Wanderung 24

Spring Fling

From March to May 2011

Thursday April 21st: Kinsale, Ireland

Bob:

We took off after breakfast to drive down to Kinsale, where we found a parking space on the street right in front of the Visitor Information Centre!

Monika:

One last day in the footsteps of Bob's ancestors. Today we were going to Kinsale where Bob's great-grandmother Sarah was baptized and grew up. We had been there on our previous visit but felt that it was worth a second look. We found a parking space right by the harbor and first went to the tourist information.

Bob:

Walking uphill to St. Maltrose Anglican Church,we toured both it and the graveyard surrounding it on two sides, hoping to find some gravestones from my forebears.

The interior of St. Maltrose was as pretty as I remembered it from our previous visit to Ireland on Wanderung 9. The baptismal font where my great-grandmother may have been baptized was still there, and the stained glass windows showing sea scenes were as vivid as ever. It was truly reassuring to see that it had not changed at all in the 6 years or so since our last visit.

Monika:

After parking the car, we just started walking the charming, crooked streets of this old town up to St Maltrose, the 11th century church were Sarah, Bob's great-grandmother was baptized. It is a very simple old church with a beautiful old organ and a large, old cemetery around it.


 

Bob:

After touring the church, we wandered among the old, weathered gravestones in the graveyard that surrounded the church on two sides. We had hoped to find some gravestones from my forebears, but that was a long shot and we had no luck..

Monika:

We walked the cemetery for a while, trying to find any familiar sounding names. But about 30% of the stones were unreadable. Since for over 150 years no one of the family was around this area anymore, it is quite natural that any grave that existed from Sarah's parents was no longer recognizable, a pity.

Bob:

As we walked back to town we got separated. Monika and Lois had diverted into a St. Vincent Depaul store to find a used purse for Lois, but I didn't see them go in, so for me they just had disappeared when I looked back. I roamed down to the waterfront where I thought they were headed next and then criss-crossed the small downtown area a couple of times before I was flagged down by Lois near the parked car. Monika had been searching for me, which is our usual pattern, and when she rejoined us, we drove over to James Fort, the smaller, unrestored fort on one side of the peninsulas enclosing Kinsale's harbor.

As we walked up to the ramparts of the old fort, a Belgium gent with a geologic bent who had emigrated to Ireland a few years back, showed me a geode with beautiful smoky quartz crystals in it that was just lying in a pile of stones at the entrance. He encouraged me to take it with, which I did on the way back.

Although the interior ruins of St. James fort were locked up, the ramparts and grounds were open to the public and we all walked around the tumble-down walls surrounding the inner bastion. From the ramparts we had very pretty views of Kinsale and its harbor on one side, and the mouth of the river opening out into the Atlantic on the other side. Retrieving my geode along the way, we walked back to the car where I was slightly surprised to see two cars now sandwiching in our Getz in its none-too-legal parking space at the side of the road. I found myself doing the same thing in Ireland, which was to park right ahead or behind someone else on the side of the street and hope to heaven it was a legal parking area!

Monika:

But I had been told, that there was a Bullen memorial on the outskirts of Kinsale that contained a Bullen memorial - Sarah's mother came from the Bullen line. So maybe we could still find some ancestry grave. I had Googled the location and it was supposed to be on the other side of the entrance to the Kinsale harbor near James Fort.

James Fort is one of the two forts at the entrance to Kinsale harbor. Charles Fort on the other side had been restored and we had looked at it when we were here six years ago. Now we walked up to and around James Fort. It was fun seeing a non-touristy fort and the beautiful views of Kinsale we got from here.


 

Bob:

Just about a mile down the road from St. James Fort, I spied a tall wall of rough stone that I took to be the remains of a church wall or bell tower. It was just a single wall about 4 stories tall and looked very precarious as it was wider at the top than at the base and jutted straight up into the sky. I turned left at the next road up that hill and sure enough we found the ruins of old Ringrone church and its graveyard. I was incorrect in my initial perception because I think the ruins of the church were right beside the cemetery area whereas that high stone wall was over in the next field. Could it have been the remains of an ancient castle or something? Not sure!

But in any case we were there to find a memorial to the Bullen family that is part of my ancestry, and Monika just headed right over to a rather unique grave: the stone sarcophagus was built adjacent to the side wall of the church and the headstone was actually embedded in the wall just above the sarcophagus. Fortunately the wall of the church had held the headstone upright for almost 300 years and a lip of stone near the top of the headstone had diverted the rain and slowed the erosion to the extent that we could still read most of the inscription. If we puzzled it out correctly, it went like this:

"Here is the burying place (of) The Family of the Bullens of The Barony of Couic(u or y)s And Erected by (?) Edward John and Joseph Bullens This Seventeenth Day of December 1726. Here (lies the?) Body of ?????? Daughter of Francis Hodden Esq of HoddenField Esq Who Departed This Life the 27 Day of May 1796 in the 29 yeare of Life(?)"

Since above the inscription was a family crest, I think we did find the family monument of the Bullens, one of whose daughters had later married a Holmes who was in my direct family line. Since the folks in the tomb were my distant ancestors, I retrieved my new geode from the car and left it for them as a pretty thing to watch winking in the sunlight. Just for fun I also left one of my plastic-coated cards beside the tomb just to give my family ghosts something to think about and my email address if they want to contact me!

Monika:

Driving on, Bob spotted a ruin and we headed towards it. And there, indeed, was a cemetery and right in the wall of the overgrown ruins of the church was a big memorial, and the inscription was still legible. It definitely was the Bullen memorial. At last we had found tangible evidence of at least one branch of Bob's ancestors.

Bob:

We continued along the southern coast road westward to Clonakilty where we stopped for lunch in a pleasant cafe. I preferred the cafes to the pubs for luncheon in Ireland because the cafes typically offered a wider selection of food whereas bars emphasized fried fare. Also the cafes usually had a wall of windows opening out onto the street, which resulted in a "clean, well-lighted place" as Van Gogh might have said, rather than the dark, fusty interior of most of the pubs.

Monika:

The rest of the day was spent sightseeing. We drove along the coast to the little, scenic town of Clonakilty. There we had lunch at a little cafe. Bob got the last jacket potato, so I had hard boiled eggs and brown bread and a side order of chips. Lois enjoyed soup with brown bread and Rhubarb crumble with a large dollop of whipped cream for dessert.

When we all were well fed we took walk through the little town, enjoying the colorful facades and signs.


 

Bob:

During a walkabout afterwards, we found Clonakilty to be a thoroughly charming old Irish town with a small stream flowing through it and a set of stonework buildings that had been converted into a pedestrian "mall". The mall, a courtyard or old mews area, really, had several little shops including a music store complete with a cello hanging on the wall!

Monika:

We were intrigued by a sign saying "Spiller's Lane" It was a little land with small shops including a second hand store with a used book store, which we of course perused. There also was a music store called "Allegro Music". All was very picturesque.

Bob:

Following the coastal road westward, we finally found the Drombeg Stone Circle built about 2,000 years ago in the Stone Age. It was a nice circle of 15 reasonably large stones and two more stone huts off to one side that apparently were used for preparing food for small groups of folks. One hut featured a stone trough about 4 feet long and 2.5 feet wide or so, and an archeologist had assessed both its capacity and the ability to cook meat in such a trough by heating stones in the nearby fireplace and sinking them into the water! Since the archeological evidence was that those huts were not residences, the food preparation might have been for worshipers if it was a religious site.

From the Drombeg Stone Circle we just zipped back home via the shortest possible inland route to have a light evening meal and enjoy the rest of the evening.

Monika:

We rambled back to the car and went on to our main destination for the afternoon, the Drombeg stone circle. It was quite impressive with all the stones still standing. There also were some old cooking circles. The landscape all around was again the lush green Irish landscape, pretty as a postcard.

This was our last stop and we took the direct route home for some relaxed sitting in the sun and the evening meal. But then it was time to pack up, since we were going to head for Galway in the morning.


 

Copyright 2011 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Index
Prolog Map of Transatlantic Cruise Map of Drive in Ireland Epilog

March 2011
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6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31
April 2011
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1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
May 2011
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8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
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