Hmm, this title’s misleading because it was not my trip at all, I am a native of New York and proud to be so. No, it’s my Dad’s trip. For many years now, he has been telling us of the times when his great, great grandpa arrived in the United States from Eire. Let’s turn the clock back to the early 1850’s and the potato famine had hit Ireland. The inhabitants of the Emerald Isle relied on the humble potato as a cash crop that was exported to England as well as a basic food item. A variant of potato blight affected the crop for several successive years and a million Irish people were killed by malnutrition. Another million people left their home country and set sail for The United Stated, Canada and England to start a new life.
I’m not sure if it was the government of Ireland trying to lower the numbers of deaths in their country or greedy shipping magnates happy to profit from misery but false promises were made to encourage people to begin a fresh life in North America and those making that long journey suffered horrendous conditions aboard those so-called “coffin ships”. I’ve seen estimates that a quarter of the travellers failed to finish that trip.
My great, great Grandfather was a fighter and finished the journey successfully. He started a new life here in New York and married a beautiful young lady from Germany and thus began the New York chapter of our family tree.
My father was yearning to take a trip to Ireland to see if he could find the tiny settlement in County Cork where his predecessors had lived before the famine. Therefore, plans were made, suitcases were packed, flights were booked and the great trip back in time commenced.
We flew from JFK to Heathrow, London’s main international airport before taking a coach to another of London’s airports, Gatwick. We had booked a flight to Cork from Gatwick early the following day so had reserved a night at one of the hotels near to the airport in preparation for our early start. We spent the night at the Copthorne Hotel Gatwick some 10 minutes drive from the airport. What an excellent hotel it was. Situated in wonderfully manicured grounds, it has been built around a farmhouse dating back to the 16th century. We enjoyed a very pleasant afternoon exploring the hotel and grounds and after a delicious meal it was time for bed.
The short hop to Ireland went smoothly and bearing in mind that public transport can be quite infrequent in the rural areas that we intended to visit we decided to rent a car at Cork Airport. In no time at all we were on the open road and now I appreciate the true meaning of that term. Once out of the airport we were driving along deserted country roads where it was more likely to encounter a herd of cows in the road than another vehicle. Our initial destination was a small town called Mallow, which seemed to be the closest town to the settlement that we were looking for. Having checked into our hotel, we went for a walk with the intention of meeting some of the town’s inhabitants who might be able to help us in our quest.
Within a few short minutes we were lucky enough to meet a wonderful old man who was ready to give us the precise details of where to find the village that we were searching for. Sadly, it was now nothing more than a tiny bunch of broken down farm workers dwellings; all humanity had left there many years before. It was heart breaking to realise that our journey had produced such pitiful results and we made our way back to the hotel with heavy hearts.
We had been lucky enough to find an amazing hotel called the Springfort Hall Hotel just a couple of miles outside of Mallow. It turned out to be an inspired choice.The Springfort Hall was hidden away in a beautiful country estate that dated back to 1169 during the Norman invasion. The actual hotel is the 18th century manor house, a stunning, magical country house that brought back memories of a bygone age. A few hours later we were sitting in the lounge bar learning to appreciate why people vow that Guiness actually brewed in Ireland is better than any other variant found throughout civilization. We started chatting to a gentleman called Seamus and it transpired that he was one of the officers of the Mallow Historical Society. Without doubt he knew everything there was to know about Mallow and the surrounding area. He was aware of the deserted village that we’d visited that day and was able to tell my dad the complete story of how nearly 50% of the villagers died during the potato famine and the remainder left to start a new life in another country. Seamus was so pleased to hear the tale of how great, great grandfather had made it to the United States and how the family had blossomed from that time. We enjoyed a wonderful evening spellbound by the stories recounted to us and we were very unhappy when the time came to bid goodnight to our new found friend.
The decision had been made to leave Mallow the next day in order to spend a couple of days sightseeing around the South West of Ireland. Much to our delight, Seamus appeared early the following morning clutching a pile of magazines for my Father. He told us that the historical society publishes an annual magazine and he was delivering at least a dozen previous issues as a gift for my Dad to read. The books are packed with the history of Mallow and the surrounding areas and tears rolled down my Father’s cheeks as he thanked his new friend for that one gift that would bring him so much pleasure. We had to keep the journals under lock and key to prevent my Father from reading each one of them before we were able to continue with our trip.
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