19 June 2002 The Church Of Brigadoon? So, as promised, the story of the mysterious moving graveyard.... I love old buildings, I also love poking around old churches and graveyards. They fascinated me even as a child and there was one in particular I always yearned to see - Skerry. Skerry is built on a line of sight from the top of Slemish mountain in County Antrim. The old myth was that St. Patrick took a step from the top of Slemish one day and his followers built a church where he set his foot down. In reality, the church is built on an old settlement, but it would have close links with St. Patrick since it is historical fact that he did live on Slemish. You can see the ruins of the church high up on a hillside as you drive along the country, so the other night Dave and myself piled into the car and drove over to the district. We stopped in the local village and asked for exact directions, but nobody seemed to have heard of the place. Damned strange, since I used to live there as a child and people knew about it then. Still, we just drove in the general direction and finally found a signpost to the graveyard buried up a tiny country road. At that point the road began to resemble a dirt track more and more, but I drove on. Finally we could see one of the walls of the old church up above us - it's surrounded by trees. There was a laneway going off to the left, but it was so overgrown we decided to keep on driving and see if there were any other entrances marked. One thing I did remember my late step-father telling me was that there had still been burials up to the graveyard in modern times, so we reckoned there should be some sort of access. We kept on driving and ended up in the front yard of a farm house. Oops. Really something wrong here. Back we went, but we couldn't see any sign of the damned church even though we knew we must only be a stone's throw away from it. I parked at the end of the laneway we'd seen and Dave said he'd run up and see where it led. Ten minutes later he came back and said it certainly didn't lead up to any church. At that point it was starting to get a bit late so we decided to call it a night and drive on over to Slemish mountain instead. Funny thing is when we were back out on the main roads we were able to look back and see the farm house we'd been at - and the damned church is visible right beside it. I can't figure it out, but we're determined to go back when I've got my hiking boots on and find out what the heck is going on :-) So, we drove over to Slemish. I'd never been up the mountain - and I still haven't been :-) We got about halfway, only to be greeted with a locked gate and a sign saying it was closed every night at dusk! How the hell can you close a sodding mountain! It could only happen in County Antrim, I tell ya. Anyways, I did a search to try and find out a few more details about Skerry, so I could at least put a link in with the diary entry, but nothing! Not one damned thing. Any other country and it'd be a tourist attraction, given it's historical significance. We've got a tourist office in our local town, so when I get a chance I'm going to have a look around it and ask if there's any info and I'll let you all know if I ever manage to find the damned place.
| |
| Stale | Fresh |
�
Cast List
� |
