Abandoned Ireland

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It proved popular very early on, with people commenting and wanting to know more about the buildings. She hasn't left the village since a traumatic stay in London as a young woman at the end of the 1980s. When she was just twelve years old, she won her first camera on a TV game show and her love of photography was sparked. An ancient island with a romantic history and lush green landscape, Ireland’s culture stretches back to the time of St Patrick and the first Christian monks and includes the Norman invasion, clan wars, mass emigration and partition in the early. Many of these hospitals treated the rare and infectious diseases of their times, particularly tuberculosis (TB).

They were well known for being great entertainers and it was said that they held the most lavish parties – Princess Margaret is recorded to have had lunch here during one of her tours. Photographer Rebecca Brownlie had just left the empty canteen in an old abandoned convent school when she paused to take a picture of the building’s impressive staircase.Entertainment Co Down photographer Rebecca Brownlie on peeling back 'hidden layers' in Abandoned Ireland New book Abandoned Ireland is packed with beautiful, evocative pictures of neglected buildings which now serve as crumbling time capsules of days past.

There was no one else in the corridor or building but us, and I get to the end door, open it and we both heard a voice that sounds like it’s beside us. Cairndhu is the epitome of abandonment: its windows are bricked up, the once-elegant ironwork of its wide veranda sorry and rusting. The governor and staff occupied the central portion of the building, allowing them to easily monitor and access all wings that were connected to this hub. Princess Margaret has even been recorded visiting the house and having lunch there while on a tour of Northern Ireland. I travelled to an iron ore mine deep in the Sahara Desert on one of the world's most extreme railways.We all pass by properties everyday that eventually we overlook but have wondered about, this book tells some of those buildings stories. MINARD CASTLE, DINGLE PENINSULA, COUNTY KERRY: 'Constructed in the mid-16th century for the Fitzgerald clan, the structure of this castle was so strong that it withstood four charges being detonated at its corners by Oliver Cromwell's English troops in the 1650s,' Connolly says of this isolated fortress. The text in this book is frequently short on detail: the properties’ locations are seldom pinpointed, one assumes for reasons of security. On the other hand, you can find a grand mansion, and imagine that it’s full of crumbling antique furniture and the walls decorated with peeling artwork… only to find an empty shell on the inside. As I venture upstairs, I’m taken aback to see old tea sacks filled with straw lying on the raised platforms.

I couldn’t understand why the voice had an Ulster accent, but it turned out the priests from Belfast used to go down and train in that college. In the seemingly ruined and mundane she finds diamonds in the rough; her images of the ordinary ephemera of past lives dusty love letters, rusting spectacles, photographs yellowed and curled with age paint the pictures of real people and full lives.

These institutions accepted the aged and infirm, orphans, foundlings and abandoned children, but were not good places to be, with cruelty and torture part of the daily routine. All images are taken from the book Abandoned Ireland by Dominic Connolly (ISBN 978-1-83886-315-9) published by Amber Books Ltd ( www.

From Big Houses to humble cottages, schools to prisons, churches to dance halls, these buildings may now be abandoned, but they are far from empty. They were constructed to house those who were ‘poverty stricken’ and some who were sent there for punishment. She left the paranormal group, focused on photographing abandoned buildings and started a Facebook page, Abandoned N.I, which now has almost 50,000 followers – a clear indicator of how these images exert such a hold on the collective imagination. Brownlie is instead intent on capturing houses – large and small, mansions and cottages, silent railway stations, echoing prisons and empty dance halls, military forts and hotels – which retain a breath of life. Not long after I started to focus on documenting the buildings and left the paranormal group behind.