Martin Tracey

While we were in Ireland, we were only an hour away from Roscrea which is where my Grandma Beattie's Grandad (Martin Tracey) came from. We have his army records and so know a bit more about him than other Great Great Grandparents so I really wanted to visit his town.

In my ideal visit, we'd go to the church, search the grave yard and find a big Tracey gravestone with generations of family history!

I marched the kids and Liam round - everyone had a section to search but we quickly realised that not only were the graves so big that they were all very rich deceased (not likely in my family), but there was not a whisper of a Tracey!

Oh well, good try. It was a nice old church anyway! And the entrance was part of an ancient monastery (guess who's been reading Wikipedia) - I love a bit of history!

We only had about half an hour left until we had to leave to meet Grandad at the swimming pool so we marched for a quick explore of the town.

I found this old photo of Roscrea, its amazing how similar it looks now!

Its a funny old town - obviously bursting with historic buildings including a castle. I wanted to buy one of those "Old Roscrea" books, like "Old Abbeydale" and Old Millhouses", so I went to look for WHSmiths. No such luck. There was a Tesco, but almost all other shops were small independent shops. Not like in England where all towns have the same chain shops. Where's a Waterstones when you need one?!I couldn't ask the kids to give up their swimming pool appointment, but I would have loved to have gone and toured the castle and mill museums. I think that will have to be my next visit!

And here's my list of other historic things to look at in Roscrea...

So the Tracey's didn't throw themselves at me while we were in Roscrea, but I got a nice idea of what the town was like for future visits and the lady at the castle gave me the address of the North Tipperary family history information office so I'll try them in my hunt for Martin Tracey!