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.

These sites are an important part of our historic landscape, even if they have only relatively recently been recognised in legislation.

Thousands of bridges built at a time when the stagecoach and horse and cart were the main forms of transport are now bearing volumes and weights of motorised traffic for which they were never designed. Unsurprisingly, there are increasing reports of old bridges buckling under the pressure.

Many bridges are major landmarks, such as the Ha’penny Bridge, in Dublin, or King’s Bridge (now Sean Heuston Bridge), built to mark the visit of King George IV in 1821.

UCC lecturer Dr Colin Rynne has carried out what is said to be the first detailed study of our industrial archaeology. A massive, 534-page tome containing many excellent illustrations, his book gives keen insights into what went on in the 18th and 19th centuries, from the days of horse and steam power to the coming of electricity.

We hear a lot of talk nowadays about Ireland being a nation on the booze. But when you go back in time — even before Father Mathew’s temperance crusading era — there was clearly a huge demand for alcohol. Ireland once had more than 200 breweries and distilleries, all reportedly prospering.

Cork distillers led the way in the adoption of steam engines in the early 1800s’ and, by the end of the century, large chimney stacks provided striking evidence of distilleries in operation.

A large number of distillery buildings have survived, but only two continue to produce whiskey — Midleton, Co Cork, and Bushmills, Co Antrim. According to Dr Rynne, the two best-preserved examples of distillery buildings are in Midleton and Kilbeggan, Co Westmeath.

In 1831, Ireland had 215 breweries, but this figure had shrunk considerably by the end of the century, by which time Guinness’s Brewery was the largest in the world, producing two-thirds of all beer manufactured here.

Railway construction was a key transport development: starting in the early 1830’s, 600 miles of railway had been laid by 1853.

Early on, railway tracks were kept as level as possible and avoided steep gradients because of the limited haulage capacities of steam locomotives at the time. That, of course, meant expensive and labour-intensive engineering works to create deep cuttings, high embankments, bridges and viaducts to carry the line over steep valleys.

The book contains a fine illustration of the Kilnap viaduct being constructed outside Cork, in 1849, which must have been an engineering marvel in those far-off days. The Chetwynd viaduct, on the Cork/Bandon line, and the Thomastown viaduct, in Co Kilkenny, are other reminders of superb workmanship from the 19th century.

Railway stations themselves, notably Heuston, in Dublin, are examples of the architectural style of public buildings in the mid-19th century, and all around the country we still have smaller railways stations, level crossings and level crossing keepers’ accommodation to remind us of an epoch-making era for transport.

But, the coming of electricity was, arguably, to bring about the greatest revolution, both for industry and the general population. By 1926, Dr Rynne tells us, Irish consumption of electricity per head of population was the second lowest in Europe. The harnessing of the River Shannon, in the late 1920’s changed all that.

“The German authors of the 1924 report on the viability of the hydro-power Shannon scheme were somewhat surprised that a country such as Ireland, with enormous potential for hydro-electricity generation, had long been reliant on imported coal to meet its basic energy requirements,” Dr Rynne writes.

The building of the power station at Ardnacrusha was a huge and ambitious undertaking for the new state, spearheaded by an engineer, Thomas McLaughlin, who had previously gained valuable experience in Germany. When construction work reached its peak, 5,000 labourers were employed on the site, outside Limerick.

In conjunction with the Shannon scheme, the ESB was set up in 1927 and was the country’s first semi-state body. By 1931, 96% of current used in the state was generated in Ardnacrusha.

Life would never again be the same.

Industrial Ireland 1750-1930, An Archaeology, by Colin Rynne, is published by the Collins Press. Price: €49.95, or £40.