Meeting Points of Nostalgia and Strangeness: Handball Alleys’ and Marian Grottos’ Status as Wayfinders in the Rural Irish Landscape.

 “Place can acquire deep meaning for the adult through the steady accretion of sentiment over the years. Every piece of heirloom furniture, or even a stain on the wall, tells a story. The child not only has a short past, but his eyes more than the adult's are on the present and the immediate future. His vitality for doing things and exploring space is not suited to the reflective pause and backward glance that make places seem saturated with significance. The child's imagination is of a special kind. It is tied to activity.”  (Tuan, 2001,p.33)

In the Roscommon/Galway area of rural Ireland where I grew up it is more common to give directions using ‘strange’ wayfinders and anomalies in the landscape than to ever say a street name or official name of a building or shop.  The same goes for when you’re meeting someone and you can’t say “I’ll see you the fifth field down”(all the fields look the same to small eyes). I think this phenomenon starts in the minds of children as they grow up and are meeting neighbours to play. When you are young you don’t know the old names or roads or how long a mile is or whose field is whose locally, but you do know what buildings look spooky or magical or what hills would make good places to build forts and have battles on. That is how my friends and I would make plans and meet when we were six and still when we are twenty two and see each other on Christmas break back home. We’ll meet at the handball alley and cycle down to the village together. I’ll see you at the grotto and we can go to the bridge to collect shrimp in jars and make crosses out of rushes, and so on. These wayfinders then stick in our mind to adulthood with me, and everyone I grew up with, still using them for things like driving instructions. For this essay I interviewed two people who I grew up with (my childhood friend and my mother) and asked how they would give directions in and out of our local area; 

“ From Feevagh school turn right, past the handball alley (on the left) keep going to the main road, turn left to Dysart to go to Athlone, turn right at the grotto, onto the main road. “ (McCarroll, 2025) 

“The closest handball alley to my house sits at the fork in the road. We would usually use it as a place marker when giving directions to the primary school or a relative's house. When you come to the handball alley, turn left/ right. ” (Kempin, 2025) 

These sort of nodes in rural Ireland can be fairy forts, humpback bridges, the old priest’s house, Holy Mary or Marian Grottos and handball alleys. These ordinary rural structures take on significance and meaning as meeting points and mental landmarks. In this essay I will be focusing on Marian Grottos and handball alleys. I think that they both uniquely balance feelings of eeriness and nostalgia because of their physical and cultural properties making them the most commonly used structures when it comes to finding your way and finding other people in the remote parts of rural Ireland. 

These feelings come from them both being de-functioned rural structures, both linked to ruins as one is purpose built to look like a ruin (grottos) and one is a ruin that has been repurposed for a community function (handball alleys). They both have a sort of lunulae/ three sided shape. They often stand alone, without other buildings, at crossroads without much hinting to their past uses so unless you’re local or come from a rural place you’re left confused as to what they are doing there. Their original use has been forgotten as generations leave the country to live abroad and in cities. 

This essay examines why Marian grottos and handball alleys, ordinary rural structures whose original functions have faded, persist as memorable wayfinding markers and meeting points in the Irish countryside. The argument is grounded primarily in Mark Fisher’s theorisation of the eerie, which describes the affective charge produced when a past agency has disappeared but left a lingering presence. Both grottos and alleys exemplify this. They sit at crossroads, edges, and thresholds, appearing as hybrid structures whose former communal purposes remain visible yet inaccessible. Their eerie quality heightens their perceptual salience, making them stand out within otherwise repetitive rural landscapes.

This sense of eeriness interacts with nostalgia, understood through Huyssen’s account of ruins as places where the past is both present and irretrievable, and through empirical psychological research by Sedikides, Wildschut and colleagues, who identify nostalgia as a mechanism for self-continuity triggered by sensory cues, memory, and social interaction. Their experiments demonstrate that nostalgic stimuli are more easily recalled and described, a finding extended by Redhead et al. (2023), who show that nostalgic landmarks support faster, more efficient route learning. Together, these insights explain why grottos and handball alleys, structures tied to collective memory, childhood orientation, and rural identity, become natural anchors in local direction-giving, as echoed in interviews with residents who instinctively reference them as key spatial markers. Further supported by Edensor’s account of ruins as sites of hybridity and lingering presence, this framework proposes that the combination of eeriness and nostalgia renders these architectures unusually “sticky” within rural mental maps, allowing them to endure as significant landmarks even as their practical uses recede. 

This essay will look at two case studies; the Marian Grotto at the crossroads at Dysart Village in Co. Roscommon (Fig.1) and the handball alley in the townland of Feevagh Co. Roscommon (Fig. 2). These are both the structures referenced in the interviews above). I will then look at them both through ideas of eeriness and nostalgia as a factor of wayfinding in a comparative analysis. A link to a map showing the locations of both of these structures has been submitted alongside the essay for locational reference.

Fig.1 Our Lady of Lourdes Wayside Grotto in the parish of Dysart with plaque detail, (Eleanor McCarroll, 2025). 

Marian Grottos are small devotional structures erected across Ireland, often in rural landscapes and along roadsides. Their proliferation is linked to the Marian Year of 1954, when Pope Pius XII encouraged the faithful to commemorate the centenary of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. As O’Byrne observes, “1954 was a time when a lot of shrines to the Virgin Mary were erected around Ireland… Pope Pius XII had called on the faithful to mark the occasion” (O’Byrne, 2025). The Marian Year was enthusiastically embraced in Ireland: “The notion seemed to capture the imagination of a young republic suffering from serious recession, high unemployment and loss of population through emigration. Hundreds of projects were put in hand… you will see statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary” (Roaringwater Journal, 2015). Because of this the majority of grottos are dated to 1954 and the years after (the Dysart grotto being erected in 1958, see Fig.1). 

These grottos vary slightly in form. Many are small white structures along road verges, on hilltops, or in gardens, some simple alcoves of painted cement, others more elaborate rockery facades or artificial caves (Freeman, 2012). Local communities often erected them through collective effort, with Marian Shrine Committees mobilising volunteers and resources. “Hundreds of shrines and grottoes were thrown up by groups of neighbours… They picked places at road forks, on village greens, near holy wells-wherever a scrap of land was free” (Freeman, 2012).

The Marian Grotto at Dysart Village, Co. Roscommon, is located at a prominent crossroads on the edge of the village (Fig.1). It is a large lunulae shape made up of unpainted rocks making it look like a cave or the crumbling walls of a large ruin of a building long forgotten to time. There is a kneeling statue of St Bernadette which is only visible to those who walk up specifically to pay respects to the grotto and is not visible from the road. Mary herself is a white, haunting figure but this colour isn’t permanent. When visiting the site with Michaela McCarroll after our interview she said “Oh look, Mary got a paint job, the priest must have had some extra cash” (McCarroll, 2025). She used to be a classic blue. This grotto acts as a landmark in daily life; local residents, including myself, still use it as a reference when giving directions or meeting friends. The grotto’s presence is accentuated by its isolated placement and distinctive shape, making it visually memorable (Freeman, 2012). The visual interest of grottos also comes from the fact that the figure of Mary is usually trapped behind a pain of glass blotched by moss and lichen over time, giving her the appearance of a sort of ghost in the firmament. Personal familiarity underscores its mnemonic potency as children play nearby, adults reference it in giving directions, and its symbolic resonance as a relic of mid-20th-century religiosity.

The Dysart Grotto creates nostalgia through its layered temporal and cultural associations. Huyssen notes that “the architectural ruin is an example of the indissoluble combination of spatial and temporal desires that trigger nostalgia… in the body of the ruin the past is both present in its residues and yet no longer accessible” (Huyssen, 2006, p.7). Grottos, though purpose-built rather than decayed ruins, function similarly. They manifest a lost collective religiosity and rural way of life. Sedikides et al. highlight nostalgia’s role in self-continuity and social connection: “Nostalgia serves as a repository of positive affect… fosters affiliation or stronger social bonds… facilitates continuity between past and present selves (both individual and collective)” (Sedikides et al., 2008, p.231, 234). The Dysart Grotto, as a childhood play space and enduring landmark, embodies precisely this temporal continuity.

Grottos also evoke eeriness, as defined by Fisher: the uncanny sensation arising where “there is something when there should be nothing or when there is nothing when there should be something” (Fisher, 2016, p.12). Isolated on a crossroads and standing silently without obvious function, the grotto exerts an eerie presence. “The eerie concerns the unknown; when knowledge is achieved, the eerie disappears… There must also be a sense of alterity, a feeling that the enigma might involve forms of knowledge… beyond common experience” (Fisher, 2016, p.62). Its hybridity as simultaneously a new creation and a symbolic relic of a lost past intensifies this effect.

The grotto functions as a mnemonic landmark, assisting navigation through rural landscapes. Redhead et al. (2023) demonstrate that nostalgic landmarks are cognitively salient. In the referenced experiment participants completed navigation tasks faster in nostalgia conditions than in neutral conditions, suggesting that affectively charged landmarks facilitate spatial orientation. The above interviews also reinforce this (Kempin, 2025). 

By extension grottos serve a similar purpose. They have a distinctive visual form and are associated memories, rendering them ideal points for orientation in rural areas.

The Marian Year zine by Caelainn Hogan and 1EuroFiddy (Fig. 1.1) reflects on these enduring symbols, combining photography and visual art to explore fading rural traditions: “This project focuses on showing familiar symbols through a new lens… the pain of the past” (p-themes, 2025). The zine frames grottos as repositories of memory and identity, reinforcing their mnemonic and emotional significance.

Fig. 1.1, The Marian Tour Zine,  1EuroFiddy and Caelainn Hogan, (2022) 

Fig. 2, Feevagh Handball Alley, (Eleanor McCarroll, 2025).

Handball has been played in Ireland since at least the mid-1500s, originally in appropriated spaces such as ruins, vacant barracks, bridge walls, and limekilns (Historyireland.com, 2025). Purpose-built alleys appeared from the late 1700s, evolving into the standard three-wall form by the early 20th century. Their decline mirrors broader social changes: “Attitudes towards handball alleys have changed in recent years, with the decline in the status of the sport as a focus of rural community life… handball alleys have been adapted as garages, animal pens or dumping grounds” (Historyireland.com, 2025). Kenneth O’Halloran notes, “These are relics of a once vibrant chapter of Irish life… bear silent testimony to a feature of Ireland that has perished through time and modernisation” (Angel, 2014).

The Feevagh handball alley (Fig.2) stands at a fork in the road, comprising three stone walls and an overgrown playing surface. Its isolated position and visible geometry ensure its salience, while graffiti (Saying “Vote Naughton No.1”) , weathering, and overgrowth convey its post-functional state. Local residents consistently reference it as a wayfinding landmark (Kempin 2025). It maintains cultural resonance as a communal memory site even if it has been a long time since handball has ever been played there. The three stone walls are also reminiscent of the half moon shape of the Dysart Marian Grotto. 

The alley evokes nostalgia through its connection to childhood games and social interactions. “Ubiquitous, derelict and rather majestic, handball alleys are a reminder of, and memorials to, a communal past” (Dunne, 2019). As with grottos, nostalgia is a mechanism for self-continuity: “Nostalgia serves as a repository of positive affect… facilitates continuity between past and present selves” (Sedikides et al., 2008, p.231, 234). Growing up in the area in the West of Ireland, we all knew handball and would play it in primary school and yet we never used these roadside relics to the sport for their original function. What we would do is meet and play there, pretending it was a castle or hiding from cars we recognised  behind its sheltering walls, so that we didn’t have to make small talk with neighbours we thought were creepy. This and association with collective experiences make it an enduring mnemonic landmark in people’s minds to this day even if we have all grown up and moved on from the area. 

The alley’s eeriness emerges from abandonment and ambiguity. Fisher notes that “a sense of the eerie seldom clings to enclosed and inhabited domestic spaces; we find the eerie more readily in landscapes partially emptied of the human” (Fisher, 2016, p.11). Empty walls, faded graffiti, and echoes of past activity create a space where “there is something when there should be nothing” (Fisher, 2016, p.12). Unlike the grotto, its eeriness derives from absence rather than sacred presence. The alley serves as a rural landmark, marking crossroads and memory nodes. Interviews confirm its use: “From Feevagh school turn right, past the handball alley… turn left to Dysart to go to Athlone, turn right at the grotto” (McCarroll, 2025). Redhead et al. (2023) argue that nostalgic landmarks support faster route learning, explaining why these derelict alleys remain integral to local navigation.

An artwork interested in handball alleys is O’Halloran’s photographic series, The Handball Alley (Fig 2.1), documents these structures as “relics of a once vibrant chapter of Irish life” (Angel, 2014), highlighting their aesthetic and mnemonic qualities. The images capture the interplay of abandonment, geometry, and residual human activity, aligning with Fisher’s notion of the eerie.

Fig 2.1, Selected images from: The Handball Alley, Kenneth O’Halloran (2013) 

Both Marian grottos and handball alleys are post-functional rural structures, effectively vernacular ruins (Edensor, 2002). They generate strong affective atmospheres combining both nostalgia and eeriness. Grottos are newly built to resemble ruins, while alleys are repurposed functional ruins; both act as mnemonic and perceptual landmarks due to visibility, cultural memory, and emotional resonance. As Fisher emphasizes, the eerie emerges when “the old use has disappeared, leaving ruins for our minds to cling to” (Fisher, 2016, p.61). Both structures embody “memory and a landscape of where things don’t happen anymore” (Edensor, 2002, p.48), offering cues that persist in mental maps.

“ romantic ruins guaranteed origins and promised authenticity, immediacy, and authority. However, there is a paradox. In the case of ruins that which is allegedly present and transparent whenever authenticity is claimed is present only as an absence; it is the imagined present of a past that can now only be grasped in its decay. This makes the ruin subject to nostalgia. “(‌Huyssen, 2006, p.12)  

They diverge in origin and affective tone. Grottos evoke collective religious nostalgia, while alleys evoke local social nostalgia. Eeriness in grottos derives from sacred stillness and the presence of the Holy Mary behind glass. In handball alleys it comes from abandonment, echoes, and ambiguous function. Functionally, grottos were constructed to inspire reverence and reflect Catholic identity, while alleys were built to facilitate sport and community interaction. They both now appear as haunting remnants. Both function as wayfinders, reinforced by nostalgia-driven salience (Redhead et al., 2023) and perceptual prominence at crossroads and edges. Together, they exemplify how rural structures can persist in collective memory, sustaining social and spatial identity long after their original purpose has faded, punctuating the liminality of rural Ireland. 

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