Druid Clan of Dana - Map of the Slaney

Left, photo of Nora Robertson (Olivia and Lawrences mother, wife of Manning Durdin-Robertson) wrote the following passages about this area of the Slaney: "It would be impossible for anyone who has lived so long by the banks of such a river not to feel hopelessly prejudiced. The character of its fall, the richness of the agricultural land through which it flows, the lively birch woods, floored with bluebells, the stands with the traditional titles, “The Bee’s Rock,” “The Fairy Seat,” “The Tinker’s Turn,” and behind all the dignity of Mount Leinster. Resting easily in the Slaney Valley, you have room to look round, to scent the furze untainted by petrol, to watch the birds follow the harrow; for our beauty is fertile for beast and grain."(Left: "Moss House" a drawing by Manning Durdin-Robertson.)The name Moss House, surviving in our most central stream, was popular in mid-Victorian days, when our forebears used to erect summer-houses, roofed with moss or with green sods. One of these was said to have existed in the Wilderness near the Castle; the one by the river, sited at its most agreeable point, disappeared before the eighties." (*1880's)

"The idea was born in the autumn of 1926. We had left London in order to bring my husband's work nearer to the home which had recently become his, and although we could not live there it was possible to keep in touch with Dublin, sixty miles away. Sitting by the hall fire during a week-end, we decided we would replace the existing wooden fishing hut with something more worthy of an architect."

"I walked the river very early one bright morning in late May so as to see the bottom with the light behind me and I counted at least a dozen fish mostly behind rocks in still, shallow water at the tail of Crow’s Grove."

“Oh! Were I at the Moss House, where the birds do increase, (*)

At the foot of Mount Leinster, or some silent place;

By the streams of Bunclody where all pleasures do meet …”

- Traditional Ballad, “The Maid of Bunclody” (Newtownbarry)

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