Rural Shops

The cartographer has to investigate many aspects of a region in order to compile both a useful map and a portrait of the area. Many little small details as regards geography and social patterns come to your eye.

I’m currently attending to a full revision of our Blackstairs & Mount Leinster map, first published 2013. We hear about rural decline but it’s often when you look again at an area in detail, that you see all the small changes. One of the more significant changes is the closure of small local shops. Take this one in Garryhill in Co.Carlow, well stocked in 2012 but gone a few years later. Myshall village wouldn’t be far away and the local history group there compiled an article c.2016 that listed no fewer than fourteen old shops outside the village that have gone within recent decades and living memory.

Our own local village of Clonegal had three shops up to a decade ago, now just one. I can think of at least three more within cycling distance and two travelling shops that have also gone. Of course, the reasons are not hard to see and we’re all to blame for it. But next time you’re out and about on the hills or wherever, take time to stop and buy something in a small rural shop. It mightn’t be there next time you go.

#eastwestmapping #irishhistory #blackstairs