Gaultier Heritage Rambles: Maypark, Ardkeen and the river loop
Mary Frances Ryan, Editor Waterford News & Star and Ray McGrath, at Ardkeen library for the launch of Gaultier Heritage Rambles by Ray McGrath. Photo: Joe Evans
An easy ramble of approximately 50 minutes and about 2.5km.
Start and finish at Ardkeen Shopping Centre. From the traffic roundabout at Ardkeen take Maypark Lane, keeping the hospital on your right. Where the new car park is now on the left was the site of Snowcream Dairies, where once, Glenville House stood. At the end of Maypark Lane go left along the river track noting the patches of Winter Heliotrope (see Nature note below) as you start. The remains of fishing weirs are close to the river’s edge. The winter day I did this walk some swans accompanied me.
The riverside track continues through open country offering good views of the woods on Little Island and across to the Kilkenny shore where Gyles Quay and Rathculiheen are prominent. Continue through a mixed woodland of beech and oak and sycamore till you come to a mesh fence. Take care in the woodland section as tree roots can be hazards. The fence line leads up to a small estate of houses off Maypark Lane, the latter leading you back to the start.
Maypark Lane in Waterford City is a local history book. The lane down to the river holds personal and community memories. In the early 1950s one of my jobs growing up was to deliver fish on a Friday morning to Maypark House, then a nursing home run by an order of nuns. This prestigious house was built in 1783/4 for Humphrey May, MP for Waterford 1757-97. It has gone through several ownerships since then with occu
pancy by leading Waterford merchant families. It is currently a private nursing home.
On the way down was a place which loomed huge in my young litany of terrors – the newly built Ardkeen Sanatorium. I would speed up passing it for fear that a TB bug would float over the wall to my lungs. TB had been rampant and was still very much present in people’s fears, attitudes and behaviour throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s. The new sanatorium was opened on June 21, 1952 by Minister for Health, James Ryan. However, it was a Waterford man, Dr Noel Browne, who did much to build a network of T.B. hospitals throughout the country thus giving expression to legislation passed prior to Browne’s appointment as Minister for Health in the 1948 inter-party government. To facilitate the building of Ardkeen Chest Hospital on the site Waterford County Council had purchased the land and the House Elva (Ardkeen House) from the De Bromhead family in 1947 for the princely sum of €10,300.
And there was another institution that came later to Maypark Lane – Snowcream Dairies, the brainchild of Waterford man Johnny Aylward. Snowcream coincided with the successful eradication of TB. It was the first dairy outside Dublin that pasteurized milk, seen by many as making a serious contribution to the fight against the dreaded scourge. Snowcream was built on the site of Glenville House of which a daughter of the family, Anabel Davis Goff has written a gem of Anglo- Irish nostagia in ‘Walled Gardens: scenes from an Anglo- Irish chidhood’.
We are in the townland of Ballinakill (the townland of the church), a large townland of 358 acres containing Little Island and covering the area north of the main road as far as the Woodlands Hotel where the townland of Knockboy starts. Canon Power tells us that a large part of the medieval church was still standing in the late 1700s. Ardkeen University Hospital (see Ardkeen Sanatorium above) and Maypark House are in this townland as was Snowcream Dairies which was bought from Glenville’s Sir Ernest Goff for £3000. Snowcream moved from its original site in Thomas’ Hill, Waterford in 1968.
Nature. Winter Heliotrope. The riverside of Ballinakill contains extensive patches of the wild alien escape Winter Heliotrope (Petasites fragrans, Ir. Plúr na gréine). This spreads as a ground cover. It is easily recognized by its relatively large kidney-shaped leaves and between November and early March by the its mauve, vanilla-scented flower-spikes. It is seen on the riverside walk just below King’s Channel Estate. Heliotropism (following the sun) is found throughout the flower world. Winter Heliotrope was planted by beekeepers as food for bees especially for late autumn survivors. The latin name Petasites is derived from petatos, the felt hat of Greek shepherds.
Supported by the Barony of Gaultier Historical Society
