Apology - injury lack of posts

So, here I am with this blog that I started off with so many hopes for - problem is that in January 2011 I had an accident with a brain bleed and I ended up in hospital and the nice people there did lots of stuff to keep me alive. They kept me unconscious for two weeks and then from the time I woke up it's all just been about getting better.................

Well, I'll never be the Jane I was before I fell - but wow it is so fantastic that I have made the recovery I have. Back in November I gave a talk at the Clare Roots Society Genealogy conference along with John Grenham and Jim Herlihy. Tonight, I gave a talk in Dublin at the launch of the Mac-Aodha-Keys Family History book, there were people there from the USA, from Australia and it was such a lovely evening. I felt so bad physically when I got up today I spent the whole day thinking I'm not going to go to Dublin, but then I did and even though the only person I knew was my friend who had asked me to talk, I had such a wonderful evening and my talk went so well.

So, outside of that, I think maybe it's time to begin taking notice of this blog. I do have tons and tons of photos that I could put on here going with my Sites and Sights tagline and maybe over the next few days I'll begin to pull some of them. I think though, if I was really to bring this site back to 'working', I should head off over to Dunamase and take some photos. Dunamase is one place in Ireland that tourists should come to visit, I describe it as the Laois 'Rock of Cashel' - thing is though, the Rock of Cashel stands nowhere compared to Dunamase

Wondering and Wandering: Ireland Day 1 - County Laois

Wondering and Wandering: Ireland Day 1 - County Laois

Wondering and Wandering: Ireland Day 1 - County Laois

Well even if I'm not doing much on my various blog pages, I am keeping an eye out for blogs relating to County Laois and Irish Genealogy and I came across this one today. Nice photos. Wonder where the hotel is though!

Wondering and Wandering: Ireland Day 1 - County Laois

I'd forgotten all about this photo! I've photographed thousands upon thousands of gravestones, lots covered with ivy or trees growing around them so you can't read them and this is the only one with a tree coming out of it's head (in a manner of speaking!)

Anyone know what this is?

Anyone have an idea as to what this little fellow is? Found him in my mothers back garden in June of 2006. I've tried the various books I have but haven't managed to find anything like him and I can honestly say I never saw anything like him before or since! I thought I'd lost the photo until I found it buried in an old folder today

Garnish island in Glengarriff and taken from around Bocarnagh which is a few miles out of Glengarriff village. Garnish is beautiful and years ago when you'd drive into Glengarriff there would be lots of men just trying to get you to go out to the island on their boats. These days, you never see them anymore. The whole village is very different to the way it was 20 years ago.

Years ago, you wouldn't have seen the mussle rafts or lines in this photo, but they are there - lots of them.

Glengarriff is in Bantry Bay and Bantry mussles are exported all over the world

Gravestones

These stones are in an old graveyard in Portlaoise and are used as stepping stones! I wonder if they've ever been transcribed?

A seashell :-)

Not any old seashell and not found by the sea - well, not really

Close to........but up a mountain! How it got there - no-one knows, but probably carried by a bird.

Still, it was a sight to see, enough to make me take a photo of it.

The mountain - we were taking one of the walks down round Glengarriff, down the Glen as it would be called locally. Absolutely beautiful walks down there, and the whole place is kept so well - and signposted. Maggie (my Boxer) just loved those walks, and Glengarriff - everywhere around it is so beautiful and so peaceful.

Anyway, there we were on one of the long walks, one which takes you way way up high so you can see miles around and then there was this shell lying off the path. It's a very old limpet and it's been there a long time, or maybe not exactly where I saw it, maybe buried and now or then uncovered. Maybe I'll never see it again when I take that particular walk.

But, as I say, it was a sight to see, so far from and yet so close to where it should have been - so unusual in the place it was in and so very high up, away from the sea

Roads

This photo is quite old now - the road isn't open yet, but this section of it is finished.

Part of the new Dublin to Cork road - soon, we'll be going from Dublin to Cork in about two hours, well, maybe a bit longer! It'll be motorway all the way and no sights to be seen en route

Castle or Church?

We have all kinds of castles in Ireland, from the tiny to the large. The large mind you have tended to survive a bit better than the small ones though. Earlier this week, I was out after a church marked on the Ordnance Survey map, the county I was in doesn't matter, 'cos I could have found what I did find anywhere in Ireland. This particular church was close to an old castle, ok, ses I to myself, should be easy enough to find. Not so! Sometimes, when looking for these 'buildings' or remnants of, you don't see them very easily, you have to keep an eye out for the markers - the walls, the Yew trees or - the ivy! Ivy is a great thing for covering these old buildings, it just loves them to bits - and literally to bits. So, after walking through a totally overgrown lane which I was sure was going to bring me to my destination but ended up as a dead end, I took to the fields and this is what I eventually found - or rather the first of my photos, once I saw this I knew I had found something. But what is that something - the church or the castle?! Later on, I did work out which structure, but this is the kind of thing we find when looking for these type of old structures. The kind which won't be there any more in a few years, thanks to the ivy.
I have more photos taken on the search for this site on my Graveyard blog at

Irish Graveyard Place/

Rain, rain and more rain

Left home the other week to go do some gravestone hunting. Weather was grand when I left, half an hour later there was little to be seen!

Took a photo of the 'non-sight!'

Stalactites & Stalagmites!!

These are found in caves or caverns - but here are some beautiful stalagtites out in the open air! The stalagmites were also there, but not properly formed yet

Maybe they're called something else when they aren't in caves or caverns?

These are in the window of an old church, initially, I thought someone had lit a candle in the window because that's what the stalagmites to be looked like, just the same as a melted candle, only they were cold and hard to touch - like rock. That's when I looked up and saw the stalactites

St. Fintan's Holy Well, Cromogue, Co. Laois

Still in Co. Laois and this time I did find a Holy Well - St. Fintan's Well, close to Cromogue in Laois and it has to be one of the best maintained Holy Wells I've ever seen. It's off a little road off another litte road - the road it is on is one of those with the grass growing in the middle, hedges growing well on either side and then all of a sudden you come to this hedge which is trimmed to either side of a little green and white gate.

More little hedges inside the gate, you can just see them in this photo behind the statues at the well.

It's really pretty and neat and so hidden away. Absolutely well worth a visit just to see it. The water in the well itself is probably not more than a foot deep and is crystal clear.

Cromogue would be between Shanahoe and Raheen and not even that far from Abbeyleix

Attanagh - pronounciation?!!

Attanagh is really such a pretty place and yesterday when I was there a friend called me. I said "I'm in a graveyard in Attanagh", pronouncing the word "Att an ah".

Now, I don't have a Laois accent, I went to live there when I was about 10 and whilst I went to boarding school in Kilkenny my accent is not the same as that of people brought up in the area all of their lives. I don't have a strong accent of any sort (or so I'm told) and then neither does my friend have a strong Laois/Kilkenny accent either. This difference is more about the way names can be pronounced - where we put the emphasis if we do

So, the friend asked "Where did you say". I replied - you know, Att an ah - a really pretty place off the Kilkenny to Durrow road. "You mean A *tan* ah, " said my friend with real emphasis on the tan part of the name.

Anyway - A tan ah or At tan ah or Att an ah, however anyone would pronounce it is really very pretty. I remember first going there years ago before I knew anything about civil parishes and I didn't know which civil parish I was in, matter of fact, I didn't even know which county. I knew I was somewhere close to the Kilkenny / Laois border and it was the graveyards of County Laois I was transcribing and I had been coming from co. Kilkenny and somewhere quite close to Attanagh I'd seen a signpost welcoming me to County Laois. So, I transcribed it.

Since I came to know more about Irish genealogy and these two counties in particular, I know that the civil parish of Attanagh spreads through the two counties. St. Brigid's Church in Attanagh, belonged to the Union of Killermogh, Diocese of Ossory, so we're really talking Laois, but the people buried there were mainly from nearby Ballyragget or other parts of Kilkenny. The village of Attanagh is in Co. Kilkenny. I know that cos it looks this way on a map, and my friend said that her mother used to go to Ladyswell in Attanagh, Co. Kilkenny to get Holy Water.

I didn't find a signpost leading to a Holy Well, but maybe next time I go back there I will

St. Mary's Kilkenny

I was in Kilkenny this morning and walking my dog in a small little park and noticed that from the end of the park I had a full view of St. Mary's Cathedral and I wondered to myself whether tourists ever went into the park and had the same view as myself.
People always try to take photos from the front, but there, they have to take them from the street and then there are always cars parked in front of the cathedral and on the street and moving through so I don't think anyone can ever get a full view shot.

So, this is one. Admittedly, without the doors!

This is or was the workhouse hospital in Portlaoise. These days, I'm not sure what it is. Weddings are held in the civil office here so it is a government building. The old mental hospital is beside it and a church and then Portlaoise prison is across the road. Can't remember when I took this photo

The 'Garda' post............. you used to see them all over the place, then we went through a phase (may still be going through it!) where there wasn't a garda in the smaller towns at night, only 9-5 daytime! Anyway, I don't notice these posts very often these days - and this one, it was outside a building which I think was a pre-fab down in Tipperary

and then this house - it's on the road to Drum in County Tipperary, except I can't remember where I was coming from to get to Drum!! Somewhere else in Tipperary I suppose.

This would actually have been a decent sized house when you think of it, probably a 2nd Class house by the 1901 & 1911 census standards - it has four windows, probably three rooms inside and the roof was thatched.

The old houses always make me stop to think about who lived in them and where they went to - did they just go up the road to a new house or emigrate. This one though, it's right beside the school house in Bilboa, Co. Carlow so I think it was probably the School Masters House. Lots of times the Master or Mistress (usually Master) lived in a house right beside the school and this one looks as though it could be the right age. Pity to see it deserted now though and if this was a house in the city, there's be someone living in it.

I've got more photographs of the area on my web site at http://www.from-ireland.net/car/places/bilboa/index.htm and I will be putting the photographs of gravestones from the Church which is just up the road a bit from the school on line as soon as I get them indexed.

Pretty, isn't it? This is a shot taken from the bridge over the canal at Vicarstown Co. Laois (also known to some as Queen's County. Vicarstown is very close to County Kildare, and it's not big really - just a few houses and a pub on the edge of the canal with another one of the bridges I like so much over the canal. I think these barges would be for rent to people who want to take a little cruise along the canal during the summer months.
I remember as a child watching barges go through the various locks on a canal in County Kildare, it used to be such fun to watch. This whole area is lovely, the bridge is one of the twisty little ones, it's almost, but not quite the 'humpty' back bridge type that we'd love to drive over as children - you'd get bumped in the car. There are lovely walks along the canal here, and I think it's part of the Laois Heritgae area, if it's not, then it should be!