Bessborough, 1985: On the seismic change of becoming a mother... For Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ Radio 1, listen to Happy Mother's Day by Claire Garvey above.
The road into the Bessborough Mother and Baby Home stretched out long and grey before me when I arrived there in August 1985.
Flanked on either side by fields where cows grazed, the old house had sweeping views over the Douglas estuary and had once been the home of a prominent Cork Quaker family.
In 1922, it was bought by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart order of nuns and became one of the first of the new state's institutional answers to the perceived problem of unmarried mothers...
Listen to more from Sunday Miscellany here.
