Schull

Capturing the View: Belvederes in West Cork

Swift's Tower

The 18th century was a time of profound change in garden design in Britain, and by extension in Ireland. In the opening decades of the 1700s great and small estates included formal gardens laid out in the French and Dutch styles that emphasised symmetry and geometry, parterres and avenues of trees. The gardens at Bantry House are a good example of this garden style. Although developed in the first half of the 19th century, they were perhaps influenced heavily by the gardens at Versailles and great European houses visited by the Earl of Bantry on his Grand Tour.

Bantry House 1

Thanks to Dennis Horgan, aerial photographer extraordinaire, for allowing me to use his shot of Bantry House. Note the formal and geometric layout of the gardens and the parterres immediately behind and to the right of the house

However, for the previous century a different style of landscaping had dominated garden design in Britain, pioneered by William Kent and Charles Bridgeman and reaching its peak in the work of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. The effect they strove for was naturalistic (as opposed to natural) – a planned layout that mirrored but enhanced their idea of a ‘wild’ and romantic landscape. Large expanses of grass, strategically placed lakes and ponds, plantings of carefully chosen tree and shrub species, and clever little structures such as temples, summer houses and belvederes all combined to delight the eye, create a romantic mood and, of course, attest to the taste and wealth of the owner.

base of ruined tower belvedere New Court

Nothing remains but the stub of what was once a belvedere in the shape of a round tower on the edge of the River Ilen, on the old New Court demesne.

Echoes of these designed landscapes can be found here and there in West Cork, even where the big houses themselves have disappeared. Lately I have been on the hunt for belvederes and have found several intriguing examples. A belvedere (bel-beautiful, vedere-to see) was an edifice from which to enjoy a view. It could be as simple as a platform at a high point, or as complex as a multi-storey tower, but its most important attribute was its positioning to command a breathtaking vista.

Killiney Hill belvedere

Killiney Hill, just south of Dublin

Perhaps the best known belvedere in Ireland is the one on top of Killiney Hill in Dublin. It was built in 1742 by the then-owner of the hill, John Mapas, to provide an opportunity to admire one of Ireland’s most iconic prospects. The room on the second floor had a little fireplace, windows, and a door to the exterior viewing deck, which was surrounded by wrought-iron railing. It’s no longer in use as a belvedere and many people think of it as some kind of memorial or folly.

View from Killiney Hill

The view from Killiney Hill

In West Cork, the belvedere at Aughadown (known locally as the gazebo) is of the most simple kind, a viewing platform. It was associated with Aughadown House, a fortified mansion built by the Bechers that I wrote about in Trading Up In Tudor Times: Fortified Houses in West Cork.  

Belvedere, Aughadown

Peter Somerville-Large, in The Coast of West Cork, quoting Daniel Donovan*, says: Donovan described it as “a strong castellated mansion, entered by a drawbridge, surrounded by beautiful grounds and having a gazebo on one of the heights behind”. He continues: This gazebo was approached by a ramp along which the quality used to drive their carriages in order to enjoy the magnificent view out over Roaring Water Bay to the islands and the Fastnet in the distance. I found the ramp running above a field of winter wheat.

Aghadown Belvedere and tower house siting

The view from Becher’s ‘gazebo’ across to Roaringwater Bay

On each side of the Ilen River lie belvederes, in the form of towers. Imagine the ladies of the house and their guests, walking or being driven down to the water’s edge. Servants would have arrived earlier and the tea would be ready and a little fire laid against the breezes. They ascend the internal staircase to the second floor or perhaps to the roof and admire the views of the lazy Ilen River as it wends its way to the sea at Roaringwater Bay.

Creagh House Belvedere

The Creagh House belvedere

The belvedere at Creagh House exists now as a picturesque ruin. Octagonal in design, with pointed gothic windows and a small fireplace inside, it rises to three stories. Some sources describe it as the remains of a mill, and the artificial pond beside it as a mill pond, but it has all the hallmarks of a romantic garden structure.

Creagh House Belvedere, Interior
The Ilen at Creagh

Across the river at New Court there were once three such ornamental towers. One is gone, the second is a mere stump, but the third still stands to its original height and offers lovely views of the river both to the east and the south.

Belvedere, New Court

One of the three original belvederes that once dotted the New Court Estate

At Castletownshend the local gentry were enthusiastic builders of ‘pleasure architecture’. Castletownsend Castle boast two structures of interest. The first is in the walls, an octagonal tower that is made to look like a defensive feature but in fact is purely decorative. Since there is apparently no entrance, this one may have to count as a folly rather than a belvedere.

Castle Townsend Belvedere turret

Behind the castle is the structure known as Swift’s Tower (see the very first photograph for an idea of its placement). Following the death of his beloved Vanessa in 1723, Dean Swift embarked on a long summer trip to the south west. it was in this tower, tradition has it, that he wrote the Latin poem Carberiae Rupes, which translates as The Crags of Carbery.

Swift's Tower 3

Once again we are indebted to Daniel Donovan’s Sketches in Carbery for an account of the poem and even a translation. Donovan did not have a high opinion of the poem (although he says that Dean Swift himself preferred it above other, better poems) and another critic referred to it as “a set of indifferent verses” describing a “bleak and deadly landscape”.

Carberiae Rupes

What do you think – his finest work?

Perhaps the Dean’s depressed state was to blame, or maybe he should have just stuck to prose. Or perhaps the servants hadn’t lit the fire and provided the tea – the tower certainly looks bleak enough now to bring on a fit of the dismals, in spite of the magnificent view.

Swift's Tower, Belvedere

On Horse Island, just outside of Castlehaven Inlet, there is the base of a round tower that may also have been a belvedere. A visit there would have made a wonderful pleasure outing on a fine day, and the views would be stupendous.

Horse Island, Castlehaven, belvedere

You can just make out the remains of a round wall at the top left of Horse Island

There is a whole set of monuments in West Cork that are labelled as Belvederes in the National Monuments Service Inventory, but as Signal Towers in the records maintained by the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage.  These contradictory interpretations are fascinating and these towers are worth a post on their own. I will save that for another day, but to show you what I mean, take a look at the two towers on Rock Island, near Crookhaven. Belvederes or Signal Towers – what do you think? (If you’re not sure what signal towers are, take a look at this post from Amanda Clarke of Sheep’s Head Places.)

Crookhaven belvederes

Looking across to Rock Island from Crookhaven. Experts differ about the functions of the two towers

But what about nowadays? Do we still worship the view in West Cork? And do we still build belvederes from which to admire that view? The answer to both those questions can be found at Sailor’s Hill, just west of Schull!

Sailor's Hill 1

Sailor’s Hill Belvedere

Sailor’s Hill is a labour of love by Connie Griffin who has worked on the sea and lived in this area all his life. It’s partly a memorial to those lost at sea and partly a place of contemplation to simply sit and soak up the panoramic views that stretch gloriously before you in ever direction.

Sailor's Hill Memorial 2

Schull Harbour in the background

Sadly now a little overgrown and vandalised, it is still an incredible experience to arrive at Connie’s little round tower and see vast stretches of the Cork coast to the south, while the mountains of the Beara and Kerry rise behind you.

Sailor's Hill Views

It’s a testament to the power that landscape and seascape has over us: the power to move us and uplift us; the power to inspire us to try to capture it in paint and in words. We can’t really, but, like Connie, we keep trying.

Connie Griffin and Robert

Connie Griffin and Robert

*Somerville-Large attributes this information to Sketches in Carbery by Daniel Donovan. However, I have not been able to find the quote and wonder if it’s from another book.

Priests and Poets, Part 1

outlookOften, while walking the Fastnet Trails, I stop to wander around the old graveyard at Stouke, near Ballydehob. I am struck each time by the lonely beauty of the site, on an elevated hillside with vistas of the countryside and distant hills. I have also come to realise that this one small place resounds with echoes of the past – a past that in Ireland seems always so intricately woven into our present that it can never be ignored or forgotten.

From the wall

The Barry tomb dominates the graveyard

There is much to say about Stouke Graveyard and my theme of Priests and Poets but I will start with one grave in particular and leave the rest to a second post. This is the grave of Father James Barry, his brother, Father John Barry, their sister, Margaret, and their housekeeper, Julia Roberts. I have mentioned this grave before briefly, but I have now had an opportunity to look at it more closely.

offerings

Coins and tokens have been left on the tomb

Why does this large chest tomb occupy the most elevated and central place in the graveyard? Why are coins and tokens left as offerings on it? Why, according to notes made by the Historic Graves Project, do people come to pray here on St John’s Day (June 24th) every year? Although I didn’t find all the answers, researching the questions led me to Father James Barry, Parish Priest of Schull before and during the Great Famine.

Frs Barry, Stouke

James was obviously a man of learning and compassion, and one who was called upon locally to be a spokesperson and advocate for his flock. Even before the Famine he gave evidence to boards of inquiry about the conditions in West Cork, pointing out the miserable diet, lack of proper clothing and housing, poor prospects for employment, the uncertainty of a lease being continued, the lack of compensation to tenants when lands were taken to build new roads, the desire of many to emigrate and the good account they gave of their experiences in their new homes.  He would have read their letters to them, since many of his parishioners were illiterate – his remarks focused on the many advantages of the New World, including a pointed reference to the absence of tyranny. In what seems like a very modern concern with income inequality, he commented on how the rich got richer as their tenants’ lives became ever more difficult. (Reported in British Parliamentary Papers)

Famine Memorial at Murrisk

The Famine Memorial at Murrisk in Mayo. The ‘coffin ships’ that carried a generation of people to North America were notorious but for those who chose to go the voyage was preferable to the nightmare of famine at home

During the Famine, he and his brother, Father John, also of Schull parish, worked to help establish soup kitchens but insisted that more than soup be served, since the soup was not nutritious enough. Called eating houses, these places fed many people who would otherwise have died, and replaced the hated and ineffective Board of Works schemes that put weak and starving people to hard labour so they could buy their own corn, thus supposedly salvaging their dignity and rescuing them from the evils of pauperism.

soup-kitchen1

Famine Soup Kitchen

The efforts of the eating house committees crossed religious boundaries and appear to have been effective in slowing the rates of starvation to such an extent that in one of his depositions James states that “deaths were now so few that the slide-bottomed coffins were no longer in use.”

Among the unmarked graves

Many unmarked graves dot the Stouke graveyard, some no doubt dating to the Famine years

James advocated tirelessly for his parishioners, through giving information and evidence and through submissions to authorities. His anger is unconcealed when he describes his visit to the village of Kilbronogue near Ballydehob: Fever consequent upon starvation was spreading among the clusters of cabins…the townland  [will] soon be at the immediate disposal of the head landlord, Lord Bandon. There will be no need of extermination or of migration to thin the dense swarm of poor people…; this will take place without his lordship’s intervention or agency, I hope, to a better world. Indeed his words were prophetic – there is no longer a village in Kilbronogue.

Trench’s book, Realities of Irish Life, is available online. The illustration is of an incident in which tenants are down on their knees begging for a reduction in rent.

Fr Barry acted as a guide for William Steuart Trench, a controversial land agent who later described his visit to the famine-stricken area of Schull in the book Realities of Irish Life (available to read online). In cottage after cottage he found families sick, dying or dead. The account is heart-rending. It led me to wonder if James Barry could have been the model for Peter Gilligan in WB Yeats’ poem The Ballad of Father Gilligan.

yeats2The old priest Peter Gilligan
Was weary night and day;
For half his flock were in their beds,
Or under green sods lay.

Once, while he nodded on a chair,
At the moth-hour of eve,
Another poor man sent for him,
And he began to grieve.

‘I have no rest, nor joy, nor peace,
For people die and die’;
And after cried he, ‘God forgive!
My body spake, not I!’

He knelt, and leaning on the chair
He prayed and fell asleep;
And the moth-hour went from the fields,
And stars began to peep.

They slowly into millions grew,
And leaves shook in the wind;
And God covered the world with shade,
And whispered to mankind.

Upon the time of sparrow-chirp
When the moths came once more.
The old priest Peter Gilligan
Stood upright on the floor.

‘Mavrone, mavrone! the man has died
While I slept on the chair’;
He roused his horse out of its sleep,
And rode with little care.

He rode now as he never rode,
By rocky lane and fen;
The sick man’s wife opened the door:
‘Father! you come again!’

‘And is the poor man dead?’ he cried.
‘He died an hour ago.’
The old priest Peter Gilligan
In grief swayed to and fro.

‘When you were gone, he turned and died
As merry as a bird.’
The old priest Peter Gilligan
He knelt him at that word.

‘He Who hath made the night of stars
For souls who tire and bleed,
Sent one of His great angels down
To help me in my need.’

‘He Who is wrapped in purple robes,
With planets in His care,
Had pity on the least of things
Asleep upon a chair.’

Although this is an unusual poem for Yeats (he was not a Catholic and he did not often publish simple quatrain-based ballads) it reflects his interest in the Irish stories he collected and loved. It was a favourite, as you can imagine, of the nuns who taught us English, combining as it did ease of memorisation,  the religious fervour they hoped to inculcate in their convent classrooms and the unassailable respectability of having been composed by Ireland’s Nobel Laureate.

Brothers' grave

But back to the grave…the priests’ housekeeper, Julia Roberts, who died in 1838 was the first to be buried here. James and John’s sister, Margaret, died at the height of the Famine in 1848 (although we do not know if her death was in any way associated with this event). The Historic Graves record contains this intriguing note: When his sister died and was also buried here Sarah’s (should be ‘Julia’s’) coffin was in perfect condition. She was reburied with the parish priest even though she was not a Catholic.

James went on to serve as Parish Priest of Bantry and died in 1853. James’ brother, John was apparently similarly active but not much has survived recording his life. He took over from James as Parish Priest in Schull, where he served until his own death in 1863.

railings

Next week I will continue my tour of this wonderful spot – and we’ll have a little more poetry – although from a different source.

Irish Roads

Heading towards the light

Driving the Gap of Dunloe in Kerry – it can only be done in winter.

To give you a flavour of what it’s like to drive in Ireland, I’ve put together a few of my favourite photographs of the roads we’ve travelled. Sometimes I wonder if we will get to the point where we take for granted the spectacular scenery which is such an everyday occurrence for us, but then we find ourselves pulling over once again to wonder at the wild landscape, the grandeur of the mountains, the way the sea cuts deeply into the sandstone cliffs, the old castles and ruins that dot the fields – and we know that we will never tire of Irish roads.

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I’ve chosen only photographs that have roads in them, so you can get the feel of travelling in Ireland. And yes, it does rain in Ireland and the clouds come down and cover everything and then driving isn’t as much fun. Find a pub to hole up in, wait a while, and try a prayer to St Medard. 

Dingle

Of course some  of you, dear readers, do this every day, like we do, so tell us your own favourite Irish roads – or share a photograph on our Roaringwater Journal Facebook page if you like.

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Obstacles are common – so don’t drive too fast along the rural roads as you never know what might be around the bend.

Tractor pace

And there’s no point in being in a big hurry…
Only room for one at a timeThere’s only room for one at a time

We do have freeways/motorways in Ireland, and tolled highways, and congested city streets with honking traffic. Our advice is to get off the highways and out of the cities as soon as possible. Get on this road, for example, that runs through the Black Valley in Kerry, and see where it takes you.

Black Valley, Kerry

Happy driving in Ireland!

By the lighthouse

A Carnivore in West Cork

Gubbeen's Chorizo and Salami

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.

O’Sullivan’s of Skibbereen
McCarthys of Skibbereen

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.

Harringtons in Bantry

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.”

The two Patricks, O’Driscolls of Skibbereen
O’Driscolls
Where it comes from
This week’s beef

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 - the meat comes from their own farms

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

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

John Barry, our local butcher in Schull, working at his 40 year old butcher’s block

Time worn beauty

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.

Saturday market in Skibbereen
Frank Krawczyk

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

Paul Phillips of West Cork Pies

Paul’s piglets
Yummy West Cork Pie Products

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.)

Avril Allshire
My swirls in prep
Finished – delish!

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.

Gubbeen market stall
The book

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.

Andy O’Sullivan of Skibbereen. He’s been a butcher all his life and says the 5 year apprenticeship offers excellent training

 

Showing Off West Cork

This is how you sightsee in West Cork!

This is how you sightsee in West Cork!

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Susan Byron! Susan is the face behind Ireland’s Hidden Gems, a custom travel service for visitors to Ireland, and she and I met last year when Robert and I spent a week in Clare. Susan loves nothing better than to hop in her car and take off for a few days to some part of Ireland she wants to explore or re-explore. There are very few places she hasn’t seen, but I soon discovered that the Sheep’s Head was one of them. She has been to the Mizen before but hadn’t seen some our OUR hidden gems. In short order we decided that a visit must be organised, and a couple of weeks ago she arrived, bearing Burren lamb, bottles of wine, and an infectious enthusiasm to see everything.

The 17th century Bardic School

The 17th century Bardic School on The Farranamagh Loop walk

Now if someone who runs a bespoke travel agency wants to see your piece of paradise, well, you’re going to put your best foot forward. Fortunately, this isn’t a problem in West Cork – it’s pretty well a fail-safe place to show off. Susan spent her first day whale watching (something we promise ourselves to do soon) and exploring the area east of Skibbereen. On day two and three she was all ours and we spent the first day on the Sheep’s Head and the second on the Mizen.

Mizen farm

Mizen farm

First of all, travelling with Susan is a hoot. She’s got a hot car, a ready laugh, an inexhaustible supply of stories, insatiable curiosity, and a real passion for Ireland. She is amazingly well-read – she knew the dates of the castles before I could tell her and was already familiar with what most tourists want to to see and do in West Cork. So this was a cheerful, companionable time of exploration, chatting, coffee and scones, hiking and sightseeing.

Mist floats in at Tooreen, start of the Lighthouse Loop
To the Lighthouse!
Down Bantry Bay
Can you spot a Susan?

Our Sheep’s Head day took in two loop walks – the Farranamanagh loop and the lighthouse loop. We started off in drifting mist but the sun came out in the afternoon and soon we were shedding coats and applying the sunscreen. After a stroll around the lovely Farranamanagh walk (famous for its 17th century Bardic School) we had lunch in The Creamery in Kilcrohane and browsed in the Sheep’s Head Producers Market. We bought eggs from a farmyard, said hello to contented alpacas, and took innumerable photos of the killer views.

Tiny abandoned farm
Not for the faint of heart

The Lighthouse Loop offers unparalleled vistas at the end of Sheep’s Head – south to Mizen Head and the sweep of the West Cork coastline, and then, as you round the end, north to the Beara and to the Iveragh Peninsula (Ring of Kerry) beyond it. The trail has some steep sections and clings to a cliff edge for part of the northern stretch. It, and the Farranamanagh Loop are but two of the many waymarked trails that crisscross the Sheep’s Head. Each is as rewarding as the next and you could easily spend several days exploring this one Peninsula.

Lake Farranamanagh

Lake Farranamanagh

The Mizen, of course is OUR peninsula and we are always delighted to introduce it to friends. The weather was brilliant so we were able to drive in Susan’s cool car with the top down. (In my next life I want to come back as a blonde with a convertible.) Three Castle Head was at its most spectacular, with the water that deep azure blue that people who don’t live here have a hard time believing is real.

The Three Castles: it's love at first sight for Susan

The Three Castles: it’s love at first sight for Susan

The curtain wall and the lake

The curtain wall and the lake

Spring was bustin’ out all over so the air was heady with wildflowers and the fields full of newborn lambs. The drive on the north side of the Mizen is as jaw-droppingly gorgeous as any stretch of road in Ireland – the only difference is that it’s empty. We met not a single car, which enabled us to stop where we pleased to survey the scenery or take photos.

Barley Cove Beach

Barley Cove Beach

Susan wound up her time by conducting some retail therapy in Schull. No better place!

Schull, colourful village with great shopping

Schull, colourful village with great shopping

She has posted numerous photographs on her Facebook page and even used the phrase “possibly the most beautiful place I have ever been….” about Three Castle Head. That’s how I feel about that magical place – but when someone who has seen everything Ireland has to offer says it, maybe, just maybe, I’m not delusional after all.

Susan at the cairn. Three Castle Head on the Mizen

Susan at the cairn. Three Castle Head on the Mizen

An Extra Lick of Paint

Old vet clinic, Schull

Old vet clinic, Schull

I used to live in Vancouver, on Canada’s west coast. It’s a beautiful city by any standards: gleaming high-rises, miles of seaside walkway, and snow-capped mountains lending a dramatic backdrop. I loved it, but when I looked through my window mostly what I saw was concrete and steel – and no colour! I had to escape up into the mountains or out to the Fraser Valley to get in contact with nature and feed my soul.

Where I used to live

Where I used to live

Where I live now

Where I live now

In West Cork, my soul is fed every day, every time I look out the window of our house, every time I stroll through our village of Ballydehob. That’s down to our rural setting, of course, and the magnificent scenery, but a huge part of it is about colour. I’m a colour person, I guess: I respond to it and crave it. I can certainly appreciate a quiet tasteful palate of greys or beiges, or any of the million variations of off-white when I see them. But left to my own devices I’d quickly have a chunk of candy apple red in there, or chairs the colour of daffodils, or a wall in a vivid pink. As Lady Gaga says, I was born that way.

Why is that woman taking my picture?

Why is that woman taking my picture?

And so I find living in rural Ireland a constant source of delight and inspiration. No country was ever this green, surely! Now the gorse is starting to bloom, turning the hillsides into a blaze of yellow. And every few kilometres along the road is another village or town full of colourful houses competing with each other for my attention. But before we get to the villages, here are some glimpses of houses just off the main roads as you drive those kilometres.

A Lick of Paint mainly featured houses out in the countryside, but for this post I wanted to show you some of my favourite houses in our nearby towns and villages: Ballydehob, Bantry, Skibbereen and Schull.

On the outskirts there are new estates of identical houses, of course, all painted in identical shades of cream. But in the steep and windy streets behind the shops you find little old terraced houses lovingly done up, the walls, doors and windows all in contrasting hues and with knife-edge divisions of colour between neighbours.

Skibb town house 2

Skibbereen townhouse

Electric yellow and – what IS that colour?

It can be like walking through a giant Rubik’s Cube (ok, that dates me) or one of those kaleidoscope tubes.

St James School, Durrus. If you were a kid, wouldn’t you want to go to a school like this?
Doorway, Schull
Neighbours

In his book, West of West, published in 1990, Brian Lalor captures my own experience growing up in a sea of grey. He says:

The nineteenth-century photographs of villages and farms show an unrelieved grimness of stone, cement and clay. Whitewash relieves this picture, though frequently this rendering has degenerated into a leprous greyness indicative of neither hope no prosperity. Colour has a symbolic relationship with the state of economics in rural Ireland. The last 20 years have seen the introduction of modern synthetics, bringing vivid tones not previously to be found here. Affluence and the EC have brought, as to the Aegean, a flight from the spartan virtues of white and cream…

Whatever the reason – prosperity, a sense of fun, a wish to lighten the spirits, the influence of the Tidy Towns Competition, an affinity with the colours of the wildflowers in the hedgerows, competition with the neighbours, the need to describe how to identify a house when street numbers are confusing or absent – I am grateful for it. It’s one of the things that makes rural Ireland unique and charming – and it feeds my soul.

Airborne, Schull

Airborne, Schull

The Gables of Ballydehob

The Gables of Ballydehob