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BALLITORE |
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BALLITORE is an old Quaker village where the eighteenth-century
Anglo-Irish political philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-97) was educated in
the school run by Quaker Abraham Shackleton - a good example of the
religious toleration that it seems the British government was prepared
to grant anyone but Catholics. Born in Dublin of a Catholic mother and
Protestant father, Burke went on to attend Trinity College, and, moving
to London in 1750, he kept company with some of the leading figures of
the time, among them Oliver Goldsmith (also a Trinity graduate), Samuel
Johnson and Joshua Reynolds. His most important works are A
Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Ideas of the Sublime and the
Beautiful , an essay in aesthetic theory that is still studied by art
historians, and Reflections on the Revolution in France , published the
year after the event in 1790, in which he argued strongly against
Jacobinism and for counter-revolutionary conservatism.
The Ballitore Quaker museum (June-Sept Wed-Sat noon-5pm, Sun 2-6pm;
Oct-May Tues-Sat noon-5pm; free) above the village library, which is
housed in the old Friends Meeting House, gives a vivid picture of what
Quaker life was like here: each member of the industrious community
plied a trade, and their sober, business-like approach made Ballitore a
model village by comparison with the general squalor and poverty of
surrounding places. But the dominant impression given by the copperplate
handwritten letters on show is the sheer boredom of life in a place
where any stranger was cause for excitement. Up towards the main road is
the walled Quaker graveyard , whose plain, dignified tombstones seem
suitable monuments to the qualities of the dead. Griesmount (tel
0507/23158; £40-55/¬50.79-69.84), a fine Georgian house a little way
from the village centre, offers a place to stay amidst Ballitore's
peaceful simplicity.
Signposted from the centre of the village is Crookstown Mill
(Easter-Sept daily 10am-6pm; Oct-Easter by appointment 11am-4pm; tel
0507/23222; £2.50/¬3.17). Built in the 1840s and still functioning, it
contributed to an independence from the potato that, along with the
industries introduced by the Quakers, meant that there was strikingly
little emigration or starvation here during the Famine.
A mile or so further south is the Irish Pewtermill (tel 0507/24164);
although you can see pewter being worked, the place is primarily a
retail experience - fine if you're into the Claddagh rings and ancestral
crest type of export Irishness.
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