Castletimon & Brittas Bay Articles

We are enjoying the project about Castletimon and Brittas Bay. John Hanson’s ancestors had a farm at Brittas in 1700-1900s. His great grandfather came to Sydney where he was a successful dairyman. He paid for all the expenses at the farm at Brittas for many years while he still had family living in the farmhouse.

We had so much trouble finding where he came from so we put ads in local papers. Brenda and Colclough Byrne wrote to us saying they had all our family papers including letters from Sydney family to Brittas. John has now written a book called In Search of Da Byrne. There is a copy in the Family History Centre in Wicklow Town/Gaol. Catherine Wright did a lot of searching for us. 

One of the photos in your project  of a cow on a grave inscription is of our family grave. BYRNE. We have the photos taken on a trip in 2010. We met Tom Byrne and picked up the family papers from Colclough and Brenda Byrne. We are so lucky to have all that family information.

We have since been to Denmark to search origins of Hansons. We discovered that a viking ship was discovered made from wood from Glenalough – could this be from Castletimon I wonder and maybe there is a link to the Ogham Stone. The Ruan stones seemed to have similar markings….

Thank you for all this pleasure! Well done school children.

Jill and John Hanson, Canberra, Australia

No Comments

Start the ball rolling by posting a comment on this page!

Add a comment about this page

Your email address will not be published.