Sunday outings: a community chorus and Lissadell House

One of my HomeExchange partner’s neighbors had alerted me to a community chorus concert (celebrating Beltane) this morning, on Aughris Head, a beach point nearby.  It was a delightful event - friends and neighbors simply enjoying singing together, along with their friends and neighbors enjoying it.

It was a bit intimidating to navigate the social afterwards - treats and tea and coffee in the Beach Pub at Aughris Head.  I’m normally decent at this (having learned the skills of conversation with strangers over my years of work life), so I’m fine making conversation with people I don’t know, but they all knew each other, and were all catching up with each other, and although I spoke with the two folks who knew me, I decided to head back to the house for lunch before my afternoon outing.

I was going to visit another megalithic cemetery spot, but based on a comment I’d overheard yesterday from fellow tourists at Glencar Waterfall, checked out Lissadell House.  Hmm, it turned out to be the family home of a heroine of the 1916 uprising (something I knew nothing about before last week).   

She (Constance Markievicz) was quite an impressive person.   And her family home, fairly recently rescued from ruin by a barrister couple from Dublin and their large family, in 2003 was quite an interesting reflection on Irish gentry - their good times and not over the last couple of centuries. Fascinating to see the divergence between upstairs and downstairs in the tour, as well as feel the very real challenges that the current family has to restore and maintain the house and estate.  I’m seeing just now on Wikipedia that they received a 1.1 million euro grant from Failte Ireland towards restoration of the the gardens (it was definitely ongoing).

I had not heard of this place nor did my HomeExchange partners excellent guest guide mention it, so I was glad, again, to bumble into an interesting visit.

This was the view of Benbulbin from the window of the sitting room.  Amazing.  As is Benbulbin.