Home Thoughts From Abroad - 13 - Photographs From The Memory

A series of posts from the Historical Assoc. Facebook group page - I'm From Togher , Boy!

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Photographs From The Memory

29th December 2015

If you've ever wondered about the changing face of Togher , it is a sobering thought to think that it is a constant ongoing process. Roads come and go. Bridges disappear. Buildings are demolished to be replaced by other buildings which in turn are knocked down. Rivers are diverted and then diverted again. Whole hillsides are cut away. Low inclines are filled in. Everything is interfered with. Without mans hand in the grand scheme of things , Togher would look radically different. The rivers would follow strange courses ( at least to our eyes ) ; there would be hills and hummocks where none were before ; dense forest would be all around. But the present Generation of Powers that be are not solely responsible - countless scores of past Generations have left their mark and not always for the better. The same could be said of the present. But one thing is for certain. Togher is poised for many more changes and some of them are just around the corner! So while you can , photograph your region for keepsakes and historical archives , because you never know just how long it will be around. One major stumbling block with the Togher Historical Assoc. is that a lot of the photographs from our recent past exist only in our minds. Social media didn't exist in the 1960s , 70s and 80s. If it did , what a treasure trove of memories we'd have today! Happy New Year and remember - the photograph you didn't take yesterday can never again be taken!

Home Thoughts From Abroad - 12 - The Ice Cometh ... Again!

A series of posts from the Historical Assoc. Facebook group page - I'm From Togher , Boy!

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The Ice Cometh ... Again!

6th December 2016

I mentioned briefly a while back about the general topography of Togher before , during and after the last Ice Age. Research shows that Togher may have escaped the worst ravages of that particular epoch. However it had bore the brunt of a previous even nastier Ice Age which denuded the land down to its very bedrock. Togher would have been literally covered in heavy dense forests and towering mountains , all of which were annihilated and deposited all over the land once the ice melted. So it can be seen that during the newer Ice Age Togher would have been an arctic tundra - extremely cold and akin to an open coffin fridge being hemmed in in the near distance by magnificent Ice walls. Whats interesting is that a land bridge connected the southern portion of the island to Britain and it can be inferred that humans from both here and even maybe Spain made the journey in search of food. These people would undoubtedly have been dark skinned caused mainly by the cold weather and high radiation of the distant ice. Togher back then would have been vastly different to what it is now. Many shallow lakes would have been evident both on low lying land and much higher up. These over time would convert into peat bogs and wetlands and eventually meadows. Hundreds of streams would have peppered the land running through the dense forests which colonized the ground. Our ancestors would have migrated to the higher lands where trees were easier to cut down to provide both shelter and fuel and weapons to defend against the local predators which included wolves and perhaps even bears. They would have fished and hunted giant deer for food and used the skins as clothing. Of course once the climate heated up and the last ice age came to a close , the terrain endured savage changes which saw it washed and worn away to what we see today. All the evidence is around us and beneath us. Our forefathers had much hardship to overcome but survived. The bad news is that Ice Ages generally have a 10,000 year warm interlude before everything kicks off again. Ours is nearly up!