A unique heritage set in stone

IT’S the stone walls patterning the landscape of the west of Ireland that leave a lasting first impression on many people visiting that part of the country.

American tourists park their hired cars in the strangest of places and focus their cameras on the fields, wondering aloud where all the stones that make up the walls came from. And they also muse on how much time it must have taken the farmers of past centuries to painstakingly put them all together.

You think of screen icons like John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, and films such as The Quiet Man that portray a picture postcard image of an Ireland that has largely disappeared. Stonewalling has a totally different meaning in today’s scandal-ridden Ireland! But, in substantial part, the dry stone walls have survived the ravages of ‘development’ and mechanised farming practices, especially in the Aran Islands.