RTÉ SERIES LIFTS THE VEIL ON LIFE WITH THE NUNS OF KYLEMORE ABBEY
By Kylemore Abbey with RTE
The Hills Are Alive: A Year at Kylemore Abbey
Sundays, 18.30-19.30 on RTÉ ONE from 10th August
A new observational documentary season follows the lives of a community of Benedictine nuns and their small army of lay staff over the course of a year, as they battle to save their iconic abbey and preserve their 1500 year old religious way of life.
Kylemore Abbey is the jewel of Connemara. The lakeside Gothic castle, set amidst wildly beautiful landscape, was once the family home of a wealthy Victorian MP, but, for the last hundred years, has been a Benedictine Abbey. Now, facing rising bills and falling vocations, the nuns must embrace tourism, commerce and ecology, alongside their religious life, in their efforts to secure the future of Kylemore and their community.
In three hour-long episodes, the series offers viewers unique behind-the-scenes insights into the life of the Abbey and its estate over the course of a year. Narrated by Megan Cusack (Call the Midwife), part of the famous Irish acting dynasty, it shows how the nuns have transformed the once crumbling castle and its neglected estate into a magnet for tourists from all over the world.
From carefully restoring the house and its Victorian walled garden to preserving the beautiful woodland, the nuns and their dedicated team of lay staff have created one of the most magical locations in Ireland, which attracts over half a million visitors a year. The enterprising sisters have also learned soap- and chocolate-making and created a thriving mail order business for their restaurant and shop, to ensure that Kylemore is not only a sustainable religious community, but supports dozens of jobs, year-round. While other Irish religious orders are generally managing decline and closing their buildings, Kylemore has just opened a new monastery and retreat centre, which will be a home for the nuns for decades to come.
The series shows how the nuns and their team of lay staff work together to keep Kylemore thriving. From battling summer squalls on their busiest day ever to coping with ferocious winter storms and replenishing their beautiful temperate rain forest, they must contend with the elements year-round, alongside the community’s religious life.
Viewers are offered unique insights into the nuns’ daily pattern of work, prayer and silence throughout the key seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter. The cameras go behind the doors of the enclosed monastery and observe the nuns as they live out the Benedictine ethos of Ora et Labora - Prayer and Work. The sisters talk openly and candidly about the joys and challenges of living so completely for the community, eloquently sharing their passion for the demanding - but also deeply rewarding - contemplative way of life.
It’s a radical vocation and the ageing community is struggling to attract new Irish recruits, although, undaunted, the sisters are casting their net wider, overseas, as well as hosting retreats, to offer visitors a briefer taste of monastic life.
The cameras capture a momentous year for Kylemore’s sisters. As the historic opening of the new monastery and the election of a new Abbess usher in a new era, the community also mourns the passing of a much-loved former Abbess and welcomes back former students, who attended Kylemore Abbey previously when it was a school.
From harvesting the estate’s plants and shrubs to making scented soap to developing the perfect chocolate truffle, and from planting native trees in the estate’s acres of woodland to breeding Connemara ponies, we see how the nuns’ religious life is entwined with sustainable tourism, commerce and ecology. If this is a battle for survival, then it is one they are determined to win.
The Hills Are Alive: A Year at Kylemore Abbey was produced by Cornelia Street Productions and was commissioned for RTÉ Religion & Society by Roger Childs with funding from Coimisiún na Meán’s Sound and Vision Scheme and Tourism Ireland. It will be distributed internationally by PBS.