THE BIG INTERVIEW ‘I’d find it hard to stop — I’ve a few jobs to do yet’

Blacksmith Florrie O’Sullivan is still making sparks fly at the age of 84, writes

IRELAND’S oldest working blacksmith has witnessed dramatic changes to rural life from the vantage point of his forge door. Florrie O’Sullivan (84) can remember a time when his native village of Boolteens near Castlemaine, Co Kerry, boasted a church, two pubs, a hotel, a dancehall, a bakery, a coopers, a mill, a creamery, an undertakers and a shop.

Nowadays, all that remains is the church, the two pubs and the forge — still a hive of activity in the Dingle Peninsula village. An insurance broker operates where the old dancehall used to be and there’s a thriving GAA club just outside the village.

“The village was completely self-contained for what you’d want,” Florrie recalls. “They all had their bit of land. They set their spuds and were very industrious. There were a lot of great tradesmen.

“But of course, there was a lot of emigration too. A pile of it.”

Florrie is the fourth generation of blacksmiths in the O’Sullivan family but also the last.

Having never married, he says there was no one to follow him into the trade, and none of his nieces or nephews expressed an interest.

“They say I’m the oldest blacksmith in Ireland but I don’t know if that’s true or not but I suppose there are not many of us left. It’s a shame but that’s the way Ireland has gone,” he says.

Little has changed at the forge since his great-grandfather’s time. The family originally came from further back west, near Dingle, and Florrie’s great-grandfather came to Boolteens and built the forge around 1870. A new roof was put on by his father in 1948 and Florrie extended the premises, building another workshop, where he does most of his welding, in the early ’50s.

“My great-grandfather was supposed to have built that chimney. It’s just stonework and never fell, and it’s a great chimney,” he says, with more than a trace of pride.

“I don’t have the fire going as often now because it’s mainly cutting and welding, but I suppose I’d still use about 12 stone of coal a week.”

Florrie began helping his father, Patrick, when he was a boy of around 13; blacksmithing was in his blood. Four of his uncles were also blacksmiths so it was the family trade.

The mainstay of the O’Sullivans’ business was shoeing horses, fixing ploughs and doing the banding for the wheels of the carts.

“You can imagine, all of them going to the creamery: ponies and carts, and donkeys and carts,” he says. “Some of them went racing too.

“We used to have a line of common ploughs outside the door after doing them up around this time of year, fixing the sock and caudal.”

When his father died in 1954, at the age of 54, being the oldest of a family of six, Florrie had to take over the reins. The only other vocation he ever contemplated was the priesthood, although he says he never really pushed it.

“I had no choice, really. I remember the morning after my father being buried, there were five or six of them outside the door. So I was in working and that was it, and I’ve been here since.”

Still, he has no regrets about how he’s lived his life and no intention of retiring, not fully anyway.

“I’ve enjoyed the work and I still love it. It’s a heartbreak to be away from it. I’d find it hard to stop and I’ve a few jobs to do yet,” he says.

Florrie’s craftsmanship is evident throughout the village. He made the gates for the football field and the railings for the church.

These days he’s kept busy making troughs for cattle and sheep, fire tongs and pokers and even the odd gate. One aspect of his work he misses is shoeing horses.

“I haven’t shod a horse in around five years but I do miss it. I loved them,” he says. “I did it for people all over the county, a world of them.

“I still pare the feet of a

IT TROUBLES ME. THE PLACE WILL HAVE TO BE SOLD: THERE IS NOBODY HERE TO TAKE IT OVER