Trailhead Description

The Coolattin Estate is adjacent to the Wicklow Way in the south of the county, just outside Shillelagh. It is used in this book as a microcosm for portraying what exactly happened during the Great Famine of the 1840s which decimated the population of Ireland.

Some historians have called the Great Famine as the worst social disaster of nineteenth century Europe and a passive genocide of the Irish people. Although the East of Ireland is not generally acknowledged for having suffered the worst of the starvation, this book explores the role of the landlord on the Coolattin Estate, Lord Fitzwilliam, who dealt with the problem by removing 6,000 people by providing an arranged passage to Canada.

The story follows the tenants of the Coolattin Estate on their journey across the Atlantic to Quebec in Canada and how they rebuilt their lives there.