Cemetery

A Meeting Place for Kings

/ lydialittlekgirl / Leave a comment

Walking is good for clearing the mind, body and for writing.  I like to use the time to think about my various projects (I am currently working on book 3 in my K-Girl’s series) maybe carry out some research and to work out any blocks I might have in plot ideas etc.

Recently I had the pleasure of a few days at the Osprey Hotel in Naas, Co. Kildare.  My husband booked us in for a few days post Christmas and it proved a great meeting point for his family.  He is one of six,  and with spouses and children in tow, we were a large gathering.  With most of his relatives living in the Dublin/Kildare/Portlaois environs, the Osprey proved a fab meeting point with swimming pool and carvery and private space –  the location proved hugely popular and successful with the Little clan!

osprey-hotel

We were booked in for a few days but on a budget so I didn’t get to use the wonderful looking Spa in the hotel.  A gal can only do so much in any hotel room/pool so I used the time to get out and about instead.

I had never been to Naas before.  Well, I lie, I have been through it on many an occasion driving from west Cork to Dublin,  back in the days when the old road went through the town itself.  But I have never spent some time in the actual place.  To me (forgive my ignorance) but I used to think it was a drive-through-mid-land town that had no redeeming features.  How wrong was I!

I made some wonderful discoveries.

Firstly, did you know the full name of Naas is actually ‘Nás na Ríoch’ from the Irish meaning ‘meeting place of the Kings’?  Now I am not going to go down a whole history avenue here, so for any one who would like to find out more, see here

I have a lousy sense of direction so my first wander was to get a feel of the place and where the Osprey was in relation to the town itself.  A 2 minute stroll down Devoy Road  found me at a junction and, grateful for some pointer signs, I was soon discovering the Naas Self-guided Historic Town Walk.

Within another few minutes, I found myself at the Harbour, and nearby Library.  The library was closed due to the holidays, but what a fab location.  Opposite was the old Market House (1810) that has planning posted to convert it to a restaurant and retail spot.  My imagination was reeling of past times and how busy the harbour must have been between canal boats docking and merchants conducting business back in the day.  Now it is a scenic walking/cycling spot where you can loop around the town and follow the canal.  Yes, the canal.

canal cranemerchant house.png

The Grand Canal I will have you know! Yes, it links via Sallins, to the Dublin Grand Canal.

I am a sea bird myself, having been raised and sailed along the Wild Atlantic Way so I am not familiar with canals and the various Waterways of Ireland.  But I was keen to find out more.  There are detailed historic notice boards along the trail that explain the various points of interest so I was learning as I walked.

The day was overcast but dry and with no commitments for the next few hours I took off on my own and found some right gems on route.

I am a sucker for old cemeteries and grave yards,  and like to take a moment to walk among the headstones and decipher what names I can.  (There is that part of me that thinks if I speak the name on the grave stone that their spirit is somewhere else smiling on hearing their name spoken once more.) But this old site had little in the line of names, most graves marked with a simple stone, which is usually a sign of a very very old grave and/or paupers/famine grave.  Towards the end of the canal I came across the old lodge house and wondered too at the people that once lived here and their role played at the ope of the estate beyond the gates.

The canal loop brought me around past the Abbey bridge and various canal locks.abbey bridge canal

In an hour or so I found myself back in town and in St David’s Church yard.  Again I had to walk among the tombstones and spotted a few unusual ones in the mix.

From left to right – ‘Atkinsons’ (forget the dieting?), ‘In Memorian’ – with a list of those from Naas whose bodies were never recovered.  Includes a Bishop (Thomas Leverous), a highwayman (Swift Nix), a pamphleteer/controversialist (Stephen Radcliffe) and a Martyr (Peter Higgins)! Next is a father and daughter tombstone where life springs yet (snow drops peeping nearby), and finally, what looks like a pirates grave with its skull and cross bones but is that of a very old gravestone dating from 1723.

But my favourite experience has to be of a little old cobbler’s shop.  It is a mid terrace dusty looking place where the trade is only revealed as a result of this little notice in the window.  I figured ‘Bill Glennon‘ has a good sense of humour and I wondered at his story too.

It was only on passing the door that I spotted a portrait in the next window and thought how nice to put a face to the name.  I was bent over taking a photo when  along came a pedestrian.  I was about to politely move out of the way when I saw that the man approaching me was the very same in the picture.

‘Tis yourself!’  says I, pointing at the window.

‘Tis’, says he, laughing.

I introduced myself and we shook hands and got chatting.  It turns out that the cobbler business has been there for over a hundred years and Bill is the last of his people in the trade.

‘Is there not anybody in the family, or maybe an apprentice, that might be interested in carrying it on?’  says I.

‘Ah, no,’ says he.  ‘It is a dying trade.  I have only the one, my son David,  and he has a good job in a bank in Dublin.’

Not to miss the opportunity, I asked Bill if I could take his photo next to his shop photo and he obliged.  It was only in our chatting that I glanced down at my phone to check if the camera was on that I noticed his shoes.  I couldn’t resist taking a sneaky shot!  Fab shoes Bill!

I didn’t get to complete the full historic trail and explore all that I might have liked so I look forward to returning to Naas and doing so.  I will make sure to pop in on Bill and see how he is getting on.

Plot – Story or Grave?

/ lydialittlekgirl / 1 Comment

I went on a walk this morning,  took a turn up past the small cemetery that lies on the coastal town of Schull (West Cork, Ireland).   It slopes gently down to the shore, overlooking Schull harbour and the Carbery isles – in turn lying on the edge of the Atlantic.  It is a beautiful spot.  I find it very moving and inspiring.

It set me thinking of plot.

And the pun therein.

Any writer will tell you that every good story has to have a great plot.  And while I like to think that ‘K-Girls’, my book, has one, I have to confess that the whole idea behind writing my series starts with a rather basic, very sad looking plot.

I discovered it at the age of 12, and was struck by it from the get go.  But it would take me the guts of 30 years before I gave it it’s due respect.

Not many know this, but the whole plot behind K-Girls started with the actual plot, that is the grave, of Ruth Stoker who is a 14 year old who is buried at Kylemore Abbey, Connemara, Co. Galway.

For any who have had the pleasure to visit Kylemore, you may remember the lovely walk to the Gothic Church that lies to the east of the Abbey/Castle?  I could say a lot about this cathedral in miniature, but I do not want to waiver from the topic that is, Ruth.  Anyway, under the shade of the Oak trees and watchful eye of Gothic gargoyles is a simple cemetery where in lies the remains of the Benedictine community that have passed on over the years.

In the midst of the simple stone markers for the nuns, there is a small standing celtic stone cross.  It is the maker of Ruth.  It simply states ‘In loving memory of Ruth Stoker who died on 18th December 1923 aged 14 years. RIP’

Ruth Stoker grave stone

When I was a student at Kylemore the myth was that she had died having fallen from the tower (the reason why the Gothic was locked up at the time) , or another, drowned in the lake (explaining why us students were never allowed to swim or boat on the mass of water).  I suppose many girls saw the grave and wondered for a moment, perhaps some didn’t see it at all.  But it struck a chord with me – why was there a girl buried in the nun’s cemetery?  And admittedly, the romantic in me thought how lovely to be buried at Kylemore – imagining that she must have had a great love for the school and her time there.  And that one day, as I have a similar love, that I too might be buried there – or at least some ashes scattered.

Now that I am 44 and married with my own teen girls, I see a different side  – that of the view of a mother  – and try and imagine what it must have been like for the mother of Ruth to have to say good bye to her little girl, and then to witness her being lowered into the ground?  Did the sun shine, setting the church lime stone alight, or did the Connemara rains fall gently dusting people’s umbrellas, or cloche hats and caps.  Was there a good turn out?  How many would have been stood around the small ope and scattered soil into the dark earth on that December day?

As a student at Kylemore, I did not consider a mother’s love, I was too preoccupied with who Ruth was and where had she come from?  How had she truly died?

Perhaps that is where the seed of her spirit was captured within me at the age of 12 and she grew as I did over my years at Kylemore and then, unbeknownst to myself – Ruth came away with me.

It was only the last 7 years that I built up the courage to start writing in earnest and contacted one of the older nuns (Sr Benedict, historian) about Ruth.  While Sr Benedict was not too familiar with Ruth’s background, she went to the retired elders and discovered that Ruth’s story was a foggy one.

A fire in the bursar office in the 50’s (that is a story in its own right) destroyed all student records and so little was remembered of her, only that the retired nuns remembered something about ‘galloping consumption’ and being ‘buried in Kylemore at the request of her parents’.

Oh! – now that put a different perspective on it – galloping consumption? – buried at the request of her parents? What did that mean?  Consumption, I understood was TB but what did galloping?  It did not bode well.  And Ruth buried at the request of her parents? – Where they there after all?  My mind raced with supposing and surmising.

And so curiosity took me down a road of research and censuses – all the while, Ruth stood at my shoulder, and I felt as if she was smiling enjoying the mystery that she had become for me.

Writers will tell you that characters become alive and when writing, they will so often lead us down a plot path that we never designed in the first instance.   I have found this of Ruth.

Ruth Stoker the actual teen who died in Kylemore  has her own story, and one I will gladly share in another post another time – her grave side remains simple and I visit it every time I am back at Kylemore.  I place a stone on the cross to mark my return, (some think this is a Jewish custom but it’s origins are pagan – the stone symbolising the permanence of memory)

It is nice to see that a other stones have been placed by mine.

But the Ruth of K-Girls, the one that lives in my head and manifests as a ghost in my writing, well she is having a ball within the pages that is K-Girls with  her new mortal friend, Alice.  Ruth is getting to live her teen life all over again – albeit in the 80’s  – and as Alice has a whole 6 years to go as a student of Kylemore.

The two of them will  have a lot of fun with plot;

and sometimes even losing it every now and then.