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I could see "the Rock" as I drove into Cashel. There were lots of tourists there with me. The centuries of neglect are evident but the buildings are being restored. Our guide told us that the Bishop and his crew left because the buildings were too hard to keep warm. I believed him as the cold wind whistled through me. Some visitors from the continent where it is already hot, were, unfortunately for them, in their summer gear. The town itself is charming and about 2000 people. I had the worst cup of coffee there on the trip so far. My heart sank when I saw grated chocolate on top. I checked out what was supposed to be the South Tipp Geneological Society near the Rock. The Bishop before the current one obviously knew the value of a euro and made sure people pay for the information which is kept in Tipperary town!
I drove off to the county town which is a bustling place and a bit grimy--I got caught behind a tractor in the main street. Tipperary is still very rural. I already knew the records for the parish I was interested in (Lattin & Cullen) began well
after the Ryans left. This was where Mum's mother's family came from. The whole family including a 2 year old Walter Ryan (Mum's grandfather) went to Sydney in the early 1830s.
I got the lady in Tipperary town to check the records for Bridget Hogan, our Walter's mother. She couldnt find her baptism but found two other children (James 1800 and John 1814) to William Hogan and Margaret Ryan in the parish of Killenaule,which is adjacent to Cashel parish. The gap suggests they moved away from Killenaule and then back again. It seems likely that Bridget Hogan was born in the parish of Killenaule.
The parish of Lattin and Cullen is a few miles (everyone here still thinks and talks in imperial even though they went metric about a decade ago) west of Tipperary town. It is lovely looking country. . It probably looks much the same as when the Ryans left with the Galty Mountains in the distance. The church in the village of Cullen is obviously not a really old one. Opposite is the school. I was there at about 5pm in the afternoon. I saw a woman weeding the garden and knew immediately that she
was the principal! Ms McCarthy told me that there are two churches and three cemeteries in the parish of Lattin and Cullen (not Cullen and Lattin!). Cullen is the bigger village but the priest has always lived in Lattin, about 5 miles south. There were apparently many Protestants in the area in the past but hardly any now. Hardly anyone between the ages of 14 --and 40 goes to Mass anymore--the sexual abuse scandal is a major reason she thinks. The falling real salaries of teachers and the threats of school closures in the poor economic times following the 2008 recession (which was really a crash in Ireland) also sounded familiar.
I went off to Denis Quinlan's pub in Cullen which is a few hundred metres from the county border with Limerick. He told me that Shronell and Ballycohey are adjacent townlands at the Lattin end of the parish. Two locals urged me over a guinness to go to the big hurling match at the weekend. They lived in Cullen not Lattin and Cullen. One of them had recently spent a year working in Melbourne and lived in Collingwood--it's a small world.
On the way back to nearby
Tipperary town I stopped at the cemetery in Shronell which is right on the boundary between the Shronell and Ballycohy townlands. I found a very interesting monument which includes a John Ryan who I think was the brother of
I also went for a drive in the beautiful Glen of Arherlow in front of the Galty Mountains. Everywhere I have been I have seen tractors on the roads--even in the main street of the County town of Tipperary.
PS: In Dublin at the National History Museum I was excited to see a mention of Cullen. In the late bronze age (1200-500BC) a large number of torcs (gold vessels and collars etc) were found in "the bog of Cullen"--apparently for reasons unknown these objects were placed in bogs on purpose and hence many have been preserved. There were many of them on display but most of the Cullen objects found over a 70 year period in the 18thC were melted down by the locals! There was a 1804 illustration of a 4 inch dress fastener owned by a family in Shronell.
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