What do we get up to during the break in the works, you ask? Well, before we even had time to recover from the works, we had a group of Millers of Ireland visit us for an event that took place in Cavan. We had about 25 people and although we tried to do a guided tour, people just seem to have dispersed. I prepared a few interpretation boards to try and convey what we found out about the history of the place and they will form a basis for future revisions as we go along.
We also had the grand-daughter of the first or second kilnman and the son of his son (also a kilnman) with his wife (our neighbours) visit, before they went off to visit another McGivney descendant in the UK. He was born in the early 1930s and clearly remembers the mill back then. We're hoping to meet more of the McGivney family in the future. They were the last family to live in our cottage (100 years ago now), where they raised 12 children. I have this lovely photo of them:
This is the kiln-man Peter McGivney (left) with Aiden McGivney (grandson), James McGivney (son), Tab Daly (nephew), Harold (nephew) and Mary nee Hughes (his wife), 1960s. Photo courtesy of of Peter Crean (grandson of Margaret McGivney, the daughter of the first or second kilnman Peter McGivney)
What else do we get up to? Ah nothing, just day jobs, vet visits, gardening, clearing space for the next portion of works, prepping, organising the construction of our new wastewater system for which we now received the final grant, helping with a bat detector course, checking bat boxes, putting up bat boxes (and we're bringing you a video of this below), trying to save the wildlife from Seth Harbinger of Chaos, dealing with mink/pine marten (or was it Scoundrel?) damage to the local duckling population, working on the MSc research project, taking trips to the house to cook, empty the WC cassette, do laundry and shower, enjoying van life (most of the time anyway)... and preparing for the big one...
Watch this space!
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