Rain poured from a sullen sky on to huge fields that rolled away to the horizon. I was on the road to Zywotowka in the heart of Ukraine, but the weather had all the appearance of an Irish summer afternoon.
Summers were long and hot in 1902 and 1903 when Constance Markievicz and her Polish husband, Kasimierz (Casi), made the long train journey across Europe to the Markievicz family home at Zywotowka. The Dunin-Markievicz family came from an ancient Polish line that held land in the east, especially in Ukraine, for centuries. Zywotowka was their home - a huge estate where they farmed and bred horses in the gentle rolling countryside.
As the taxi crawled through a crater filled with water I had plenty of time to study the lake through the line of trees. The view reminded me of the long entrance into Lissadell and the light shining on the bay. For a moment the spirit of Constance was beside me in the car. Would there be a trace left of the life that once was here? Con and Casi were newly-weds and aspiring artists. They made a makeshift studio in the park at Zywotowka and painted. Some of the pictures Con completed are on display in the exhibition devoted to her in Lissadell. They show peasants working in fields, figures in a wide landscape with trees and small hills.
She wrote home to her sister that the land was beautiful, the people friendly, but the poverty of the Ukrainian peasants was "tiresome." The house was burnt during the Revolution in 1919 and the Markievicz clan fled to Poland. During the 20th century all traces of landlordism and the past were eradicated. The name Zywotowka became another lost Arcadia, a symbol of leisurely days in the long ago.
"You won't find even the stones of the house," a Polish friend said. "Nobody will remember anything. Nobody will understand you." I contacted Adzika Tours, who specialise in western Ukraine. The response was typical: "It's in the middle of nowhere, not even on the maps."
My single Ukrainian contact, Julia Gogol, checked her computer, but could find nothing about Zywotowka. All traces of the once-great estate had vanished into the fertile earth.
There was one clue. Con and Casi started their long rail journey to western Europe from a railway station at Oratowo. There was a town called Orativ about 100 kilometres from the city of Vinnitysa, but trains no longer stopped there.
Then Julia came up with a guide, a history graduate named Pavlo, who would interpret and navigate the transport system. And so, after many adventures, we were in a taxi on the road to the village of Zywotowka, now called Zywotiwka.
The replacement vowel baffled me, but the change was highly significant. Pavlo explained: "Now is Ukrainian name." As Pavlo slept in one of the houses I set out to explore the village. The rain turned the main village street into a muddy track. Some of the houses were of wood, but the majority had brick walls.
In the gardens hens and chickens rambled amongst a chaos of broken machinery. It looked as though very little had changed since the days when Con and Casi came to stay.
A few curious souls came out and stared. I tried a few words in basic Ukrainian: Dobry den - good day.
They responded and I flourished the picture of the manor house. A woman wearing a brightly coloured headscarf talked about a Polish building, but didn't know where it was.
Pavlo came on the scene and we plodded through the rain. The woman in the village council office knew nothing about a Polish building in the village, but her superior wanted to meet us. Olena Fedoryna Werbowa recognized some of the trees in my photograph. They were in the village park and were known as the "aristocratic trees". The village schoolhouse was built in the 1960s on the site of the old Polish house. I stood on the steps and for a second it was as if Constance was beside me, staring down the avenue of trees. There were other traces of the past - a gravestone with the name Tadeusz Markievicz lying in the middle of a huge field. There was a redbrick building that had once been the stables and gave an idea of the large operation here. It was used by the collective farm for years, but was now lying empty.
It was a wonderful feeling to find some traces of the old Zywotowka. But the best was when Ms Werbowa shared her plan to set up a room in the village centre as a place to remember the Markievicz family. "They were a big part of our history." She had already erected and maintained a monument to the war dead from the village - out of her own funds.
She showed us copies of ancient documents and maps she had collected.
There was no material from the 20th century and she was eager to accept the photocopies I carried.
As we left I agreed to hunt for Markievicz material in Ireland for the museum.
In the 21st century the name of Constance Markievicz and her husband will connect Ireland, Ukraine and Poland in new and unexpected ways. I think she would be pleased.