Posts of an historical nature
Courtesy of a YouTube video, I became aware of the Andrews family mausoleum, located in the grounds of the Church of Ireland in Comber, Co. Down.
The Andrews family feature heavily in Ulster history, with Thomas Andrews (Snr) being Chairman of the Belfast & County Down Railway and father to Thomas Andrews (Jnr), the designer of the Titanic and JM Andrews, a prime minister of Northern Ireland.
Today is the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway in England. Of what relevance is this to Industrial Heritage in Ireland?
None, specifically. However, the S&DR is generally taken to be the first modern era railway in the world. Prior to the S&DR, there were multiple industrial railways, primarily connected with collieries. In addition, there were earlier railways carrying passengers, such as the Swansea and Mumbles Railway in Wales, which carried fare paying passengers as early as 1807, albeit using horse drawn vehicles. There was also the Kilmarnock & Troon Railway in Scotland in operation before 1825.
The S&DR is, however, regarded as the first railway carrying passengers, using steam locomotives, on metal rails, anywhere in the world and as such, it is generally regarded as the first railway.
From this idea, others followed, including the Dublin & Kingstown Railway, opening in 1834.
I was in Northern Ireland last weekend for Heritage Open Days and one of the locations I visited was Toome Bridge for a guided history tour along the towpath of the Toome Canal.
One of the historical aspects of the town covered by the guide was the processing of kieselguhr in the town (known as diatomite in English). Diatomite is a naturally occurring, soft, siliceous sedimentary rock that can be crumbled into a fine white to off-white powder. When nitroglycerin is absorbed in diatomite, it becomes more stable and can be transported. This was discovered by Alfred Nobel and patented as dynamite.
As I update the gazetteer for the railway stations visited last weekend (Derry Central Railway and the Belfast & Ballymena branch from Drumsough to Magherafelt), I noticed the presence on the historical 6 inch maps online at Toome of “Kieselguhr Works” north of the town.
Britain is currently commemorating 200 years of railways with a series of events having taken place this year, arising out of the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, which will occur on 27th September.
However, this was not the first railway in Britain/globally as many mineral tramways predated this. In addition, there was at least one passenger service that predated the S&DR, which was the Swansea & Mumbles Railway in Wales, also known as the Oystermouth Tramway.
The line was built to primarily carry limestone from Mumbles to Swansea, however, a horse drawn passenger service commenced in March 1807.
The BBC has an article going into the details.
The Irish Examiner has an article about the memorial reputed to be the grave of Samuel Grubb, a Quaker of Castlegrace, Co. Tipperary, which is in the form of a beehive.
The Grubbs were active in milling, Castlegrace Mill being their business. The mill building and mill house remain – I was part of a Mills and Millers of Ireland visit to the complex in 2022, arranged courtesy of its current owners.
I haven’t made it to this monument yet – now that I have the bulk of what is necessary for the railway network of Ireland done, I will be moving onto other additions to the Gazetteer and memorials will be part of this.
In the interim, the image below is of the monument, photo from Geograph.ie – copyright Hywel Williams and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence:
The Dublin Whiskey Fire of 1875 took place on 18 June 1875 – 150 years ago today.
At a high level, the fire started in Malone’s malt house, where there was also a bonded warehouse, on Chamber Street in the Liberties area of Dublin.
For further details, see this blogpost on The Pot Still blog.
I was in Southampton over St. Patrick’s weekend and came across a memorial to the Titanic in the city.
The RTE archive has a piece on the opening of 4 new stations on the Maynooth Line in 1990 (Broombridge, Castleknock, Coolmine and Leixlip Confey).
The blurb contains many errors, including:
Referring to the service as “A new Dublin suburban rail line”. The Maynooth Line service actually started in 1981.
Stated that the original railway along which the service ran dates back back to the 1870s. The line actually opened in 1847.
Stated the railway was originally known as the “Great Midland and Western Railway”. No. The railway was originally built/owned by the Midland Great Western Railway.
There is a well known image of a steam locomotive protruding through the end wall of Harcourt Street station, this being the end result of an accident on 14th February 1900. The 125th anniversary of this was 2 days ago and the YouTube algorithm recommended this video to me:
It is reasonable enough in terms of the history, although I take issue with the narrative around how the locomotive was re-railed and left the following comment on YouTube:
Are you sure about how the locomotive was re-railed? My understanding is that the engine was lowered onto Hatch Street (the street that it protruded onto) where there was a tram line. Conveniently, the original tram network in Dublin used the same gauge as the railway, allowing it to be moved closer to Adelaide Road, where temporary track was laid to bring the engine up the goods area access road to be re-railed.
Co-incidentally, the locomotive in question had another off road excursion during the Irish Civil War and also had to be re-railed using temporary track.
The first commercial use of the Samuda and Clegg patent for the propulsion of trains by atmospheric means was on the railway line between Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire) and Dalkey, opening in 1844 and closing 10 years later.
The great Isambard Kingdom Brunel also tried to use the system on the South Devon Railway in England, where it was a complete failure. This is alleged to be due to the use of insufficiently powered engines in the lineside engine houses used to create the necessary vacuum in the centre pipe, which in turn moved a piston along said pipe to propel the train.
Little remains of the Atmospheric Railway in Dublin today – the station site (still used by Irish Rail as a Permanent Way dumping ground) and the final road overbridge at Dalkey, which has been abandoned for railway purposes are the only significant traces, the cutting in which the line ran having been rebuilt for conventional railway purposes.
At the Didcot Railway Museum in England, they have a section of the pipe used on the South Devon Railway (along with replica broad gauge track).
I availed of the February Bank Holiday to travel to Didcot and took the photograph below of said pipe.
