This walk involves a coalfield, a canal and a vanished church
THIS week’s walk takes us to explore part of our industrial heritage. However, it is not for the faint hearted as this involves some walking on the main Mallow/Killarney Road (N72).
Even though there is a decent hard shoulder it cannot be recommended for children or for dogs on leads who are nervous/skittish in traffic. Others must also think the same as I met only one other soul on this walk.
The Munster Coalfield measures six hundred and forty square miles from Kanturk to the middle of Co. Clare. In the 18th Century there were four worked coal deposits in Ireland, the Leinster Coalfield, the Slieve Ardagh Coalfield, the Connaught Coalfield, and the Kanturk Coalfield.
The Kanturk coalfield was at Dromagh, near Kanturk and owned by the Leader family. This was during the time when a population was starving and eager to be employed at any price. In the height of the mining over 300 labourers and 40 colliers were employed.
The colliery was worked on-small scale workings in the 1700s. Between 1820 to 1882 the coalfield produced upwards of 950,000 tons of coal.
The coal was mainly used locally as a poor transport network limited the distribution of the coal. Successive generations of the Leader family put pressure on the government to have a canal built to transport the coal from Dromagh to the port of Youghal.
By 1715 Parliament was successfully petitioned to build a canal linking the Kanturk coalfield to the River Blackwater, with the ambition of exporting the coal from Youghal. However, it took forty-six years before the ambitious building plan commenced. How the wheels of politics move slowly!
In 1755 the Commissioners of Inland Navigation dispensed a grant of £11,000 to make the Blackwater navigable from Dromagh to the port of Youghal. William Ockenden began work in 1756. He decided not to start near the coalfield nor at Cappoquin, which was already navigable by tide from Youghal. He began at the townland of Pallas near Roskeen Bridge.
Ockenden died in 1761 and was replaced by Thomas Fruin who continued his work. However, in 1763 funding was cut by parliament leaving three and a half miles stretch of unfinished canal that runs from Pallas to the town of Mallow, giving this part of the road its name of The Navigation Road.
The canal itself is known as the Mallow-Lombardstown canal even though it does not flow through Lombardstown. It does, however, flow through the townlands of Pallas and Roskeen, among others.
To trace the canal, I turned up the steep hill at Ardine Bridge then past Castlemagner Woods (which are private and have a sign saying no trespassing). The view from the brow of the hill makes the climb worthwhile and is spectacular looking out over the Blackwater Valley with the majestic Mt. Hilary in the background. Then down past Roskeen House.
Roskeen House was the seat of the Power family. The townland of Roskeen, like Subulter, was once too a parish in its own right. There was also a church of which no evidence remains, but local tradition believes it to have been located near Roskeen House. You will descend down the hill and come onto the main N72 road at Roskeen Motors and across from Roskeen Bridge.
The Blackwater River (known as the Irish Rhine) flows under the beautiful nine arched bridge (some records say it is ten arched, but I could only see nine!). The bridge dates to the 1750s and was part of an elaborate chain of bridges connecting Mallow to Killarney overseen by government engineer Richard Griffith in the 1800s.
The Mallow-Lombardstown canal runs along the north side of the N72 (Mallow/Killarney Road). In most places you will need a vivid imagination to see the canal as in some parts it has been filled in and other parts are completely overgrown with just muddy channels. There are some stone walls in places which are in poor repair inside the guard rail, but the stone is beautifully cut.
There were two locks on the canal, the one at Pallas is gone but the second, called the Longueville Lock, can clearly be seen. The Longueville lock is larger than any on the Grand Canal, which gives an idea as to the ambitiousness of the plan.
The late Michael O’Callaghan of Longueville House generously made this lock visible from the road. You will easily find it near the Longueville Cross as there is a brass plaque giving a short history.
The Lock is nearly directly across from Dromaneer Castle on a cliff on the south bank of the Blackwater river. This was a fortified castle/mansion that belonged to the O’Callaghan Clan but now lies in ruins with high gables, massive chimneys, and parapets. It is outside my 5km and is supposed to have a leprechaun who sometimes peers from the top walls and tries to lure people in. Even from a distance the ruin itself is inviting but will have to wait for another day.
The canal was not successful and by the 1830s was already abandoned. Train and rail systems and roadways greatly improved shortly after the ambitious canal project begun. The quality of the coal in the Kanturk Coalfield was not of a particularly good quality and was difficult and not cost efficient to extract.
It is 265 years since the work on the canal commenced and you can’t help but wonder if it had been successful how would it have affected both the landscape and lives of many people in the locality.