As I mentioned, it is forty years ago this month since I first set eyes on Ballyduff.

We were living in Dublin at the time and had decided on a move to the country and reckoned that somewhere within a hundred miles radious of Dublin would suit us so, each Thursday we would buy the local papers of a particular area, check the properties for sale columns and spend the weekend inspecting those that appealed to us.

On this particular weekend, in November 1972, it was Wexford and, somewhere close by Enniscorthy - I forget exactly where - we had spotted a vested cottage which, on inspection, we figured would do us nicely and had thoughts of pursuing it with the auctioneer during the following week.

Friends from Belfast had recently moved to Thomastown so, finding ourselves not too far away, we decided to visit.

They were architects and at the time were engaged on the conversion of one of Thomastown's many water mills (The Little Mill at Arland's Inch, to be precise) into the headquarters of a central heating company. (Amazingly, at that time, the manufacture of radiators and the provision of central heating had replaced flour milling as the town's primary industry).
And on the Sunday morning I was invited along to a site meeting to meet the owner / developer, Liam Hoyne, a solicitor by trade but also the entrepreneurial leader of the burgeoning new industry.
I bantered with him, accusing him of defiling a building of industrial architectural importance. (I was to learn later that Liam had married into the principal milling family of the town, had become an expert on mills and was, in fact, the first to recognise that they were doomed unless they were given a new purpose).

Anyway, given my, most likely callow (I was still in my late twenties at the time), comments he enquired of me whether I liked old mills.
I told him I did and he bade me follow him.
And, unbeknownst to me at that moment, we set forth for Ballyduff.
To do so we crossed the Nore over the bridge (that had not yet been modified to facilitate the passage of articulated lorries), drove the length of Mill Street, passing Grennan Mill and Pilsworth's Mill (the family into which Liam had married) before turning left up the Mall and along the Rock Road.
And on this run - which I guess Sue and I will have done, between us, at least thrice daily for the past, aforementioned, forty years - one rises to Davey Walshe's (he's been dead for twenty years at least, but names stick) and then, a few yards beyond, the Nore and Arrigle valleys, with views of Saddle and Brandon Hills with the Blackstairs beyond, open before you.
But in the foreground there is what we have always known as 'Ryan's wood': it being a hillside of deciduous woodland that rises over Bonnybrook, the Ryan's farm and farmhouse.
And here's the link that prompted this ramble...............

In that November of 1972 not only was Ryan's wood a riot of autumn colour in the late morning sun (sadly not so when this shot was taken) .......

.......but this was the sight that greeted me the first time I passed through the gate to the mill which I did not know, that day, was to become our home.
Mind you, these trees were forty years younger and smaller then!!.................