Before I get stuck into my latest post I want to thank all of the people who have followed this blog so far. I am very grateful for the vote of confidence and I shall try to keep up my blogging efforts. Now, down to business….
This is an out-and –about post which ties in with the Art File page on the Cuala Press that I mentioned in the last post. I said in that piece that I had discovered to my surprise that the Yeats sisters Lolly and Lily were buried in St Nahi’s Churchyard, Dundrum (part of Taney Parish). It has taken me some months but I finally got around to visiting the churchyard last Saturday afternoon.
For a short while, the sun shone so my daughter and I decided to look for the Yeats grave and generally explore the churchyard a little (possibly this is not everyone’s idea of summer holiday entertainment). After wrestling with the latch of a squeaky iron gate we let ourselves in and located a sign with the map of the burial plots.
Fortunately, an enterprising person has prepared a Podcast tour of the churchyard featuring notable names buried at St Nahi’s. While this was not on our agenda for the day, it did mean that the numbers allocated to the stops on the tour came in handy for our mini self-guided tour. We therefore found the grave (number 7) we were searching for easily enough, which looks towards the nearby Luas Green line (not that it was around at the time the sisters were buried I hasten to add).
I forgot to take photographs of the graveyard but I did find this video tour of the churchyard produced by Taney Parish on You Tube. The video has a bonus in that it shows the interior of the church (closed when we were there) with some shots of tapestries behind the altar that were made by Lily and Lolly Yeats. The video was made in 2009 and so is fairly recent and gives a useful overview of the history of the church and burial grounds, as well as highlighting the particular bit in which I was interested. Look out for the lovely stained glass (including some by Evie Hone) too.
I am still amazed that my technological skills have stretched as far as putting a copy of the video into my post so I might just quit while the going’s good and go and put the kettle on. Many thanks to Taney Parish for the fascinating tour of St Nahi’s Church and grounds. I would still like to find out exactly where Cuala Press was situated and whether the building still exists so I would love to hear from anyone who can point me in the right direction.
Next time I post I will hope to have a positive report on the progress of the ‘Landing Eight’ to give you…..
