around Roscommon

admin

17 hours ago

Roscommon is a beautiful countryside area about 1 1/2 hours drive Northeast from Galloway. The main attraction I found interesting was the national famine museum which is very extensive, built by the former Lord of the estate which is still standing with its complete contents left for the public to enjoy. The famine museum is important for the story of the people who died and survived and also left Ireland for someplace they could get some food and just survive. Anyone interested in recent Irish history would enjoy visiting this place and coming to understand why the famine happened and how it could’ve been avoided.

This letter was an appeal by the people living on this Lord’s estate for work other than farming since there was nothing to farm, the potatoes all died.

He could’ve been one of my ancestors, a fellow who signed the appeal for work.

The famine was turned purposely into an attempt to reduce the catholic population by the British occupiers. There was plenty of wheat and other crops but those were taken by the Lords of the estates, almost all protestants and loyal to England, and sent to England and other countries for profit. The local catholic population was left with only potatoes which were dying from a fungus.

The land was let out to renters who subdivided to other renters who then subdivided to other renters and resulted in plots so small most of them had problems producing enough to feed themselves and to pay the rent which was incredibly expensive.

This is the estate Manor. The last inheritor of the estate, an old lady, sold it and it was left as she loved it. All of the contents of the house are still there. This is a very rare situation for the large estates in Ireland after independence. Many of the old houses were destroyed by the angry people who were subjugated by these lords. One interesting thing to note is that the side portions of the building are all just façades and were designed to indicate a large house with large portions on the left and the right. They were just walls with decoration to impress visitors.

On this dictation exercise the young student was not evidently very clever

This is the estate and all of the lines indicate boundaries of rented properties so subdivided most of them were very tiny

The playroom for the children kept with all the original artifacts and toys

Every Lord needs to have his gallant portrait

The kitchen. Behind me was an open walkway almost one floor above for the lady to come and give commands to the cooks

Silvermines

this is actually the name of a small town where I stayed. It was a very nice bed-and-breakfast

Tralee

even many small towns in Ireland attract the tourist but this town seems to be very inactive and people there are lamenting the lack of business. But it’s a cute little town and people are very friendly so you might want to visit for an evening at the pub.

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