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Looking on the bright side - reflecting on the hell of post-Famine evictions and workhouses
Posted on Friday, June 17, 2011 at 09:19 AM
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I sipped an espresso from the small cafe behind me and looked down the floral path leading into the center of a walled garden that has become a major tourist attraction in the West Clare town. It was a long time before the reality of where I was, in historic terms, struck me like a bucket of cold water.
Down that very path, into the very same garden, the cruel Lord Hector Vandeleur walked with his agents away back in the post-Famine era, when his family owned the town, and planned the mass evictions of sick and starving tenants from his estates in an episode which is indelibly marked not just into Kilrush history, but nationally too.
In savage strikes against a peasantry stricken with cholera and hunger and plague, he walked down that path of beauty and planned the evictions of no less than 20,000 tenants in two or three years.
Given the subsequent horrific mortality rate in the Kilrush Workhouse, Lord Hector effectively murdered tens of thousands as his lovely garden bloomed inside the sun-warmed walls.
History strode forward a long way since then. At the entrance to the Vandeleur Gardens on the
edge of Kilrush there is now a plaque dedicating the development of the walled garden to the memory of the victims of those evictions.
The people own the garden again through their local authority, Lord Hector has long since stood before his Maker (and clearly been evicted into hell!), and peace on a summer day in 2011 comes dropping slowly and warmly and sweetly as small children play among the trees and flowers, and an old man at the next table says to me, in relation to the evictions, that we might be in a recession but we don't know at all what real suffering is like.
And, says he, the sun is free.
And, says he after another while, maybe there is even a brighter side to recessions like this one.
"We had lost the run of ourselves once we got a few bob in our pockets with the Celtic Tiger. We have had to get our feet back on the ground again and a lot of that is good,” he said.
“In the good times we got selfish. We forgot about our neighbors. We lost our sense of
community. We went crazy altogether.
“We are learning our lesson now. I had to close my business and I lost money but damn, I'm not starving either. I'm a lot better off than the poor bastards that had to take to the coffin ships in those times if they did not die of hunger behind a hedge before that!"
As he went away, still a sprightly man, he left me with the reflection that he spoke a lot of truth.
Things are hard now here, unemployment, rising emigration levels, deep bitterness against both the banks and the politicians. Everybody is feeling the pinch except the very wealthy like Lord Hector who are always insulated against recessions.
But, in truth, in social rather than economic terms, people have become more caring and neighborly towards each other. There is a growing sense of the necessity to pull together for the common good.
The grass roots are stronger. Like him, and about everybody else, I've lost a lot of work in the last couple of years but, thank God, I'm not starving either.
Cloth is being cut to the measure everywhere nowadays in Ireland. In the countryside there is a growing sense of being just about able to cope.
And there is a strange kind of satisfaction in that too. And in helping others in the small ways that matter between Monday and Friday.
Meanwhile, heading into the summer in Clare and the region generally, the countryside is unbelievably beautiful. Some of the luxuriance is likely due to the sun-drenched spring that made us forget the harsh winter before that.
It’s as if the resilient Mother Earth is showing us how to recover and thrive again. And all of that is free. Just like the sun.
There are brighter sides. A neighbor who loves his pint told me lately that he now visits the pub only once a week rather than the twice or thrice of the good old days.
And he says he drinks only two pints now instead of the three or four he used to have.
And he said he relishes those two slow pints far more nowadays than the careless ones he drank before! And he has stopped smoking!
The western summer circle begins again. The great fair of Spancil Hill is almost upon us again.
The Willie Clancy Summer School is only a good long blast of reels away. The hurling and football championships are well into their stride.
Kerry and Dublin and Cork footballers are looking good. Tyrone is on a winning run up in the North, the beautiful pod of dolphins are now enchanting all the visitors to the Shannon Estuary as they gambol and play where once the coffin ships sailed.
Can I please go away for my pint now?
See more: Roses flaunted themselves and quiet little edelweiss blooms were heading towards their pure white flowerings in the Kilrush garden I sat in the other afternoon amid scenes of unbelievable summer beauty on the Clare coastI sipped an espresso from the small cafe behind me and looked down the floral path leading into the center of a walled garden that has become a major tourist attraction in the West Clare town It was a long time before the reality of where I was, in historic terms, struck me like a bucket of cold water
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Towngate | Jun 21, 2011, 07:01 AM EDT
Begob,Cormac, I hope yeh wrote this article in a cupboard for fear of upsettin' yer Dutch wife) with your slaggin' off of her fellow-countryman Lord Vandeluer! Although the family was not English you like to lump the evictions along with British 'evils' when they were a tragic but brief event which occured: ~ as the local priests stood by wringing their hands ~ in the running of their Estate over a period of 113 years. You omit all the benefits they brought to the area. The evictions were not any worst than those of 'Rebel Heroine'Countess Markewitz's Father! The Clare County Library is proud to possess the Vandeleur Family Bequest for all to see.
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themurphia | Jun 20, 2011, 12:03 PM EDT
johnshiel:could you post a link to the photo?
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johnshiel | Jun 20, 2011, 10:46 AM EDT
it's funny how hedgerow schools came up here, even tho not mentioned by Cormac. They are an enduring image. I saw and photo'd a beautiful mural of a hedgerow school, painted in Ardoyne neighborhood, Belfast in '03. The width of a rowhouse end, it showed a green attired headmaster sitting under a tree before his troupe of barefoot scholars. One boy was standing, scratching his head in obvious confusion. The Gaelic caption to the mural was translated for me as "Say it in Gaelic". As an Irish American, I felt this was a real zinger image. Those murals are some of my best memories of visiting in Belfast the first time; thanks, Mickey, for the fine walkaround tour that sunny February morn!
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themurphia | Jun 19, 2011, 11:03 AM EDT
The 'master' will correct me if I am wrong but the origin of the hedge school is in the Penal Laws of the 1690's. Following the Battle of the Boyne no Catholic was allowed to become a teacher or give instruction.Catholics were forbidden from educating their children or setting up schools.This was to prevent Catholics from becoming too knowledgable and risk posing a threat to the Crown.To overcome this the Sciolleanna Scairte were set up to teach Catholic children the three 'R's' some also taught Greek and Latin. Hedge schools awere often called after the 'master' who taught in them. After the repeal of the penal laws in 1840's Many hedgeschools continued in makeshift buildings cowshed barns and some were constructed from sods of turf by the families.
This would make a nice little project for children of Irish descent to learn a little more about their history and their heritage.
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McClusky | Jun 17, 2011, 09:44 PM EDT
A beautiful article. My ancestor, George Hodges, was born in Kilrush. In 1851, his widow, Mary, and their three grown children, Jane, William, and George, came to America.
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jnewnam | Jun 17, 2011, 09:17 PM EDT
Mr. MacConnell: You truly write beautifully. This was a pleasure to read. Since people are hurting here (USA) too, one radio well listened to personality is urging the same sentiments as expressed above. Be prepared for the oncoming economic collapse by praying more, storing food, helping your neighbor, using less, and seeking out the best things in life which are free.
I wish you would do a story on the Hedgerow Schools in Ireland. My mother in law whose mother grew up in Ireland, spoke of them often. She as well as most Irish Americans valued education above all things. I think the Hedgerow Schools came about when the English banned educating the Irish. When my mother in law and father in law visited Ireland they toured and took pictures of cemetery grave markers (dead relatives and family school headmasters) and crumbling former family 'estates'. Once an Irish family member tells you a story about the old country they are likely to tell it a thousand times. I suspect that my in laws were tracking those memories through the cemeteries, churches and the sodded ground of Ireland.
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rosyposy | Jun 17, 2011, 06:00 PM EDT
it would do us all no harm to cut down : and the best things in life are free .
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irishman6 | Jun 17, 2011, 01:34 PM EDT
It is proven once again that PMA (positive mental attitude) can help with all things in life.
Enjoy your pint!
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