Unbelievable...but true

Talk about victim blaming! One of the quotes from the gentleman in charge of Temporary Relief Operations, during the worst part of the potato famine in Ireland, insinuates that good may come of the famine because growing potatoes was easy and had led to the farmers being lazy, and therefore 'We may derive much advantage from this calamity.'

The National Famine Museum is in Strokestown Park, from which place alone 1,490 famine emigrants were forced to walk to Dublin for passage on 'coffin ships' to Canada in 1847, never to see their homeland or families again. And in fact many of those people did not live to see a new life in the new land either, because they died of starvation or starvation related illnesses either before or during the sea voyage or on arrival. In Quebec, Canada, at the quarantine station, there is a mass grave where 5,424 people were recorded as buried in 1847 alone.

It's utterly depressing reading about the potato famine, and the impact the potato blight had on the lives of the poor farming families, who relied almost exclusively on potatoes to survive.

Strokestown Park House and garden is now open to the public, to see how the upper classes lived in those times. Major Denis Mahon, who inherited the debt ridden estate in 1845, did little to help his tenants and he evicted over 3,000 tenants in 1847. There was widespread anger among the tenants and Major Mahon was assassinated in November of that year. He was the first landlord killed during the famine. 

On a brighter note, we did enjoy walking through the gardens and woodlands belonging to Strokestown Park. This was a much needed lightener after the gravity of the museum.The formal walled garden has also been restored and has some of the original glasshouses where the gardeners grew all sorts of exotic things, including pineapples, but my favourite part was the walking path through the woods, where the mosses grow on the tree trunks, and the fairies obviously live beneath the roots of the ancient trees.