Tributes paid to woman aviation pioneer

Tributes were last night paid to pioneering author, archaeologist, geologist and aviator Daphne Pochin Mould, who died earlier this week at the age of 93.

Prof Robert Devoy of University College Cork said Ms Pochin Mould was a unique talent whose interests included history, archaeology and geology. “She was a talented flyer who did tremendous work charting the archaeological and landscape features of Cork and beyond,” he said.

Ms Pochin Mould was born in what she described as the very heart of “the Englishry” in Salisbury in Britain in 1920. She studied geology at Edinburgh University and got a PhD in 1946.

She converted to Catholicism following a period as an agnostic. In 1951 she moved to Ireland after developing an interest in the Celtic saints. She lived at Aherla in mid-Cork and learned to fly. Over the next four decades she photographed and catalogued archaeological sites all over Munster from the air.

She was the author of several books on Ireland, including The Monasteries of Ireland, Aran Islands and Discovering Cork.