I’m delighted to say that I will be appearing on RTE 1 TV’s very popular walking series Tracks and Trails this coming Friday night, 5th April 2024 at 7.30pm.
I will be guiding Crime journalist, Nicola Tallant who follows the cliff top trail starting out from Dunmore East. She meets with local legend Elaine Power of East Pier and then comes along the path where I meet her at Portally and we walk towards Rathmoylan Cove.
“Out on the cliffs with the coastline spread out before her, Nicola walks with local author Andrew Doherty who shares with her the maritime traditions and old seas legends of this part of Waterford.”
I had prepared a piece on the importance of local placenames and the origins behind these. I concentrated as much as possible on the fishing traditions, how local fishermen used the placenames as coastal day markers that allowed them to divide up the sea in terms of fishing grounds/locations, as useful and important as any field boundary ashore.
We spoke of shipwrecks, and some interesting events such as the origins of Swede Patch, or the importance of Failskirt Rock. I also covered the rescue of the Naomh Deaglán by the Dunmore East Lifeboat crew.
For all that I said was covered, here’s what was broadcast on the night. I made a mistake with the incident mentioned, calling the ship Chamber of Commerce, it was the Queen of Commerce. Apologies in advance
The topic of smuggling and the coastguard came up naturally as Nicola was interested in the subject from her day job. I covered some historical incidences, much of it based on a guest blog by my cousin James.
Nicola also encountered Deena’s swimming buddies from Dunmore East and the surrounding areas – the Mermaids.
Hopefully, it comes across well, it’s an area and a history we should be proud of.
On St Patrick’s Day 1880 the Waterford-owned sailing vessel Geraldine lay in New York. Under British registry, the ship was supposed to fly its national flag, a requirement of any ship in a foreign port.
However as it was St Patrick’s Day, the crew in an expression of national pride, hoisted the Green Ensign from her masthead, a flag that made obvious her Irish origin, but against the law. It fluttered, proudly 160 feet above the dock. The captain and crew departed. Only a watchman remained.
Today, March 8th is International Women’s Day. To celebrate it, we have a guest blog from David Carroll to recallthe life and times of Daphne French, a yachtswoman who lived in Dunmore East during David’s childhood inthe 1950s and 60s.David was the son of the Harbour Master, Captain Desmond Carroll, and his mother Freda, and had a front-row seat to much of the seafaring activities of the village.
When I was growing up in Dunmore East, people arriving at the village along the Ballymabin Road would have been familiar with a sign outside a bungalow called ‘Pamir Cottage.’ Many may have wondered what ‘Pamir’ meant and pondered the background of this name. However, I knew all about the famous barque called Pamir, thanks to my father’s seafaring knowledge.
Pamir was a four-masted barque, built in Hamburg in 1905 and owned during the 1930s by the famous Finnish shipping line of Gustaf Erikson for use in the Australian wheat trade. In 1949, Pamir was the last commercial sailing ship to round Cape Horn. The ship would play a significant role in Daphne’s world of sailing and significantly she named her house in Dunmore East after it.
Daphne French was born in Co. Roscommon in 1905. The French family were Anglo-Irish whose home was Cloonyquin House near Strokestown. It is said that they were decent landlords, their estate was never subject to land agitation. Daphne’s father was Arthur John St George French, born in 1853. He married Pauline Anna Haddock in 1898 and they lived at Lichfield in Staffordshire, where he served in the Army. Arthur’s younger brother, born in 1854, was the popular, well-loved, and yet sometimes neglected of Irish geniuses – William Percy French or as he was more popularly known, Percy French, songwriter, humourist, entertainer, and painter.
Cloonyquin House near Strokestown, Co Roscommon. Image courtesy of Percy French Society.
The 1911 Census shows Daphne living in Meath Terrace, Bray with her family. Her father is described as a retired military officer. Daphne’s age is given as four years, which surely is an error. Her older sister, Maeve, is noted as being born in Lichfield, Staffordshire. Interestingly, the family’s governess is named Frances Alcock, who was born in Co Waterford. Edward H Alcock was the harbour master of Dunmore East in 1884 and one wonders if there is any connection?
It may have been living close to the sea that gave Daphne her lifelong love of sailing and the sea. Journalist Lorna Siggins has said that her life revolved around sailing and boats, since, as she said herself, “she read nothing but sailing and adventure books in her childhood.”
In 1935, Daphne French was the owner of a 30-foot ketch Embla. While sailing back into Dublin Bay after a cruising holiday with her friend Betty Parsons, she saw the Pamirentering Dublin Port with a cargo of wheat.
Ketch Embla, built in Southampton in 1908. Drawing courtesy of Irish Cruising Club
On reaching the shore, Daphne and Betty caught a bus to the South Wall, boarded the Pamirand requested to see the master. They asked to be taken on the ship’s books for the ship’s next voyage – to Australia. They were signed on as stewardesses at one shilling per month. The voyage to Port Lincoln in South Australia took a record seventy-seven days to complete. “The irresistible silent march of the great ship, under 50,000 square feet of canvas, was a fine sensation,” Daphne wrote in her log.
Pamir berthed at Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin, 1935. Photo: Courtesy of Cormac Lowth.
The arrival of the Pamirand subsequent stay in Dublin Port gave rise to much coverage in newspapers. An overly descriptive report of her departure on October 10th, 1935, appeared in the Irish Independent on the following Monday and was written by a journalist who was titled ‘J.A.P.’ The article began with a transcription of Masefield’s Sea Fever. Near the conclusion of the report, the two female sailors are mentioned:
The Ship’s Ladies
The ladies on this trip are Miss DA French, a member of a well-known West of Ireland family, and an English friend, Miss E Parsons. Both are keen yachtswomen.
Miss French’s yacht, in which she was cruising off the coast of Scotland this year, is at present laid up in Dublin. Both ladies are undertaking the voyage for health and pleasure and hope to come back with the Pamir despite the homeward route being around the dreaded Cape Horn.
The outward journey will be via the Cape of Good Hope. But as the First Mate explained to me, the ship will be following the sun on both the outward and homeward journey, and so may escape really bad weather. The ladies should be very comfortable aboard. There is even a bathroom, though salt water will have to be substituted for the precious fresh water while at sea. And she is a fine seaworthy ship, fully meriting Captain Mattsson’s deep pride in her.
Irish Independent October 10th, 1935
On arrival in Australia, the 12,000 miles voyage voyage made by the two female sailors was reported in the newspapers.
Daphne and Betty did circumnavigate the world, but their homeward voyage was on another Erikson four-masted steel barque, the L’Avenir. The following year, (1938) while sailing from Australia to Hamburg, with a cargo of wheat, the vessel radioed her position as 51˚ S and 172˚ E on March 1st, stating ” All well.” She was never heard from again.
Daphne’s arrival home to Ireland was noted in the ‘Irishman’s Diary’ columns of the Irish Times on June 16th, 1937. It noted that she had arrived back in Liverpool on June 5th and had left for a two-week holiday in Roscommon while her yacht was being fitted out in a Ringsend boatyard for a planned cruise.
In 1939, as clouds of war gathered over Europe, Daphne with one crew member and a paid hand embarked on a 2,500-mile cruise, through the Forth and Clyde canal in Scotland, across the North Sea and as far as the Aland Islands, north of Stockholm. Many of the crew members of the Pamir were natives of the Aland Islands so maybe that was the attraction in venturing that far. This cruise took forty-four days and seventeen nights at sea with twenty-two days spent in port, starting on July 5th, and safely returning to Dún Laoghaire on September 8th. Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1st, and Britain had declared war on September 3rd. In recognition of this epic voyage, the prestigious Faulkner Cup presented by the Irish Cruising Club, was awarded to Daphne.
Interestingly, Daphne was not the first female sailor to win this prestigious award with that honour falling to Elizabeth Crimmins of East Ferry in Cork in 1934. In more recent times, the award has gone to Co Waterford sailor, Máire Breathnach of Dungarvan, who made a rounding of Cape Horn in 2004.
Map of Embla’s voyage to the Aland Islands, Baltic Sea, July – September 1939. Courtesy of the Irish Cruising Club.
During the war, Daphne was a trainer of women trainees who were drafted to work aboard canal boats, as part of a Ministry of War Transport scheme, on the Grand Union Canal, delivering coal by barge from coalfields around Coventry to the factories along the Birmingham and Fazely canal and down to the docks in London.
Daphne French on board the barge Cleopatra. Photo: Courtesy of Cormac Lowth.
After the war, Daphne came back to Ireland and moved to Dunmore East, setting up home in Pamir Cottage with its beautifully maintained garden.
I can remember Daphne French well during my childhood in Dunmore. With my father as Harbour Master, she was a regular and courteous visitor to our house discussing seafaring matters and seeking my father’s advice or opinion on a myriad of nautical issues. She was a distinctive dresser, always wearing blue or navy sailing clothes, denim trousers, a reefer jacket, a knitted hat and sailing shoes. She drove a small ‘bubble car,’ a Messerschmitt. I can remember the distinctive sound of the two-stroke engine as it went up and down the village.
In Dunmore, Daphne sailed Dara, a small 4-ton yacht that was moored near the RNLI lifeboat, Annie Blanche Smith, close to where the Island was in the harbour. She had a circle of friends that crewed with her on short cruises from Dunmore or ones further afield. Paddy Billy Power, the well-respected coxswain of the Dunmore East lifeboat was a great confidant to Daphne, assisting her with the care and maintenance of Dara.
Dunmore East Harbour 1950s. Dara is moored close to RNLB Annie Blanch Smith. Photo: Courtesy of Brendan Dunne, enhanced by Brendan Grogan.
The 1956 Irish Cruising Club Annual details an account of a cruise made by Daphne and her crew on Darato the Scillies off Cornwall and back to Dunmore East.
I can remember on one occasion, Daphne invited my mother to afternoon tea in Pamir Cottage and being an only child, I also went along. It was like a scene from a sea captain’s house in an Enid Blyton Famous Five novel. There were numerous books, ships in bottles, paintings of ships and all sorts of nautical memorabilia decorating the lovely bungalow.
During her time living in Dunmore, Daphne French was the Port Representative for the Irish Cruising Club. This entailed meeting and greeting the visiting yachts of club members and attending to their needs. Each year, she compiled a list of visiting yachts to Dunmore, and this was published in the Irish Cruising Club Annual. Her report in the Annual from 1962 makes interesting reading:
“In spite of gales of wind and rain, sixty-two yachts, sail, and power, visited Dunmore East between May and September. The pier as it was, is hard to recognise. The removal of the stone houses by blasting began in August. They have buttressed the outer wall against the most furious storms for 150 years, and it is difficult to imagine that their destruction could be justified in order to provide a double lane for fish lorries for a limited period- architecturally it is a tragedy.”
D. French.
The sailing activity was much curtailed during the harbour development for a period from the mid-1960s. It was not until the sailing club premises were completed and sailing activity moved to the Stony Cove area, that it flourished again. Unsurprisingly, during this period Daphne sold her yacht. Her active sailing time was ending and in 1966, Pamir Cottage was put up for sale and sold by Palmers from Waterford.
Daphne spent the last years of her life living in Greystones, Co. Wicklow. She lived a life close to nature, tending her garden and learning to paint watercolours after the style of her Uncle Percy. She fascinated many of her sailing friends with her tales of the sea.
Daphne French died on July 20th, 1995, aged 90 years, and is buried at Redford Cemetery, Greystones. A fitting epitaph from the RL Stevenson poem is written on her grave – “Home is the sailor, home from the sea.”
The assistance of Brendan Grogan who enhanced the Dunmore East 1950s photograph is appreciated. I also wish to thank Cormac Lowth, Brendan Dunne, John Aylward, Captain Alex Blackwell of the Irish Cruising Club, Mr Berrie O’Neill of the Percy French Society and Karen Poff and June Bow of www.youwho.ie. All assistance for this article is very much appreciated. Previous related writing by Marine Correspondents Lorna Siggins and WM Nixon were a source of information.
Last week Flanagans closed after a remarkable history of almost 116 years. In fact, a week shy of that, for Martin J Flanagan opened on Friday 28th February 1908. Ironically that was a leap year too.
Waterford Standard – Wednesday 26 February 1908; page 2 The original advert for the company – opened in a leap year of 1908 – on Friday 28th of February
One of many fish shops when I was a child in Waterford, only Doherty’s in Patrick St and Billy Burkes in Ballybricken now remain. Flanagans had vacated the city center of course, moving to the Northern extension and for a time they had a small outlet at Ardkeen.
Flanagans in Broad Street Waterford, Check the original on NLI
The new business advertised heavily to get the word out, including the use of a bicycle.
Our readers will be glad to learn the Mr Martin J Flanagan has opened his new Fish Shop at No. 18 Broad-Street, Waterford. The house and shop have undergone extensive alterations to meet the requirements necessary for this class of business, and the proprietor hopes to merit a share of public support. For the quick delivery of his customers Mr Flanagan has purchased a Rudge-Whitworth bicycle, specially designed with a suitable basket arranged over front wheel, capable of carrying 56lb, so that there will be no delay in conveying the good purchased at his establishment.
Waterford Chronicle – Saturday 29 February 1908; page 2
As a child, however, I knew of Flanagans because of their van which travelled around the harbour fishing villages, buying fish directly from the quays and local homes. My father always sold to Flanagans and as a signal to stop, my mother would put a conch shell on the gate pier.
The van would stop, the arm on a weighing scale would be hoisted, and we would carry out the fish for the official weighing. I say official because we had already weighed the fish on a handheld ouncel, but it was what the buyer’s measure stated that determined the final payment. Weighed by the pound and paid by it, even a 1/4 lb made a difference to cash-strapped families but there was no point in arguing.
An ouncel that saw a lot of fish down the years
Several small peal would be weighed together, but a “fine salmon” would get its own treatment and always attracted more interest. Big fish meant a higher rate of pay per pound. Of course many had already gone to McAlpins, Mr Mac always paid the best prices around for large fish.
Once weighed, the tarpaulin would be lifted off the back of the van, releasing a black wave of flies and blue bottles off the fish already stored there, and as our father’s fish were sorted into boxes we took a careful measure of what was there. Then a docket was written up calculating the weight, price per pound and the all-important calculation of what the catch realised.
A docket of mine from 1989. Note the price difference between a 9 lb salmon and a 7lb (jack as we would call it) and the two peal weighed together.
Hard-pressed fishermen would sometimes have to get the price of the annual licence from a fish buyer. And sometimes that included some new nets and oilskins etc. In this case, the docket would also include a deduction as the loan cost was taken off in a percentage.
When I was fishing in the 1980s the fishbuyer’s practice of coming around started to slow, but I think it was the 1990s before it died out. Most of the lads had cars or vans at that stage and I regularly went to town with Pat Moran in his rusty green Ford van which smelled to high heavens of fish. We would pull up in Arundel Sq at the back of the premises and carry the fish through in a box to the lads. There the filleters were employed, and fish were sorted, weighed, and prepped for the shop floor.
In those days most of the salmon were being sorted and iced in styrofoam boxes, to be dispatched that same day worldwide. But it was the era before the salmon farms. would eat into the market. It was also the era of salmon fishing on the high seas, and small operators like us were starting to become irrelevant.
Russ Parsons had a feature in last weeks Irish Times on Woodstown Oysters – having travelled the world he raved about the quality of the product but pointed out that although some locals stock them including Elaine Power in East Pier Dunmore, we as a nation don’t appreciate or support such products. This attitude may have had nothing to do with the closure of Flanagans, but perhaps our relationship is worth considering. If only to think of how and why we should support our fishermen and fishing industry.
Over the centuries people have harnessed the power of water via ponds, streams and rivers to drive wheels which created the power to grind wheat, corn and other grains. The fertile valley and hinterland along the Three Sister rivers had many advantages to this practice, an industry that had its peak between the mid 17th and 19th Century.
These advantages included fertile land, the flourishing of religious abbeys and the manorial estate system post-Norman conquest, and a long and navigable river network with bustling ports connected to England and the European mainland. But another advantage, and perhaps less well known, was a ready supply of accessible Old Red Sandstone, that provided perfect material for the creation of millstones.
The Quarries
Quarrying operations took place in areas with suitable stone and also, crucially, proximity to waterways for transportation. The main locations in this area included Creaden Bay, Templetown and Great Graigue on the Hook Peninsula, Ballyhack Hill, Minaun and Drumdowney close to Ballinlaw in Kilkenny. I wonder are there other areas that they tried to quarry that we have yet to discover? I’m guessing there are.
Millstones at the New Quay, Templetown, Hook Peninsula, note Creaden Head in the distance. Photo courtesy of Liam Ryan.New Quay at Templetown at low water. Photo courtesy of Liam Ryan.
I described previously our childhood visits to the Minaun above Cheekpoint. One of our picnic spots was a rounded rock, and our mother said the Knights of the Round table gathered there. It turned out later that it was an attempt to quarry a millstone from out the bedrock on the hill, but that still doesn’t spoil the memory for me. I have no recollection of seeing others, or locations where they were harvested on the Minaun. I’m also gutted to say I have no images. I think the stone may have been bulldozed when the round tower was built there in the late 1980s.
Ballyhack was another location, and although the area is now overgrown and not a very obvious commercial millstone quarry. However, it was once a hive of activity and was written about as early as 1684. Rober Leigh gave the following description:
“About two miles from Dunbrody to the sewarde upon the river of Waterford there is a creeke and an old Key at the bottom of a steepe rocke, called Ballihack: it is a sad place to looke upon, and has not above halfe a dozen houses and an old pile of a castle besides a fue cabins, but is is a place much frequented by passengers that ferry over there into Munster to a place on that syde called Passagem as alsoe by seamen and the like, for ships often lye thereabouts in the River.
There are two considerable fairs kept at Ballihak, (for black cattle and hogs) in the yeare, the one at Michaelmas, the other upon St James’ day.
In summer and out of the rock that hangs above ye village and Key is wrought a number of very good Milstones, which with noe small skill nor less danger are rowled downe a very high precipice to the aforesaid Key and soe carried by water as the occasion requires”
Source: Hore.P.H History of the Town & County of Wexford. Dunbrody Abbey, The Great Island, Ballyhack etc. 1901
Ava exploring part of the millstone quarry (and frogspawn) on Ballyhack Hill about 15 years ago. Photo Courtesy of Maria DoyleA discarded millstone at Ballyhack…imagine the hours of work it took only to find that it was no use perhaps because of a flaw? Photo Courtesy of Maria Doyle
Dates of the process
Although the quarrying of millstones in ancient, the need for millstones was driven by the process of local milling which was popular between 1550 & 1850. Niall Colfer speculates that the local quarrying seems to have been at its height between the mid 17th to mid 19th Century. He also speculates that the Creaden quarry could in fact have started sometime in the medieval era, because of some of the extraction methods employed.
The traditional lighter in the foreground here in Waterford. They were used in navigating from the quarries to the mills on many of the local Pills including Ballycanvan, St John’s and the Blackwater (Kilmacow Pill etc). Image courtesy of the Andy Kelly Collection.
Extraction Methods
Various methods were employed depending on the location of the stone being cut. But in all cases the use of hand tools seems to have been the preferred method in the harbour.
The Otter Hole on the Hook – the initials of some of the workmen that extracted the stone from the quarry’s nearby are still to be seen. Photo courtesy of Walter Foley.
Jim Walsh describes the work as perhaps taking a week to cut out one stone of 5 to 6 feet in diameter, a foot thick and weighing a ton. Quoting from William Tighe (1800-1801), he states that the stones from Drumdowney Hill were sent as far as England, and after tariffs were placed on the imports, the local stones were sent coastwards to Cork and Dublin and elsewhere around Ireland. The workmen received 6 guineas for a pair of stone, but they can sell for up to 12 guineas. The work is arduous and sometimes the quarrymen only discover a flaw in a stone after extracting it from the rock
At Creaden Colfer has calculated that perhaps 300 millstones were extracted from the site over the years. Such coastal sites had a number of advantages, including transport and extraction
Part of the expansive remains of the quarrying at Creaden Bay. Photo – Andrew DohertyRemains at Herrylock on the Hook, photo courtesy of Walter Foley
The extraction method employed using the tides was as follows: A circular trench was hewn from the rock, chiselled down to twice the width of the required millstone. Triangular wedge shapes were then carved and into these timber wedges were inserted. Once completed, the tide washed into the hole, and as the wedges absorbed the water, the swelling wedges expanded, the force of which naturally cracked the millstone from the bedrock.
At Great Graigue, Hook Peninsula. Photo courtesy of Walter FoleyAt Great Graigue, Hook Peninsula. Photo courtesy of Walter Foley
Transportation
Once extracted, the millstones had to be transported to their final destinations. I was raised on stories of the millstones being rolled down the hill of Ballyhack to be transhipped. The method was as follows, the stone was lifted vertically, a beam was placed through the central core, ropes were secured to the ends of the beam (but were free to turn) and then the stone was rolled carefully, the ropes being employed as a break in case the stone took off down the hill.
A broken millstone at Ballinlaw, Co Kilkenny. Can you imagine after hand chiselling a stone for at least a week if not longer, how crushed you would be to see it broken just at the point it was to board a lighter or a ship? Photo Courtesy of Paul Grant.
Waterways, like the Waterford Harbour and the Three Sister Rivers were a natural highway for the movement of such stone. They could be loaded onto boats (I’d imagine Lighters were the craft of choice for accessibility both to the coastal site and as far up areas such as the Ballycanvan Pill, Johns Pill or the Blackwater). Of course they could also be loaded onto ships for transport around the coast. It is certainly possible that the proliferation of quarrying at Waterford harbour indicates a thriving trade to England, and perhaps even the continent.
A nasty spot for the paintwork even on a calm day! Despite the danger, I fancied this as a very natural working point for the lightermen in Creaden Bay. They could have only got in her on specific tides and in favourable weather. Photo – Andrew Doherty
The site at Creaden has a naturally occurring landing site and must have been useful in the rolling of Millstones onto the lighters. Colfer states that water transport was common practice in Ireland. At Templetown on the Hook there is a natural landing area for boats which is called the “oul Key”. See Liam Ryans photo above.
Belfast Commercial Chronicle – Monday 25 November 1805; Page 3 Niall Colfer speculated that the use of the phrase Ballyhack Millstones could have been employed as a type of branding for all the local millstones.
Following publication I received a message (May 2024) from a pal that there was mention of a wreck found in Dublin Bay which had millstones aboard originating from Waterford harbour aboard. An email to David Carroll prompted quick responses from Dr Eddie Bourke and Cormac Lowth with suggestions for follow up. Cormac also provided an introduction to Niall Brady of the Archaeological Diving Company Ltd. Niall was very generous in his time and supplied me with the following image and information. (Niall was also part of the team that discovered the Duncannon wrecks which we have blogged about previously)
Image (above) Plan of shipwreck discovered on the approach channel into Dublin that carried a series of millstones which would have originated in the Waterford Harbour quarries. Drawn for Dublin Port Company Ltd by Rex Bangerter, the Archaeological Diving Company Ltd (ADCO) (www.adco-ie.com). Niall went on to explain that this image is “of the wreck we investigated in Dublin that carried some of the millstones, the association of which lends its name to how we now refer to the wreck site, the ‘Millstone Wreck’. We discovered the site while monitoring the capital dredging campaign for Dublin Port Company in 2017. A millstone was dredged up and further monitoring, survey and then underwater investigation led to the discovery of the wreck. The dive work was led by my co-director, Rex Bangerter, who drew the site plan. The wreck lies on the toe of the navigation channel into Dublin, at a location that would have been on the Dublin Bar – the naturally-occurring sand bar that forms across the mouth of the Liffey delta and poses a barrier to shipping; hence the dredging campaigns. We suggest that the wreck occurred while trying to cross the bar, perhaps in the eighteenth century, when only limited progress had been made to improve navigation into the city. We do not know the vessel’s name or the story around its wrecking but it is one of some 300 recorded wrecking events on the approaches to Dublin. The millstones were most likely cargo that would have been destined to support the milling industries along the east coast; perhaps this one was meant to serve a mill along the Liffey but never quite arrived there”
Decline
The 19th century saw significant changes in milling technology. Better stones were imported from France which saw the older local stones being used to a lesser extent. The advent of steel roller mills in the late 19th and early 20th centuries saw a decline too. Roller mills offered more efficiency and consistency in grain milling.
Today, the remnants of old millstone quarries offer us a glimpse of these historical landmarks of a once-thriving industry. I’d imagine there may be other sites out there too. Hard work, hard lives but again the harbour and rivers played their part.
Watermills
Just to conclude, here’s a quick overview of the water milling operations that I am aware of. I’m bundling together here mills fed by streams, by the tides etc and some of these did not grind corn, but it gives a sense of the extent of them. I’m also not including windmills.
Kilmokea horizontal mill at Great Island– 5th Century
Two tidal water mills at Dunbrody Abbey
Five mills utilising streams in Slieverue – Ballyrouragh, Ballinlaw, Rathpatrick and 2 in Gorteens. (ref Jim Walsh p215-219)
Foley’s Mill at Gyles Quay (ref Jim Walsh p215)
Historically one is mentioned on the Faithlegg/Woodlands Pill.
2 on the Ballycanvan Pill that I have written about previously
3 on St Johns Pill, the last of which operated to the 1950s
9 mills on the Maudlin Stream near New Ross (ref Jim Walsh p212)
Kathleen Laffen listed 14 water mills on the River Blackwater in South Kilkenny (not all for milling grain however, and there may have been older mills there too)
And of course the mills of Carrick & Clonmel
Updates
August 2024 – while boating on the shore here below Cheekpoint I came upon a piece of broken stone that looks like it was hand cut. Too small for a millstone perhaps but interesting nonetheless. Also, it is a curious location. There is no known quarry at the location, would it have been discarded possibly by lightermen following an accident?
Thank you for extra information to Olivia Murray, David Carroll and Pat Bracken and to photo archives of Andy Kelly, Maria Doyle, Paul Grant and Liam Ryan.
Sources used:
Niall Colfer (2019) Turning Stone into Bread: The Millstone Quarries of Medieval and Post-medieval Ireland, Industrial Archaeology Review, 41:1, 65-72, DOI: 10.1080/03090728.2019.1594063
Laffan. Kathleen. The History of Kilmacow – A South Kilkenny Parish. 2nd Ed.2005. GK Print, Grannagh, Kilkenny
Walsh. Jim. Sliabh Rua, A History of its People and Places. 2001. Slieverue Parish Pastoral Council.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.AcceptRead More
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
