Glimpses in the dark

My favourite lens is my 100mm f/2.8. It suits the way I see, a bit shortsightedly, focusing on an interesting small detail, with everything else fading off into the background.

I spent a happy couple of hours at the Ulster Folk Museum yesterday using it to pick out little details in the old houses - slivers of china or fabric lit by sunbeams in the dark rooms, reflections in wavy picture glass, shadows cast on cracked plaster.

I wanted to create a mood that was secretive and compelling, with hints of stories unfolding from the shadows. It was a good technical challenge too, working with what may look like pure black, but is really shades of darkness. I wish I had time to write the stories now, but they'll wait a little longer.

Safe

My workhouse obsession has been in full swing for a couple of years. It was sparked by the discovery that some of my ancestors in north Fermanagh had survived the Famine years of the 1840s only by entering the workhouse at Lowtherstown, now Irvinestown. Seeing their names and the descriptions of their pitiful circumstances in the workhouse records was a moving experience, and it set me off on a quest to discover more about their stories. 

The workhouse buildings at Irvinestown are long gone, but Bawnboy, County Cavan, built to the same plan, like all the Irish workhouses, made a fitting substitute. You can read more about my first visit to Bawnboy here - it was another cathartic experience. I read all round the subject of the famine and the workhouse. My most helpful guides were John O'Connor's 'The Workhouses of Ireland', Breege McCusker's 'Lowtherstown Workhouse' and the recently published 'Atlas of the Great Irish Famine'. I travelled to the Irish Workhouse Centre in Portumna, County Galway, where Steve Dolan answered every question I could think of and showed me round another incarnation of the building which Margaret, James, Catherine, Irvine and Thomas Elliott entered in 1848.

As I worked my way round the topic and visited the dreadfully atmospheric workhouse buildings, I decided that an audio-visual piece based on my own family's Famine story would be a good response to what I'd discovered. 

I was clear from the start that I didn't want to make a didactic piece, communicating historical information in a dry way, but a personal story, expressing the feelings of a real and relatable human being.

I chose Catherine, my great-great-grandfather James's little sister, as the focus of the work. To me, she became Cate, and I was delighted to find, when I came upon her details in someone else's family tree, that she was called this in real life.

I had a large portfolio of workhouse images I'd created at Bawnboy and Portumna. Now I needed Cate herself. Finding a famine-thin eight-year-old model was obviously out of the question, so I decided to focus on Cate as a woman in her twenties, thinking back to her experiences as a child. My model Hopewell personified the Cate of my imagination perfectly, with facial expressions and expressive gestures to communicate every moment of her journey. With her bare face, hair pulled back and handmade antique high-necked blouse, she became a thoughtful and damaged young woman from 1864.

Many of my workhouse photographs featured windows, as elegantly decayed architectural features and symbols of both imprisonment and escape. I couldn't believe my good fortune in locating, for Hopewell's "Cate" shoot, an old six-paned window which echoed strongly those of the workhouses. This became a key pivot point in the piece, with Cate shown first sitting outside the window, but moving behind it as the story recounts her admittance to the workhouse, her face partly obscured now by its bars. I structured a narrative that moved to and fro between Cate as a 24-year-old and the workhouse of her childhood, shown now as a near-derelict building. This was going to involve considerable suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewers, but I hoped that it would be effective.

My script was structured round Cate's experiences, told simply and clearly. My voice actress, Rosie, conveyed her words with total integrity, bringing them to life in a way that made me forget it was actually me who'd written them.

To provide contrast, I also included the words of the Matron of the workhouse, the visiting minister, the workhouse inspector Dr Denis Phelan (these words are taken from his real report into conditions at Lowtherstown), and an anonymous local man. Helpful friends and colleagues read these parts for me, populating the piece and lending it further authenticity.

Early in the process, I composed a simple lullaby for the Elliott family....

Safe, safe in my heart
I'll keep you safe in my heart
Stay near or go far, wherever you are
I'll keep you safe in my heart

As the script emerged, I decided to use the song at two key points in the drama: the moment when Margaret was separated from her children on admission to the workhouse (Charles Kickham's novel of 1869, 'Sally Cavanagh' helped me with this scene), and the tender moment near the end when Cate reveals her own current circumstances.

I composed all the music for the piece myself. I spent some time developing a palette of sounds to create the mood I wanted, with instruments such as a bouzouki, lute, cor anglais, flute, piano, folk percussion instruments and double bass. The style I chose is more contemporary than those of my other pieces, with no attempt to recreate the sounds of the nineteenth century apart from the presence of the simple lullaby. There's a recurring idea of a smear or glissando, referring to Irish traditional music but also aiming to cause a sense of disquiet.

The opening notes of the lullaby, 'Safe, safe in my heart...' became a motif which reappeared frequently in the score, always referencing the idea of keeping a child safe from harm. I also composed a theme for the workhouse itself: this can be heard for the first time when the matron starts to read the list of names of those admitted on 22 November 1848. (The 67 admissions she mentions for that date is an accurate figure.)

As well as the ubiquitous windows, a couple of other ideas emerged as visual themes within the piece. Flowers appear at significant moments. A cross transforms back into a broken workhouse window. 

'Safe' has been a labour of love. I hope that it conveys something of the desperation and tragedy that these people experienced, something of the possibility of redemption and the long shadow cast over everything that came later. I suspect it's not my last piece of work on the subject.

Click on the image below to see the finished piece on Vimeo.

In harbour

Nothing makes me happier than an evening visit to a fishing harbour with my 100mm lens. I have hundreds of images to prove it.

It's maybe a bit of a niche interest, a detail shot of the beautiful rust on a fifty-year-old prawn trawler. But this weekend I've been trying to go a bit more mainstream with some colour-themed grids of my harbour close-ups. I'll put them in my Etsy shop and hope that someone else in the world shares my love.

Lough Ennell

Lough Ennell, just south of Mullingar in County Westmeath.

This was one of my stopping places (the only one without tea and cake) on my way back from Portumna to Belfast yesterday. It was the generous recommendation of a friend - and such a beautiful place.

It was a dull day, but the clouds were lovely, reflecting in the tranquil surface. Much of the lake is very shallow, with rocks and plants emerging elegantly from the water.

It feels old, despite the calm. It has a busy history of crannog and ringfort building and buried silver. Now, it's surrounded by big houses and golf courses, but on a dull Irish day, there's enough wildness left to imagine it in ancient times. It even has swans - but by the time I reached them it was raining heavily and I needed some chocolate cake. I'll aim to return in May, with a picnic.

Following Frances 4: Swanlinbar, Part 2

I’ve been thrilled by the visceral glimpse into Frances and William’s life afforded by my visit to the derelict Swanlinbar Methodist Church (you can read about it here), and I’m ready to drive away happy. But Gregory wonders if I’ve called at the manse yet. No – I had assumed that the manse lay between the church and the river, and that it’s long demolished.

It’s not. It’s a few houses up the Creamery Road from where I parked my car. Gregory suggests that I call at the door.

IV

I walk out the road, knowing it’s a long shot. But there working in the garden are Noel and his son Conor. I explain my connection with the house and I’m welcomed in. Noel’s wife Kathleen arrives back from doing messages in the town and we begin a tour of the manse.

It’s a gorgeous house, detached and set in a substantial garden, with stabling for a horse. The period features are intact – the tiles in the square hallway, with the staircase rising up around it, the shutters throughout the ground floor, the window frames with some little touches of stained glass. It’s the most elegant house Frances has lived in so far, and as her first manse, it always occupied a special place in her heart. Nora writes about her mother’s vivid descriptions of her new home and of placing her wedding presents around it.

Kathleen and Noel are the most generous and lovely hosts possible. In no time, I’m sitting having my lunch at a big old table in my great-grandmother’s kitchen. It’s bread and cheese and tea. The cheese is fancier than any Frances would have seen, but it’s familiar ground. We talk about the Swanlinbar of today, education and prospects for young people, agriculture, health and Irish political issues. This manse kitchen has listened to such conversations continually over the last 117 years. I feel immensely privileged to be involved in this one, and there’s a very grateful tear in my eye.

V

Frances and William lived here in County Cavan for three years. It was a quiet posting in many ways. Later, when I’m able to see the original documents in the library at Edgehill, I find that William officiated at only one wedding during these years, perhaps his first. It was a winter celebration, when Maggie Jane Moffitt married William Magee on the fifth of December 1900.

Maggie, a seamstress, thirty-one years old, had been living with her older brother Robert, his wife Doria and their seven children on the family farm in the tiny townland of Gortnaleg, just south of Blacklion. After her marriage, she moved in with William, his elderly mother and father and sister Hannah, on their farm in Druminiskill, just across into County Fermanagh. The Magees were a Church of Ireland family, and Maggie left the Methodist Church of her youth to join her husband’s denomination.

The census records of 1911 show Maggie and William living in Druminiskill with their eight-year-old son Richard. Hannah is still with them, occupying the position of unmarried auntie that Maggie had previously held in her own brother’s family. The Magee family remain in their Gortnaleg farm. Doria’s name is now transcribed as Deliah, or perhaps Deriah. The three eldest children have left home, and four more young ones have joined the family. The youngest is baby Wesley Jason, an astonishing mix of names, Methodist and 1970s, to my eye. Interestingly, two of the middle children, including Maggie Jane, named after her aunt, are recorded as being able to speak Irish as well as English.

All of that’s a bit of a diversion, but it’s also a little snapshot of a family history very typical of its time and place. I also wonder about the personal connections between the characters I see emerging from the church’s careful records. Frances and Maggie were the same age and had much in common. Might they have been friends? Might they have kept in touch during the years ahead, as Frances, a great letter-writer, moved from town to town and Maggie brought up her one precious son in the Lakeland countryside? Would they have heard of the important events to come in each other’s lives and sent sincere notes in their similar, careful late-nineteenth-century handwriting?

VI

Frances was six months pregnant with her first child at the time of Maggie and William’s wedding. The baby was due in March. With so many older and younger siblings, nephews and nieces, I would imagine that Frances had attended births before and looked forward with excitement and a realistic idea of what lay ahead for her own first confinement.

Her sister Rebecca, a reassuring and competent presence, came to stay in the manse. Everything was made ready for the expected time. But a complication arose. William received news that Swanlinbar was to receive a visit from the Reverend F E Harte, minister of Carlisle Memorial Church in Belfast, as part of the Foreign Mission Deputation. Fred Harte was a friend of William’s – they had been ordained together. Carlisle Memorial was William’s own home church. Offering hospitality at the manse was the right thing to do.

And despite everybody’s best hopes, the inevitable happened. Frances and Rebecca entertained their visitor warmly, and everyone retired to bed. Almost immediately, Frances went into labour.

Fred Harte tells the tale in his own book, The Road I Have Travelled. “I was three long weeks in the country speaking on week-nights and preaching on Sundays. The tour began at Enniskillen, from which I had a two hours trip down Lough Erne to Knockninny, thence to Swanlinbar, where a little boy was born to the Rev. and Mrs. William Bryans while I was in the manse. There was great commotion during the night, but I slept peacefully through it all. The little boy was called after me.”

Mr Harte was a notoriously heavy sleeper. Later in his book he manages to slumber through the night of the Donaghadee gun-running. Nevertheless, to modern sensibilities, having to stifle your labour cries to avoid disturbing your husband’s colleague in the guest bedroom sounds like a duty too far. Frances was certainly made of sterner stuff, though, and, ironically or as a genuine compliment, the little boy was indeed named Frederick Edward.

VII

Fred was joined the next summer by his brother Donald. The manse and its safe green garden were the perfect place for the little boys to play, and by the spring of 1903, Frances was secretly expecting her third child.

But spring was becoming a time of anxiety. She knew that a move was inevitable, and as yet there was no indication of William’s next posting. With every passing week she looked more fondly round her warm, square, nicely appointed house and feared that its comforts would be hard to equal. Her fears were to prove entirely justified.

Everytown blues

You look behind Main Street.

You let the shadows sink deeper and the cracks show more clearly.

You see the words which hang empty and painful at the back of beyond.

You find the blues of everytown, the sad/beautiful poem that's different and the same every time.