Bernadette M Redmond

Daughter of a Sea Locked Isle Bernadette M Redmond

This is the story of Catherine Qualter, born in 1859 in the townland of Gortcloonmore, two miles down a bog road in Claregalway that was so out of the way that it was said to be 'behind God's back'. The Qualter family home was one of eleven limewashed cottages clustered together in the little Gortcloonmore colony on the Lambert Estate which were registered in 1851 in the Griffith Valuation Household Survey, carried out to determine liability to pay the Poor rate (for the support of the poor and destitute within each Poor Law Union). Following the Famine years, want and poverty continued to be a problem and agricultural families existed as tenants-at-will, subject to the whims of James Staunton Lambert their Ascendency landlord, the will of God and the vagaries of the River Clare. In 1879, the year of 'An Gorta Beag', Catherine left home never to be seen again. Catherine's story is told against the background of the times in rural Galway and the events that shaped her destiny.