RELIGION



CHILDREN

VILLAGE LIFE

FAMILIES

TRANSPORT

TOWNS AND CITIES

HOME

THE PEOPLE

FARMING

SHOPS AND COMMERCE

HORSES

MUSIC

Death

OLD AGE

LAND

HUMAN INFLUENCE ON THE LANDSCAPE

The west coast of Ireland seemed to be caught in a time trap in the last decades of the 20th Century. It has started to show signs of catching up with the rest of the world as tourism opened up the sleepy villages. The naming of the coastline as the ‘Wild Atlantic Way’ was one lever, the other were the European grants in the infrastructure that made it a more attractive proposition for private investors. Suddenly, new building was taking place everywhere. The long tradition of emigration away from Ireland reversed and the population started to grow. Then the bubble burst with a huge worldwide economic crash. These photographs were taken in the decades just before that crash. They speak of communities intertwined with the landscape. Of farming families that made a living from the land, often in ways that had not changed for hundreds of years.

During the 1980s and 90s I travelled to the west coast of Ireland because my wife had family living on the Galway-Clare border. They had a small farm with a handful of cows. It looked out on a small inlet known locally as ‘the tide’. About a mile away was Traught Beach. If you looked south, you would see the hills rise up sharply towards Clare. On that hill was a stone wall that rose from the field below and suddenly stopped halfway up. The story goes that it was paid for by a local landowner to provide work for the many men who tramped the roads with their families during the Potato Famine.

I noticed during my visits that life ticked away slowly. It reminded me so much of my life back in the 1950s. All the men wore slightly threadbare jackets and flat caps. If you listened in to their conversations it would range between hurling, Irish football and livestock. On one occasion in the 1980s, we visited a stock market (previous pages). The low afternoon light gradually faded as we left the market. Autumn was well and truly with us. The heavy clouds threatened rain but that didn’t deter these old boys from having a smoke and a chat before they went on their way. The cattle had been loaded and their journeys back to the surrounding farms were about to begin.

Ireland is the home of romantic dreams. Songs telling of rolling green fields and sparkling white beaches conjure up a halcyon land. And in that land, what could be idyllic than rolling along the road in a bow top caravan. Going to no particular place without the worry of time. Travellers have been a part of the Irish landscape for hundreds of years. What was once a difficult way of life often enforced on tenant farmers thrown of their land by greedy landlords has been turned into a romantic lifestyle.