Bunratty Folk Park…Thatched Cottages and More!

I had the best of intentions of blogging yesterday, but I got my revisions back from Mills & Boon and I spent a chunk o’ time working on those. Back to Bunratty…

As I mentioned before, our bed and breakfast hostess was flying out the door, leaving us with the Cleaning Lady in charge. We never did learn what the “emergency” was, sorry. Cleaning Lady stared at us and said, “I don’t really like to cook. Is a continental breakfast okay?” I wasn’t quite sure how to reply. It wasn’t like we had a choice. Here I was, looking forward to my first Irish breakfast,:hungry: and Cleaning Lady was bound and determined to serve corn flakes. After that, she asked for us to pay for the room up front, in cash. I had visions of her taking our Euros and going off on a wild spending spree to buy more Lysol, but we paid for that and also for our reserved medieval banquet at Bunratty. I am a sucker for reenactment banquets. I loooove them. And by golly, I was going to drag my unsuspecting hubby and father-in-law to eat with their fingers and listen to madrigal singing.

But first, we went to Bunratty Folk Park. The Folk Park was much better than I expected. It has cute little cottages like this one (see husband and father-in-law pictured): . Most of them were 19th century, but a few things surprised me (not one of which was the size).

Inside the cottages were religious pictures everywhere, icons, and even a holy water basin near the entrance. I knew there was a strong Catholic identity to Ireland, particularly in the past, but this really struck me. Framed pictures of the Sacred Heart, as well as pictures of the Virgin Mary, were in every cottage we entered. There was a simplicity and a deep faith that I saw. Here is a picture of a reenacter who was making soda bread in a cast iron pot. At first, I didn’t even see the pot since it was buried beneath the peat ashes. Peat fires were used everywhere, and the peat is rectangular-shaped, like this outdoor fire in the courtyard. I actually didn’t mind the odor–it was a spicy type of fragrance. In any case, we sampled the warm soda bread, which was wonderful. It had a crusty outside and a soft inside. Mmmm…

Here is an interior shot of one of the cottages. All of the furniture had a loving, hand-made quality to it. I truly enjoyed visiting the cottages, because you could imagine the lives of the inhabitants. One cottage even had a fold-away bed, and several had lofts for the children to share.

This is a picture of one of the wealthier families, as you can tell from the phonograph in the corner and the china. I’m guessing it was from the Victorian era, given the decorations.

The gardens in the folk park were also amazing. Lots of cottage-style gardens, but these surrounded a manor house. Animals such as sheep, cows, and even deer were grazing. Stone walls were everywhere. We even visited two mills, a large one where you could see the bags of grain and flour being ground and a smaller one. Weaving throughout the cottages and landscape were tall fuchsia hedges, which bloomed with pink flowers and purple heart centers. It was gorgeous.

Tomorrow: The Bunratty Medieval Reenactment Dinner!