Sept 1 Strokestown (Day 340)
Today we headed into the countryside to learn some family history and meet some of the distant relatives. I am a member of only the 2nd generation on our father’s side to be born in the US, our paternal grandparents having emigrated from Ireland to the US in the early 1900’s. We are traveling to the town of our Irish grandmother’s birth, Strokestown, county Roscommon, central Ireland. She hailed from the farming area known as Cloonfree, about 2 miles from Strokestown which was one site of the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-49, witness to some of the worst starvation and emigration of the time.
We began our history tour at “The Big House”, Strokestown Park House, the estate owned and run by the Mahon family for over 300 years. In the 1660’s Captain Mahon was given the lands by Oliver Cromwell as reward for his services in the Crowellian War of Conquest of Ireland, the most devastating of the long history of invasions of Ireland.
After a hearty lunch in the cafe, we started our tour in the walled gardens of the estate.
The Victorian era glass houses (greenhouses) are impressive. The walled pit at the front of the photo is the ‘pineapple pit’ where potted pineapple plants were placed, packed around with composting manure to keep them warm!
Inside the largest glass house is a small room with a wood burning furnace that directed heat via cast iron pipes to all corners of the greenhouse and out to other smaller glasshouses. ‘Garden boys’ would keep the fire burning all night which allowed the estate to furnish their table with fresh vegetables and fruits year round.
We moved inside to tour the National Famine Museum, established by the Westward Group and opened in 2022. In 1979 the Westward Group purchased the derelict estate, for its acreage, from the last member of the Mahon family to live there, Olive.
Olive, in the center, continued living in the Big House until 1981. When Jim Calley (red arrow), founder of Westward Group, took possession of the estate he discovered 300 years of furnishings and written records preserved by the Mahon family. This trove included over 50,000 written records of the Famine years and the impact on the local population. These became the basis for preserving the house and displaying the history of the Famine, through the eyes of the landlord and the tenants alike.
Some of the records explained the program by which the landlord, Denis Mahon, paid the passage for the transport to North America, of the tenants he deemed undesirable. He failed to pay their way to Dublin, 100 miles away and basically evicted them, forcing them to walk, in winter, and starving, to the ships ultimately called ‘coffin ships’ to be sent to Canada or the US. A sculpture in the courtyard commemorates the gift of $170 dollars (equivalent to several thousand dollars today) raised by the Choctaw Nation, donated to relieve the suffering of the starving Irish in 1847.
Our family ancestors somehow avoided the evictions and transportation as well as starvation through those difficult years.
From the Famine Museum we joined a tour of the Big House.
The imposing edifice, built and expanded on through the years from 1660.
The history of the Mahon family as told by our tour guide described a family obsessed with ostentatious outward appearances of wealth and subsequent debt. The main sitting room, the library, was papered with gold leaf wallpaper! The thick walls of the master’s bedroom incorporated the walls of the original fortress built on the site pre-1600!
The kitchen, in the servant’s wing, is the best preserved 18th century ‘gallery kitchen’ in Ireland.
The ‘gallery’ balcony overlooking the kitchen was the domain of the Mistress of the house from where she would drop written instructions to the servants, so at to not have to talk to or even walk amongst the servants, busy at the stoves and preparation tables.
The gallery kitchen was preserved due to it being walled off and a smaller modern kitchen built in the center of the room in the 1950’s!
Our tour completed we drove the 2 miles to the home of our relatives, cousins several times removed.
The lovely house with the modern accoutrement of solar panels!
With the guidance of our cousin Tom we drove around the block to the site of our grandmothers house.
Under the brambles and trees in the field is the rubble of the house our grandmother was born in and lived until she emigrated to New Jersey in the early 1900’s.
We joined the extended family for dinner at a local restaurant, with a birthday cake dessert!
It was after dark when we said our goodbyes, the light in the doorway inviting and warm, carrying on the legacy of family.