Jean Reinhardt's Blog, page 7

Thursday Doors – The Old Church

The old church in the grounds of Glenmona House, Cushendun is the main feature of this week’s Thursday Doors post. Constructed in 1838, it was a Church of Ireland place of worship for some local landlords and their families and built of locally quarried red sandstone. Because the congregation dwindled over the years, the church was deconsecrated in 2003 and is now an arts, heritage and community centre.  After thirteen long years of campaigning, lobbying, application forms and hiccups, restoration began in autumn 2018, and the keys were handed over to the dedicated volunteer group, Cushendun Building Preservation Trust, in July 2019. I’ll put a link at the end of this post if you would like to see the interior and read more of the history.* 

You can see from the next photograph how close Glenmona House is to the church. I think the large circular object in the foreground might have been a fountain or a sundial at one time.

At the edge of the grounds around the house you can see some cute little holiday pods that look right at home surrounded by all those trees.

I found a smaller, even cuter, wee house attached to one of the trees and had to include it in this post.

It’s called a beach hut for good reason. You’ll see why in the next image.

That’s the view across the road, with a nice little beach just a stone’s throw away.

Thanks for stopping by this week. Dan’s post has links to lots of interesting places that are great to visit virtually in this time of restricted travel. Next week’s Thursday Doors will feature a variety of buildings not too far from the old church.

The Old Church *

Thursday Doors – Glenmona Lodge, Antrim

This week’s Thursday Doors features Glenmona Lodge, one of the old estate houses in Cushendun, County Antrim. They must have really liked arches to have five of them on the main entrance.

I love the dark grey framing the windows and how there are even more arches on the side entrance. It would have been so nice to see the inside of this big old house.

There’s a polytunnel in the distance so I think the garden is still in use.

I would love french doors to my own garden but I need lots of light coming into the house so patio doors it will have to be.

Thanks for joining me this week, Dan has lots of interesting places to visit from all over the world on his blog. Next week my Thursday Doors will feature more photographs and a bit of history from the County Antrim estate, Glenmona Lodge.

Thursday Doors – Family Time

Family Time may seem a strange title for a Thursday Doors post but in these days of restricted travel and intermittent lockdowns spending time with loved ones is a rare occurrence. In December, when there was some freedom of travel for a limited period, we were very fortunate to spend time with children and grandchildren. Nobody was sick, thank goodness, so we headed up north on a long overdue trip. Our daughter’s cosy little rental cottage is where we stayed, right next to the family home. It was so good to stock up on lots of hugs from our grandchildren and to explore some lovely County Antrim scenery that I hadn’t experienced before.

My daughter brought me to one of her favourite places and when I saw these old circular pillars I knew we were in for a treat. A walk through some beautiful native woodland lay ahead. Ireland is full of stone walls and pillars, as it was a great way to create boundaries using material that was readily available while clearing rocky fields.

It wasn’t long before we reached the woodland trail and found some information about the area. In the distant past, oak woods were abundant in the north-east area of Antrim but the trees were gradually felled for timber and to clear the land for farming. Breen Oakwood nature reserve is one of a few remaining segments of what used to be extensive native woodlands. Nice to see that it’s home to lots of red squirrels.

Thanks to my daughter I had a fabulous walk in this beautiful nature reserve. Interestingly, Breen is my mother’s maiden name so I really felt at home there.

We didn’t see any red squirrels on our walk but there’s no shortage of them at my daughter’s house. Here’s one cheeky wee fella poking his head through the open window, enjoying a snack. There are deer, foxes, rabbits and buzzards to be seen, too, in the fields and woods around the garden. If you’re planning a trip to Northern Ireland and the Antrim coast and glens, a few days spent in the cottage surrounded by nature with the beach and town close by, is only a click away. Let’s hope that tourists will be able to visit at some point this year. I’ll leave a link at the end of this post.*

Hopefully, you’re feeling energized after our short virtual hike through the woods. I really enjoyed Thursday Doors hunting for this post as it involved spending precious time with family, and if you carry on over to Dan’s blog you’ll find lots more places to explore.

Cosy Cottage on the Causeway Coast and Glens – airbnb *

Cosy Cottage on the Causeway Coast and Glens – booking.com *

Thursday Doors – A Mystery

There’s a bit of a mystery about this week’s Thursday Doors post. I remember the road I was on when I took some drive by shots of this old ruined castle but I’m not sure which county I was in at the time. However that’s not the mystery I have in mind right now. I also managed to capture a pretty clear image of this old thatch being repaired. Or maybe it’s a brand new one, I’m not sure, but that’s not the mystery either.

At this time of year I love watching leafless treelines in the distance as we travel on our journey (don’t worry, I’m always the passenger in the car). I usually see familiar shapes and can let my imagination run wild, like in this next image I was sure there was at least one building. If you look long enough you might even see two but it’s just trees and hedges – so no mystery about that.

The mystery I’m referring to in this post is about a man called Robert Emmet. This beautiful old barge that has been moored at the local marina over the winter bears his name. The disappearance of his body is one of Ireland’s most intriguing historical mysteries.

Robert Emmet was an Irish patriot and orator who was tried and hanged in 1803 at the age of twenty-five for instigating an ill-fated rebellion. These are the most well known words from his speech in the dock: “Let them and me rest in obscurity and peace, and my name remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written.”

Emmet came from a wealthy Presbyterian, Anglo-Irish family who sympathized with Irish Catholics and Protestant Dissenters. The unjust penal laws (which discriminated against non-Anglicans, mostly Catholics and Presbyterians) were still in force in Ireland in the early 1800s. On January 1st 1801, in the wake of the failed United Irishmen Rebellion of 1798, the Irish Parliament was abolished and Ireland became part of a new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland by way of the 1800 Act of Union. The promise that these unjust laws would be abolished with this Act was not put into practice and caused a lot of anger and resentment.

Following the uprising of 1798, Emmet was involved in reorganising the defeated United Irish Society, which led to his arrest in 1799. He escaped to mainland Europe in the hope of securing French military aid but his efforts were unsuccessful. In 1803 Emmet organised a short-lived unsuccessful rebellion which led to him going on the run. He came out of hiding to meet his fiancee, Sarah Curran, but an informer betrayed him and Emmet was promptly arrested and sentenced to death for high treason.

After he was publicly hanged outside Saint Catherine’s Church in Dublin, on September 20th 1803, Robert Emmet was decapitated and his head displayed to the crowd by the hangman. Because his family and friends were either under arrest or feared for their lives, no one came to claim his body. It is thought that his remains were interred by the authorities in a paupers’ burial site known as Bully’s Acre, in the grounds of what is now the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. Another theory is that when it was safe to do so, some of his friends discreetly moved his body to another church in Dublin, St Michan’s, which was associated with the United Irishmen. There is a plain headstone without inscription in the church’s cemetery, which is said to mark the grave of Robert Emmet. However, this has never been verified.

There is another theory that Robert Emmet’s final resting place is Saint Paul’s in Dublin. Excavations that took place there in 1903 revealed a coffin with an unregistered headless body in a vault with five other registered bodies. It’s worth noting that this vault was the property of Doctor Edward Trevor, the prison physician in Kilmainham Gaol during Emmet’s incarceration there. Those who believe this theory feel that the British authorities had Robert’s remains secretly placed there to prevent his grave from becoming a shrine to the republican movement.

Many historians believe that Emmet was secretly reinterred in the family crypt in Saint Peter’s Church, Dublin in 1804, under the cover of his sister’s burial. In 1903, on the centenary of his execution, his great-nephew, Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, requested an archaeological dig at the church to finally solve the mystery of the whereabouts of his ancestor’s grave. Disappointingly, the results were inconclusive.

In the early 1960s a headless skeleton was discovered in an old churchyard in Blennerville, County Kerry. Twenty years later, a skull was inadvertently dug up during a tidy up of the churchyard by the local community. It was in a mahogany box with brass handles. This led to speculation that it was the match for the headless body and that both were likely to belong to Robert Emmet. The box and skull were placed back in the ground where they had been discovered, without any tests being carried out. Emmet’s mother, Elizabeth Mason, was born in County Kerry and had many connections with prominent local people at the time. Some of these families had crypts in the same churchyard where the box and skull was found. This may have fuelled the legend that her son’s headless body was transported to County Kerry by a certain Patrick McMahon. Unfortunately, the whereabouts of Robert Emmet’s grave is still a mystery today.

I was intrigued by the verse on the side of the barge and looked it up. The words are taken from The Boatmen that are Gone, a song written by Kit Ennis, who was a lock keeper in the 1920s. It laments their passing as you can see from another verse.

With hearts within their bosom that knew no art or guile
With honest faces that always bore a kindly welcome smile
Hearts that will never beat again, may the clay lie lightly on
Those poor toil worn bodies of the boatmen that are gone
Their lonesome cold and bitter life with cheerful hearts they bore
And for their loved ones left at home no men could suffer more
‘Till Saint Michael sounds his final call we cannot look upon
The faces of those friends of ours the boatmen that are gone.*

I hope you enjoyed this week’s Thursday Doors and its mystery, thanks for stopping by and don’t forget to pay a visit to Dan’s blog, too.

Link to the rest of the The Boatmen song.*

Thursday Doors – Edgeworthstown

This week’s Thursday Doors features Edgeworthstown in County Longford. There are some interesting murals on the walls of a car park, painted by artist Phil Atkinson, depicting the family the town is named after. One of its members was an inventor, another a writer. Richard Lowell Edgeworth was born in Bath, England in 1744 and taken to Edgeworthstown when he was three years of age. He was an inventor and an educationalist who carried out extensive repairs and renovations to the family mansion, built by his father in the mid 1720s.

Many labour-saving devices were invented and installed in the house, including sideboards on wheels, leather straps to prevent doors banging and even a water pump which automatically dispensed a half-penny to beggars for each half-hour they worked it. This was perhaps more successful than Richard’s attempt at building a wooden horse that would be able to jump over the stone walls of the locality. I’ll put some links at the end of this post if you would like to read more about this inventive man and his family history.*

Richard Edgeworth was married four times and had over twenty children. His eldest daughter, Marie, never married. She had a lot of acquaintances in literary and scientific circles and Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austen were admirers of her writing. Between 1809 and 1812 she published her Tales of Fashionable Life in six volumes. They include one of her best novels, The Absentee, which focused attention on a great contemporary abuse in Irish society: absentee English landowning. A sample of some of Marie’s work is included in the murals.**

The area’s original name was the Irish ‘Meathas Troim’ which was anglicized to ‘Mostrim’. In 1935 Longford County Council officially changed the town’s name to Mostrim but in 1974, a local government order reverted the name back to Edgeworthstown. Today, both names are in use.

If only that car had been parked somewhere else but at least you can still the beauty of this building with its lovely yellow door. Thank you for visiting this week. Along with my Thursday Doors of Edgeworthstown there are links to lots of interesting places over on Dan’s blog.

Richard Lowell Edgeworth*

Marie Edgeworth**

Thursday Doors – Limerick City

King John’s Castle Limerick

I love castles and had planned a Thursday Doors tour of King John’s Castle in Limerick city for 2020. Unfortunately, it was a year of travel restrictions and lock downs, which meant the castle was closed to the public. Over the holiday period in December there was a bit more freedom and we took that opportunity to visit our youngest, who is in college in the city and lives there most of the year. Although I couldn’t take a tour of the castle I did manage to snap a few shots from the outside. It’s pretty impressive.

A large, colourful mural near the castle caught my attention.

The style of this painting looked familiar and an online search told me this was the work of Aches, the artist who painted the large Sharkey mural featured on my series of posts during the Seek Arts Festival in Dundalk last year. It’s a tribute to Dolores O’Riordan (1971-2018) who died tragically, far too young. She was an Irish singer/songwriter, lead vocalist and lyricist for the alternative rock band The Cranberries. To the right of the photo you can see the back of a statue. It’s a sculpture of Michael Hogan, the bard of Thomond. (1826-1899). Speaking of bards, Limerick gives its name to the limerick a popular five line humorous poem, thought to be derived from the 18th century, Maigue Poets of Croom, Co. Limerick.

Crossing the bridge at John’s Castle.More doors than windows.Old stone walls everywhere.Lots of old redbrick buildings, too.It looks like they sell more than lawnmowers.A typical residential street in the city.

At some stage this year I hope to be back for a tour of King John’s castle so keep an eye out for that post. Thank you for joining me on this short tour of Limerick city and if you’d like to see some interesting places around the world, have a look at this week’s Thursday Doors post from Dan.

Thursday Doors – First of 2021

Welcome to the first Thursday Doors post of 2021. Knowing we were in for more travel restrictions I took advantage of the window of opportunity we had in December and paid some visits to family and captured images for my weekly blog, too. This first one is of the Cooley Mountains as seen from Blackrock, County Louth. When I think of the seaside village where I was born this is what always comes to mind, with its ever changing light and colours. I’ve also used it as a setting in a few of my books.

Just a couple of miles up the road is the town of Dundalk, which I’ve featured many times on this blog. On every visit I find something different to photograph.

This is the rear of St. Patrick’s Church (also called a pro cathedral). I’ve featured the front in some previous posts but never the back. It was opened for worship in 1842 but wasn’t completed until much later as work came to a halt during the Great Hunger, resuming in 1860. The church was designed by the architect Thomas Duff, who modeled the interior on Exeter Cathedral and the exterior on King’s College Chapel, both located in England. My grandmother often sang solo there at the request of Michael Van Dessel, a famous organist in Ireland in her day. In the 1920’s he settled in Dundalk when he was offered permanent employment as organist in St. Patrick’s. It was at a time when Belgium was in ruins after the first world war and the churches there could not afford to pay wages to their organists. Van Dessel was not only famous for his playing of church music. He wrote many lovely pieces for his own choir, which was made up of talented local singers.

Not too far from St. Patrick’s (you can see it in the distance in this image) is the main indoor shopping area or mall. Although it’s fairly new, the style is in keeping with the older architecture of the town and blends in very well.

There are also old buildings with new additions. It’s nice when the original has been preserved, as I prefer the older part myself.

Just before the sun went down I took a photo of the main street in Blackrock, as the lights were coming on.

This bar is managing to keep a little bit of business going by serving take-away tea and coffee at a time when many hospitality businesses are struggling to stay afloat.

Recently, some new street art has been added to the town of Dundalk in the form of local sayings. When I get a chance to travel again, I’ll take some photos of them but in the meantime here’s one I managed to capture from the car as we drove by. It’s a good one to end this post on as I am well and truly ‘away’ now.

It was lovely to have you with me for my first blog post of the year. Dan has a great mix of Thursday Doors over on his blog, with links to some more first posts of 2021 from around the world.

Thursday Doors – Memories of 2020

This will be my last Thursday Doors post of the year so I thought some my favourite memories of 2020 would be a nice way to finish what has been a very strange year. Our host, Dan, suggested we compile a list chosen from the past twelve months of Thursday Doors posts so here are my choices. The first one is from a blogpost at the beginning of 2020, when we still had our lovely little Tino with us. This puzzle is special to me not just because it features some very nice doors but I had some help with it from my canine friend.

The next couple of photos were taken at the Cavan County Museum and were part of a series of Thursday Doors over quite a few weeks. There was so much to see there and I particularly liked this exhibit where I took a step back in time and became immersed in the early nineteen hundreds.

Another Thursday Doors series that I really enjoyed putting together was the Seek Art Festival in Dundalk. It was fascinating to watch the progress of the large wall murals as the artists worked on them every day for a week.

A place where I did a lot of foraging for wild garlic, hawthorn, elderflower and lots of other goodies is Castle Saunderson. Walking through the grounds is so relaxing and it’s a lovely place to get some exercise and fresh air.

This next door is a big favourite of mine mostly because of the entrance. It’s the old town hall in Cavan and is now an arts centre. I love the stonework and the inscription over the doorway tells us a little of its history.

You might be wondering what a large deer has to do with my Thursday Doors memories of 2020. This photo was taken at Rosepark Farm and was the last time I saw some of my grandchildren this year, many months ago. The photographs connected to this day out mean a lot to me and I did find some teeny tiny doors there, too.

A meet up at Castle Archdale in the summer with my other grandchildren gave me some nice memories to hold onto when we were seperated by a second lockdown. Some of the doors in this courtyard were decorated with the portraits of servants who may have answered a knock in times gone by.

With so many great examples of doors in Dundalk it was difficult to make a choice. I finally decided on a modern door that reflected some of the local history and an old door that was part of that history.

How could I end this post without including a photo of Belturbet Marina and its array of boats and barges. Some of my favourite doors throughout the year have been on the water.

Dan has a selection of his favourites over on his blog this week. Thank you so much for keeping me company for this past year of Thursday Doors and sharing my memories of 2020, I hope you have a peaceful, safe transition into 2021.

Thursday Doors – The Marina

This week’s Thursday Doors is all about Belturbet’s marina. It’s a good way to follow up on the past couple of posts about the barracks wall, as they run alongside each other. There are boats of all shapes and sizes to be found.

Some even have doors, which is a good thing for a Thursday Doors post.

Others may not have any doors but they add a nice splash of colour to the marina.

Then there’s the water fowl, always present but no swans on this day, unfortunately.

Just a short post this time, thanks for stopping by the marina, Dan has some interesting Thursday Doors over on his blog.

Thursday Doors – Follow the Wall

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Continuing our walk from last week, along the boundary walls of the old military barracks, we come to one of two entrances. Nowadays, they lead us into a large green area with a children’s playground and picnic tables dotted around the perimeter.

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The walls enclose a pretty large community park with exercise equipment positioned at various intervals. I can imagine the sound of soldiers footsteps stomping up the stone steps in this next image.

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If we walk across the grass to a higher level we can see the rear of one of the original houses that is still lived in. I think this may have been the field officer’s residence. The second entrance gate that leads onto Barrack Hill is on the bottom right of the photo below.

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Here’s a closer look. On a sunny day it’s a lovely place to sit and soak up some rays.

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Next we have some more exercise equipment which can be difficult to use depending on how much you weigh. You lift your own weight when you push out those bars.

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Of course, back in the old days you could get a similar workout while performing a necessary task. This old pump would have been used a lot, I imagine.

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On the exterior of these walls are narrow slits which I presume were for pointing rifles through. I wonder if the stone jutting out from some of them was for resting weapons on, although it looks like it’s for drainage now as the earth is banked up much higher on the other side.

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I bet a fair amount of potatoes were used daily to feed so many men and this horse drawn digger was probably how they were harvested.

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There’s a print of an old postcard of the barracks on one of the walls. You can see from it just how little of the original buildings remain but most of the boundary wall is still there.

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The next photograph appears to have been taken from across the river. I can’t believe how wide it was back then and how close it was to the barrack’s wall.

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The occupants of the barracks weren’t always armed with rifles. Other weapons would have been used, too. The history of this place goes way back.

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Around 1660 the first military barracks was built in Belturbet on the opposite side of the river. There is still a building on that site, Riverdale House, which is now a family residence. Some of the older houses on that side of town were originally built for soldiers. In 1753 a larger cavalry barracks was constructed, the one we have been exploring over the past two blog posts. It was occupied up to the 1900’s. The sword in the image above was found in a row of houses known as The Lawn. They were built to accommodate officers from the barracks. An internal door connected the houses to each other allowing an escape route in case of attack. It’s said that a long tunnel led to the barracks but I don’t know where that is now.

In time, the barracks housed both cavalry and infantry and in later years it served as an artillery barracks. From what I could find out, it was built to accommodate 1 field officer, 6 officers, 156 NCOs and privates and 101 horses. However in December 1837 there were only 3 officers, no field officer, 40 NCOs and privates and 41 horses.

Thanks so much for walking the wall with me on this week’s Thursday Doors, if you carry on over to Dan’s blog (our new host) you’ll find some interesting locations to explore.