Abandoned Ireland by Rebecca Brownlie

ABANDONED IRELAND

Rebecca Brownlie

CONTENTS

Introduction: Abandoned Beauty 1

Country Living 9

Wee Neil’s 21

Laurel Hill 29

Armagh Gaol 35

The American Dream 41

The Priest’s Retreat 49

Piano Farm 55 Workhouses 61

Asylums 73

Crumlin Road Courthouse 81

Mother & Baby Home 85

Ardavon House 91

The Borstal Boys 95

Cahercon House 101

The Convent 107

Donegal Taj Mahal 113 Cooneen Poltergeist 117

Ederney Post O ce 123

Ahead in Thread 129

The Last Stop 139

While I Breathe, I Hope 145

The Hidden Village 151

Quaker School 157

Paranormal Experiences 165 Country Lords 167

End of the Line 173

Abandoned Hotel 181

Abandoned Congregation 185

Lenan Head Fort 189 Castles 195

Morgues and Hospitals 203

Maggie’s 211

Florida Manor 219

Twin Brothers 225

The Old Manse 227

A Saved School 233

Ragged Seams and Purple Dreams 239

The Last Dance 245

Acknowledgements 250

Introduction ABANDONED BEAUTY

When I first came across Cairndhu House in 2008, I was totally captivated by it. I just couldn’t believe that we had such a building here in Northern Ire land. It looked like something out of a Gothic novel, something lifted straight from American Horror Story. I was also shocked that it had been left abandoned. What had led its owners to walk o without a second thought, leaving such a grand and probably once-lively residence to fall into such disrepair?

At this time, I was in a paranormal investigation group, and I was the team’s location-finder and photographer. Once I discovered this house, I knew we had to explore and photograph it. So I set about finding the owner, which was quite an investigative process in itself.

At that time, a property developer had ownership of the house, and his plans were to eventually turn it into luxury apartments. I explained who I was and that our group would love to explore this haunting place while it still stood in a state of frozen history. Thankfully he agreed. What’s more, after a few return visits, he gave me my own set of keys (the house was secure at this stage). Can you imagine?

I had my own keys for this fabulous manor house. To say I was thrilled would be an understatement!

Over some months we carried out our investiga tions, searching high and low for any trace of ghosts or the peculiar, but I found I was more and more interested in the history of the house, the echoes of what it had once been. I started to document the house through the medium of photography, capturing shadows of what it once was. I also delved enthusiastically into its history, eager to find out who had lived there, what the building had once been and, ultimately, why it was now abandoned.

COUNTRY LIVING

I feel lucky to have had the chance to document this charming little cottage, one that was rich in history, as it has since been demolished. I was actually asked to record the property to create a memory of it that would live on after the building was gone.

I was unsure what I would find, but I was not disappointed. Over five months, creeping through

rooms and exploring what was left behind, I real ised this was a historical treasure trove. It was a rural property, a family home, where three boys had been raised, one of whom had lived his entire life there. His name was Dessie and he was the last of the family to survive, passing away aged eighty-seven.

The first known historical record for this house was an appearance on the Gri ths maps in 1858. Then, it was a one-storey cottage, but it grew with its inhabitants, with an additional half storey added at a later date. It was a modest, traditional Irish home: two receptions, two storerooms and three bedrooms.

Dessie is remembered among local friends as a fabulous cook. They still talk about his famous soda bread, which he cooked over the original fire pit with a crook and crane, later replaced by a modern stove. We’re lucky to have a photo of the man himself at the original fire. Every shelf and worktop in the kitchen was decorated with snippets of history, including Fynnon Salt, a saline treatment that relieved the symptoms of rheumatism.

There was a radio in the house, left propped up on the windowsill as it had always been. When

Dessie had lived there it went on every hour, on the hour, for the news. Now it has fallen quiet. In my pictures, you can see where a TV and aerial had

ARMAGH GAOL

Many times over the years, I’d driven past Armagh Gaol, which sits in Armagh City overlooking the Mall. I’d always wanted to photograph the inside. Even today it’s an imposing building to look at, but I’m sure it was much more frightening in the 1700s! When I got permission to photograph the gaol, I was quite apprehensive about visiting, as I believe buildings retain energy, good and bad. However,

when I was there, I felt at ease, although things may be di erent in the darker hours.

The gaol was built in 1780. It was used primarily as a women’s prison, but as time went by men also spent time behind these walls. Life for the prisoners must have been unpleasant. There was little room in the cells for anything more than a single bed and table. Nets were stretched across the landings to

THE PRIEST’S RETREAT

We have many religious institutions across Ireland: convents, mother and baby homes, asylums, even religious retreats where priests would have gone to study religious matters after their university studies, which is what this building was used for. Built between 1815 and 1818, it was used as a prep school

until 1886, when the school had to be closed due to lack of funds. In 1888 the building was repurposed to be used as a house of ecclesiastical studies and enclosed retreats, and then, from the 1960s up until 1991, it was used solely as a retreat house only. In its final years it was a nursing home.

The vast building now has collapsing floors, collapsed corridors, missing staircases, and dark basements, and much of it is blocked o , making areas impassable. Every window has been smashed and it is heavily vandalised, even though it is in such a remote location, deep in the Irish countryside.

Regardless of this, it has all the characteristics that make photographing these places come together: peeling paint, textures, muted colours, large windows letting in streams of light, long corridors, and even that coveted wheelchair shot.

I’m told that the statues from the chapel have now thankfully been removed and placed in safe keeping.

At the time of writing there are no future plans for the retreat.

ASYLUMS

This austere-looking asylum in Co. Galway was built in 1833 at a cost of £27,000 and with capacity for 180 patients. It was thought it would never be filled, but it quickly became overcrowded, and several extensions were added throughout the years to keep up with demand. The workhouses and prisons in Ire land at that time were su ering from overcrowding,

which forced them to o oad some of their more troublesome inmates to asylums, which meant that many of the patients did not actually need psychiatric care and were there for living purposes only, but it was against the law to refuse entry to anyone. It was given the name Asylum X due to its crossshaped layout. The governor and sta occupied the

ARDAVON HOUSE

This beautiful Victorian mansion was built circa 1870 by Samuel Trimble, who was the deputy treas urer of Co. Antrim and lived there until his death in 1887. Granville Craig, brother to James Craig, who was Viscount Craigavon, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, once lived in the house.

The house, which would have had impressive views over Belfast Lough, shared its 5.9 acres with a cottage, o ce houses and stables. The main house had three receptions, six bedrooms, two bathrooms and a conservatory, traces of which were still visible on the left side of the building when these pictures were taken. (In an earlier image I took, you can see

MOTHER & BABY HOME

This mother and baby home in Co. Down opened in 1955, on the site of the Good Shepherd Convent. The girls and women forced to enter such homes were single and expecting, and their ages ranged from fourteen to forty years of age. Many were taken there against their will by family members or the Church, while others sought refuge for fear that their

families and neighbours would discover their pregnancy. It’s been reported that hundreds of women and babies passed through these doors, where they were subjected to poor nutrition, overcrowded sleep ing quarters, and emotional and mental abuse by the nuns who ran the home.

One woman who has spoken out about her time

THE BORSTAL BOYS

This detention centre for troubled boys, also known as an industrial school, was on a 43-acre site and had several buildings, twenty-seven residential blocks, a school, an exercise yard and a private summer mansion that was used for prison o cer training. The complex held up to sixty supposedly violent and disturbed boys between the ages of ten and

seventeen. An independent study on the children that stayed there stated, ‘they came in as criminals with low self-esteem and went out as criminals with high self-esteem’.

This was the first institution of this type I had visited to photograph. I remember growing up as a child and hearing young boys talking about being

DONEGAL TAJ MAHAL

This beautiful old ruin of a church lies silent just below Mount Errigal (the largest mountain in Done gal) and can be seen from the peak. It is surrounded by the Poisoned Glen, an area of outstanding beauty. The story of the church’s construction echoes that of the Taj Mahal, one of the seven wonders of the

world built 200 years previously by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan to bury his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal.

This story begins when James Russell and his wife, Jane Smith, who were newly married in 1825, started life together in London. James was a

THE LAST DANCE

This unique dance hall is one of the last of its kind in the country. It was built fifty years ago when the late Fr Eustance returned to his hometown from travelling abroad to find his local community suffering badly from unemployment. To battle this, he

set about designing and constructing this round hall, which would include a ballroom for dances and other community activities and uses.

The hall was a hit, with the top showbands from all over Ireland playing here on a regular basis and