I love Heritage Week.  It’s run every year at the end of August and is a great chance to see places that wouldn’t normally be open to the general public.  So far this week I’ve been on a tour of Coopershill House, Riverstown, Sligo which was very interesting and the first time I’ve been in the house itself.  It was one of the places I photographed for the Hidden Histories book so brilliant to actually get a look inside it. The house is not only home to Simon and his family but it is also a luxury hotel and also serves dinner for non-residents. You can find out more about Coopershill here.

Simon was a great guide to have for the house tour, we got to see the bedrooms which are just amazing and also the basement – the original kitchen is now a games room. We heard about the history of the house and found out that Ronan O’Gara’s granny was born in the old stable house at Coopershill.

After the tour of the house we had a little wander around the garden. I also got to see some of the deer as Coopershill is also a venison farm….thank goodness for my zoom lens 😉

Today I went along to Markree Castle as they had a fleece to yarn demo. It was very interesting seeing the process of turning fleece into wool, I had no idea how much work was involved. We also heard about dying the yarn, you can even dye it with natural things such as ivy and heather.

After the demo I had a wander around the Markree Castle grounds, it’s such a beautiful place.

As always I took a lot more photos from Coopershill and Markree. You can see those on my flickr page.