Annual Delaware Antiques Show 2019

offer glimpses of a sky never intended to be exposed. There may be remnants of furniture, some bedding rank with damp, a picture precariously hanging on the wall. Who once lived here, and why does no one do so anymore? The imagination springs to work. After many years of clambering about such sites, in September 2012 I began to share my interest through theirishaesthete.com . Traveling around the country with just a mobile phone, I have recorded and posted what can be discovered. The Irish Aesthete features the full gamut of Ireland’s architectural heritage across all thirty- two counties, but ruins have always had a strong presence. This is inevitable. I would challenge anyone to journey more than a mile in Ireland without coming across at least one building in a state of decay. Where Irish ruins are concerned, there is no hierarchy: from castles to cottages, cathedrals to chapels, ballrooms to barns, we have them in abundance and at every stage of dilapidation. Our climate, temperate and damp, is conducive to the production of ruins, but so too it seems is our national character. The jilted building is a characteristic of Ireland, customarily dumped for a younger, more attractive model. Makeovers are rare. “Life is too short to discover the reason for all the ruins Ledwithstown, County Longford, Ireland. — 19 —