By Helen O’Leary

Last week, there was a journey to be made. Leaving Clonmel we crossed the Old Bridge and drove out towards Knocklofty following the Suir. At the village of Newcastle, we took a sharp turn to our left and headed for the hills.

Our new car made light work of the climb up and over the rugged foothills of the Knockmealdown Mountains. Not so, in the journeys of our youth.

My father’s Wolseley would chug its way round twists and bends, each of us saying a silent prayer that we wouldn’t meet another vehicle causing him to have to reverse down the narrow road.
Mountainy sheep cling to the rocks, monitoring our progress. The view from the top has not changed: lonesome, bleak, magnificent.

After some twelve miles or so the road dips and we find ourselves at the imposing entrance gates of Mount Melleray Abbey. We turn in and drive up the avenue for the final time. On our right, buildings that once rang with young voices, lie silent and empty. Flaking paint, shattered glass, rooms echoing.

I have grown up with stories of Mount Melleray. Of how my grandfather, an electrician, wired the building; of how he was one of the very few to have a car on the road during the war years as he would have to be available to service the generator.

I imagined my grandmother waiting for him in her warm kitchen, on a wet winter’s evening, praying he would make it home.

We were brought here as children. We sat silently in the church, thrilled with the prospect of a visit to the shop where we could plead for a treat; a ring, a bookmark, a beaded bracelet for the decade we promised to say. Or perhaps a little book telling the lives of the saints.

Sometimes we were rewarded, and the little gift would be blessed by the kindly monk behind the counter. Mass cards too would be bought, masses said, prayers offered.
Today, the magnificent church building rises before us, grey and solemn. In the car park, fellow day trippers wander. Complete strangers catch our eyes and whisper,
“So sad! Such a shame!”

We wander around the buildings, enter the church where every available space seems lit with candles. There are no monks to be seen. We visit the office, give offerings to remember those who have gone before us, who have sought solace in this place. We visit the shop, still the beads, the bracelets, the little books! But no longer the kindly monk to bless them.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own