Man and boy

Another damp day, so after a morning of sorting out following our hectic few days, we thought the afternoon would be a good chance to search out and visit Seamus Heaney HomePlace in Bellaghy, Co. Derry. This is a new exhibition space, dedicated to the legacy of Seamus Heaney, in the place of his birth. The building itself is not quite what one might expect, but inside is wonderful. Spacious and brilliantly laid out, the exhibition traces Heaney’s life and work and inspiration, through photographs, memorabilia, personal stories and lots more. Usually we would both turn down the offer of an audio guide, but here it is great – type in a number given in a particular place in the exhibition and you can sit and listen to Heaney reading a related poem. An inspirational place. And it has a good café. Yes of course I bought a book, and this is taken from the well-known poem ‘Digging’:

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into the gravelly ground:
My father, digging . . . 
 
On our way out of Bellaghy we visited Heaney’s grave in the local churchyard. Then we decided to visit the town of Ahoghill, not that far away. Not a lot to be said about this place, except that it was where Gordon’s family came from before they left for Scotland. Very little of what would have been there in the 1840s remains, but we were pleased to find the church where marriages and baptisms, which we had seen recorded at the Archives in Belfast, took place and found it would have been the same building. Somehow this seemed satisfactory – bridging the generations, as Heaney did.