A Magic Walk from the Town of Dundalk - Diary of a Ditch Witch

[@betsysutton13]

This was lovely, and yes, even a little bit sad, but that's ok. Sometimes the sadness is worthy of the moment.

[@dianewatier50]

Tara yes please do more "walk abouts", this was sooo fascinating!

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

I certainly will! Thanks Diane xxx

[@athenafrances4770]

Wow so love your your adventures in beautiful Ireland big thank you

[@melolore1280]

This was magnificently magical & wonderful.I absolutely loved this. Nothin better than a good ditch. Blessed Be🔮

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

So glad you enjoyed Melody! Thank you! 😊

[@megmystery]

I am from California and had a real witchy afternoon finding this graveyard on trip 3-4 years ago. It means a lot to be able to visit again in these times of lockdown. Thanks for posting you answered my pagan prayers for a breath of fresh air.

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

That's so great to hear, Meg! That's amazing that you've been here! Hopefully it won't be too long before you can visit again

[@annie850]

Loved the appearance of the rainbow as soon as ye mentioned the wee folk!! Absolutely loving the series' and seeing your face again x ;)

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

Ach thanks so much for watching lady! I think my introvert tendencies have finally found their best outlet, and I can't be sure, but I think the Other Crowd agree....lol

[@mcdaibhaid]

Yes please more of this historical facts, fiction, and folklore. This is amazing for me and the likes. Thank you Tara so much and procrastination has battled with me and won as I always intended to do similar.

[@cybergal99]

Lovely video, thank you for the Dundalk history, my grandmother was from outside of Carrickmacross and I recently found my family there who live on the farm she left in 1912 to come to America. We had dinner in a lovely pub in Dundalk and went to the Tesco! IF I ever get back to Ireland, I'll make sure to visit this graveyard and pay my respects.

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

Lovely to hear from you Ann, and to hear about your visit 😍 gime another few months and I'll have another few stop off suggestions for your next trip! 😊

[@MseeBMe]

Would love to see more historical walks :) Thank you for sharing this with us.

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

Most welcome MseeBMe! So glad you enjoyed 😊 I've done many more historic walks since this video, feel free to check out the 'Irish History & Folklore' playlist on my channel to see more! 😍

[@sarahflynn8408]

Thanks Tara- Class videos! Keep them coming! Lovely to see sights from home when in California for lockdown 💚✨🙏🏻

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

Ach thanks Sarah! And hello to California! Send us some of that heat please :-P I've done another few local history and folklore vids since this one, but there's a very special one coming out next Thursday

[@brandyjean7015]

Happy to join you on your walks!

[@kevinmcguire8377]

Yes please more I love them

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

Tomorrow's video: "A Coastal Walk in the Town of Dundalk" ;-) thanks Kevin!

[@snuffiegrl992]

Yes please!!

[@annegrozelle6174]

Really enjoyed your video. I live in Ontario Canada and love to see other parts of the world. Thank you

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

I've been to Ontario a couple times, I was born in NWT ;-) Thanks for tuning in, glad you enjoyed Anne!

[@AriaIvancichArt]

Ty, that is so nice!

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

Thanks for watching Aria!

[@amandagosling7622]

Id love to see more history on The Town, im only up the road from you in Ardee and i wont lie, i know very little about Dundalks history.

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

So do many of us here in Dundalk Amanda, myself included! So don't feel bad lol Ardee's another place brimming with history, I'd love to do a feature on it at some point. Then up to Smarmore for high tea maybe? :-P

[@amandagosling7622]

@@DiaryofaDitchWitch I'm sorry to tell you Smarmore is no longer open to the public, it is now a private rehab clinic.

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

A pity for the public but no doubt the residents are glad to have it. Well there's plenty of other stories to take me to Ardee in the New Year!

[@amandagosling7622]

@@DiaryofaDitchWitch its not really any use to the locality to be honest, other than staff and local produce. Its the new Priory if you get me, the only people that can afford to access it are celebs and the kids/teens of the very rich from the UK. Its all a very open secret locally, but very discreet. With that said, we have seen an increase in local produce been shipped to the UK. They do also hire local physios and therapists etc, depending on the resident/patient. It is very up market so had been good to the local economy but in a low key way

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

Sounds intriguing, if I figure out how to blur your face out, wanna be my tour guide? 😆

[@growmusic3901]

Fab thank you!! Morrre

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

Working on it as we speak, hit subscribe and stay tuned! Thanks for watching Grow Music! :-)

[@alexanderkelly3496]

Hello Tara and happy new year. I just came across your excellent page. The graveyard I am very familiar with. I saw my first ghost there in 1975. Well before it's restoration. I was 9 years old. At the time I lived on the Ardee road at Bally Barrack. Myself, my brother and two of our cousins came across the graveyard by chance. We had been sliding down the walls of the old quarry next to the graveyard and my brother spotted a ton of blackberrys over the low wall into the graveyard. We didn't know it was a graveyard then and only found out after my mother told our landlord about my ghost sighting. At the time the graveyard was completely over grown. I now live on the South coast of NSW, Australia. All the very best.

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

Hello there, fellow Dundalker! This story is exactly what I hope to find when I click into my KZbin comments, thanks a mil for sharing Alex! But what really stands out to me is that it was your FIRST ghost, implying there were more. I smell an interview coming on! The places I visit are riddled with ghosts, but they know better than to appear to the likes of me haha

[@everydaybellydancer]

Hey that’s no fair! We need to hear about the ghost you saw please!!!!

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

I still second that! Here's hoping Alexander gets back to us 😊

[@alexanderkelly3496]

@@everydaybellydancer Ok. At the time I saw "The Ghost' I wasn't even aware we were in a Graveyard. It was completely overgrown and certainly wasn't as big as it looks now. Being 9 at that time I was aware of ghosts as I had spent a lot of time wandering through graveyards with my parents. The ghost I saw, or was it an apparition appeared to be that of a 'Holy man'. I have never been of any religious persuasion. I say Holy man because of the way it was dressed. It wore a long dark cloak with a hood which hid it's face. It was standing at the gate to the graveyard and looking directly at me. My brother and my cousins were oblivious to this as they were eating blackberries. The graveyard was full of blackberry bushes at the time. I looked back at the ghost, blinked and it was gone. I had no idea what I had just witnessed but it definitely freaked me out. The next thing I was running as fast as I could, bawling my eyes out, back to our house on the Ardee road. My brother and cousin's were chasing after me shouting 'What's wrong?' It was a few weeks after this that my mother was talking to our landlord about what had happened when he told her that that field was full of ghosts 'Sure isn't it the oul Famine yard' he said. So there you are. It's a story I love to remember and also tell. It may not seem to be very much but I can tell you that at the time it blew my mind. I began to see 'Ghosts' and also be contacted 'from the other side' from that time. Unfortunatley I haven't seen or heard anything for the last 20 years. Be well!

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

Only seeing this now, thanks for sharing your story Alexander. So vivid, truly seem throughthe eyes of a child. I would say indeed that there are a lot of lost souls up there, I don't see them myself these days either. But perhaps I'll check in on them when I'm up again.

[@tomzadvydas1758]

Interesting. You have a beautiful town

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

Thanks Tom! I hope to show you it all over the next while, this is only a small taste of the beauty and history we have here :-)

[@tomzadvydas1758]

@@DiaryofaDitchWitch awesome. Ireland is such a beautiful country

[@brianamurphy144]

Wow! Thank you for sharing 💜

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

Thanks for watching Briana! Glad you enjoyed!

[@Anna-wc5it]

Would be good to have an interview with one of the members of the famine graveyard committee who have spent years renovating the graveyard, and know about the local history of it ☺️

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

Definitely! I couldn't find contact details for them before I did the video, but at least two of them have been in touch with me since. Will get that going as soon as restrictions allow, or perhaps via Zoom. I'm working on another local history one right now so want to get that put out first. Thanks for watching and commenting Anna! Really appreciate the feedback!

[@Anna-wc5it]

@@DiaryofaDitchWitch perfect!

[@DaughterOfChrist1997]

❤

[@joanndullahan4709]

My husband is from Dundalk. We are coming home for a family reunion in June. I look forward to taking this walk! Where would we begin?

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

There's an entrance near the McArdle Moore Brewery, another further up the Ardee Rd 😊

[@joanndullahan4709]

Thanks so much!

[@paulgilgunn1739]

Hello from Dundalk Famine Graveyard Committee, great video on the graveyard County Louth, Ireland, who have been working on the restoration and preservation of a unique historic cemetery, the Dundalk Famine Graveyard, which is located within walking distance of what was originally the Dundalk Union Workhouse. 2. Background The workhouses were introduced into Ireland under the Poor Relief (Ireland) Act of 1838 as a means of providing a carefully managed system of temporary relief for the destitute. A form of Poor Law had been in existence in England since the beginning of the Seven- teenth-century and the Irish Poor Law was modelled on the “new” English Poor Law howev- er, it differed in a number of key respects. As Christine Kinealy explains: “[R]elief could only be administered within the confines of a workhouse: outdoor relief being expressly forbidden. Secondly, no ‘right’ to relief existed. Finally, a Law of Settlement, which had been an integral part of the English Poor Law since the seventeenth century, was not introduced in Ireland. These provisions indicated that from the onset Irish paupers were to be treated differently - and, in fact, more harshly - than their counterparts in England.”1 The Act also established 130 (later 163) Poor Law districts which paid a tax that contributed to the upkeep of the paupers in the workhouses. The Poor Law workhouses were designed by George Wilkinson (1814-90), an English architect, who was hired by the Poor Law Commissioners to design all of the workhouses in the newly created union districts in Ireland. All the workhouses that Wilkinson built were based on variations of a standard plan and executed in Wilkinson’s favored Tudor style. 2 The day-to-day running of the workhouse was controlled by elected Poor Law Guardians. Conditions of entry into the workhouses were strict and only destitute people were deemed eligible for relief. It was seen as a last resort for desperate people as the workhouse regime was punitive and little better than that found in the prisons of the time. The inmates’ only possessions, which were given to them upon admission, were a uniform, mattress and thin blanket. Sleeping conditions were crowed and uncomfortable, and sanitation facilities were primitive. Both factors contributed to the spread of disease and infection within the work- houses. Families were separated on admission as there was strict gender segregation within the building complexes. A typical day inside a workhouse was to rise at 6:00 am breakfast at 6:30am and then work from 7:00am until 6:00pm with a break at noon which may have included lunch. Supper was served at 7:00pm with lights out around 8:00pm. Despite the harsh environment and forbidding conditions, the workhouses were quickly overrun during the years of the Famine. Dympna McLoughlin illustrates the grim reality: On December 31, 1840, there were a total of 5,648 people in the workhouse and a total of 10,910 relieved during the year. By December 13, 1846, heading for the worst year of the Famine, there were 96,437 people in the workhouse with a total of 243,933 seeking assistance during 1846. The workhouse was not designed to cope with such numbers and as a result many of the destitute perished. 3. The Dundalk Workhouse and Famine Graveyard The Dundalk Poor Law Union was formally declared on the 18th June 1839 and the work- house was officially opened in February 1842. Built on an eight acre site, the workhouse was located on an area fronting the Ardee Road in the townland of Rath, which is in Hag- gardstown parish. The land was provided by Thomas Fortescue, the First Baron Clermont (1815-1887), of Ravensdale Park in County Louth. The workhouse, which received its first inmates in March of 1842, was initially designed to accommodate 800 paupers, but as with all the other workhouses built in Ireland they quickly exceed this quota during the Fam- ine years. As the Famine continued, the Poor Law played “a significant role in providing a medical safety net in some of the poorest parts of the country” (Kinealy 109). Dundalk was no different and consequently the workhouse guardians soon found it necessary to provide separate accommodations for fever patients. The addition of a 48 bed fever hospital was completed sometime later in the decade (perhaps in 1845 or 1947). By the end of the Famine in 1852 the workhouse was catering for some 1,290 inmates and was at full capacity. Deaths at the height of the Famine averaged around 20 per week in this workhouse. When the building was originally built it included a modest graveyard; however, the scale of death during the Famine years and immediately beyond meant that this graveyard was at full capacity by 1852.3 The Board of Governors were forced to find a larger burial plot and a one-acre site located a mile to the southwest of Dundalk at Killally was acquired. This graveyard was opened in 1852, and according to official parish records roughly 4,000 men, women and children were buried in this mass grave.4 The site continued to be the burial ground for the workhouse until 1900 when the last internment took place. Unlike other cemeteries this graveyard was non-denominational. Another distinguishing feature is the complete absence of headstones or other memorials indicating the burial plots. The Dundalk workhouse closed in 1920 and for much of the latter half of the twentieth century the building operated as a hospital and nursing home for elderly patients, known as St. Oliver Plunkett’s Hospital. After the nursing home was relocated to another building on the main Dublin road the remains of the workhouse were demolished in 1987. In addition to traces of the original brickwork, a portion of the fever hospital still remains and is now a daycare center. 4 Until the establishment on the Dundalk Famine Restoration Committee this graveyard remained hidden in plain sight, with many residents of the town of Dundalk unaware of its existence. The only acknowledgment of its existence was a small plaque erected in the garden of the workhouse in 1984 by the Old Dundalk Society in honor of all those interred within the graveyard. The erasure of the history of such historic sites is not uncommon, as the histo- rian Cormac Ó Gráda has noted: Folklore is prone to forget the more distant past, how- ever, and suffer from chronological confusion. It is also subject to hidden biases and evasions. Thus, although about one-fifth of those who perished during the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s breathed their last in a workhouse, hardly any of the famine narratives collected mainly in the 1930s and 1940s refer to an ancestor in the workhouse. Given the enduring stigma attached to workhouse relief in Ireland, the silence could be due to selective memory; it may also be that the more articulate members of a community, those who transmit the mem- ory, are atypical descendants of more resilient families, and so recall events witnessed rather than those experi- enced by their forebearers. 4. Renovations of the Dundalk Famine Graveyard. As noted above, the graveyard remained largely neglected and forgotten until 2000, when a group of local volunteers formed the Dundalk Graveyard Association. A spokesman for the committee describes their mission thus: “The people buried here at present are neglected in death as they were in life. We would like to afford them some dignity by restoring the grave- yard, erecting a modest and appropriate memorial together with road signage to ease access for the public.” The first task facing the committee was that of clearing the site and maintaining the grassy area covering the graves, a job complicated by the fact that the graveyard has a noticeably uneven surface due to the practice of burying coffins no deeper than 18 inches below the surface. For the last several years the committee has undertaken the monumental task of repairing and rebuilding the stone walls enclosing the cemetery. The first stage of this project involved clearing away the multitude of trees, briars, ivy and weeds that were overgrown in order to assess how much of the wall structure had collapsed over the years. The original walls were constructed with a mixture of sand and limestone, but a more contemporary material, concrete, was utilized by the stonemason in the restoration work. Renovation of the walls surrounding the graveyard was completed in early June of this year. The committee has also been instrumental in organizing an annual interdenominational Service of Remembrance at the graveyard which takes place every August. For information on the work of the Dundalk Famine Restoration Project visit the groups Facebook page. More information is also available at sites.google.com/site/killallygraveyard/home To date, all the costs incurred in repairing and maintaining the graveyard have been raised locally by the committee through fundraising drives, church collections and the donation of volunteer time. There is still more work to be done and the site has to be continually maintained to ensure it does not fall into disrepair. To contribute to the restoration work the committee have estab- lished a Go Fund Me page. Please consider supporting the preservation work on this important Famine site: https.//www.gofundme.com/dundalk-famine-graveyard You can contact me on 0876775829 or at [e-mail] for further information I have a group on Facebook called Dundalk famine Graveyard with photos and other information on it A91E76N location of the graveyard for parking for access to the graveyard

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

Thanks for that Paul. I tried to accept your request to join The El Paso Chronicles but you appear to have me blocked so I was unable to.

[@paulgilgunn1739]

Don’t have you blocked on fb or anything whats your name and I’ll look it up on fb to see can I find u

[@DiaryofaDitchWitch]

That's so weird. I can't see your profile on my FB, but I can see you on Dave's. I'm Tara Tine.

[@paulgilgunn1739]

Found u ☺️😃