For some time now, going back thirty years and more I have kept notes and photographed Greystones old and its old harbour. In the light of dawn and sunst it has a certain charm. It has a checkered history in which tragedies have struck . Soon all that I have learned and a large gallery from my portfolio will be published in bookform.
Long before there was a town, or so much as a hamlet in the late 1700s, the harbour was the launching pad for fishermen who lived in the surrounding hills. Then it was just a shelf of rocks ran protruding into the sea and at such an angle that the shore was protected from southerlies. There was deep water at all times to within a few feet of the steep shore. The place was busy. Records show that four hundred people made a living from the fishery around 1800. Then came Ireland's first famine of 1822. The shoals diminished and then came the Great Famine of 1845. Disease and starvation and the exodus decimated the population.
There were campaigns to develop the harbour, to give it greater protection in bad weather. Fishmen would be able to build bigger boats and thereby increase their catches. But it was not to be.
