0:00:05 > 0:00:09Ireland's beauty has captivated artists and writers for centuries.
0:00:10 > 0:00:12It's easy to see why.
0:00:14 > 0:00:16I'm Martha Kearney and I was born in Ireland,
0:00:16 > 0:00:18but I left when I was a small child,
0:00:18 > 0:00:20so in the course of this series,
0:00:20 > 0:00:24I'm hoping to rediscover the land that I once called home.
0:00:26 > 0:00:30My guide is going to be a 19th-century Irishman.
0:00:30 > 0:00:32He was an artist and surveyor
0:00:32 > 0:00:34and he made it his life's work
0:00:34 > 0:00:37to chronicle the country's landmarks and treasurers.
0:00:37 > 0:00:41His name was George Victor Du Noyer.
0:00:44 > 0:00:46Du Noyer was part of a team
0:00:46 > 0:00:50which undertook a ground-breaking series of surveys in Ireland.
0:00:52 > 0:00:54Mapping its landscape
0:00:54 > 0:00:56and its geology,
0:00:56 > 0:00:59but Du Noyer was also an accomplished artist
0:00:59 > 0:01:02and he was inspired by all that he saw in his travels.
0:01:04 > 0:01:08His work is like a memory map of the country as it once was.
0:01:10 > 0:01:15Thanks to Du Noyer, we can see the landscape as it was 150 years ago
0:01:15 > 0:01:18with its open spaces and ancient sites.
0:01:18 > 0:01:22In the middle of the Victorian period, a time of massive change,
0:01:22 > 0:01:24he travelled the country,
0:01:24 > 0:01:25across its mountains,
0:01:25 > 0:01:27through the bogland
0:01:27 > 0:01:30and along the spectacular coastline,
0:01:30 > 0:01:32and I will follow in his footsteps.
0:01:47 > 0:01:49Ireland's haunting beauty is legendary.
0:01:52 > 0:01:56In recent years, I've mainly come here as a journalist,
0:01:56 > 0:01:59but I still find the landscape stunning.
0:02:07 > 0:02:10Du Noyer was born in 1817 in Dublin.
0:02:10 > 0:02:12He trained as an artist
0:02:12 > 0:02:13and put his talents to use
0:02:13 > 0:02:17in the two hugely ambitious projects of 19th-century Ireland,
0:02:17 > 0:02:20the Ordnance Survey and Geological Survey.
0:02:22 > 0:02:25He spent the next 35 years on the road,
0:02:25 > 0:02:27mapping and sketching the country.
0:02:30 > 0:02:33Du Noyer made thousands of drawings en route.
0:02:34 > 0:02:38These include panoramic views, contemporary buildings,
0:02:38 > 0:02:42ancient monuments, rock formations
0:02:42 > 0:02:43and even the Irish people.
0:02:45 > 0:02:50The Victorians had an insatiable appetite for documenting the past,
0:02:50 > 0:02:53and Du Noyer was certainly a man of his age.
0:02:54 > 0:02:58He came from Dublin, and that's where I'm starting my journey
0:02:58 > 0:03:00to find out more about the man.
0:03:00 > 0:03:03In the mid-19th century, intellectual life was booming.
0:03:05 > 0:03:10There was such huge progress being made in science, art, archaeology,
0:03:10 > 0:03:14and in fact, in the first half of the 19th century here in Dublin,
0:03:14 > 0:03:18a number of new institutions of learning, academies
0:03:18 > 0:03:21were being set up, and this was one of them.
0:03:28 > 0:03:31- Hi, there.- Martha.- Good to see you. - Nice to meet you.
0:03:31 > 0:03:34It looks like you've got a real treasure trove here
0:03:34 > 0:03:35for us to work through,
0:03:35 > 0:03:38which will give us a sense of just the range of Du Noyer's work.
0:03:38 > 0:03:41Well, Du Noyer was a polymath. He was interested in everything.
0:03:41 > 0:03:46He was trained as an artist by a gentleman named George Petrie
0:03:46 > 0:03:48and George Petrie got him
0:03:48 > 0:03:49interested in archaeology,
0:03:49 > 0:03:51and so although he was working
0:03:51 > 0:03:53mainly as a geologist,
0:03:53 > 0:03:56he was interested, and painting absolutely everything that he saw,
0:03:56 > 0:03:58so for example, here we've got
0:03:58 > 0:04:01some of his own little notebooks, his own personal notebooks,
0:04:01 > 0:04:04which again, he was doing while he was travelling around
0:04:04 > 0:04:07- with the Geological Survey. - Oh, look, the women in their cloaks.
0:04:07 > 0:04:08The top hats, yeah.
0:04:08 > 0:04:11So this is an example of Macroom, which is a town in Cork.
0:04:11 > 0:04:14It says here, "January from 1853".
0:04:14 > 0:04:16He was noting down the archaeology,
0:04:16 > 0:04:18he was drawing the landscapes,
0:04:18 > 0:04:21he was annotating what was actually happening in the villages
0:04:21 > 0:04:23and the towns of the time.
0:04:23 > 0:04:25So we get a really amazing sense
0:04:25 > 0:04:29- of what mid-19th century Ireland would have looked like.- Absolutely.
0:04:29 > 0:04:32How was he travelling around the country?
0:04:32 > 0:04:35Well, he travelled mainly on horseback but once he got to a place,
0:04:35 > 0:04:38as all geologists of the time, they went out and walked the fields.
0:04:38 > 0:04:42Many of them said it was actually easier to do geology when it was wet
0:04:42 > 0:04:45because the rocks were wet and you could see the colour of them better.
0:04:45 > 0:04:48- Tough old life!- Absolutely, absolutely tough life.
0:04:48 > 0:04:51Sounds quite a lonely existence tramping the fields,
0:04:51 > 0:04:54often in wet weather. What do you think kept his spirits up?
0:04:54 > 0:04:56I think his curiosity,
0:04:56 > 0:04:59his love and his desire to understand the geology,
0:04:59 > 0:05:01to understand the archaeology,
0:05:01 > 0:05:04to understand what was going on in the landscape,
0:05:04 > 0:05:06and of course he had his little dog.
0:05:06 > 0:05:08- Did he?- He did, of course.
0:05:08 > 0:05:09Oh!
0:05:09 > 0:05:10MARTHA LAUGHS
0:05:10 > 0:05:13- Fantastic!- His name was Mr Buff,
0:05:13 > 0:05:15and he went everywhere with him.
0:05:15 > 0:05:18You can see how much he loved this dog here,
0:05:18 > 0:05:20so we've got a beautiful watercolour of Mr Buff.
0:05:20 > 0:05:23- He's actually called Buffer here. - Buffer, yeah.
0:05:23 > 0:05:27- "Thoughtful Buffalo", does it say? - Yes, "Thoughtful Buffalo"!
0:05:27 > 0:05:30So I thing that Mr Buff also kept him going.
0:05:30 > 0:05:33He was the companion that was constantly with him.
0:05:33 > 0:05:37You can imagine these two going through the Irish fields
0:05:37 > 0:05:38in the 19th century.
0:05:46 > 0:05:48But he wanted to document things.
0:05:48 > 0:05:50He wanted to record what was there
0:05:50 > 0:05:54because he knew that Ireland was changing, that all these new things,
0:05:54 > 0:05:57all these new railways, all these new roads were being built,
0:05:57 > 0:06:00and we were going to lose some of what was there, that he treasured.
0:06:02 > 0:06:04What makes Du Noyer's work truly special
0:06:04 > 0:06:08was that he was recording a pivotal time in Ireland's history.
0:06:08 > 0:06:12The traditional way of life that had remained unchanged for centuries was
0:06:12 > 0:06:17being eroded by the revolutionary changes of the Victorian era.
0:06:17 > 0:06:22Men and machines were beginning to transform the landscape irrevocably.
0:06:22 > 0:06:26Du Noyer witnessed all of this first-hand as he surveyed the land.
0:06:30 > 0:06:34Mapping Ireland, recording its landscape, natural history,
0:06:34 > 0:06:37geology and archaeology, was a massive project.
0:06:38 > 0:06:42Du Noyer devoted 35 years to the task.
0:06:42 > 0:06:45It was the first time that a project of this scale
0:06:45 > 0:06:46had ever been attempted.
0:06:49 > 0:06:50It's very much part of
0:06:50 > 0:06:53a 19th-century sensibility of surveying landscape,
0:06:53 > 0:06:55surveying people,
0:06:55 > 0:06:58and a culture of science that really emerges.
0:06:58 > 0:07:02It's very much part of the vocabulary of geography,
0:07:02 > 0:07:04of exploration, of travel,
0:07:04 > 0:07:06so instead of going across the landscape,
0:07:06 > 0:07:07now they're going down into it,
0:07:07 > 0:07:10and of course this is the period as well of great road-building,
0:07:10 > 0:07:13of canal-building and later railway-building in Ireland.
0:07:13 > 0:07:15It's a whole history of transportation that's happening
0:07:15 > 0:07:19and the Ordnance Survey are moving along those pathways.
0:07:22 > 0:07:26England had nothing comparable to the Ordnance Survey
0:07:26 > 0:07:27and I think it's remarkable
0:07:27 > 0:07:31that within a mere - what? - 10, 15 years or so,
0:07:31 > 0:07:34that the survey had not only mapped the whole of Ireland
0:07:34 > 0:07:40but had also amassed a team of experts who were
0:07:40 > 0:07:45able to go out into the field, who were able to note down place names,
0:07:45 > 0:07:47able to note down local lore.
0:07:47 > 0:07:52If you like, it's a whole new description of a country
0:07:52 > 0:07:55and a complete description of a country at one particular time
0:07:55 > 0:07:57just before the famine.
0:08:01 > 0:08:04Looking out over this gorgeous landscape
0:08:04 > 0:08:06in Skibbereen in west Cork,
0:08:06 > 0:08:08it's hard to believe that 160 years ago,
0:08:08 > 0:08:12it was filled with scenes of unimaginable horror.
0:08:13 > 0:08:17Millions of people starved during the Great Potato Famine.
0:08:20 > 0:08:23It was the cataclysmic disaster in Ireland's history.
0:08:25 > 0:08:30Before the famine, Ireland had been a country of eight million people.
0:08:30 > 0:08:32Most of them grew their own food
0:08:32 > 0:08:35on small plots attached to their homes.
0:08:35 > 0:08:37The staple diet was easy to grow
0:08:37 > 0:08:41and thrived in Ireland's damp weather - the humble potato.
0:08:42 > 0:08:46But the vegetable was susceptible to blight.
0:08:46 > 0:08:48In 1847, the disease struck.
0:08:52 > 0:08:57Deprived of food, a million died a slow, lingering death.
0:08:57 > 0:09:01People living without hope walled themselves into their houses
0:09:01 > 0:09:04and starved to death.
0:09:04 > 0:09:08Four million others left the country, many never to return.
0:09:10 > 0:09:15In Du Noyer's work, though, there are no images of starving people,
0:09:15 > 0:09:17no harrowing pictures.
0:09:17 > 0:09:20His images of the famine all tend to look like this -
0:09:20 > 0:09:24drawings of roofless and abandoned cottages.
0:09:24 > 0:09:26Throughout his vast work,
0:09:26 > 0:09:30there's barely a hint that it ever actually happened.
0:09:30 > 0:09:33But that begs an interesting question - given that Du Noyer
0:09:33 > 0:09:37was working and travelling in the immediate aftermath of this tragedy,
0:09:37 > 0:09:42why do we see so few visual examples of it in his work?
0:09:45 > 0:09:48For a start, Du Noyer was more interested in the landscape
0:09:48 > 0:09:50and the artefacts in the landscape than
0:09:50 > 0:09:52he was in painting the human figure,
0:09:52 > 0:09:54but to widen it from Du Noyer,
0:09:54 > 0:09:59most other artists didn't paint scenes of great poverty in Ireland
0:09:59 > 0:10:02either, or devastation, I think partly because
0:10:02 > 0:10:05the academic training, if they had it,
0:10:05 > 0:10:08concentrated on painting the classical figure.
0:10:08 > 0:10:14They hadn't the skills for painting, you know, absolute destitution
0:10:14 > 0:10:18and emaciation and people dying of disease and so on
0:10:18 > 0:10:24and some kind of, just horror of painting such awful,
0:10:24 > 0:10:26you know, soul-destroying misery.
0:10:30 > 0:10:33Du Noyer may have steered clear of the famine in his work,
0:10:33 > 0:10:37but there was an Irish artist from this very area who was
0:10:37 > 0:10:41depicting the most graphic images of the kind of gruelling poverty that
0:10:41 > 0:10:45people were undergoing, but then he was sending his pictures to London.
0:10:52 > 0:10:54We rely a lot on primary source accounts,
0:10:54 > 0:10:58people who came here to tell us what was happening during the Great Famine
0:10:58 > 0:11:01and probably the person who had most effect was James Mahoney
0:11:01 > 0:11:03of the Illustrated London News,
0:11:03 > 0:11:06and he visited Skibbereen at the height of the Great Famine
0:11:06 > 0:11:09in early 1847, and what he sketched
0:11:09 > 0:11:13and described literally horrified people and it had a profound effect.
0:11:15 > 0:11:18The Illustrated London News was a new type of media
0:11:18 > 0:11:19and it had images, obviously,
0:11:19 > 0:11:22and today I suppose we'd call him a photojournalist.
0:11:22 > 0:11:24In those days, he sketched what he saw
0:11:24 > 0:11:27and Skibbereen made the front page of the Illustrated London News
0:11:27 > 0:11:29and in today's terms, these images went viral,
0:11:29 > 0:11:33they went all over the Empire. You know, Africa, Asia, India, Canada,
0:11:33 > 0:11:36and huge amounts of money started to flow into Ireland
0:11:36 > 0:11:39and Skibbereen became very famous,
0:11:39 > 0:11:43synonymous with the famine through these images and descriptions.
0:11:45 > 0:11:48Even now, in one corner of Skibbereen,
0:11:48 > 0:11:51the famine still feels very real.
0:11:52 > 0:11:54What is it we're looking out on here?
0:11:54 > 0:11:58So this entire area here is one mass grave,
0:11:58 > 0:12:02famine burial pits, as they're known. In this area
0:12:02 > 0:12:05there's somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 people buried.
0:12:05 > 0:12:07- Seriously? In this small area?- Yeah.
0:12:07 > 0:12:09To give you a perspective,
0:12:09 > 0:12:12there's about 2,000 people in Skibbereen today,
0:12:12 > 0:12:13- so this is huge.- It's huge.
0:12:13 > 0:12:16There's two other mass graves in Skibbereen, one up at Chapel Lane
0:12:16 > 0:12:19and one at the workhouse itself, so it's just one of three,
0:12:19 > 0:12:21estimated about 28,000 dead in this area.
0:12:21 > 0:12:25So it must have been absolutely devastating for the families
0:12:25 > 0:12:29to know that your parents' or your children's bodies were just
0:12:29 > 0:12:31thrown into a mass pit like this.
0:12:31 > 0:12:34Well, burial in Ireland was very, very important.
0:12:34 > 0:12:36It was part of the psyche,
0:12:36 > 0:12:40so, yes, this was an aberration in Irish terms.
0:12:40 > 0:12:43There was a terrible shame attached to the famine, wasn't there,
0:12:43 > 0:12:46- in the years that followed? - There was, there was.
0:12:46 > 0:12:48They call it the Great Silence.
0:12:48 > 0:12:51People didn't speak about the famine, you know, they put up this wall.
0:12:51 > 0:12:55Today we have a name for it, you know, post-traumatic stress disorder.
0:12:55 > 0:12:58In those days, I think it was a combination of things.
0:12:58 > 0:13:01I think it was survivor's guilt. Also, people did things
0:13:01 > 0:13:04that were so out of their normal realm of behaviour
0:13:04 > 0:13:06that they couldn't think about it.
0:13:06 > 0:13:10It turned into this bitterness, which fuelled a lot of revolution
0:13:10 > 0:13:13and war afterwards, so you can understand it, though.
0:13:22 > 0:13:24We find it hard to imagine this nowadays
0:13:24 > 0:13:26because we look around the Irish rural landscape
0:13:26 > 0:13:29and it is largely, as it were, a green and pleasant land.
0:13:29 > 0:13:35Then, it was the most densely populated place in Europe
0:13:35 > 0:13:37and that's kind of hard for us to imagine.
0:13:38 > 0:13:42Most of the homes of the people who lived in Ireland in the 1830s,
0:13:42 > 0:13:441840s, are utterly invisible today
0:13:44 > 0:13:47because they were literally mud cabins,
0:13:47 > 0:13:51so to walk around an Irish hillside, you would have seen
0:13:51 > 0:13:54literally hundreds of dwellings, hundreds of dwellings,
0:13:54 > 0:13:58where nowadays you might see half a dozen isolated farmsteads.
0:14:11 > 0:14:15Like most other artists, Du Noyer didn't paint famine victims,
0:14:15 > 0:14:18possibly out of respect for their misery.
0:14:18 > 0:14:21His pictures showed quiet unpopulated areas,
0:14:21 > 0:14:23reminiscent of simpler times.
0:14:23 > 0:14:28He was drawn to wilderness, to peaceful contemplative scenes,
0:14:28 > 0:14:31and there was one place to which the artist kept returning,
0:14:31 > 0:14:34the extraordinary valley of Glendalough,
0:14:34 > 0:14:36where the beauty of the Wicklow Mountains
0:14:36 > 0:14:38evokes a unique spirituality.
0:14:48 > 0:14:50This really is such a stunning view.
0:14:50 > 0:14:54I can see why Du Noyer came here to capture it
0:14:54 > 0:14:58in one of all those vignettes he did of Wicklow.
0:14:58 > 0:15:02As much as he knew about geology, and he did for his time,
0:15:02 > 0:15:06it was still an infant science, so he'd have been astonished
0:15:06 > 0:15:10to find out that this valley was formed by a glacier.
0:15:24 > 0:15:27Glendalough is a really important place for me,
0:15:27 > 0:15:30because it's such a romantic location for my parents.
0:15:30 > 0:15:33They met at university in Dublin
0:15:33 > 0:15:37and came down here in a rickety old bus on their second date,
0:15:37 > 0:15:41and I'm not entirely convinced it was all about archaeology.
0:15:47 > 0:15:51In the sixth century, this place was discovered by a monk,
0:15:51 > 0:15:55St Kevin, who wanted somewhere quiet for prayer and contemplation.
0:15:55 > 0:15:58He certainly found it.
0:15:58 > 0:16:02The valley flourished as a religious centre for 600 years,
0:16:02 > 0:16:05each generation adding their own chapels and shrines.
0:16:05 > 0:16:09The round tower is one of the most perfectly preserved in the country.
0:16:12 > 0:16:15My own parents visited Glendalough 60 years ago.
0:16:15 > 0:16:19Every summer, archaeological students from their old college
0:16:19 > 0:16:21in Dublin still come here to dig,
0:16:21 > 0:16:25and leader Graeme Warren has a link to my family past.
0:16:25 > 0:16:27Thank you very much for coming to see us.
0:16:27 > 0:16:32We do have a photograph from, which I think is 1954.
0:16:32 > 0:16:35That's my dad!
0:16:35 > 0:16:39- Hiding away in the background of it there.- Thank you so much!
0:16:39 > 0:16:41- That's really good research. - Not at all.
0:16:43 > 0:16:46Just to put us in context, the community of St Kevin,
0:16:46 > 0:16:49this was very early Christianity, wasn't it, for Ireland?
0:16:49 > 0:16:55St Kevin and the foundation would be one of the classic
0:16:55 > 0:16:57early monastic settlements.
0:16:57 > 0:17:00It's a landscape that people still see as spiritually
0:17:00 > 0:17:01very important today.
0:17:01 > 0:17:03There's a landscape of the imagination here
0:17:03 > 0:17:07as well as the physical reality of a stunningly beautiful landscape
0:17:07 > 0:17:08that you see around you now.
0:17:08 > 0:17:12The round tower that we can see here is a particularly fine example.
0:17:12 > 0:17:15It is a particularly fine example. It's slightly reconstructed.
0:17:15 > 0:17:18If you look at 19th-century photographs of it,
0:17:18 > 0:17:19it doesn't have the roof.
0:17:19 > 0:17:22And that's one of the things that happens a lot,
0:17:22 > 0:17:24is the well-meaning actions
0:17:24 > 0:17:29restored, repaired, changed these monuments a little bit,
0:17:29 > 0:17:32which is why some of Du Noyer's pictures capture aspects
0:17:32 > 0:17:35of that landscape before all of those changes have taken place,
0:17:35 > 0:17:38and they can be very valuable for us.
0:17:38 > 0:17:41Let's just go back then to George Du Noyer's day.
0:17:41 > 0:17:45He came here, clearly had an interest in antiquity,
0:17:45 > 0:17:48but I suppose his interest in antiquity
0:17:48 > 0:17:51would have been quite typical for someone of his time.
0:17:51 > 0:17:55Often, although not exclusively, this would be men
0:17:55 > 0:17:56of a certain social class.
0:17:56 > 0:18:00Some of the accounts of antiquarian activity we have in this valley
0:18:00 > 0:18:04are from William Wilde.
0:18:04 > 0:18:05In reading those narratives,
0:18:05 > 0:18:10you do get a sense of the way this was a part of their identity,
0:18:10 > 0:18:12who they were as individuals,
0:18:12 > 0:18:16was to hold this interest in the past and to be able to talk
0:18:16 > 0:18:17about those sorts of things
0:18:17 > 0:18:20and to speak knowledgeably about that material.
0:18:25 > 0:18:28It's difficult to be certain, of course,
0:18:28 > 0:18:33whether people who do the kind of thing that Du Noyer did,
0:18:33 > 0:18:39did it because they were aware that this was a vulnerable heritage,
0:18:39 > 0:18:44or whether they were interested in it for its own sake.
0:18:47 > 0:18:51It seems to have been an urge to look back to an earlier time
0:18:51 > 0:18:57in Ireland's history, perhaps because of an emergence
0:18:57 > 0:19:03in the 19th century of a concept of an Irish nation
0:19:03 > 0:19:07that was broader than any that had existed in an earlier period.
0:19:11 > 0:19:16This is one of those more vulnerable places to which Du Noyer was drawn,
0:19:16 > 0:19:20a very special part of the Irish landscape, the boglands.
0:19:21 > 0:19:24The Irish bog is like nothing else I've seen.
0:19:24 > 0:19:28It reminds me of a landscape straight out of Tolkien's Middle-earth.
0:19:28 > 0:19:31There's something truly fantastical about it.
0:19:33 > 0:19:37In ancient Ireland, it was regarded as a liminal place,
0:19:37 > 0:19:39a threshold between the living and the dead.
0:19:39 > 0:19:43Simply put a foot wrong on this kind of ground,
0:19:43 > 0:19:45you might never be seen again.
0:19:45 > 0:19:48Du Noyer drew the strata of the bog,
0:19:48 > 0:19:52but it held other secrets in its depths, as he would soon discover.
0:20:02 > 0:20:07This is a quintessential part of the Irish landscape, the bog,
0:20:07 > 0:20:11and it's so strange to walk in it, I can't tell you!
0:20:11 > 0:20:14It's a kind of heathery bouncy castle.
0:20:14 > 0:20:17It actually makes me feel slightly tipsy!
0:20:19 > 0:20:22The bog has a very special place in Irish culture.
0:20:22 > 0:20:26Seamus Heaney wrote, "But bog meaning soft,
0:20:26 > 0:20:30"the fall of windless rain, pupil of amber."
0:20:30 > 0:20:32It's also an incredibly rich resource.
0:20:32 > 0:20:35People come to places like this to dig up turf
0:20:35 > 0:20:36to put on their fires,
0:20:36 > 0:20:39which give off that wonderful smell of peat smoke,
0:20:39 > 0:20:42which I remember so well from our family holidays.
0:20:43 > 0:20:46Conservation officer Tadhg O Corcora
0:20:46 > 0:20:49is taking me through a vital initiation rite of the bog...
0:20:49 > 0:20:52A bit of water here now.
0:20:52 > 0:20:53..getting wet.
0:20:55 > 0:20:57First time you fall in is a celebration.
0:20:57 > 0:21:00It really is like a special landscape.
0:21:00 > 0:21:03I love looking around. When you look from a distance,
0:21:03 > 0:21:06it's quite brown, a little bit of green,
0:21:06 > 0:21:09but then close-up, there are amazing colours.
0:21:09 > 0:21:13Once you get into it, there's massive colour change all over,
0:21:13 > 0:21:16so these are the heathers all starting to come out.
0:21:16 > 0:21:19- They give you the little sea of pink.- And then this bright orange.
0:21:19 > 0:21:21The bright orange is the asphodel,
0:21:21 > 0:21:24and that two months ago would have been all yellow.
0:21:24 > 0:21:27That's sphagnum moss here.
0:21:27 > 0:21:29And why is the moss important?
0:21:29 > 0:21:33The moss is the key bog-building plant here..
0:21:33 > 0:21:37The only bit that grows is the flowering head.
0:21:37 > 0:21:40This, as it gets older and older, gets pushed down
0:21:40 > 0:21:44further and further, that's what's turned in to peat.
0:21:44 > 0:21:49You're standing here on about approximately 7.1 metres of peat.
0:21:49 > 0:21:53Basically, your bog grows about a millimetre a year on average,
0:21:53 > 0:21:58so a millimetre a year is basically a metre every 1,000 years.
0:21:58 > 0:22:0010,000 years equals 10 metres.
0:22:00 > 0:22:04What would you say that the landscape of the bog
0:22:04 > 0:22:08means for people in Ireland?
0:22:08 > 0:22:10The bogs, or peatlands anyway,
0:22:10 > 0:22:13make up 20% of all of Ireland's land core.
0:22:13 > 0:22:16They are synonymous with Ireland
0:22:16 > 0:22:19and a lot of people can relate to bogs.
0:22:19 > 0:22:21Ireland has a big history with bogs,
0:22:21 > 0:22:24particularly I suppose through the coating of turf.
0:22:24 > 0:22:26So as a fuel source.
0:22:26 > 0:22:30Are there stories associated with the bogs, I mean, mythology?
0:22:30 > 0:22:34They were long associated with burial grounds
0:22:34 > 0:22:39and offerings were placed and people were buried with offerings.
0:22:41 > 0:22:46The ancient Celts were pagans who honoured the forces of nature.
0:22:46 > 0:22:49The bogs exerted a special power.
0:22:49 > 0:22:52One characteristic of the bog is its unique ability
0:22:52 > 0:22:54to preserve whatever lies within it.
0:22:54 > 0:22:57It acts like nature's very own museum,
0:22:57 > 0:22:59yielding up what people put into it.
0:22:59 > 0:23:03A hoard of wood, metal, jewellery and even food.
0:23:05 > 0:23:10Typically, Du Noyer was fascinated by these artefacts and drew them,
0:23:10 > 0:23:13but more recently there have been other discoveries.
0:23:15 > 0:23:18The slightly macabre bog bodies.
0:23:23 > 0:23:27There's well over 100 bog bodies which have been found in Irish bogs,
0:23:27 > 0:23:29dating from various different periods,
0:23:29 > 0:23:34particularly the later prehistoric period, around the time of Christ,
0:23:34 > 0:23:36a couple of centuries either side.
0:23:36 > 0:23:38Some of them may have been people who just lost their way.
0:23:38 > 0:23:42Others may have been ritually executed,
0:23:42 > 0:23:46as a kind of an offering to the gods.
0:23:46 > 0:23:51Others may have been social outcasts who had to be got rid of.
0:23:52 > 0:23:56Who knows what other secrets lie beneath these bog lands?
0:23:56 > 0:24:00In recording them, Du Noyer himself only really scratched the surface,
0:24:00 > 0:24:05and as we'll discover throughout this series, the landscape itself
0:24:05 > 0:24:08has a part to play in telling the story of Ireland.
0:24:15 > 0:24:19If one landscape is as emblematic of Ireland as the bogland,
0:24:19 > 0:24:21it's the rugged coastline.
0:24:21 > 0:24:25The sharp angles and roughness of the edges of the island form
0:24:25 > 0:24:28another important part of Du Noyer's work.
0:24:31 > 0:24:34The sea is an integral part of life in Ireland -
0:24:34 > 0:24:3980% of the population lives within ten kilometres of the coast -
0:24:39 > 0:24:41and one of the most beautiful coastal spots
0:24:41 > 0:24:43is Kinsale in County Cork.
0:24:46 > 0:24:49You can see the life around here is just amazing.
0:24:49 > 0:24:54Over there at the Old Head, we might see some dolphins or seals.
0:24:54 > 0:24:57It's always worthwhile keeping a sharp lookout. You never know.
0:24:57 > 0:25:00Every day's different. You never know what you'll see here.
0:25:00 > 0:25:04- You never get bored doing what you do.- Oh, no. No. I always say that.
0:25:06 > 0:25:08This is the Old Head of Kinsale,
0:25:08 > 0:25:12a long finger of rock that juts out into the ocean.
0:25:12 > 0:25:15There are records of lighthouses here
0:25:15 > 0:25:18dating back to pre-Christian Ireland.
0:25:18 > 0:25:20In the 1850s, a new one was under construction.
0:25:23 > 0:25:25And on his travels, Du Noyer had a chance
0:25:25 > 0:25:28to sketch this striking addition to the landscape.
0:25:30 > 0:25:34There's no doubt that the Old Head of Kinsale is an extraordinarily
0:25:34 > 0:25:35dramatic promontory.
0:25:35 > 0:25:39But it's quite interesting comparing it with the Du Noyer drawing,
0:25:39 > 0:25:42because I think here he's taken a bit of dramatic licence,
0:25:42 > 0:25:47because the way he has the sweep of the rocks rising right
0:25:47 > 0:25:51out of the sea is certainly an exaggeration of what I'm looking at.
0:25:56 > 0:25:59Du Noyer drew the Old Head of Kinsale when it was a new,
0:25:59 > 0:26:04state-of-the-art lighthouse, a wonder of Victorian technology,
0:26:04 > 0:26:07operated by highly-skilled keepers.
0:26:07 > 0:26:10More than 160 years later, it's still working.
0:26:14 > 0:26:17Just be careful of your head there, Martha.
0:26:17 > 0:26:19Wow! This is incredible.
0:26:21 > 0:26:25- Ooh!- You feel like the sea is at your feet, don't you?- You do.
0:26:25 > 0:26:27It's beautiful, isn't it?
0:26:27 > 0:26:30There's quite a tradition of lighthouse
0:26:30 > 0:26:32- keeping in your family, isn't there?- There is.
0:26:32 > 0:26:34Yeah, my father was a lighthouse keeper,
0:26:34 > 0:26:39and he served in land stations, he served in rock stations,
0:26:39 > 0:26:43and we lived as families at the lighthouses.
0:26:43 > 0:26:44He would be offshore on other stations,
0:26:44 > 0:26:46and we'd have dwellings ashore.
0:26:46 > 0:26:47And then every Sunday,
0:26:47 > 0:26:51all the families were brought out on a boat, just sort of
0:26:51 > 0:26:54a family day, to see the father, like, you know what I mean?
0:26:54 > 0:26:58Everything, like, has changed completely as regard lighthouses now.
0:26:58 > 0:27:02And why has that change happened, would you say?
0:27:02 > 0:27:03Well, it's the technology, like,
0:27:03 > 0:27:06you know? You don't need a man now to wind up the light.
0:27:06 > 0:27:08We've got electricity. So electricity started, like,
0:27:08 > 0:27:11so a totally different operation.
0:27:11 > 0:27:13So...it's sad.
0:27:13 > 0:27:14Why is it sad?
0:27:14 > 0:27:18Well, for me it's sad because I lived at lighthouses when I was a child
0:27:18 > 0:27:22and I grew up around lighthouses, and it was a great community,
0:27:22 > 0:27:26so, like, we're fairly rare.
0:27:26 > 0:27:28- We're the last, I'd say! - You're the last remaining.
0:27:28 > 0:27:32I would say we're the last, yeah. Yeah, it's looking like that.
0:27:32 > 0:27:35It's in places like these that the distance between Du Noyer's
0:27:35 > 0:27:41lifetime and my own somehow shrinks and I realise that the Ireland he
0:27:41 > 0:27:44captured so vividly with his pencil and brush
0:27:44 > 0:27:45hasn't vanished completely.
0:27:47 > 0:27:50If we carried on heading out to sea from here, where would we come to?
0:27:50 > 0:27:53If you go down this direction here, you'd come to another
0:27:53 > 0:27:57lighthouse called the Fastnet Rock, and that was called the Teardrop.
0:27:57 > 0:28:00When the people from Ireland used to be on the emigrant ships,
0:28:00 > 0:28:02that's the last piece of Ireland they used to see,
0:28:02 > 0:28:04so they used to call it the Teardrop.
0:28:04 > 0:28:07There was a lot of tears there on the ships, like, you know?
0:28:11 > 0:28:14It's thanks to Du Noyer's ceaseless travel
0:28:14 > 0:28:17and meticulous watercolours that we can still imagine
0:28:17 > 0:28:20the images of Ireland those emigrants were taking with them
0:28:20 > 0:28:21on the ships.
0:28:21 > 0:28:25The country they left behind, the boglands or mountainside,
0:28:25 > 0:28:28may have changed in the years since, but with Du Noyer
0:28:28 > 0:28:32as a guide, look hard enough and you can still get a glimpse.