Going Back To My Roots

That title’s misleading, they are not my roots at all, I’m a New Yorker, born and bred in this great city and proud of it. No, they’re my family’s roots. For a few years now my Dad has been telling me stories of how his great great granddad arrived in the United States from Ireland. It was around 1850 and the potato famine had hit Ireland. The Irish people were dependant on the humble potato, not only as a basic food but also as a crop that they exported to England. A blight hit the crop for several successive years and a million Irish people died from malnutrition and related diseases. A further million people left Ireland and travelled to England, Canada and the United States to start a new life. False promises were made to encourage people to travel to North America and they endured horrendous conditions aboard the so-called “coffin ships”. It is estimated that 25% of the people that started the journey from Ireland did not survive the trip.

Great, great Grandpa was one of the lucky ones. He settled here in New York and married a fine young lady from Poland and together they started the New York section of our family tree. My dad wanted to take a trip to Ireland and see if he could find the little village in County Cork where great, great Grandpa had lived and worked. So, suitcases were packed, advice to travellers was checked, flights were booked and the great adventure began.

We flew from JFK to London Heathrow then took a coach from Heathrow to another of the London Airports, Gatwick. We were due to fly to Cork from Gatwick early the following morning so had decided to stay at a hotel near to Gatwick ready for our early start.. We stayed at the Copthorne Hotel which is about 10 minutes drive from the airport. What a wonderful hotel it was. Set in beautiful grounds, the hotel is built around a 16th century farmhouse. We had a great time exploring the hotel and grounds and after a delicious meal it was time for bed.

The flight to Cork went smoothly and we hired a car at the airport. In no time at all we were on the open road and I now know the true meaning of that phrase. Once we’d left the airport behind we were driving along deserted country roads where we were more likely to come across a herd of cows in the road than another car.  We were heading for a town called Mallow, which seemed to be the nearest one to the village that we were searching for. Having checked into our hotel, we went for a chat to a few of the local people to see if anybody could help us in our search. In no time at all we found a delightful old man who told us exactly where the village was, or rather used to be. It was now a little group of ancient derelict farm workers cottages, all signs of life had long since departed. It was sad to think that our journey had achieved so little and we returned to Mallow with heavy hearts. We had found an amazing hotel called the Springfort Hall just a couple of miles outside town. It was tucked away in a beautiful country estate that dated back to the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169. The hotel itself is the 18th century manor house, a stunning, magical building that conjures up memories of a bygone age.  Anyhow, we were sitting in the lounge bar that evening when we got into conversation with another guest, oh what a lucky encounter. The gentleman was called Seamus and he was one of the officers of the Mallow Historical Society. He knew everything there was to know about Mallow and the surrounding area. He knew of the derelict village that we’d seen earlier and was able to tell my dad the full story of how almost half of the villagers died during the famine and the remainder left to start a new life elsewhere. Seamus was delighted to hear my Dad’s stories of how great, great Grandpa had made it to the United States and how the family had grown from that time. We had a truly memorable night listening to the stories told by Seamus (all Irishmen are wonderful storytellers) and we were all sorry to have to say goodnight to our new friend.  We had decided to leave Mallow the following day and to spend a couple of days sightseeing around Ireland. Imagine our surprise when Seamus appeared clutching a pile of magazines for my Dad. It seems that there’s an annual journal published by the historical society and he’d brought at least a dozen back issues as a gift for my Dad. The books are full of the history of Mallow and the surrounding areas and there were tears in my Dad’s eyes as he thanked his new found friend for the gift that meant so much to him.

We had to keep the journals under lock and key to stop Dad reading every one of them before we continued our travels. We promised to allow him access to a couple of them on the long flight home to the U.S., but in the meantime we still had a few days of our trip remaining. It was decided that we’d visit the beautiful South West corner of Ireland with the lakes and mountains of Killarney and Kerry. En-route we stopped off at Blarney Castle to kiss the Blarney Stone and gain the gift of eloquence (now you know why I talk so much). Later that day we were booking into The Lake Hotel in Killarney, a majestic hotel with the most amazing views. The hotel was built in 1820 and still features the original elegant lounges with open log fires. Queen Victoria of England stayed in the hotel in 1861 during her tour of Ireland and the hotel has been sympathetically updated since those times to give a combination of modern amenities coupled with old world charm and service. The hotel was a wonderful base to enable us to discover this very special part of Ireland and the time simply flew by. Before we knew it, we were back to Heathrow and the flight home to New York.

Let me finish by recommending two websites that we found very helpful during our trip. The Tourism Ireland website is a mine of information for anybody visiting that country from overseas and we found a superb selection of hotels in UK and Ireland  on the online hotel bookings website, with online checks of availability and price plus online booking of the actual hotel rooms.