Ireland – Folk Horror Revival & Urban Wyrd Project ⨘

Wanderings with the fae. A photographic journal of places of atmosphere, folklore, history and strangeness, found on my travels around Ireland.

Sometimes you find things totally by accident. Sometimes these places have a greater resonance than those you visit deliberately.

Sometimes you wander deeper into the woods than you meant to, but something calls you on.

When the path into the woods becomes narrower, thinner, wilder, and just at the point when you wonder should you turn back, something catches your eye through the trees.

Miles from any road, from any other inhabitation, the lost cottage sits in a clearing.

As a chill atmosphere filled the air, I could only imagine who lived there last, who left it to succumb to the whims of the forest. I walked away with more haste than I arrived.

Sometimes you can never find these places again, sometimes there is a reason for that…………

(Photography by Jackie Taylor. An unknown location somewhere on the Mayo/Sligo border. Winter 2016)

Wanderings with the fae. A photographic journal of places of atmosphere, folklore, history and strangeness, found on my travels around Ireland.

Achill Island is a place of remoteness, wildness.

Carrickkildavnet Castle has stood guard over Achill Sound for near 600 years. Once the home of the infamous pirate queen, Grace O’Malley.

Kildownet Graveyard contains the ruins of a chapel thought to have been built by the pirate queen herself. Sitting right on the coast, it seems that one good storm could take some of those interred to a far deeper, wetter grave.

What makes Kildownet so special is It’s number of folk art gravestones. These simple markers, cast from concrete and decorated with stones, broken glass and shards of pottery are far more poignant than any grand tomb.