EPISODE433 BONMAHON, IRELAND, AS SEEN IN 1960 (Could the old Knockmahon mine be opened?)
alan skeoch
Sept. 2021
NOTE: THESE EPISODES WILL PRESENT AN UNUSUAL SERIES OF PICTURES
OF SOUTHERN IRELAND, EIRE. OUR CANADIAN MINING EXPLORATION CREW
WAS BASED IN THE TINY VILLAGE OF BONMAHON, WESTERN EDGE OF
COUNTY WATERFORD. SUMMMER 1960
Group One: The Nature of our job…THE TURAM GEOPHYSICAL INSTRUMENT
I HAD TO WAIT 13 DAYS IN DUBLIN FOR OUR CRATED TURAM TO ARRIVE. Count the crates…7 big crates plus smalls.
That is a lot of equipment to keep in operating order. Lots of things happened .
TURAM OPERATED IN 1959 ON THE BARREN LANDS OF WESTERN ALASKA. IRELAND WAS NOT ALASKA.
This is the Turam console … the receiver. The long white thing is a vertical coil of copper wire which was very heavy like a third leg
with no boot. Bashed my ankles. Back in Toronto in 1960, Dr. Paterson wondered why we needed so many employees in
Ireland. You can see the difference below. Ireland was not Alaska. Irish farms had tiny fields with fences made of stones covered
with Gorse. Gorse? Think of death by a thousand cuts and you will get an image of what it was like to climb oner Irish
fencerows. I needed Andy Dwan just to lift me through. In Alaska there was worry about Kodiak bears but we were armed
with 30-06 rifles and had helicopters to move about. In Ireland we worried about pigs and Gorse and ticks and farmers whose cattle
we stunned with electricity.
This is a Gorse hedgerow. Lovely yellow flowers encased in a bed of countless needles. Perfect places for hedgehogs to
live but Hell to try and penetrate. Our grids had to be dead accurate…straight. We had to climb through these damn hedges
somehow…to slice holes..precise, arrow straight no matter what the resistance .
In this picture Barney Dwan is showing the way through a rotodendron forests on a large Irish estate. “Try not to cut the plants…the
owner of the estate is not happy we are here.”
Need I say more. Ireland was not Alaska. But there were similarities when crossing rivers or streams.
GROUP 2 THE IRISH HEDGE CLIPPING CREW…a job aided with Guinness.
Imagine this: “Here’s a few half pints of Guinness lads. Can I take your picture?”
THESE fellows were hired to slash the thorny Gorse (like brier only worse) hedges that intruded into the roads of Ireland. I think It was
a make work program to relieve Irish unemployment . They used hand tools that dated back centuries.
If I remember correctly we bought the boys a bunch of Guinness bottles to make the job easier. Quite a
cross section of ages. All giving looks of good will. Can’t imagine handing out beer to DHO employees
beside our highways. I should not have done that.
Look at those beautiful hedges behind them…but do not touch …thorns like needles by the thousands.
GROUP THREE: HURLING ON AN IRISH BEACH WITH A VERY FRIENDLY LITTLE BOY
This picture was taken many years after my job in 1960…decades later..in the 1970’s when Marjorie and I took our boys, Kevin and
Andrew on a tour of Bonmahon and region. The friendly gesture of this young boy was heart warming. He handed his hurling
stick to Andrew and a game began. Hurling is much like lacrosse only the weapon is harder should a player get a good whack
At your knee.
In 1960, the lads took me to an evening hurling match played on a farm field. Quite a crowd gathered as the two teams beat a
little ball back an forth. I remember the toilet best. At the far end of the field several sheets of corrugated iron had been
erected as the backboards of a simple urinal. I do not remember any facilities for women.
GROUP FOUR: THE IRISH “BEE HIVE “ HOMES…ANCIENT TIMES ON THE DINGLE
IRISH BEHIVE HUTS (freestone, no masonary)
BEE HIVE HUTS FOR IRISH MONKS
On a drive around the Dingle on the southwest corner of Ireland there are a number of these stone buildings where
long ago Irish monks lived and contemplated things spiritual…or so it was believed. Place yourself in these stone
structures…no cement , just the careful placing of stone. The long stones on the roof were placed should repairs
be necessary I suppose. ImagineTaking a few days to marvel at our place in the cosmos. Sitting in a bee hive stone hut
marvelling at our tenuous presence on this planet is not a bad idea. Some decision makers might be advised to do that today.
Most of us crawling into a bee hive hut would fear the roof collapse and think of little else.
‘It is worth remembering though that the beehive hut may have had uses other than as a monastic cell. Peter Harbinson [6] makes this interesting suggestion in a discussion of pilgrimage sites associated with Saint Brendan:
By far the greatest concentration of these clocháin in Ireland is on the Dingle Peninsula, and almost all are found west of Mount Brandon.. the fact that these huts are found in such great numbers to the west of Brandon, yet are very much rarer in other parts of Kerry and elsewhere throughout the country, strongly suggests that these clocháin were the temporary habitations of pilgrims waiting for sufficiently clement weather to climb Mount Brandon. In a similar vein, one can explain those in the Glenfahan area, between Ventry and Slea Head, as temporary shelters for those awaiting the right wind to waft them to the Skelligs. If this explanation is correct, then the clocháin could truly be described as Ireland’s first and oldest surviving bed and breakfast establishments.”A SURPRISEI punched up St. Skeoch in hopes of discovering who this sixth century saint really was…if she ever existed. MAYBE the records of these beehive huts would help my search. Surprise! Up cameEpisode 145: LEGEND OF THE SKEOCH NAME…OCTOBER 21, 2020 BY TERRAVIVA. My own musings. Did a saint or a monk by that name ever sit in one of theseancient bee hives. Silly. Waste of time;GROUP FIVE: STRANGE OBJECT ON BONMAHON BEACH“WHAT IS that big round rusty ball?”“Decommissioned floating mine from World War II.”“Any other reminders of the war?”“Some. German bomber crews tried to land damaged planesin Ireland. One landed nearby. The crew survived, werekept here then returned to Germany when the war ended. The captainand his family came back here on a holiday a while back.”(IN 1915 The passenger ship Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine near Kinsale…west of Bonmahon. Many hundreds of civilians drowned)GROUP NUMBER SIX WHY WERE SO MANY OLD STONE HOUSES ROOFLESS?In 1842 a German writer and geographer called Johann Georg Kohl travelled around Ireland, publishing an account of his journey the following year. “Of all the countries in the world”, he observed, “Ireland is the country for ruins. Here you have ruins of every period of history, from the time of the Phoenicians down to the present day… each century has marked its progress by the ruins it has left.MORE TO COME IN NEXT EPISODEalan skeoch
