Industrial sites part of our heritage

HARD to believe in an era when items from our past are disappearing by the day that more than 100,000 industrial sites from previous centuries still survive.

Sites of archaeological interest range from small lime kilns to windmills, and to much bigger structures, such as Ballincollig Gunpowder Mills in Ballincollig, Co Cork, the second largest ever built in Europe.

Add in the sometimes derelict remains of railways, canals, breweries and mills, and it’s easy to see why there isn’t an area without tangible evidence that Ireland, too, had its industrial revolution.