Bonamargy Friary on FP4+

Bonamargy (what a great name - it means 'foot of the Margy river', apparently) Friary lies just East of Ballycastle, about a 20minute drive from Chez McNeill.  I met my fellow film shooter David there last week for a morning's entertainment.  And very good it was, too.  Access is limited, so we parked at the Golf Club, with fingers crossed they wouldn't actually hit us with a £100 fine like the notices suggested (they didn't).   Five minutes later we crossed the third fairway (part of the golf course appears to be built around the friary) and entered the walled abbey through the graveyard.  This was taken as we were leaving, when the light was rather nice and soft:

Entrance to the friary, on an October morning in 2021.  I had the 50mm Distagon on the 'Blad and at first look I thought I managed to provoke a little flare with the light coming through the trees.   I can't be sure, though - I think it may just be the light hitting a branch.  The stone on the left is dedicated to all the unknowns buried in the grounds. Up until recently I always reached for RO9 when developing FP4+ but I've found that 9 minutes in HC-110 dilution B (1:31) does just as well and that's what was used here.  Printed on the luscious Ilford MG Classic fibre paper and very lightly toned in a weak home-brew thiourea mix as per Tim Rudman's recipe for Rayco toner, which just warms the print every so slightly.

Bonamargy was originally built around1500 by a certain Rory McQuillan but those pesky folks from the rival McDonnell Clan took over in about 1588.  There's a sealed vault somewhere inside which apparently holds the coffins of several Earls of Ulster, including the main man himself, Sorley Boy McDonnell (him of Dunluce Castle fame and on the receiving end of the massacre of his children and faithful Clan members at Rathlin Island).   The name Sorley Boy is an Anglicised version of Somhairle Buidh (Mac Domhnaill).  Somhairle is itself a Gaelicised form of a Viking name, meaning Summer Wanderer, of the yellow hair (son of Donnell).  Hope you are paying attention as I'll be checking later...

The ruins of the friary are rather spectacular, I have to say - well worth a visit if you are in the vicinity. The stonework in particular caught my eye:

Superb stonework makes up the friary walls.

I need to return to Bonamargy some time with a tripod thing - FP4+ isn't the fastest film on the planet and to be able to hand-hold the Hasselblad meant shooting at f/4 or f/5.6, which isn't the best idea when you need a bit of depth of field.   There is some restoration work going on at the minute (and for some considerable time, the locals tells me), so there's a bit of scaffolding around parts of the ruins.  I stood and watched a couple of workmen for a while - they were re-pointing some of the stonework and I could see they had replaced at least one window arch as well.  I hope they do whatever needs to be done to weather it so that it blends in a bit more sympathetically, as at the minute it sticks out like a sore thumb. We shall see...