This week saw the launch of John Feehan’s latest work Camcor the River of Birr published by Offaly County Council. It could be argued that it is a book that he has been working on for a lifetime as he was reared on the banks of the Camcor in Birr town and has been living close to it for the majority of his life, exploring and observing over the decades. While it is the river associated with Birr the book sets out the formation of the geology of the tributaries in the Slieve Bloom and follows the progress of the river to where it meets the Little Brosna in Birr Demesne. As with all John Feehan’s books it is a masterpiece in presenting knowledge about all aspects of the landscape in a digestible and engaging format. The book is A4 in format, softback, full colour, and extensively illustrated with upwards of 200 photographs, charts, maps and drawings – all carefully selected. Some of the chapters open with double page spreads and the overall effect is pleasing as there is no sense of clutter. Full marks to the author, designers and printers of this important addition to Offaly’s local and natural history. John Feehan has been a major contributor to Offaly’s growing library of publications since his seminal Slieve Bloom in 1979.
The contents of the book are wide ranging with chapters of The Course of the Camcor, The main tributary, the Nature of Rivers, Natural History, Mills and Distilleries, Draining the Camcor basin, The River in our Service, Crossing the river and the bridges of the Camcor and the concluding Afterward appropriately titled ‘Looking ahead’.
The launch of Camcor, the River of Birr on 30 March in the County Arms Hotel was well attended with Catherine Casey, Head of Heritage and Climate Change with the Heritage Council speaking on the importance of the national focus on biodiversity, Sean Loughnane spoke on behalf of Birr 20:20 Vision group where he recounted his early memories of hopping along stones in the Camcor on his way to school and Cllr Carroll as Cathaoirleach of Birr Municipal District formally launched the book.
The covers the whole broad remit of heritage from the geology to the constantly evolving landscape, the biodiversity in all its reaches and how humans have interacted with it – both attempting to manage the various drainage schemes and utilizing it for milling and distilling.
Excerpt from John Feehan’s address
… let me say what a great privilege it was to have been given the opportunity to write about the river of the town in which I was born and have spent half of my life, with now-and-then excursions between times further afield that helped me to appreciate it all the more. My earliest encounters with the natural world were all within earshot of its waters, in my very earliest years drawn especially to its birds. I was born right beside the river at Elmgrove Bridge where dippers nested, and dippers have haunted my dreams without fail year after year, especially when I was away. A little later, in possession of the breast-pocket-sized Observer’s Book of Flowers, my attention widened to wildflowers. Finding my first bee orchids in a small sandpit beside Clonoghil Lane, a stone’s throw from the river, was a transformative event in my life, making deeper my sense of wonder that there could be such intricate beauty on my doorstep, beyond my Newbridge Street threshold in bog and field, and all along the river. And it was all free.
As my early years have grown into decades that, like the expanding universe go faster as time goes by, that early wonder, focused through birds and flowers, grew as opportunity allowed me to get to know a little about all the kingdoms of smaller creatures: mosses and insects, lichens and spiders and all the others. But as it did, something else was retreating, not just from me, but from all of my generation who, it is meaningful to say, grew up along its banks, when there was no digital distraction to lure us away from these personal encounters; and the pathways along the river became overgrown and in some cases, over time, were lost to our human footfall. And at the same time, the forward march of our human affluence steadily drained the rainbow of nature’s diversity all around us, we scarcely noticing most of the time.
When I was away from Birr for the first time at boarding school, the little wood where the long-eared owl lived, between the river and my first bee orchids, was cleared. When we were in Africa the lake at the heart of Clonoghil Bog where I saw my first dragonflies was drained and the living bog around it began to die. The Croneen, in many ways the touchstone of the Camcor’s health, which we used to stand on Oxmantown Bridge in the early autumn to watch leaping the weir in shoals, the croneen has all but disappeared. Now, it is as though we have woken up, and as we look around with eyes more aware and critical of ourselves, we see that what is happening around us here in Birr is a microcosm of what is happening everywhere, and the scale of the challenge, in relation to the loss of biodiversity and environmental change more generally is – and I use the word because no other word will do – potentially: more than potentially, with certainty, catastrophic beyond our apparent ability to grasp what that means in a way that compels us to the necessary action.
We are all of us called – although called is really not a good enough word because it carries no sense of the urgency, or the price to be paid if the call is not heeded, called to play our part on all the different levels on which action is needed: starting at individual personal and family level, at community level in town and parish and county, at national level and in all the forums of people that make up our human family.
And with that wake-up call we must look with new eyes on the Camcor, on Killaun Bog, on all the places around us where natural diversity is still to be found, asking ourselves what do we need to do to hold onto this, what must we do, what is it urgent beyond words for us to do, really, to come to our senses; our senses literally in the sense of seeing clearly, perhaps for the first time, what it all means.
Camcor, the river of Birr is available at €20 from
Tullamore
Offaly History Shop – Bury Quay and Online
Midland Books
Kinnitty
Peavoy’s
Birr
Loughnane’s Centra, Tullamore Road
Supervalue
Birr Castle Demesne Shop
Crinkill
Daybreak, Military Road
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