CREEDON’S ATLAS OF IRELAND
3×60
Transmission – Episode 2 – Sunday 18th August
18.30 Sundays
RTÉ One
John Creedon is a man on a mission, teasing and exploring the true meaning behind some of Ireland’s most unusual, iconic and famous place names. Each show is an hour long journey where John discovers lost meanings behind every day place names.
He travels the length and breadth of Ireland with ancient maps and modern technology at hand to investigate, probe and uncover hidden folklore, forgotten history, secret architecture and obscure topography of our country’s towns, cities, villages, highways and byways that give rise to Ireland’s place names.
Following in the footsteps of John O’Donovan – the man who helped
document place names for the 1820s survey – John Creedon cracks the
code of some of Ireland’s best loved, quirkiest and common place names.
John says “Placenames
have been a source of fascination for me since childhood. I mean,
NewTwoPotHouse is only out the road .. how could you pass that without
wondering about the story behind it. My father was a fine Irish speaker
and through him I loved to crack the placenames code. Sunday spins in
the car were peppered with conversations like ‘Dad, what does
Glengarriffe mean? ‘It’s from ‘Gleann’ meaning Glen and ‘Garbh’ meaning
rough. So ‘Rough Glen’ and if you look around you, you’ll see why!”
John Creedon has always had a curiosity as to how places got their names which ultimately led to a two year Regional Studies diploma course in UCC, where he examined Irish Folklore and place names. John’s television series “Creedon’s Shannon” was also the winner in the Best Broadcasting category at the Travel Extra Journalist of the Year Awards.
John says “The study of place names has opened up a wonderful world to me. As I drive around Ireland for work, my view of the landscape has become 3D, as I read the signs and stories within the place names.”
In Episode Two, directed and produced by Barry Donnellan, John meets singer/songwriter John Spillane to talk about our love of place in song and even manages to knock a few tunes out of him! John heads down into the bowels of the Cave of the Cats in Roscommon in search of the origin of Halloween! And he takes an early morning hot air balloon ride with travel writer Manchán Magan to get perspective on where our place names originated from. He also cracks the code behind place names in Co. Dublin, Co. Meath, Co. Wicklow, Co. Westmeath and Co. Galway.