Saturday

A day at The Turnip House
Yesterday our replacement vacuum cleaner came, so it was again possible to do the housework - Oh joy!
After cleaning the mobile set to on the Turnip House, getting ready to open today.
Then made celery soup and wheaten bread ready for visitors.

soup (celery) and wheaten bread ready to go

sun shines on the wet slabs of Slievenaglogh

The Turnip House is OPEN!

view form the table - although the mountains could well 'disappear' in the next rain shower

a lovely little place

if only the weather had been like this all day

AND, after work, managed to lay the insulation and first run of boards in the gallery:

We're Open again tomorrow, Sunday 11-5 come along, 

get some real soup, 

and check out the work in progress!

Down The Ages

This is a true story.
As you know the old Stevenson House is full of treasures, left when Annie Stevenson moved down to her son's place in 1977.
Food, Clothes, furniture, documents, books, newspapers, to name but a few.
Each is redolent of it's time, and we have spent many absorbing hours looking through them. 
Many of the smaller more fragile items we've cleaned and put into storage, to be brought out as the story of this place is told. 
Some however are still there, including the furniture and some papers.


A couple of weeks ago, after a stormy night,I was walking across the yard, and a fluttering of paper caught my eye. Not that unusual after a storm, it could have been anything blown from the Windy gap or any other part of the Townland.


It did look of interest, so I picked it up; a page from the Rathfriland, Mourne and District Outlook dated 14th October 1950:

Interesting indeed. It must have blown out of the (many broken) windows.
I took it into the mobile and left it on the table - to put away in a box later. 
That evening, I picked it up and started to read it. 
This is not something I do with all the papers, there are so many.


I nearly jumped out of my seat. On the back page this advert leapt out at me:

This is my father's business that he had in Kilkeel. 
I have never seen this before.


I looked through the rest of the paper. 
One the inside page, I saw this:

an advert for a Grand Dance in Ballymageogh Orange Hall. Near Kilkeel. The band playing: Girvan's Dance Band - my Mother played accordion in that Band.


By chance, I had in my hand a document over 60 years old, produced 8 years before I was born, with references to each of my parents - before they were married


This place - Amazing!

The whole front page