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BALLITORE is an old Quaker village where the eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish political philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-97) was educated in the school run by Quaker Abraham Shackleton - a good example of the religious toleration that it seems the British government was prepared to grant anyone but Catholics. Born in Dublin of a Catholic mother and Protestant father, Burke went on to attend Trinity College, and, moving to London in 1750, he kept company with some of the leading figures of the time, among them Oliver Goldsmith (also a Trinity graduate), Samuel Johnson and Joshua Reynolds. His most important works are A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful , an essay in aesthetic theory that is still studied by art historians, and Reflections on the Revolution in France , published the year after the event in 1790, in which he argued strongly against Jacobinism and for counter-revolutionary conservatism. The Ballitore Quaker museum (June-Sept Wed-Sat noon-5pm, Sun 2-6pm; Oct-May Tues-Sat noon-5pm; free) above the village library, which is housed in the old Friends Meeting House, gives a vivid picture of what Quaker life was like here: each member of the industrious community plied a trade, and their sober, business-like approach made Ballitore a model village by comparison with the general squalor and poverty of surrounding places. But the dominant impression given by the copperplate handwritten letters on show is the sheer boredom of life in a place where any stranger was cause for excitement. Up towards the main road is the walled Quaker graveyard , whose plain, dignified tombstones seem suitable monuments to the qualities of the dead. Griesmount (tel 0507/23158; GBP40-55/?50.79-69.84), a fine Georgian house a little way from the village centre, offers a place to stay amidst Ballitore's peaceful simplicity. Signposted from the centre of the village is Crookstown Mill (Easter-Sept daily 10am-6pm; Oct-Easter by appointment 11am-4pm; tel 0507/23222; GBP2.50/?3.17). Built in the 1840s and still functioning, it contributed to an independence from the potato that, along with the industries introduced by the Quakers, meant that there was strikingly little emigration or starvation here during the Famine. A mile or so further south is the Irish Pewtermill (tel 0507/24164); although you can see pewter being worked, the place is primarily a retail experience - fine if you're into the Claddagh rings and ancestral crest type of export Irishness.
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