A Lost Past

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Memories from a lost past haunt this abandoned homestead in County Kilkenny, Ireland. Houses like this are scattered all over Ireland due to the incredible historical population collapse. In 1841 the population of the area now covering the Republic of Ireland was over 6.5 million however the Great Famine (Gorta Mór) of 1845 to 1852 or Irish Potato Famine as it is known outside of Ireland, directly caused the deaths of over one million people and a further million more emigrating from Ireland.

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By 1871 the population had dropped by over a third to four million, and by 1926 the subsequent economic, social, and political turmoil had further reduced the population down to three million, less than half of the 1841 population. Slowly nature takes back what was once lost to 'progress'.

If you would like to learn a little bit more about my background in photography you can read the interview @photofeed did with me here.

Robert Downie
Love Life, Love Photography

All images in this post were taken by and remain the Copyright of Robert Downie - http://www.robertdowniephotography.com



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8 comments
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So sad to know about that
but your photos are nice,
I can see the history of the place with the photo itself. Nice.

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I feel very sad after knowing what happened during 1900s in Ireland. Hope it's going good now and it's progressing.
And talking about the mother nature,it will heal on its own if left undisturbed. And we should always protect it.

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So no one wants/can afford to do anything with these old buildings? Sad, they're really nice old buildings and look like they might be able to be fixed up.

That potato famine sounds like a good lesson we're not paying attention to about relying heavily on a single type of crop x_x

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Yes. Sadly we don't seem to learn from our past mistakes.

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I love coming across these old abandoned buildings they are so cool with so much history.

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