The 2007 Artpoints Tour of the United Kingdom continued
Irish Roots in County Cork
June 21, 2007
We drove to Killavulen, the tiny town where my Father and the Barrett family lived. My cousin Marie had already visited here and found our great grandparents graves, so we had some idea of where to go. The Barrett family lived in the tiny town of Killlavulen. We spoke to several local elders who remembered the family and pointed out the house they had lived in. The town is so small that it does not have a restaurant, although there are two pubs.
After some driving on country roads, we found the cemetery due to kindness of a local woman who led us there in her car. The cemetery is surrounded by fields and the former church next door has been converted to private use. I sat for a long time imagining generations of villagers slowly walking coffins out from the village to bury here.
  James Barrett's Gravestone
For dinner, we walked onto downtown Mallow where we had dinner at a local pub. There we met two American Army buddies from New England with an interest in stone construction. They were visiting castles and other stone buildings to study stone building techniques.
June 22, 2007
A short drive took us to the town of Fermoy, where the Dansons, my grandmother's family lived. We visited St. Patrick's Church where she was been christened. As a sentimental gesture, I left an American JFK 50 cent coin in the collection box.
Then we set out in search of Barrett Castle, the ruins of a Norman castle, destroyed by Oliver Cromwell that had possibly once been held by my ancestors.
The Castle had been built in the Thirteenth century to protect nearby Mourne Abbey which we found quite easily.
At Mourne Abbey, There was a construction trailer and two workmen on the site of the ruins of the abbey. After viewing the ruined abbey and taking some pictures, we asked the workmen for directions to the Castle and fell into a most fascinating conversation about the preservation work they were conducting.
 Mourne Abbey reconstruction
They used only construction techniques from the time of the original building, salvaging stones from the site and still standing walls. They told us that they often found bones (but no gold) from the burials conducted over the centuries. Due to limited space on the Abbey grounds, apparently gravediggers would cast bones from older burials into the weeds next to the graveyard walls.
They respectfully rebury all remains. The workmen take real pride in their heritage-preserving work. They described their careful following of "best practices" as determined by scholars and archeologists to preserve the site for future study.
In the Abbey cemetery, we also saw some modern graves, including the grave of an IRA soldier who had died there during Ireland's war of independence in 1921.
We did find Barrett's Castle, but only viewed a fragment of a tower from the road. Most of the Castle stones were used in the construction of a nearby road. The weather was once again rainy and there was a herd of cattle in the deep grass between the road and castle.
June 23-26, 2007
Our drive to Dublin took longer than expected due to the continuing rain. We arrived just in time for rush hour and flooded freeways on the way to the airport to turn in our rented car. We were most glad to end our time of driving on the left side of the road.
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