Day: July 5, 2022

Dia is Mhuire díobh go léir a chairde and welcome to my report.

The hunger for outdoor pursuits was well portrayed  this past week with the huge attendance at outdoor events. The Willie Neenan five-mile race which is no stranger to great support, didn’t disappoint. Supporters filled the town on Friday evening and some lined the way along to lovely route taking in the picturesque Glebe road. The Glebe road was the real deal for the aristocrats of the town when I was a child. You had to be a certain sort of person. Know how to walk with an expensive looking walking cane. Know what to wear  and have the proper company. Mostly married couples of mature years. Very staid looking never smiling, dead intend in conversation with one another. The women always wore heeled shoes, common by todays standards I suppose which could not have been that comfortable for the long trek, five miles. But perhaps the walking cane helped. Himself in his tweed suit and long gabardine overcoat and hat. The lady also wore a hat. There was an educated way of using the cane. After every few steps or more, the end of was given a little toss in the air while the knob turned in the palm of the hand. She wore her well tailored calf-length tweed coat, often topped off with and expensive looking natural fur. Very like what she wore going to Mass on Sundays. Sometimes they met up with others of their class and had a brief chat before moving on for their weekly walk around the Glebe. I’d heard of the Glebe road, but it was years before I ventured that far and when I did, it was easy to see how it attracted these town business people who were cooped up inside a counter or an office all week. The French Sisters of the Divine Jesus were in vogue back then at Drishane Castle with a upmarket boarding school for girls,(who could afford it) and a busy working farm and knitting factory which gave employment to may locals, both men and women. So there was plenty for the passers by to see.  To us young mortals Drishane was something of a mystery. It was down there away from our daily lives. For one thing they could be seen walking in groups on the roads outside the Convent, which was alien to us because our nuns in the Presentation Convent couldn’t come out at all. Not that we ever encountered one of them and we were told that you addressed them as madam while we addressed ours as sister. As a child you accept many things as normal, because you don’t know how to ask questions and those whom we’d ask them of wouldn’t be able to find answers. So it’s only in later years that it dawns on you that you just settled for what was handed to you and if we could go back I bet we’d do it all again the same way. The road took the walker around a great deal of the Drishane Estate. So the scene kept changing all the time. Sometimes past the historic entry gate with it’s mini castle feature, clear views of the Castle and buildings below, then the rolling meadows and cornfields and the tillage fields providing fruit and veg for the large number of residents and staff.  The historic graveyard could also be seen in the distance.  Turning off the main road was a joy all of its own with the huge beach trees meeting overhead forming a cooling tunnel, a wonderland, scented by the lush greenery on all sides. The next entrance gate to Drishane brought a change of view, the cooling waters of the busy Finnow  came insight as it rushed along under the road, to meet the Blackwater before they joined forces to make their way to Youghal. The humpback bridge ,I’m sure was a great place to stop and gaze into the river and get a different look at the Drishane Estate. Moving on past the home of the Doody Family, the shiny waters of one of the historic ponds couldn’t be missed. Reminder of the great lime industry which the place was famous for in the past. Trains were powered by steam on those days and you’d wonder did the strollers ever encounter a steam bath as they neared a passing locomotive as it filled the vale with it’s puffing steam. As they crocked the railway they came to the the last lap on the approach  back to  town  which gave them a view of the McCarthy O’Leary Estate and a reminder that because of them our Railway is now a mile from town. Coming up  must have been a welcome sight and an appetite for evening tea  neatly prepared by the maid. A big different from the fast-moving competitors who went there last week in honour of Willie Neenan. But no matter how you look at it the now and the then, we will always have folks who will go around the Glebe.

[read more …] “Eily’s Report – 6th July”