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Coppinger’s Court, Ballyvireeen, near Rosscarbery
Fortified houses are a distinctly Irish phenomenon. The Tudor period in Britain ushered in a great era of house building with many distinctive features. But England was a peaceful place – the owners of these great houses did not expect to be attacked. Tudor Ireland was a very different environment: life was still dangerous and conflict between the native Irish and the planter class, or between Irish clans, was common.
Machicolations at Coppinger’s Court
Up to the end of the 16th century the castle/tower house was the residence of choice of the powerful – a tall stone keep mainly focussed on defensive features and horribly uncomfortable to live in. (See When is a Castle..? for a complete run-down on tower houses.) These new houses emphasised the horizontal rather than the vertical, and were built with comfort in mind. However, they incorporated some of the defensive features of the tower houses – they were “fashionable but defendable.”
Mullioned windows
In Ireland they represented “a public display of power and wealth…[and] a long-term investment in their owner’s regional future and were monuments to an aspiration for an English and Continental house style suited to local Irish conditions. On a basic level the construction of a fortified house represented the owners desire to modernise and Anglicize.” These quotes and much of the information that follows is taken from The Fortified Houses of County Cork: Origin, Fabric, Form, Function and Social Use of Space, by Joe Nunan, who has generously made it and related material available on his website.
Gun loop at ground floor level, Coppinger’s Court
Fortified houses were built of stone but all internal floors, stairs and partitions were of wood. Defensive features included machicolations, bartizans, wall walks, gun loops, corner towers or wings to provide for flanking fire. They were built starting about 1580 up to about 1650.
Tower and Bartizan, Reenadisert
There are four (or five, if you include Baltimore Castle) surviving fortified houses in West Cork. The one that is most accessible (should you wish to visit) is Coppinger’s Court, in Ballyvireen townland near Roscarbery. It is also one of the most magnificent examples of this type of dwelling in Ireland. Some of the mullions remain in upper windows, and a sharp eye will spot gun loops in the outer walls. The machicolations are particularly fine, with impressive cut stone supports. This was the home of the infamous Sir Walter Coppinger, whose plan was to build a complete settlement around him in this lovely spot on the banks of the Roury River. He was a despot who got rich through clever manipulations of mortgage documents and he was said to hang his enemies from a gibbet from one of his windows.
The chimney on top of this wall has fallen – note the pile of stones on the ground
The house was so awe-inspiring in its time that the legend developed that it had a window for every day of the year, a chimney for every week and a door for every month. The house was eventually attacked and ransacked in 1641 and has sat in ruins ever since. Sadly, one of the magnificent chimneys fell down in the storms of early 2014. Evidence of a bawn wall remains, with possible outdoor cooking areas.
Gearhameen – a U shaped plan
The fortified house at Gearhameen near Durrus, built by the MacCarthy Muclaghs, provides evidence of the comfort that these new ‘castles’ provided. The household work was done on the ground floor – large kitchens contained huge fireplaces, and in this house we can see the main kitchen fireplace had a bread oven to one side and a slop hole for sweeping out leftovers to the pigs, who must have been in an attached pen (the smell!).
Large ground floor fireplace with bread oven
The first and second floors have large fireplaces, with magnificent herringbone chimneys still intact (and hosting nesting choughs).
Rather than the machicolations we see at Coppinger’s Court, corbels on the outside walls probably supported wooden or stone platforms.
Corbels supported a platform for defenders
Like Coppinger’s Court, the outer walls still stand to their full height, but the loss of a keystone above one arch, and the consequent development of a large crack above it, bodes ill for that section of the wall.
Missing keystone
The house at Reenadisert, near Ballylickey, has been built onto and within over the centuries, serving as a modified dwelling place and as farm buildings. It was the stronghold of an O’Sullivan and has an impressive bartizan on one of the external towers. It is in a very ruinous state inside – the eeriness is enhanced by an enormous crows’ nest that has fallen from inside one of the chimneys to rest on the ground. There is evidence of a basement but this cannot be accessed.
Fallen nest
The house at Aghadown, home to the Becher family, consists only of one wall with attached towers. Ivy has threatened to take over most of it – I love Leask’s description of ivy – “destructive green mantle beloved of the sentimentalist.” Through it one can make out traces of the slate that once hung on the wall above the ground floor, the outline of corbels at roof level, and a string course between the ground and first floor.
Aghadown Fortified house occupies high ground with a commanding view
Interestingly, Dún na Séad Castle in Baltimore, home of the O’Driscolls, is described as a fortified house in the National Monuments Inventory. It possesses aspects of both a tower house and a fortified house – in this photograph you can see the corner bartizan, a gun loop, and the long, rather than tall, shape.
Dún na Séad or Baltimore Castle
For a comparison of the two types of edifices, take a look at Leamanagh in Clare – here a 17th century fortified house has been literally tacked on to a 15th century tower house.
Leamanagh, in County Clare
Joe Nunan provides useful summations of Irish fortified houses. Among other points, he says the following:
The fortified houses built in Co. Cork had a unique Irish architectural quality and a distinct southern English look and feel; the result of contacts built up between both regions, politically through plantation-immigration and economically, through trade with the port and fishing towns of Waterford, Cork, Kinsale, Youghal and Baltimore. The social changes that took place in Tudor England were reflected in architectural form by the elites in that society and it was the latter who spearheaded the Munster plantations. They were noblemen who viewed Munster as another region within a larger England and it was through these individuals that the initial architectural influence of the many gabled, oblong country manors with circular, square, rectangular and hexagonal corner-towers was introduced into Co. Cork.
Reenadisert
We are lucky to have these fine examples of fortified houses in West Cork still. However, all of them apart from Baltimore Castle are in a perilous state of dereliction. Gearhameen’s owner has tried to stabilise the building and stave off collapse but all of them may eventually succumb to the natural ravages of time. That’s a sad thought.
Colourful Courtmacsherry
In the Days of Yore – when I first started to visit the west of Ireland – I travelled on the good old Swansea – Cork Ferry. It’s such a shame this route has now been scrapped (not once but twice): it was an overnight crossing, leaving the Welsh port at 9pm and arriving in the mouth of the Lee estuary at dawn. I felt there was nothing more beautiful than the slow cruise up through that great natural harbour in the early morning sunlight: passing lighthouses, lookout towers, mothballed ships, the Irish Navy and the coloured terraces of Cobh (pronounce it Cove), before disembarking at the exotically named Ringaskiddy Terminal.
Swansea – Cork Ferry: above – Celtic Pride, 1980s, below – MV Julia, withdrawn in 2011
Part of the excitement of that journey was the anticipation of the drive down to Ballydehob and beyond. I always went on the R600 route, passing through Carrigaline and Kinsale – stopping, of course, at Ballinspittle to check that the BVM was safely in place at her grotto – before heading out along Courtmacsherry Bay. The journey alongside that ribbon of water – the road hugs it for some 10 kilometres – is recommended as an exemplary introduction to the landscape characteristics of rural Ireland.
This water was known as Timoleague Bay until it became silted up in the 18th century
What was formerly Timoleague Bay is now known as Courtmacsherry Bay. Timoleague was the head of the navigation and thrived from wharfs built in front of the medieval Priory there until a catastrophic earthquake occurred in Portugal in 1755 causing a tsunami which hit the coasts of Britain and Ireland and dramatically changed the topology. This bay is one example: the inlet was no longer navigable for sea-going vessels up to Timoleague, and new piers and quays were built further to the east, closer to the mouth of the estuary, on the north facing shoreline. The place we now call Courtmacsherry didn’t exist until after this maritime event (hence the title of this post).
The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 changed the shoreline of Britain and Ireland
So how did the name ‘Courtmacsherry’ come about? It’s an unusual one, and a bit of a mouthful – locals call it simply ‘Courtmac’. According to Sean de Barra of the Courtmacsherry Historical Society the area was settled by the Hodnett family from Shropshire, in England:
…In the course of time they became more Irish than the Irish themselves and took the Irish version Mac Seafraidh…
…Which sounds like Macsherry – the prefix Cuirt would have been ‘Manor House’ or ‘Mansion’.
The Hodnett name is still familiar in the area
Although I travelled so many times along the road up to Timoleague it is only very recently that I actually diverted to visit Courtmacsherry. I’m very pleased that I finally did: it’s an attractive settlement which displays many aspects of its 300 year history. I had heard of the place – it has a lifeboat which is twinned with the one in Bude, Cornwall (have a look at this post). I worked for very many years in Bude with Jonathan Ball, who was Coxswain with the Bude boat and he led (and still leads) a choir from the Bude crew who have an annual twinning visit with the Courtmacsherry crew.
The Courtmacsherry Lifeboat has recently been in the limelight as the Centenary of the sinking of the Cunard liner Lusitania by a German torpedo has just passed (here is a very detailed account of the tragedy). The RNLI lifeboat Kezia Gwilt was on call during that event (having to row the 11 miles out to the wreck because there was no wind to sail her with) and helped rescue survivors. Sadly, 1,198 of the 1,959 people on board lost their lives on 7 May 1915.
Model of Lusitania on display in Courtmacsherry, 2015
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The village is unusual in that it has virtually only a single street facade, which follows the line of the water. Finola liked the colourful house fronts! Fishing is still a living here, just about. Tourism is important nowadays: we certainly appreciated the hostelries, including the Golden Pheasant Cafe. There really are Golden Pheasants in the cafe garden and – to my delight – Robins and Chaffinches who will eat from your hand. Also, in the aviary, a magnificent Eagle Owl. Apart from all this the food is excellent!
Single sided street…
As with our own village of Ballydehob, Courtmac was served by a branch of the West Cork Railways. Although planned as a three foot gauge ‘roadside railway’ (just like our Skibbereen to Schull line), the Timoleague and Courtmacsherry Extension Light Railway was actually built to full gauge, and lasted a little longer: our line closed in 1947, this one in 1960. The track bed from Timoleague has been made into a scenic waterside footpath covering several kilometres.
Timoleague Station around 1910, top left – seaside Courtmacsherry 1950s, top right – the waterside walk along the old railway line, above
Our visit to Courtmacsherry was too short: we will be back soon, to take in the Castle and the Abbey – and to try and find out why it has an area called Siberia! My researches showed that there is another Siberia in Ireland: it’s in County Sligo and is also known there as Slieveroe. In that case the name is said to have come from An Sliabh Rua, which means ‘Red Mountain’ – but there are no such topographical features in this part of West Cork.
I didn’t quite draw a blank with ‘Siberia’. Here’s an extract from Eating Scenery – West Cork, the People and the Place by Alannah Hopkin, The Collins Press 2008:
…In July and August, like most coastal villages in west Cork, Courtmacsherry can be too busy; it is heavenly in May and June, September and October. But in winter Courtmacsherry is deadly quiet, prone to dull, dark days of low sky and mist, when you are acutely aware of its north-facing character.The only compensation in this season is the presence of thousands of migrant birds, great clouds of golden plover, lapwing, blacktailed godwits, and Arctic shags, fleeing the cold of Scandinavia and Siberia to roost on the mudflats of Courtmacsherry Bay…
Thomas
A byway taking off to the north just after the Cross House on the Skibbereen to Ballydehob road – signposted to Corravoley – will bring you to the townlands of Ballybane West and Ballybane East. That little boreen will take you past some Rock Art, and then on to the Magic Forest. If you find your way in, keep a lookout for the Other Crowd!
Look out for the Other Crowd!
We accepted an invitation from the creator of the Magic Forest – Thomas Wiegandt – to come and visit while the bluebells were out – and we were enchanted by the woodland walks and all the experiences which excited our senses once we were there.
It’s hard to describe Thomas – he’s a musician, an artist, a poet and – above all – he has a quirky and witty way of looking at the world… I like that way of seeing things. He has lived for years at Ballybane and pursued his creative career as well as working on and caring for his few acres of West Cork wildness, which is based around an old sally grove – a place which hadn’t been used for around 100 years and which had been sold as ‘waste land’. As you make your way through the Magic Forest (and take care – there are some rough paths and a few stony steps to be negotiated) you will be taken through his thoughts and into his imagination.
Thomas believes we are all musicians at heart (I agree) – and invites us to have a go at the Ballydehob Gamelan – a wonderful collection of ‘rescued’ objects with which we can create rhythms and explore a whole world of sounds: you can play an array of drums, cans, goblets, makeshift xylophones, even stones… Finola had a whale of a time!
There is art and poetry set amongst the willows, often with the most unexpected juxtapositions. One of my favourite discoveries in the Magic Forest was Natural High – a little knoll looking out to Mount Kidd: there are two garden seats there where you can sit at ease and frame the view of the mountain, with two dogs as companions: one of them is real!
There were some messages here – about how we treat our world (or mistreat it), but they weren’t intrusive to the enjoyment of the whole adventure. If anything they were thought-provoking and – overall – a very good lesson in how we can all positively re-use things that seem to have transcended their original purpose.
In another life, Thomas might have been a shaman or medicine man: walking through the forest can be seen as therapeutic and refreshing in the context of our modern busy world – and it will certainly make you laugh at times. I really liked the idea of picking up a phone and talking to our ancestors!
You can discover more about the Magic Forest – and about Thomas Wiegandt – on his website: Cosmic Radio. You will find his poetry and his music there, and you can download many of his compositions for free. But do go and visit this unique piece of West Cork for yourselves: I hope you will be as delighted by the experience as we were.
Toe Head Thistle
Up to Christmas I had been using my iPhone for photography. Upside – you always have it with you, it weighs nothing and fits in a pocket, it takes surprisingly good images as long as you don’t need to zoom in. Downside – very grainy if you try to zoom, very limited except for basic shots, few manual controls. Because of my frustration with its limitations (did I grumble that much?) Robert gave me a new camera for Christmas (Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ60, for those who care about such things). It fulfils my requirement of being small enough to fit in my pocket while launching me into a whole new world where I can have more control over my images.
Up to now I have been using it purely on the automatic settings, with occasional forays into some of the pre-programmed effects, and I was starting to hit that wall of frustration again – the knowledge that the camera is capable of so much more if only I knew how to use it properly. So this week we signed up for a one day session with Celia Bartlett, a photo-journalist who uses her house in Toe Head to lead weekend photography breaks and workshops.
Farmhouse near Toe Head
After some initial discussion about our goals for the day, and some instruction on caring properly for our cameras, the three of us set out on a ramble down to the beach and along the rural lanes of West Cork. Robert and I clicked away, while Celia mostly just observed our modus operandi. The weather did its usual West Cork thing of alternating between being overcast and sunny, the lanes provided hedgerow flowers and the beach had an obliging spring tumbling over stones to the water, while the farmhouses looked picturesque and cattle browsed contentedly in the fields.
A beach around every bend
Back at the house Celia put our images on a large screen and we went through each one in illuminating (and occasionally embarrassing) detail. “What were you after in this shot?” she asked, encouraging us to articulate our intentions and to analyse whether or not we had realised them. “What could you have done differently?” “Where were you standing and was that the best place?” “What were you focussing on, and is it IN focus?” It was a revelatory experience.
Robert had expressed that what he wanted was to get the best image in the camera, rather than rely on cropping and correcting afterwards and she focussed on that, showing us how a little forethought might have improved a particular shot.
Robert was taken with this unique postbox
She introduced me to aspect ratio and the rule of thirds (honestly, am I the last person in the world to learn about such basic photographic terms?) and how choosing a square versus, say, a 16X9 format might bring out a line in the shot that lead the eye to a natural point. She showed me how to use focus/recompose to correct a lighting or a focussing issue.
Robert taking his best shot
When I was 21 my parents gave me my first camera. Still have it – an AGFA SLR, completely manual, with a small rangefinder on the strap. I needed it to photograph the rock art for my thesis. The irony is that way back then, 40 years ago, I understood about ISA film, shutter speeds and Fstops. I had to – I couldn’t afford to take more than one or two shots of each rock, mainly in black and white, with an occasional roll of colour slides and I had to make each shot count. But in the 40 years since then I have relied on cameras with automatic settings and have forgotten all that I knew in my early 20s. So the lesson that followed the critiquing session – on aperture size and shutter speeds and sensor sensitivity and grain (ISO) – was a process for me of re-learning long-lost concepts.
Frozen water – it’s all about the shutter speed
After lunch we practised some of those concepts, trying to get the feel for varying the focus and the depth of field. I re-took a couple of shots from the morning, addressing the issues we had identified earlier. Celia went through some of the basics of image processing with us, encouraging us to use minimal adjustments to good effect and to choose the right aspect ratios.
Celia Bartlett
She went through our camera settings with us and showed us what happened when we went, for example, with aperture priority versus shutter priority. Finally, she encouraged us to let go of the Auto security blanket and strike out into the brave new world of manual controls, starting with aperture priority.
Finola gets the picture
I left full of confidence – which has waned a little in the few days since as I’ve played with shots using the aperture setting and realised that I have to practise a LOT to feel like I really know what I am doing. But it’s a great start. I do feel more confident in composing a shot now and in taking my time to get what I want in the image, and in framing and improving it afterwards. As usual, there’s a lot going on in West Cork, so I had the opportunity to practise aperture settings at the opening of a new exhibit at Uillinn, the West Cork Arts Centre. Tess Leak has been the artist-in-residence there for the last few months and she also plays with the wonderful Vespertine Quintet. For this opening, Justin Grounds had composed a new piece for the quintet, featuring a phono-fiddle – a one-stringed horned violin.
The Vespertine Quintet debuts a new work
My shutter-speed controls got a workout today at the Baltimore Fiddle Fair. April Verche and her trio entertained us with a dazzling display that included her step dancing while playing the fiddle! This was followed by The Henry Girls, a Donegal trio of sisters with an eclectic repertoire and lovely harmonies.
I did have a spectacular fail, though. I love bluebells and took multiple shots of our local display using aperture priority, Every single shot was out of focus, so I ended up using the the pre-programmed ‘take flower pictures’ setting.
Bluebell wood
Grrrrr….still lots of work to do…. Celia – help! I need a second day! Oh and by the way, Celia, I loved your coverage of the Lusitania commemorations in Cobh.
Gubbeen’s Chorizo and Salami
Why am I writing about meat?
Well, for starters, Robert and I are omnivores. Given that I do eat meat (walk away now, all my vegetarian friends!) I want it to be good quality and tasty. I want to know where it comes from and how it was raised. Living in a large Canadian city, I was aware that here and there there was a butcher shop – either an old-fashioned hanging-on-for-dear-life shop in a traditional neighbourhood, a stall in one of the large markets, or latterly a smart shiny artisan establishment staffed by trendy young men in striped aprons. But, like everyone else, I didn’t have time to drive across town to seek out places like this and just bought my meat in the supermarket.
One of the things that surprised me, coming back to live in small-town Ireland, was that butcher shops are alive and well and thriving still – even if there is also a large supermarket in the town.
They are a friendly lot, these butchers. They love to offer advice on how to cook the meat you’re buying, or to give suggestions for dinner. They will cut a piece exactly as you want (wafer thin for stroganoff) or disappear into the back and reappear with a huge haunch because you want something that isn’t on display (shanks, with the marrow intact), or trim every last ounce of fat off a joint. “Years ago,” one butcher told me, “all cuts were sold with bone and fat. But, sure, you have to move with the times.”
Over the years there have been lots of exposés and scandals about the provenance of meat sold in Europe (horse meat, anybody?) and concerns about foot-and-mouth and other diseases, but our local butchers know the source of all the meat they sell, down to the farm it came from, or the herd. “It’s from our own farms,” one butcher told me, indicating an area north of Skibbereen where contented cattle spend their days in lush green fields.
Micheál Daly of Skibbereen – Daly’s meat comes from their own farms
“We get our lamb from out by Fohorlagh” said another. We know the cattle spend their lives grazing on rich grasses – we are surrounded by them in Nead an Iolair – and we think that’s the secret to the taste. We don’t want to eat meat that’s been factory bred and fed.
Happy cattle in the field next door to us
Most of the local butchers work on well-worn wooden butcher blocks. I’m fascinated by these – they seem like such old technology and indeed some have switched to dense plastic blocks. But the ones who still use the wooden ones tell me that lots of research has been done on them and that they are as safe as or safer than plastic.
John Barry, our local butcher in Schull, working at his 40 year old butcher’s block
Time worn beauty
As our readers know, the food scene in West Cork is terrific. At our Saturday market in Skibbereen we have a great choice of artisan meat products. We get our breakfast sausages from Frank Krawczyk – he was a charcuterie pioneer here before any of us knew the meaning of the words.
The fabulous West Coast Pies is our go-to resource for pork pies, scotch eggs, gourmet dinner pies (chicken and leek, beef bourguignon) and wonderful salmon quiches. They do lots of vegetarian stuff too. Paul is so insistent on the quality of his pork that he has decided to raise his own and is now an organic pig farmer on top of everything else.
Paul Phillips of West Cork Pies
We met Avril Allshire of Rosscarbery Recipes at a recent concert, serving her uber-delicious black pudding swirls. We loved them so much she told us where to find the recipe and so we made up a batch ourselves. Yummers! (And I am not normally a black pudding fan.)
And of course there’s Gubbeen! They’ve been making cheeses forever, award-winning and delectable, and built a smokehouse to produce a smoked version of their famous farmhouse cheese. From there, Fingal Ferguson has produced an array of chorizo and salamis that are firm favourites with all the locals. We buy his bacon and hams – we always cook an enormous one at Christmas and have to book it weeks in advance.
Read about Gubbeen’s food philosophy on their website – it might be the most profound expression of the importance of real food you will find anywhere.
Andy O’Sullivan of Skibbereen. He’s been a butcher all his life and says the 5 year apprenticeship offers excellent training
Nurturing small native plant/pollinator/wildlife habitat in western Oregon
Travels on foot
Another bicycle adventure in France
In which M & A cycle to — and over — the Pyrenees and into Spain
the town that time forgot
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J&M invade the Austro-Hungarian Empire
Encounters with women in Irish theatre history
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It's all about the photos.....
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