Knockanore in medieval times
Niall C.E.J. O'Brien
I seem to be falling behind in posting more articles or blogs on medieval history of late. That is not because I am off playing golf or catching fish after hours. Just busy these past few weeks getting together material for a talk lasting just one hour this Friday night, 2nd August. Possibly spent 50 hours or more gathering information and processing the information - trying to understand about the history of four united parishes in medieval times with few manuscripts to go on.
Molana Abbey church looking west from the choir and chancel towards the nave and west gable
Some people have written about individual medieval buildings in the four parishes such as Molana Abbey, Rincrew Preceptory and Strancally castle. These writing are good even if they are a bit keeping to what folklore says than exploring fact or fiction. With such few documents to go on all writers of medieval history in the four parishes of Tallow, Kilwatermoy, Knockanore [Kilcockan] and Templemichael [Rincrew] are hitting into the dark. In such situations falling back on folklore is handy to make a dull story interesting but does little to advance historical research and get to the true story.
Part of the hall house at Strancally Castle showing the basement area and first floor window on the left above
Yet as some may say = never let fact get in the way of a good story = I think a good fact can make a story just as interesting as folklore story told without the facts. Some historical background is in nearly all folklore = its finding that historical background that is difficult but if life was easy everyone would be at it.
The vault passageway at Rincrew religious house - a mystery place
With the material I have gathered for the talk I hope to put together a few blog articles over the next few weeks = well = sometime before Christmas anyway!
And the Mike Aston tribute post = in preparation
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Signing off -still have slides to get ready for the talk and only 24 hours to go = no pressure!
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