Page 134 - Greystones Archaeological Historical Society

CÚL OF THE ROCK

A dark-bearded man stands tight in against a hedge in the
foreground. Beyond the hedge, which is roughly about head
height, lies a totally bare field on which the mirror-image stone
and redbrick cottages of Arva and its twin, Shamrock Lodge,
were later built; a development Greystones - its buildings and
history part 2 dates circa 1870.

The main focus of the photograph shows the lower part of
what became the Church Lane as a mere access lane to the gate
of St Patrick’s, the grounds of which are bare of trees or
shrubbery except along the lower boundary wall. On the road
below the church there is not a tree. Not as much as a sapling
borders the brae on the Church Road, nor the Lower Church
Road; something that’s strange to me.

This was the route I traversed daily to school at the Convent
from the age of three or so, and to St Kilian’s Hall after I moved
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