommy, how kind they were to us as recent blow-ins then, and how much they enjoyed their collections. We hope that this post gives other Ballydehob folk some fond memories too.
Here is a collection of photographs taken in West Cork from some of the high places: ridges, peaks, mountain paths. The pics were all taken around ten years ago, and haven’t been used in our blog posts previously. They serve to show stunning landscapes, of course, and hopefully illustrate the variety of the country which surrounds us here. The header is taken from the peak above Three Castle Head.
The upper pic is looking down on Bantry town from the high ground to the south, while the lower one reminds you of the evening view from Bantry at sea level.
If you leave your car at Galley Cove Beach and walk up the steep track towards Brow Head you will come across this enormous stone row – and you will look back to the peninsula of Crookhaven. Don’t be fooled by the stones: they have been placed on this site fairly recently. They are impressive, nevertheless.
And here is a closer view of Crookhaven.
While turning from this spot and looking west, you will see the end of the coastline at Brow Head. This stone is likely to be more anciently placed. In the distance is Mizen Head with its Napoleonic era signal tower at Cloghane.
Contrasting light effects seen on the footpath that follows the ridge on the Sheep’s Head Way. That’s the spit of land that runs from east to west between the Mizen Head and the Beara Peninsula. There are cairns on the summits, with the remains of a wedge tomb and a Marriage Stone to be seen along the way.
The view north from the heights of the Sheep’s Head takes in the Beara Peninsula and – seen above – the high point of Hungry Hill dominating the distant rugged landscape.
You are never far from the coastline in West Cork. Look out for wild seas constantly sculpting the rocks over millennia.
From our home in Cappaghglass we look out to our own ‘high place’ – Mount Gabriel. This enigmatic tract of land dominates the area and is imbued with legends and folklore. It is also one of the most atmospheric of our peaks at all times of the year.
Another local view for us (above): we face out to Rossbrin Cove on the Mizen Peninsula. Finally, the celestial spectacle (below) finds its pot of gold on the shores of the Mizen.
I was around in London in the early sixties, and was definitely part of the swinging Flower Power scene: beatniks, Beatlemania, Carnaby Street, flowery shirts and ties (I’ve still got some of them – below – stashed away in my wardrobe!) – the regulation Afghan coat (and its distinctive smell) . . . What I miss most, perhaps, is the purple velvet flared trousers: sadly an expanding waistline quickly did away with them.
What is less well-known – in my generation at least – is the fact that there was a similar cultural phenomenon in one part of Ireland – our own West Cork! And it was centred on Ballydehob – that’s the main street, above. It’s a colourful village today – as it was then: well-suited to the cultural heritage which the artist community of the time imposed upon it. This building on the main street in those early days was particularly significant:
One of the artists who happened upon Ballydehob at that time lived on here to tell the tale (he still lives in the village and is still a working artist):
BREAKING NEWS: BALLYDEHOB IS DISCOVERED!
. . . During the early 1960s, a group of students at the Crawford School of Art in Cork, heard a rumour that something bizarre was happening in a village called Ballydehob. Here some vestige of Swinging London had taken up residence in a painted-up building called ‘The Flower House’. I was one of those students. We decided to investigate.
Since nobody owned a car, a parental vehicle must be ‘borrowed’. Somebody’s parent was away so this could be done without controversy. One of the know-it-all students announced that Ballydehob was in County Sligo and we would need money for petrol and have to camp when we got there. Nobody owned a tent. A forever-complaining student said that ‘He didn’t want to end up arrested as a vagrant and to have to sleep in a Garda station’. A few days later we left the Crawford en-route to County Sligo. Fortunately, a more astute student rummaged in the car as we were leaving the city for the West, found a road atlas and announced that Ballydehob was actually in County Cork, a mere two hours drive over the potholes. Tent-less or Garda station camping would not be required.
We arrived, we saw, we were astonished. Cork was then a darkly conservative place, ditto the Crawford and its staff members. What we found in Ballydehob was a house on the main street of the village with enormous flowers painted on the façade. It might have been in Chelsea or San Francisco. We entered to find a hive of creativity and alternative lifestyles. This was the world of women in flowing batik dresses, bearded men with bead necklaces and leather-thonged trousers. Even a cod-piece was observed. We sat in the café and drank coffee from the brownest of chipped brown ceramic mugs, ate inedible brownies and marvelled at the range of art and crafts being produced by this creative group.
This establishment, which seemed to have landed from another planet since the remainder of Main Street appeared to have experienced no visual or economic change from the images recorded in the black + white photographs of the 1900s, was run by two women, one German, the other English: Christa Reichel and Nora Golden. Here was a living example of William Morris’s dictum, ‘Have nothing in your homes that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful’.
Some ten years later, John and Noelle Verling (participants in that epic car journey) set up the Fergus Pottery in Dripsey outside Cork, later transferring it to Christa Reichel’s former premises in Gurteenakilla, Ballydehob, where it became a fixture of the creative community. A few years following, another member of the car-team, myself and Clair, came to stay with the Verlings, and also remained in the area, setting up an etching studio on the other side of Ballydehob.
Many of those who established the creative community of West Cork have died. Another generation has grown to maturity, further expanding the tradition of West Cork as a major and continuing centre of creative engagement in all of the arts, an epi-centre of delight. . .
BRIAN LALOR
That’s Brian, in his studio today. Just a few years ago – in 2018 – he and I decided that that creative time in the village needed to be properly celebrated, and we gathered around us like-minded enthusiasts, and opened up the Ballydehob Arts Museum, using a room kindly donated by those who had taken over the disused bank building, right in the centre of town:
That’s the inside of the Museum above: its first exhibition opened in the summer of 2018. We had another the following year, then Covid stopped us until last year, when we featured Ian + Lynn Wright. This year’s exhibition also features a ‘couple’ of working artists: The Verlings– Noelle + John.
John Verling was a contemporary of Brian Lalor (who has written the account above), and they both studied architecture and art in London and at the Crawford in Cork. Brian has penned for us his memories of sharing a studio in London with John Verling:
THE PERILS OF A SHARED STUDIO, LONDON, 1967
. . . During the late 1960s, John Verling and I, then students of architecture in London, shared a quite substantial studio in one of the leafier areas of Kensington. The building, a large brightly lit interior behind a row of decaying Victorian villas (it might originally have been a Victorian studio, we never discovered) had many more recent uses and the first task on gaining possession was to somehow manage to get rid of what had been left behind by earlier tenants; office furniture, old matresses, much unidentifiable plumbing apparatus and a stuffed fox whose pelt had been consumed by moths, were among the challenging contents.
Conversation among acquaintances in our local, the Norland Arms, evoked interest from other drinkers, an English sculptor and a South African photographer who asked could they share the space and, very willingly offered a down payment on the rent. This was agreed and not long afterwards the studio became operational, with both John and myself busy creating in our new-found haven, with only the occasional appearance of our fellow tenants. John was at that point concentrating on elegant photomontages as well as complex drawings of Portobello costermongers and was extremely productive, while I was engaged in a substantial series of elaborate and brightly coloured timber constructions enhanced by scaffold clamps, in a latter-day Bauhaus manner. Time passed, various local artists called to view the work and admire the space. We were exhibiting successfully and the studio became in W H Auden’s phrase, ‘the cave of making’. Our fellow studio members failed to turn up and when occasionally encountered in the Norland, expressed embarrassment in being behind with the rent while offering a contribution to ‘keep their name in the pot’. This was an extremely satisfactory situation with individuals happy to subsidise the rent but too busy to actually attend the studio.
A chance encounter in the Norland brought another hopeful artist to our acquaintance, David O’Doherty, Dublin painter, he worked at the international telephone exchange. He came, he admired the studio, and invited himself to join. Fatally, we agreed. An accomplished portrait painter, he often had a sitter posed, but seemed happy to work on, undisturbed by the other occupants. Our new tenant was affable, expansive, a storyteller. He became a permanent fixture. Suddenly we realised that we were entertaining a cuckoo in our midst. O’Doherty had moved in permanently, camp bed, small stove on which there was always a fry-up in progress, an endless stream of visitors, large canvasses propped against the wall, and the catastrophic revelation of his other occupation; he was a keen traditional musician, devoted to the Uillinn pipes. Suddenly the space, ample for John and myself to pursue our work, had begun to feel like a home for the demented.
Gradually it became apparent that our studio, which a year before had been, in the midst of the city’s turmoil, as quiet and remote as a stylite’s pillar, had metamorphosed into Picadilly Circus with noise, air pollution and crowd control issues. The dream of having a secure place in which to create had floundered on the fatal choice of an individual whose concept of an ideal workplace was perilously close to Francis Bacon’s taste for irredeemable chaos. I bailed out, John lasted a little longer. And the completed series of brightly coloured scaffold-clamp constructions, what of them? Occasionally I received reports of their travels. Before he emigrated to Boston, O’Doherty sold them to a construction company and they were later spotted decorating the foyer of a social welfare office in Amsterdam. After that only blessed silence . . .
BRIAN LALOR
Noelle Verling (above) studied ceramics at Hammersmith College of Art. She and John met and married and – when they moved back to Ireland in 1971 – John & Noelle Verling established the Fergus Pottery in Dripsey in 1971 with Noelle as potter. She produced a wide range of domestic ware at Dripsey. When they moved in 1973 to Ballydehob to take over Christa Reichel’s studio, they adapted Reichel’s press-moulds and Gurteenakilla pottery stamp for their own work and from then on, traded as Gurteenakilla Pottery and latterly as Brushfire.
. . . The Verlings loved the windswept West Cork landscape and felt moved to record a disappearing environment. John’s paintings often depicted the doors, windows and walls of decaying buildings, repositories for the memories of past inhabitants, long gone. The windswept thorn tree is a familiar motif which connects John Verling with West Cork: the tree became his icon and frequently appeared in his paintings and on his ceramic work . . .
Alison Ospina – West Cork Inspires 2011
This is a rare photograph of John working on one of his favourite subjects: the gnarled thorn tree suffering from the ravages of harsh West Cork gales. Among the architectural work he undertook voluntarily was the reordering of the east end of St Bridget’s Catholic Church in Ballydehob. This was a major work.
. . . The gold fish hand drawn in the background of the altar and the depiction of one fish swimming against the shoal continues to evoke admiration from locals and visitors alike. He also designed the two ‘windswept thorn’ stained glass windows and etched the brass surround of the tabernacle. The Altar slab, composed of a vast monolith like the capstone of a dolmen, is a distinguished piece of sculpture and a tribute to his imaginative capacity . . .
Special thanks to Geoff Greenham for giving us this superb photo of St Bridget’s Church, Ballydehob.
The sign for the Brush Fire Ceramics Pottery, created by Noelle and John. They successfully produced a large number of individual pieces, crafted and fired by Noelle, and decorated by John.
John Verling died in 2009. Noelle Verling is living in West Cork and has been extremely helpful in providing material and information for this exhibition. Without her we would have been unable to fully present this story.
That’s John Verling in the picture above having his legs plastered by Ian Wright: this was part of a publicity stunt for the visit of a large group of West Cork artists to Zurich in 1985. John is also singing a folk song! You can read more about that particular enterprise here.
The Ballydehob Arts Museum is grateful to the town’s Community Council for providing the accommodation for the Museum. BAM is: Brian Lalor, Robert Harris, Sarah and Stephen Canty. Their combined knowledge and practical experience has ensured that our ambitions for this – our fourth exhibition – are fully realised.
Exhibition opens Jazz Festival Weekend in Bank House: Thursday 27 April @ 5pm, then Friday 28 April to Monday 1 May: 11am – 4pm. It will open with the Tourism Centre from June to September 2023
We had, unknowingly, driven past this wedge tomb many times. It’s located on rising ground overlooking the Barley Cove wetlands, in the townland of Ballyvogebeg. The townland name (according to logainm.ie) translates as the Little Place of the O’Buadhaighs, a very scattered clan sometimes translated as Bogue, or Bowe.
The wedge tomb here was formally recorded by archaeologists de Valera and Ó Nualláin in their Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland in the early 1980s. They provided the scale drawing, below.
It was next surveyed by the Cork Archaeological Survey Team in the early 90s. Oddly, neither of these reports contain any reference to one of the most striking aspect of this megalithic tomb – the cupmarks on the capstones.
The next person to record it was Jack Roberts for his Antiquities of West Cork series, and his drawing clearly shows the cupmarks.
If you are new to this series on Mizen Megaliths, or to megaliths in general, you can catch up with a quick read of my post Wedge Tombs: Last of the Megaliths. This wedge tomb, Ballyvogebeg, fits the pattern, although its ruinous state doesn’t allow us to observe much detail. The side stones have collapsed under the weight of the two large capstones, although you can still see them underneath, leaning at a perilous angle.
De Valera and Ó Nualláin noted that there was no indication of a surrounding mound, which seems to be typical of West Cork wedge tombs. It likely dates to the Copper or Bronze Age, making it around 4,000 years old.
Cupmarks are normally found on open air rocks and boulders, not associated with any monuments and are the most frequent element or motif in Rock Art. However, they are found occasionally on Wedge Tombs and Boulder Burials, so while their occurrence on the Ballyvogebeg wedge tombs is uncommon, it is by no means unique. Intriguing, though! If the tomb had been covered by a mound, they would not have been visible, leading to the conclusion that it was the act of carving them that was important.
Like all of our West Cork wedges, it is oriented towards the west and the setting sun – that is the ‘entrance’ or tallest and widest end, faces the west. The most striking feature of the view is the pyramid-shaped Mizen Peak. What gives the Mizen Peak its distinctive point is a small cairn on its summit.
I haven’t yet been up to this cairn, although I am hoping to get there one of these days. So I am relying on the generosity of our friend Michael Mitchell, of theWalking to the Stones Facebook Page, for the photograph below. Like us, he has been struck by the fact that Mizen Peak seems to be visible from many sites, saying, It’s obviously a very important hill. It seems to be a focus for various megaliths, even some that are not on the Mizen peninsula itself. Michael points out that the cairn does not have the appearance of being ancient but more like a marker cairn.
Curiouser and curiouser, because there is very ancient folklore indeed about this cairn, which, in fact, gives its Irish name to Mizen Head – Carn Uí Néid, or the The Cairn of the Grandson of Néid. Which grandson are we talking about here? Néid had a son, Elathen, who in turn had five sons – the Daghda, Oghma, Bres, Alloth and Delbaeth – all of them figure prominently in Irish Mythology as members of the Thuatha Dé Danann.
Bres is the grandson in question, but Bres was his nickname. He was really Eochaid bres – that is Eochaid the Handsome, because everything comely and handsome that is seen in Ireland, ’tis to Bres it is likened. I am getting my information here from a piece written by J. F. L. in the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society of 1912 (available online).
The Dinnshenchas of Carn Uí Néid has been translated by Dr Whitley Stokes
Bres, son of Elathan, died there; ’tis he that in the reign of Nechtan Fairhand. . .King of Munster, demanded from every rooftree in Ireland a hundred men’s drink of a hornless dun cow, or of the milk of a cow of some other single colour. So Munster kine were singed by Nechtan with a fire of fern, and then they were smeared with a porridge of the ashes of flaxseed, so that they became dark brown. . . And they also formed three hundred cows of wood, with dark brown pails on their forks in lieu of the udders. These pails were dipped in bog stuff. Then Bres came to inspect the manner of these cattle, and so that they might be milked in his presence . . . All the bog stuff they had was squeezed out as if it was milk. The Irish were under a geis to come thither at the same time, and Bres was under a geis to drink what should be milked there. So three hundred bucketsful of red bog stuff are milked for him and he drinks it all.
JCHAS Notes and Queries Carn Uí Néid, by J. F. L. 1912, Vol 18, 96, Ps 211-213
Of course it’s a huge and unreliable leap from mythology to a wedge tomb, but I can’t help thinking how great it would be if the Ballyvoguebeg wedge tomb was indeed the tomb of Bres, brother of the Daghda, handsome King of Munster, dead from a surfeit of bog stuff.
Last week’s post The Twelve Arches of Ballydehob proved a most popular subject. Ballydehob’s railway viaduct – dating from the late nineteenth century can’t be ignored. It was fairly easy to put together another dozen pics of the structure, making a good Christmas Day theme to take your minds off turkey and stuffing!
As we have lived not too far from the viaduct over the last ten years, we have seen it – and photographed it – in many of its moods. And it’s a constant backdrop, of course, to life in our West Cork village. Below – here it is, supporting a very ancient tradition, on St Stephen’s Day (that’s me on the right!):
“No Wrens Were Harmed in the Making of this Post!” That was the title of my RWJ article on the Wren Day festivities in Ballydehob in 2019 – pre-Covid. It was great to be out and about in the village, echoing a custom which has been passed from generation to generation. When I grew up in England I joined in the Mummers’ tradition there: I followed it for much of a lifetime, and even now can recite the whole play without a prompt… “Here comes I, Bold Trim Tram: Left hand, press gang – press all you bold fellows to sea…”
Something else which could do with a revival is the Pedalo tradition. Pedalos were brought out of storage for an unique occasion in the summer – a project named Inbhear, an art installation by Muireann Levis. Here is own my post about it.
I was pleased to have this photo of the viaduct in my collection. If the scale looks a little wobbly it could be because this – and the train – are models sited at the West Cork Model Railway Village at Clonakilty. Below – a local company, in Ballydehob, has chosen to use the bridge in its title.
We showed you some of Brian Lalor’s work last week. Here’s another of his drawings. It is dated 1975: he tells me he has plenty more viaduct pics if I write another post in the future.
Atmospherics a-plenty: we have them all the time in Ballydehob. We do live in one of this world’s most inspiring places… Have a very good and atmospheric Christmas, everyone! And – safe journeying if you are out and about.
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