A special return home to Gaoth Dobhair

By Tommy Curran

LAST week Mrs Grace Drummond travelled from Adelade in Australia to Sheskinbeg in Gaoth Dobhair to place the ashes of her mum, Ellen Hughes in the ruins of her former home.

In the end bringing her mum’s ashes from Adelade to Sheskinbeg is more than a logical task, it is a pilgrimage of the heart. Through this act the departed are not simply laid to rest they are brought home, to the land that shaped them.

Grace was accompanied on the visit by her husband Stuart, their daughter, Kelly and her husband, Julen and their son Jack.

She said her mum died in 2020 during the Covid Pandemic and was aged 97 years. She often recalled the time spent in the family home known as McCole’s Homestead (Teach Chonaill Aelic), Sheskinbeg.

It was her mum’s dearest wish that her ashes would be brought back and scattered in the house which is now in ruins.

Grace and Stuart Drummond with their daughter Kelly and her husband, Julen.

The house was served by a spring well and was known as Tobar Chonaill Aelic. She said some of the McCole family were well known stone masons while her mum was a talented Aran sweater knitter. She said the family moved to Glasgow about 1928 and her mum married Peter Hughes who was originally from Keady, Co. Armagh. The family emigrated to Australia in 1963, and her father passed away in 1992.

In the 1901 Census lists the McCole family as follows: Parents, Connell head (52) and his wife Ellen (52). Their children Grace (8) and who married John Gallagher and who was Ellen’s parents, Alex (24), Mary (19), Madgey (15), Anne (13) and John (11).