Thursday 19th September 2017

At the invitation of the Mayor Jane Carroll, Veronica and I visited Veronica’s home town of Bishops Castle. We were met by the Mayor, the Deputy Mayor and the Town Clerk and were joined by local farmer Simon Bedell, for a discussion regarding the challenges facing the farming industry. We were then shown around the splendid Town Hall, which was refurbished in 2013, and now provides a Visitor information Centre, the Town Clerk’s offices and two rooms for hire for a variety of events. We also made a brief tour of the town on foot and viewed the system of “shuts”, narrow passageways dating from the Middle Ages that run between the three principal streets in the town. We finished with a visit to the town church, St John the Baptist, a C13 building that was re-built in 1869-70 in the Victorian Gothic style.