'Finally, a home at last': Mitchelstown welcomes Ukrainians
Huge efforts have been made to open Mitchelstown homes for the needy to Ukrainian refugees. Other residents of Kingston College Square include pensioners from Ireland and other European countries and a family who fled the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe
By
Neil Michael
when Carole Bradley laid down tiles on the basement floor of her parents' former home, she had no idea they would be of any significance years later.
But as she stared down at them recently, the penny dropped.
They are blue and yellow - the same colour as the national flag of Ukrainians due to move into the Georgian terrace house on Kingston College square, just outside Mitchelstown’s town centre.
Hive of activity on the first day: Kingston College, in Mitchelstown, Co Cork, from the air. PICTURE: NEIL MICHAEL
The historic square where Carole’s parents used to live will soon welcome six families who have fled the war and are in need of temporary accommodation.
They will be moving into what is a small community living in a cluster of 18th century terraced houses - once used to house former tenants of the Fourth Lord Baron Kingston - on either side of the Kingston College Chapel.
The 30 houses are administered by the Kingston Charity Trust, mostly for the benefit of older or retired people from Ireland and abroad who have fallen on hard times or suffered some form of hardship.
A number of them have been boarded up and laid empty since the property crash in 2008. As people either died or moved out, there wasn’t enough money in the trust to do them up.
But inspired by the suddenly unfolding events in Ukraine from February 24, the Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, Dr Paul Colton, Diocesan Secretary, Billy Skuse and Cobh lawyer Charlie Daly set up an appeal for funds to do up some of the houses.
Within just eight days they had raised €200,000 from members of the public - enough to help pay for the materials and some of the labour needed to do up six houses.
Kingston College, in Mitchelstown, Co Cork.
Picture: Neil Michael
Kingston College, in Mitchelstown, Co Cork.
Picture: Neil Michael
n
ot long after the appeal was launched, the team behind RTÉ’s DIY SOS: The Big Build Ireland got involved.
The popular show sees teams of builders and designers - mostly volunteers - rebuilding the homes of people in need of help.
The second and latest series, presented by Baz Ashmawy, features Irish families based in New Ross, Meath, Santry and Waterford city.
Motive TV’s Anne McLaughlin read about the Kingston College project in a newspaper and approached the bishop to offer to help with six of the houses.
Experts including Brandon Duarte, whose work with Cork firm MMD Construction has seen the Macroom man involved in a variety of high-profile building projects around Munster, and a team of volunteers - made up, in part, from tradespeople in and around Mitchelstown - was assembled and work began in early July.
Dr Paul Colton and Baz Ashmawy at the start of restoration work at Kingston College
PICTURE: NEIL MICHAEL
Celebrity garden designer Diarmuid Gavin during filming of the DIY SOS series on the refurbishment of Kingston College.
PICTURE: NEIL MICHAEL
Volunteer Eamonn McCluskey, from Co Meath, embraces old friend DIY SOS Safety Advisor, Helena Ryan at the start of restoration work.
PICTURE: NEIL MICHAEL
one of the Ukrainian refugees turning up on the first day to watch proceedings start was Darina Gruzdieva, along with her mother, Viktoria Gruzdieva. They are currently staying in student accommodation in Cork city, which they have to leave in mid-August.
Previously, they had stayed with a host family near Fermoy, where Darina volunteered with a local charity.
Before leaving Ukraine, the 30-year-old lived in Kyiv, and her mother lived in Bucha, in the Kyiv Oblast about 30km away.
Shortly after she went to visit her mother, Russian soldiers broke into her apartment and ransacked it at a time of intensive fighting in and around the outskirts of the capital city.
With her 14-year-old half sister Liza already living with her own mother in Spain, Darina and her mother moved to Ireland on March 7.
Darina would love to have her half sister live with her, along with her mother under one roof and Viktoria is also keen for her own mother - Darina’s grandmother Ludmila - to come to Ireland.
“It would be better for all of us if we were all under one roof, Myself and my mother are very excited to be coming to live in Kingston College any day now. We have been made to feel very welcome in this country right from the word go. First we stayed with a host family near Fermoy but then they had relatives coming to stay and we had to find somewhere else."
“It is very hard not knowing how long before the war will be over, or when we can actually move back to your homes in Ukraine and what conditions they will be in.”
DARINA GRUZDIEVA
Ukrainian refugee Viktoria Gruzdieva and her daughter Darina Gruzdieva are welcomed to Kingston College by long-serving warden, Carole Bradley. PICTURE: NEIL MICHAEL
They're currently in student accommodation in Cork city.
“We have to leave there on August 19, so it is great to finally have somewhere that we can call home for as long as we are in Ireland.
“As long as we have a war, we will be here. It is very hard not knowing how long before the war will be over, or when we can actually move back to your homes in Ukraine and what conditions they will be in.”
Another benefit for Darina of living in the Mitchelstown community will be that she will be able to get a bus into Cork city, where she has found work in a recruitment agency.
“I feel in Mitchelstown that we finally have a home and feel a bit of peace for now, We would like to try and lead normal lives and being welcomed into Mitchelstown makes that possible, and we are so very thankful.”
Warden Carole Bradley, spending a few moments in the basement of her mother's former home at Kingston College, in Mitchelstown, Co Cork, before it is gutted and restored for Ukrainian refugees.
PICTURE: NEIL MICHAEL
aCarole Bradley knows only too well how she feels. Just over 26 years ago, she arrived at Limerick Junction at 3am with her three children and her entire life in a suitcase, and two backpacks.
At the time, her youngest son Jonathan was just three, her daughter Catherine was eight and her other son Christopher, who has since died, was aged 11.
Carole had lived in the UK with their father but after their relationship ended, she found herself homeless, and while looking for somewhere to live, was told that her late stepfather’s house in Kingston College had been empty for years.
So, she found herself living in the same house that her mother Elizabeth 'Dorrie' Dorothy Frazer had lived in, at Number 15.
Known as the Chaplain’s House, she had lived there with her second husband - Carole’s step-father - the late Archdeacon of Glendalough Albert 'Bertie' Frazer.
He became chaplain at Kingston College Chapel after he retired there in 1985 from his senior ecclesiastical role within what is now the Anglican Diocese of Dublin and Glendalough.
The couple moved out of No 15 in the early 1990s and moved, instead, to a smaller house, Number 17 and they lived there until their deaths.
Dorrie died aged 77 in October 2011, and the house had lain empty ever since.
Carole still lives in No 15 and never forgets the kindness and warm welcomes shown to her when she left the UK.
the residents in the other houses came to the square after various crises of their own, coming from all parts of the globe.
As well as a number of Irish residents, others come from France, Holland, England and one pensioner, Geoff Wood, came to the square from Zimbabwean.
90-year-old Geoff is Carole’s next-door neighbour, and he's looking forward to welcoming the Ukrainians.
He arrived in Mitchelstown from Harare, Zimbabwe 17 years ago, with his late wife Maggie.
Under Robert Mugabe’s presidency, white farmers' lands were being taken from them, and his wife Maggie had health issues.
“I am looking forward to welcoming the Ukrainians and showing them the warm welcome I was shown when I arrived.”
GEOFF WOOD
“The situation was getting very difficult for everybody, I had never had any racial problems or anything like that, but it was just a situation that was going wrong. My wife and I had been there for over 50 years, our three children were born there and our five grandchildren were born there."
“One day we just decided to get the family together and tell them that it was time to leave before it was too late.” His daughter Alice heard about Kingston College, and thought it would suit him and Maggie.
They duly applied to join the waiting list and when they had got onto it, they left Zimbabwe and moved to Kilkenny to live with their daughter and they were eventually given a home at Kingston College.
“I know only too well how the Ukrainians who move here will feel when they do come,” he said. You’ve no idea of the absolute relief I felt when I stood in the house at first and looked around and just thought, ‘thank goodness it’s all over, we finally have a place we can call home’.
On the welcome he and his Maggie, who died six years ago in a local nursing home, received when they arrived, he added: “People really made us feel very welcome. They weren’t just our immediate neighbours but they were also the people in the town, and it helped that I worked in the local Sue Ryder charity shop, and I got to know people.”
He added: “I am looking forward to welcoming the Ukrainians and showing them the warm welcome I was shown when I arrived.”
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