I commented recently on the posthumous honour awarded to Kerryman Horace Kitchener, born at Ballylongford near Saleen Quay on the Shannon estuary. Part of the cost of building Saleen was paid by the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth neare Dublin (whose present gaffer wants to change its name to something more snappy and brand-like, probably with an exclamation mark or a number in it (maybe he would like something modern: L33T or D00dz!, perhaps). The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth neare Dublin owned large bogs in the area and sent turf to Limerick by boat.
Another turf connection has just come to my notice. Donal Clarke, in Brown Gold: a history of Bord na Móna and the Irish peat industry (Gill and Macmillan, Dublin 2010, but it is no longer on their website), says that in the 1850s Horace’s father experimented at Ballycarbery [which seems to be a long way from Ballylongford] “with the production of peat charcoal for se in the manufacture of gunpowder” and, in the process, discovered a way of making peat briquettes.
Not a lot of people (apart from Donal Clarke’s readers) know that.
Incidentally, Kitchener appears in this trip around the world with Irish waterways.
Filed under: Ashore, Built heritage, Charles Wye Williams, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Foreign parts, Forgotten navigations, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Non-waterway, Operations, People, Politics, Scenery, Sea, Shannon, shannon estuary, Sources, Steamers, The cattle trade, The turf trade, waterways Tagged: £2, ballycarbery, Ballylongford, coin, college of the holy and undivided trinity of queen elizabeth neare dublin, gunpowder, Kerry, Kitchener, peat briquettes, Saleen
