New book digs up history of Connemara’s walled gardens

Date Published: 08-Nov-2012

It’s one of the most challenging landscapes in which to live, but is also one of Ireland’s most beautiful places, and for that reason Connemara has always attracted more than its fair share of visitors.

It was especially popular among the gentry and well-heeled of the 19th century, with many of them building fishing lodges and summer homes as well as permanent residences in this wild and inhospitable environment.

Frequently these houses had walled gardens which supplied residents with their fruit and vegetables. The most elaborate is the beautiful and renowned Kylemore Abbey, but it’s not the only one as Clifden resident Gary Brow discovered when he went researching the subject.

Belfast born Gary has now published a book on the subject entitled Connemara Walled Gardens; Clifden and Environs, which takes in houses in an area from Cashel to Kylemore, including Toombeola, Roundstone, Ballyconneely, Clifden, Cleggan, Moyard and Letterfrack.

He was surprised at the number of old houses that were built and are still in existence, and his research has left him with a profound admiration for those people who created the gardens in such challenging surroundings.

“They were adventurous – it was desolate, there were no facilities, the landscape was both barren and waterlogged.”

In the 1960s when Gary first started visiting Connemara with friends, they had to bring wine, garlic and other supplies with them – and transport then was easy compared to the previous century.

But, as he also points out, that was an era when cheap labour and advances in technology allowed for water systems to be built, as well as heated greenhouses, although the take-up on these around Clifden was small.

Gary was a surgeon in Dublin for many years but the family bought a small holiday house in Connemara in the mid 1990s. He now lives there permanently while his wife, Pearl, a palliative-care nurse who has several years before retiring, divides her time between Connemara and Dublin. Their adult daughters, Emily and Lydia are frequent visitors West.

“Our Dublin home is old,” says Gary, “and so I’d have an appreciation of the work involved in these houses in Connemara – they are lovely buildings.”

He points to the beautiful Garrabaun House near Moyard, built in 1852, describing its “magnificent buildings in the middle of nowhere”.

Houses like this were in their prime during the 1800s but in the 1950s, when Ireland declined economically, these houses also suffered.

“It took time for people to realise that those who built these houses had built them on the best sites, with the best views. This was virgin country and a blank canvas for these people.”

While the walled gardens he studied varied in size and distance from the houses they served and some were more sophisticated than others, they all had one thing in common, says Gary.

“They were dedicated areas for growing. Therefore the wall offered physical protection from animals and shelter from the wind that is always present.”

He points to his own garden, which he has designed to withstand the same problems that were experienced by gardeners in previous centuries.

“It’s a constant battle with the wind,” he says.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.