#abbeyleix

Silly me, I had forgotten that I actually a video recording of our rehearsal. Jim’s wife sneakily taped us through the back door. It lets you get an idea about the landscape situation I described in the earlier post.

Looking positively Italianate in the early autumn sunshine, the west end of the garden front at Abbeyleix, County Laois. A series of terraces descend to a final series of circular stone steps, an architectural device highly reminiscent of similar work designed in 1906 by Edwin Lutyens for Heywood barely five miles away: might he have had a hand in this too? A sunken area immediately below…

For the past two weeks, I've been back with Abbeyfolk, the band from Abbeyleix. We're playing regularly in Kyteler's in Kilkenny, which is very convenient for me, because I can cycle there.

Yesterday, we had a rehearsal in Jim's garden in Abbeyleix, which was pretty cool. Apart from the fact that playing music is fun, his house is at the edge of town, so we're overlooking (or being overlooked) by a herd of cows and a tractor was going up an down the other field harvesting. And the sun slowly set and the light was gorgeous. You get it, I'm sure.

An 18th century House Guest

Abbey Leix, County Laois ‘I must return to give you an account of Lady De Vesci’s. I am quite in love with her and with their state of living. It is entirely without form, everybody doing as they please, and always a vast number of people in the house. Lady Knapton, his mother, lives with them, and seems no restraint upon anybody, she is so good-humoured. We were about six or seven ladies and as…