Dry Ireland, Wet Grave

I’m on a RyanAir flight from London Luton Airport. Shit airport. Delayed. Seats too narrow. Weather a factor. I need to get out of my head. Get out of my habits. About six months ago I was grinding for the US government. My house is now a prison, and Ireland my temporary reprieve.

If you go to Ireland to dry out then you can imagine my state. Imagine a dry Ireland. I could, and I would. The sky could not. It was near the tail end of storm Isha. The rain and wind were fucking angry. The plane lands sideways. I make it to the rental car place, and drive to Knappagh just south of Westport, County Mayo.

I had found an old rectory that at one time offered writing retreats. On that property there is a cabin. It’s nestled in the woods, private, and not within walking distance to a pub. Perfect for my dry Ireland. I arrive in a driveway full of mud, branches littering, at dusk, the cabin in utter darkness. It’s unlocked. Freezing inside. No power, no heat.

The storm is in full effect. Oddly, Isha is the Muslim call to prayer when darkness falls and there is no scattered light in the sky. True to form this night. Just the agony of creaking trees and the spite and sting of rain on the face.

I pull blankets from every corner of the cabin and find the bed. I’m wrapped, swaddled, shivering. It’s been a shit day and I’m going to sleep, or try my best. But all night there are ghosts about. Howling. Tapping. Noisy fucking ghosts.

Morning. The sun is out. The wind and rain have stopped for now. I step out of the cabin and see the looming shadow of a an abandoned stone church just steps from me. This is the Ireland I wanted. The driveway is littered with leaves, the clouds not sure of their next move, but the church is a beacon of some sort.

The trod to the the church is a tangled slog of mud and wood. I’m a bit wobblily, unfortified. I get there. Slate roof, tall broken windows, and the doors are locked. I tried the doors. I promised my daughter I would. The church is surrounded by those jagged sheets of slate that had come off the roof. I hadn’t considered this before. Fuck, they would be deadly in a storm, like last night.

The churchyard is small but not insignificant. Family names, whole families. But its so peaceful and beautiful and like any place you’d like to lie down and rest your head, your life. Everything. I mentally record the names, and they are not Irish names, well, some, but not all.

There’s a row of Junipers at the edge of he churchyard. Vibrant, green, tall junipers, and in between the last few there’s a headstone. Pale and gray as you’d expect. Stained by the rain. And here’s what it said. This is all it said:

“George the beloved son of the Rev John Liddy died October 13th 1868 aged 12 years.”

For all the words a priest can muster. For every bellowing call for repentance or redemption. Pointed fingers and spit-stained cheeks of accusation. This. A heart so shrunken that he lost his words. A priest. An Irishman.

Fuck me. I get it. What more can be said? A life unlived, a boyhood suspended. A father ripped apart by grief.

The church has been abandoned for a century or more. It was St. James but you can’t see that on the map. It was a protestant church that served the immigrants that worked in an iron forge across the way. Its broken windows and treacherous slate roofs are all that remain to guard over a churchyard of forgotten souls.

In the wind, the juniper trees dance. Green all year around, and George Liddy will never be alone.

Whitehall and the Great War

Whitehall Convalescent Hospital, now Coppingford Hall. Image from Cambridgeshire Community Archive Network

I currently have the pleasure of driving a meandering country route to work. The roads are often so narrow that I have to pull over to allow cars (and often tractors) to continue on from the opposite direction. My drive takes me past stone farmhouses, ancient forests, and a vista of gently rolling farmland that’s punctuated with the steeples of village churches.

The looming pale structure was largely hidden from the road, and I only spotted it today after reading an old Sawtry resident’s account of visiting “Whitehall” in 1949 near Archer’s Wood. Just before reaching the Wood, I peered around for a manor house that could be the one in the story.  Sure enough, there was an “imposing building,” with “tall brick chimneys” as described by “V. Woodbridge.”

Soldiers and Staff from the Whitehall Convalescent Hospital. Image from the Peterborough Image Archive.

Whitehall was, in fact, Whitehall Convalescent Hospital, which took care of wounded soldiers who had slogged it out in the trenches of France in World War I, or The Great War, as it’s known. Although the hospital could only treat about 25 soldiers at a given time, it was reported to have taken care of upwards of 650 wounded servicemen in the span of three years.

Private J. McWilliams, a soldier from the 14th Canadians, recounted the action that landed him in Whitehall in a letter home dated March 16, 1918:

“…Got my wound in a bombing raid at Avion trench, near Lens. One of the German trench bombs fell within a few yards of me and I got several pieces in the legs and thigh. Fritz came over about four o’clock in the morning, just before daylight, after a preliminary bombardment by trench mortars and got quite close to our trench before we spotted him. His first bomb landed right square among the machine gun crew, wounding several of us. But we were able to spot where he was and get the gun in action before he could get into our trench…”

Volunteer Nurse at Whitehall. Image from the Sawtry Historical Society.

Many of the nurses came from nearby Sawtry village area and volunteered their time because the hospital reportedly did not receive much, if any in government funding. During the years it operated as a hospital, the staff and patients would perform in village halls to raise funds.  According to Alan Bottell, a historian who has been researching Whitehall, these performing patients were called “Blue Boys” because of their distinctive uniforms, which apparently prevented the poor wounded blokes from getting into pubs.

“…There were times when soldiers also couldn’t go into pubs. In fact, the landlord at the George in Huntingdon was fined for letting soldiers drink. She was lucky not to lose her licence.”

Interestingly, The George was the same inn I stayed at in my April visit to the area, and while pleasant enough, may have relinquished a bit of its charm since 1918 as it is now part of a U.K.-wide chain of inns.

Whitehall is a good distance from Huntingdon and Peterborough, the two closest towns of note, and Whitehall is on a remote road in a very rural area. Even though the traffic from the bustling A-1 motorway is a short distance away, you can’t help but feel the solitude of the area.  I can only imagine what it was like a hundred years ago.

“This is a fine part of England I am in, and I will be rather sorry to leave it,” wrote Pvt. McWilliams. “It is about 9 miles away from any town, so is rather quiet. The nearest town is a place called Huntington. Peterborough is the nearest large town, and is famous for its cathedral, which is one of the oldest in England… Mary, Queen of Scots, and Catherine of Aragon, were buried there. She was beheaded at Forthingay, which is not far from here.”