Looking across this beautiful landscape we thought it a lovely, quiet spot away from the hustle and bustle of world events.
As we made our way around a loop walk we discovered this small area had been a centre of hustle and bustle for over 5000 years. Stone Age; Bronze Age; Iron Age; Vikings; Normans; English and now people from all over have settled and left their marks. A lot of the sites were on private land and we couldn’t get pictures. We did see the ruins of Templecrone church built in the 1200’s on the monastic site of St Crone.
She led a thriving community in the 600’s. We did see the Signal Rock. During the Penal Law years of the 1700’s, when Catholic priest were hunted and killed, the rock would be covered if a priest was in the area.
Catholics knew where they could slip away to meet for mass outside. We did see the Famine walls. In this area, the 1822 potato crop failed and the people were forced to eat the crops that they were planning to sell. There was no money to buy anything. One of the land owners, who had no tenants of his own, spent 1,500 pounds hiring men to build massive walls around his land.
Throughout our ramble through history we were accompanied by a lovely dog we called Padraigh (pronounced Porig) who knew the way better than the humans who had the map.
I was really proud of Shush and her gammy knee. She did the whole slog up and down some pretty big hills without any complaints.
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