Vanishing Ireland TIMELINE

Here Turtle explains more about the project:
In 2000, I went on an assignment to Zimbabwe with my old friend James Fennell, then an up-and-coming interiors photographer. We got talking about the way in which Ireland was changing so dramatically before our eyes. It’s remarkably easy to forget the frenetic pace of change on this island since the 1990s. Everything accelerated to such an astonishing degree that even children began to agree that time was flying.
In those heady days, much about the past seemed irrelevant. Emigration had come to an abrupt halt and most young people were earning good money, investing it in houses, cars and leisurely holidays. The day-to-day present was all we could think of.
But for many men and women of senior vintage, the changes were deeply alarming. Many stalwarts of generations past were proving to be intensely vulnerable in this brave new Ireland. Church authority had all but collapsed. Politics was following fashion onto the catwalk. Most farms were now framed by tarmac roads, supporting a relentless convoy of cars, lorries and motor-bikes. The friendly villages of old were an increasing rarity, either because the post office, pub and creamery had closed down, or because the fields around them had been developed into housing estates and retail parks. Ireland was changing utterly, and it was all terribly fast.
James and I decided to join forces to chronicle the memories of the older generations as quickly as we could. I would interview them about their life story and family background, and James would photograph them in situ.
We started with people we knew, mostly bachelor farmers in our home counties of Kildare and Carlow. Then we upped the ante and headed on a series of road trips all over Ireland, heading down every back-road we could find, sometimes on a whim but mostly because someone had recommended a particular character to us.
We expanded our brief to encompass any man or woman over the age of 70 who had experienced a traditional, working class upbringing. We sought out blacksmiths, saddlers, farmers, fishermen, housemaids, lacemakers, publicans, postmen, thatchers, musicians, anyone who would help us to gain a better understanding of a world which was fading fast.
Twenty-one years and 250 interviews later, we have four volumes of Vanishing Ireland books under our belt and a huge following in the Vanishing Ireland Official Facebook group.  Published by Hachette, the books have been a massive success, with not one but three volumes shortlisted at the Irish Book Awards. We also produced a book called 'The Irish Pub' with Thames & Hudson that focused on the endangered rural Irish pub. Bruce Springsteen bought one of the first copies.  The Vanishing Ireland project continues to gather momentum at all times as more and more people face into our past. To younger generations, the sepia-hued world of our grandparents is sometimes difficult to comprehend. It seems like an almost make-believe land of thatched cottages, potato furrows and pony traps. But the stage on which they played out their lives was little different to that of their grandparents before them. And of course it was every bit as real as our own.
There is much to learn from these tribal elders. Raised in an age before cars and televisions, most lived an outdoor life, rising with the dawn, working in the fields, strolling the roads, always in tune with both the landscape and the weather. Their hardy constitutions undoubtedly stem from a childhood where they all walked, and sometimes rowed, to and from school. When they were young, horses, ponies and donkeys formed the backbone of rural Ireland. Many lament the end of that era but others relish the way in which the ‘Machine Age’, as one farmer called it, took the ‘hardship’ out of daily life.  Ireland has an incredibly rich history, albeit tragic and dark in many places. Vanishing Ireland project brings the more recent past to life through the stories, both humorous and sad, of those who remember how things were when the world was younger. It is our great hope that these interviews inspire others to take a moment to think of old timers whom they know, to phone them or meet for a chat, and to write down or record the stories they hear.