Two to Three Gray Tales

Today’s post comes to you from a busy author, who has her first final this coming week! Wow! I was also [un]pleasantly surprised by an essay that had been, until Tuesday, a mere figment of my professor’s imagination and is due directly after the Saint Patrick’s day holiday. Woop woop. Thus, I am going to attempt to cram my last week-point-half into one post and hope it counts.

(I will make mention, as my poor parents were worried, that the four papers mentioned a while back were all completed with much time to spare and one has thus far received “first honors,” or “one-haych,” aspiration on the hhhhhaych, which is a much more distinguished way to put “A+.” Maybe multitasking is not such a bad thing after all).

Today I have three cold, gray, expeditions ranging across the Eastern half of County Cork and all the way up to Dublin to describe to you, which, despite the inclement weather, were still lovely.

The first of these cold gray expeditions occurred fairly early on Friday morning, when one of my history classes took a ramble to the towns of Glanmire and Rathcormac, both generally North of Cork city. Our destinations were two “great houses” in the Ascendancy tradition, Glanmire’s Riverstown House and Rathcormac’s  Kilshannig.

Riverstown House

Kilshannig

I shan’t tire you with the minute details of the respective owners of these houses, or an extensive treatment on the lavish plasterwork (and the controversial mystery surrounding the plasterwork: was it the famous Italian La Franchini brothers, or an imposter of theirs, that wrought the plaster? Was it an apprentice of the La Franchinis? Is La Franchini actually spelled that way, or is it Francini? Do you even need the La? Were they even Italian??? ). Instead, I will show you nice pretty pictures and give a few general impressions:

Have some pictures of plaster.

Houses like Riverstown and Kilshannig are so very rare in Ireland nowadays because after independence nobody particularly wanted to preserve big ol' mansions that had once belonged to the English usurper. Though they are evidence of a good three hundred years of tradition, oppression, and social stratification, as well as some damn gorgeous architecture and decoration, most were let fall entirely into ruin or were purposefully demolished. I don’t blame the Irish state for condoning this, but it is regrettable that there aren’t more surviving great houses for me, a selfish backwoods American with the historical decency of a carpetbagger, to see. I feel that in America (good old ‘Merica) a rumpus would have been raised at the demolition of these romantic bits of history, nationalism or no.

In any case, houses preserved in their original Georgian states are few and far between. Both Riverstown and Kilshannig sport the vibrant walls, ornate (La) Franc(h)in(i) plaster friezes, and at least some elements of the Paladian style in their construction. Kilshannig is much more grand, having belonged to a wealthy merchant (the sort who was once a Quaker, but was asked to leave the church for his failure to live simply and stay out of politics) instead of a Church of Ireland Bishop, as Riverstown did. The current family to own Kilshannig are breeders of Thoroughbreds and possess a creditable number of distinguished family portraits and gouache-heavy modern art pieces that reportedly cost a mint. They also were kind enough to feed the frigid band of history students tromping through their home tea and fancy cakes, which was immensely thoughtful.

Hand. Painted. Wallpaper.

Staircase at Kilshannig

Preserving such houses sounds like an absolute nightmare and a noble undertaking. Despite the fact that they don’t build ‘em like they used to (a witnessed by my own apartment; twelve years old and it’s already moldering like last week’s bread), it takes extreme effort to keep out the rain, vermin, and march of the centuries. I applaud the caretakers of both of these houses for that. 

Since you, gentle reader, were not there to goggle at the JAYKERS ‘TIS A CHERUB’S FOOT PROTRUDING FROM THAT PLASTER FRIEZE houses yourself, I’ll share some of the more interesting anecdotes:

Behold, a headless dove

Here is a dove whose head was shot off by a champagne cork, let fly by reveling United Irishmen (or some other rebel faction, it’s all apocryphal) during a siege on Kilshannig. Only one dove cooing among the plaster leaves in the front entrance has retained its head; the others have jagged stumps. Those rascally rebels.

Here is a deep well. It looks most dangerous and is surrounded by a ruined stable block with three stories of crumbling brickwork. Quite eerie, especially when contrasted with the glorious, perfectly preserved exterior of Kilshannig.

Now it is time for a revelation:

I wish to have a Georgian house.

I care not that they’re a bugger to keep warm, are in constant need of repair, will slowly eat away your vast fortune, and usually visit some disaster (i.e., collapsing ceilings) on their owners. One day, when I am by some miracle wealthy (here my parents are shaking their heads, ruing the day I chose a major in history) I shall endeavor to won such a house. And when students come to take a tour and ogle at my plasterwork, I shall feed them tea and cake.

Now, one very quickly to my trip to Cobh! It is pronounced like cove, though spelled see-oh-bee-hhhhaych.

Cobh is a lovely little town overlooking Cork Harbour, a body of water previously known as the Cove of Cork, ergo the town’s name. It was once called Queenstown, as it was the first place in Ireland to be visited by Queen Victoria, for a while; upon independence, the Irish state, for obvious reasons, wanted to get rid of the Queen references and thus shortened “Cove of Cork” to “Cove…” and changed its spelling to the Irish way, with a bee-hhhhaych, because of revenge purposes.

I went to Cobh by train early on a Saturday morning. The ride was lovely although the weather was, as I have already mentioned, quite dour. It’s only half an hour from the Cork station to Cobh, plus a short ramble into town along the harbor. Did you know that Cork Harbo[u]r is one of the many locations worldwide to claim to be the second-largest natural harbor in the world? ‘Tis a true story.

Our first order of business in Cobh was to get coffee to ward off the creeping damp chill. Then, we met up with our city tour at the Commodore Hotel. We had initially booked a boat tour of the harbo[u]r, but were informed the day before that the boat was not running for undisclosed purposes. Therefore we had to stick to the streets.

The tour was quite informative and focused mainly on Cobh’s designation as the last port of call for the RMS Titanic. As the guide romantically alluded, the eyes of Cobh were the last eyes to see Titanic… while she was still afloat. After our tour we stopped by the Titanic museum, located in the White Star Line offices through which the doomed vessel’s final passengers passed on their way to their watery grave. At the entrance we were assigned identities as passengers who had boarded in Cobh. I was Bridget Mary Sullivan, a twenty-one-year-old maid who was eloping with her boyfriend Joe. Myself/Bridget Mary did not make it off the Titanic alive, as I was cheerily informed at the end of the exhibit.

The museum was well-put-together and I would strongly recommend it to anybody passing through Cobh. However, it is an extremely sobering affair and not for the easily-disheartened. One of the highlights is stepping out onto the balcony upon which first-class passengers would have awaited the ferry that would take them to Titanic, anchored off Spike island at the harbor’s mouth. It was set up to be a beautiful moment, with the original pier from 1912 slowly crumbling into the cove and an industrial fog rolling out from behind the island. Unfortunately, a nearby café insisted upon blasting “Eye of the Tiger” quite loudly from some spot directly beneath Titanic’s pier, effectively ruining the beauty of the moment.

And he's watching us all with the eeeyyyyyyeeee... of the Tiger.

After lunch to calm our somewhat depressed spirits, we hiked up to the top of the town to see Saint Colman’s cathedral, the seat of the Bishop of Cloyne and an absolutely spectacular structure. As thanks for providing extra masses and spiritual council before their departures for the new world, many Irish immigrants who left from Cobh sent money back to the cathedral to build it up to be one of the finest in Ireland. Saint Colman’s was almost entirely funded by donation, and now I’ll let the pictures do the talking:

Now, I feel incredibly remiss for waiting THREE WEEKS to post this. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Therefore I shall truncate Three Gray Tales and make it Two Gray Tales and tack on Dublin sometime later, once I have finished this blasted essay on European Union agricultural policy.

Warm regards,

KB