This book will follow Mary in words and pictures through her life in the West Country from her early visits to Polzeth in Cornwall in 1914 to the present day living and working in Totnes. Drawing on her own life, and also remembering how her words were inspired by many of the places she visited or made her home, it will be part-memoir, part-nostalgia of the West Country that has meant so much to her over the years. Most of the photography is original and will be beautiful and intriguing in its own right without losing its relevence to Mary or her books     This book is second hand, and while you may not get the same publication/version/reprint/edition shown in the picture it will be the same author and title. Removing existing stickers from a second hand book may damage it, so we refrain from doing so. Even if the picture shows no price stickers on the book they may be there on the copy you receive. All of our books are in very good condition. Please be aware that there will be a sticker with an identifying number on the spine of this book.
The St Ann’s Hill Hydropathic Establishment, or The Hydro, was Ireland’s first and pre-eminent sanitorium. The Hydro was built in in Co. Cork in 1843 and closed its doors 110 years later. Founded by Dr Richard Barter and run by three generations of his family, only ruins remain on a hill between Tower and Blarney. This book documents the Hydro’s history from a range of sources, alongside two main themes. The first focuses on the social history of the Hydro, a world of its own, reflected in its resident inhabitants, a spectrum of Anglo-Irish society and international visitors. It was additionally a family home and a major employer in the region. The second theme considers the Hydro as a site of medical innovation, initially via a cold-water curative regime driven by a mid-nineteenth-century craze for hydrotherapy and later in the development of a new form of Turkish bath that spread around the world.
Ronan Foley is a native of Laois and Associate Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography at Maynooth University. Sinéad McSweeney is a native of Tower, Co Cork. She recently completed a Diploma in Genealogy in UCC.