Steeped in history, Cheshire Home meets a sad demise

A litany of failures at the home is an insult to the work of its founder and disturbing for anyone with relatives in care, writes Catherine Shanahan

As wedding albums go, most contain pictures of unbridled joy, but one image stands out from my parents’ big day. Taken on the lawns of Cheshire Home in Cork, it shows my mother and father, in all their finery, sharing their happiness with less fortunate friends.

My mother, a former nurse, worked in the Cheshire Home and regarded its residents as human beings no less deserving than herself. It was the 1960s, an era when those with disabilities were sometimes “put away” and where visitors could be thin on the ground.