The hothouses have been draughty skeletons for ten years. Only a few beds are cultivated in the walled kitchen garden the rest has run to rot, thorned bushes barren of edible fruit spreading everywhere among weedy flowers reverting rankly to type. The demesne land is all that belongs to Fleacetown now, and this is let for pasture to neighbouring farmers. All the way from Ballingar there is a succession of whitewashed cabins and a dozen or so fair-size farmhouses but there is no gentleman’s house, for all this was Fleace property in the days before the Land Commission. Moss lies on everything in a rough green rug on the walls and banks, soft green velvet on the timber-blurring the transitions so that there is no knowing where the ground ends and trunk and masonry begin. On the other side the ground slopes up to the north, divided irregularly into spare fields by banks and stone walls over which the Ballingar hounds have some of their most eventful hunting. A typical Irish town.įleacetown is fifteen miles from Ballingar, on a direct uneven road through typical Irish country vague purple hills in the far distance and towards them, on one side of the road, fitfully visible among drifting patches of white mist, unbroken miles of bog, dotted with occasional stacks of cut peat. Someone has written The Pope is a Traitor in tar on the green pillar box.
The shell of the barracks stands with empty window frames and blackened interior as a monument to emancipation. These all deal in identical goods in varying degrees of dilapidation Mulligan’s Store, Flannigan’s Store, Riley’s Store, each sells thick black boots, hanging in bundles, soapy colonial cheese, hardware and haberdashery, oil and saddlery, and each is licensed to sell ale and porter for consumption on or off the premises. Celtic lettering of a sort is beginning to take the place of the Latin alphabet on the shop fronts that complete the square.
There is a pretty Protestant Church in 1820 Gothic on one side of the square and a vast, unfinished Catholic cathedral opposite it, conceived in that irresponsible medley of architectural orders that is so dear to the hearts of transmontane pietists. It is the market town of a large and comparatively well-populated district. Ballingar is four and a half hours from Dublin if you catch the early train from Broadstone Station and five and a quarter if you wait until the afternoon.