A living heritage

A STEP INTO THE PAST Joe Moylette outside Jack’s Cottage in March sunshine. Pic: John Moylette

The warmth, welcome and wonder of Jack’s Old Cottage in Islandeady  


Oisín McGovern

JACK’S Old Cottage in Islandeady is a place that Tatsiana Bakhmach and Anna Domina never thought they’d find themselves.
After the hand of the Russian tyrant brought plunder and woe to their homeland, these two Ukrainian mothers were welcomed with open arms at a function hosted in one of the best lesser-known heritage sites in the country.
Located at the back of beyonds in the townland of Derrycourane, stepping into Jack’s Old Cottage is like taking a trip back in time.
When The Mayo News walked through the red wooden door of the function room to attend a fundraiser for Candle of Grace – a local charity on the frontline in assisting Ukrainian refugees – the warmth was instantly palpable.
Local people packed into a building reshaped into a miniature dancehall for an old-fashioned ‘rambling house’, where songs, tunes, tea, scones, well wishes and chatter filled the room.
A roaring stove heated a room radiating with the céad míle fΡilte that the locals had laid before Anna and Tatsiana, who had just arrived into the area through Candle of Grace founder Lily Luzhan.

Goldilocks
One might best describe this dancehall as the Goldilocks of parish halls, not too large but not small.
Just as we are getting ready to leave, proprietor Joe Moylette offers a tour of a house that has stood since before The Great Famine.
First constructed in the 1830s, the cottage itself was lived in right up until 1997 and sported a thatched roof right up until the 1960s.
Its name is derived from its last inhabitant, Jack Jennings, who had lived here on his own since the death of his aunt in 1959.
As a child, Joe spent manys a day here helping Jack with saving hay and other odd jobs.
When the house came on the market in 2006, the structure had almost caved in after nine years of vacancy.
“There wasn’t even a road into it, there was only a cart track,” he says.
While others bought apartments in Grand Canaria during Celtic Tiger Ireland, Joe Moylette’s sole interest was in preserving a piece of rural Ireland’s heritage.
Without a cent of grant funding, he set about refurbishing the cottage with the helping hands of nearby tradesmen and donations from other locals.
Since the 1960s the roof has been slated and the walls plastered, but the whitewash walls, single-glaze windows and large open fire are true the homestead’s original design.
Even persons not-so lofty must stoop slightly when coming through the half-door, a reminder of how much smaller people were in those bygone days.
The dresser, the open fire and the bed for the ‘cailleach’ are the most distinctive features of this room, which adjoins two other small bedrooms.
The main room is replete with a priceless plethora of tools, trinkets and ornaments that were part and parcel of rural life in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Oil lamps, chamber pots, milk churns and sods of turf may not find much use in modern homes, but these were essential for country living long ago.

Idyllic
POSTCARDS and films like The Quiet Man often paint an idyllic picture of Irish country living. However, life in these small poorly insulated dwellings was actually far removed to the comforts we enjoy today.
The remnants of the turf fire wafting from the hearth conjures the distinctive smoky smell that would have filled a house like this on a cold winter’s night. Still, the absence of central heating leaves a biting dampness that can be felt in every square foot of Jack’s Cottage of a March evening.
It seems to have done little harm to Jack Jennings, who was well into his 90s when he passed away in the Sacred Heart Home.
Today, Joe takes the greatest pleasure in recalling his forefathers’ tales and traditions to whoever happens to call.
“Kids came in from First Class and Second Class, and when they poked their head around the door the first thing they said was ‘Wow!’. That, for me, meant an awful lot, that they got that kind of reaction when they looked at how we lived years ago,” Joe says.
“I would say to them ‘How many of you have ensuite?’, and hands would be going up everywhere. And then I would point to the pot under the bed, and I said, ‘That was the ensuite here!’.”

Community
THE idea of constructing a miniature dancehall from the remnants of an old shed came when two coach loads of primary-school students landed one fine afternoon.
“It wasn’t a big plan, any of this,” Joe stresses. “We didn’t have any hall or anything, and we had something like 90 kids. I could only have 25 in [the cottage] at one time, and they had stand on the wall outside for me to tell them the stories,” he explains.
“It was a lovely fine day, but I said if this happens on a wet day what are we going to do here?”
Once again, Joe and the local community came together to construct a small but practical meeting place fully in keeping with the character of Jack’s Cottage.
“I supplied all the materials, but I didn’t have to pay an awful lot of money for the labour,” Joe says. “It was a community effort; they knew this fella wasn’t going to make too much money out this!”
Although not quite as large as the halls where previous generations asked their future spouses for a dance, the room has hosted Zumba classes and is also used as a base for Islandeady Cycling Club.
Equipped with a small kitchen, the venue can host all manner of dos and functions, weddings and wakes.
“Last year my daughter got married here; that was the only thing we’d had for two years,” Joe says.
“It’ll have to start promoting more than I am, to get something more out of it. There’s not much point having an empty room.”
With Covid restrictions lifted, one feels Jack’s Cottage won’t be lying idle for too much longer.