See2be Photography

Growing up with my unanchored father I ended up living in more places than I care to remember, never really knowing what's next. In hindsight it was a great education, at the time it scared the shit out of me.

Now at 54 years of age I'm feeling nostalgic and regretful for the sale of a house that was never my home but a place of peace and a great escape from the oft crazy days of the life I once lived.

I found this place by chance over 30 years ago and it's charm and tranquillity seduced me instantly. Then some weeks later I hear that my father went, or had a friend go to an auction to do the bidding for him because my father wasn't a local.

Leonard Hayden
Ballinagoth

It's often like that.

It was Ballinagoth!

I was delighted if that's the right word to use, anyway I was chuffed maybe even jealous (though very unlikely) that my father had got this gem of a cottage.

Today it goes under the hammer, and perhaps that describes in an appropriate way the loss that I will feel when it's actually sold and no longer in the family.

As I said before we had many houses and they were just that, houses. They served a purpose and held no significant emotional attachment for me. Most I prefer to forget.

Ballinagoth was very different.

It had magic.

Ballinagoth: Town of the cots

I spent less time in Ballinagoth than all the other houses yet I will miss it most. I will miss the sound of the stream that trickles by the boat when the tide is out, the hum of the bees in the trees and then the mornings incredible dawn chorus of what seems to be every bird in Ireland descending on our forest garden behind the cottage.

It's all that remains of my father. It was his paradise and refuge.

He called the pheasants and they came, he fed crows by hand and eventually he found that there was a place of peace.

Ballinagoth.