In December of last year, a property in rural Galway was burned to the ground after word spread that it had been designated to be used as accommodation for international protection applicants.
Coverage at the time suggested that Killaguile House, known to locals in Rosscahill as the old Ross Lake House Hotel, was an abandoned property. In truth, an Irish-American family had been living in a cottage on the site while they made plans to renovate the former hotel, which housed almost everything they owned.
Shannon Kincaid, an artist, lost most of her life’s work, family heirlooms, furniture and even her mother’s ashes in the blaze. “We had her next to an angel – a cement angel that I had bought from a Mexican sculptor,” she says. “She was sort of the guardian angel of my mom’s remains. Now it’s all just ashes.”
Ms Kincaid and her family had been “in the process of talking about” selling Killaguile House, after her husband suffered health complications that required them to return to the US.
News spread that the prospective buyer planned to contract the property as accommodation for asylum seekers. Rumours began circulating on December 15th, propelled by social media. “That really whipped up the locals and made them panic and worry about what was going to happen,” Ms Kincaid says.
The family had been spending their Friday afternoon in Galway city, unaware of the growing tension in Rosscahill, when they were contacted by a friend to let them know what had happened.
“She said you need to come home right away,” Ms Kincaid says. “I think her point was to dispel all this anxiety and so forth. The quote she said to me was that the rumour circulating was that ‘70 unvetted African males’ were moving into our house that night.”
Another friend got in touch to instruct them not to head home as the situation had become dangerous, with groups protesting and blocking the road to the property. They decided to stay in town, and early on Sunday morning they learned of the fire.
“We were told there has been a fire, a very big fire, and everything is gone,” Ms Kincaid says. “We just sat in dumbfounded silence. In disbelief. Not knowing or able to process it.”
Everything outside of the concrete angel, a few pieces of furniture and around 10 of Ms Kincaid’s paintings was destroyed. The family spent Christmas in Salthill, near where her son and daughter had been living.
Emergency services had trouble accessing the site, as the entrance to Killaguile House had been blocked by a shipping container and boulders. The cattle guard had also been cut through to prevent any vehicle from crossing it.
Ms Kincaid and her husband, Allen Stringer, first came to Ireland in 1996 to purchase wedding rings from Fallers Jewellers in Galway. While there, they met Celine Hession of the Hession School of Irish Dance, which has operated in the city for more than 60 years.
Their three children have long embraced their Irish heritage. Their daughter, Arden Stringer, was the Texas Rose of Tralee in 2022, while their two sons, Obie Stringer and Kincaid Stringer, grew up obsessing over a tape of Riverdance that their mother purchased on Celine Hession’s advice. Kincaid Stringer, a dancer who has lived on and off in Galway for about 20 years, eventually became a part of the Riverdance cast.
Amid the false information circulating around the fire at Killaguile House, Ms Kincaid says a vicious campaign against the family began on social media. With her children’s connections to Irish culture, they became targets.
“Bullies and cowards,” Ms Kincaid says. “These people were attacking my daughter.”
Moving to Ireland had been a lifelong dream. Ms Kincaid was adopted and raised in the US, but her birth mother was Irish, and she says she has always revelled in her connection to the country. It made the experience around the fire more hurtful.
“It became clear immediately that we were the outliers,” she says. “We were not trusted. That we weren’t Irish anyway. With all of these conspiracy theories, it was just abundantly clear that we needed to pull back. And the ongoing investigation reinforced that – we were asked to just not talk about anything to anybody.”
Two of Ms Kincaid’s children remain in Galway, with Kincaid Stringer now teaching dance at the Hession school. They are sad to be apart from their parents, but Ms Kincaid believes the community in the city is very different.
Despite everything, her love for Ireland remains just as strong. Before leaving the country, Ms Kincaid was able to attend some of her son’s dance classes. Children in attendance shared a broad mix of nationalities and ethnicities, with some of the beginners coming from Ukraine.
“These children have fled murder and war,” Ms Kincaid says. “Who in their worst day could begrudge them life in a place of peace?”
It inspired her first attempt at painting since losing her collection. Ms Kincaid had been making Irish dancing themed art since her son was eight years old, amassing somewhere between 200 and 300 pieces over the years, the vast majority of which were destroyed in the blaze.
“The title of it is The Future of Ireland. This was the first piece of work I’ve made since the fire. And it’s provocative perhaps but it’s also a big statement. Children aren’t born hating; somebody teaches them to hate. This painting is about children who have not yet learned to hate.”
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