We live in an old ramshackle cottage down a road to nowhere...though if you're going to be properly Irish then the road is 'the street'...there are only eight occupied houses and cottages now...once there was a busy railway station where cattle were loaded onto trucks to take them to the town mart and sacks of flour were brought out for the people living in our street.
There was a lime kiln as well, just a little way from our cottage...everyone used lime then for sweetening the earth before growing the tatties...mixing with water for lime-washing the interior's of the cottages and the farm buildings.
And there were two forges...one was beside the road itself...it was where you took your waggon wheels to be repaired...the other was in the field next to our home and that was bigger. You could have your donkeys shod or a wheel made from scratch...a rake for the garden or a cauldron for the stews.
A little way further up there was a corn mill on the river...now it is just a tumble of stones. You could take your wheat or oats there to have them ground into flour or flakes for the morning porridge.
Almost at the cross-roads, where Paddy and Honoria live, there was an animal pound where straying farm animals were put until the owners collected them...there was a fee to be paid though.
Back again and past our cottage on the way to the big river and there was once a grand two storey house whose occupants all died from T.B. such was the fear of that disease the house was knocked down and nothing remains...the family who lived there were taken straight to the burying ground with no Wake in their names.
Then just before the bridge over the river, is a tiny old cottage which is still known as The Bishops...the local Bishop used to spend his weekends here...fishing and boating on the river and he had a pretty garden by all accounts, but now his garden is where our two old donkeys graze the summers away and the cottage lies almost derelict.
There are Otters living in the river banks and Water-Lilies with pale pink flowers...Pike lurk in the depths and enormous emerald Dragon-flies dart across the water.
This is our home.
The photograph is my adored cats.
Fascinating to read your post - thank y ou 
x
Lime-Wash And Old Stones...
