RTE have an interesting video clip about a 1977 robbery of mail vans in Sligo whilst leaving Sligo train station. One of the vans was crashed into a mine adit in Arigna and the contents searched for valuables outside the mine.
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Category: History
Posts of an historical nature
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Dublin Port Archive
The Irish Independent reports on the launch of the Dublin Port online archive, an initiative by the Dublin Port Company to digitise and make available online the company’s archival collection of photographs, maps, etc.
The collection can be accessed at https://www.dublinportarchive.com/
Another of the buildings featured in RTE’s 100 Buildings series is worth linking to – Derrinlough Briquette Factory in Co. Offaly.
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Poitin country
The BBC have an article on their website in connection with the historic production of poitin on the Inishowen Peninsula.
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The Mourne Wall
The Mourne Wall in Co. Down is a wall delineating the catchment area of the Silent Valley and Ben Crom Reservoirs.
It is 100 years old this year and the BBC have a short video clip marking this occasion.
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Lighthouses in the Civil War
RTE have an interesting article on their site about raids on Irish lighthouses during the Civil War. As a subject that doesn’t immediately spring to mind, they are to be commended for giving this research an audience.
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Parnell Bridge, Cork City
The RTE website has a short (22 second) clip, showing the dismantling of Parnell Bridge in Cork City in 1968.
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Mitchell House, Belfast
The BBC have an article about Mitchell House, which is a special education school in Belfast. The IH connection is that the school was founded on foot of the Mitchell family (involved in whiskey distilling) donating the family home – Marmont House – for use as a school for those with physical disabilities.
St. Judes Anglican Church in Inchicore, Dublin, was built between 1862 and 1864, primarily for the use of railway workers employed at the nearby Inchicore railway works.
The main building was dismantled and relocated to Straffan many decades ago, where it now acts as the Steam Museum, thanks to the actions of Robert Guinness.* I understand that Robert would have taken the spire as well, but local objections led to this being left, with dreams of some sort of taxpayer funded community centre being built around it.
The latter never happened and the spire and adjacent ground is now up for sale. The Spire is a protected structure and therefore, any planning permission granted for development would need to factor this in.
* Declaration of interest – I know Robert Guinness personally.
Located on the Dublin – Sligo railway line between Multyfarnham and Edgeworthstown, Inny Junction was a passenger transfer point only – i.e. you couldn’t buy a ticket to Inny Junction – to allow for transfer to the Cavan branch of the MGWR. Opened in 1856, it closed in 1931, when the transfer point moved to Mullingar.
Below is the Googlemaps aerial view for the junction:
The junction point can be seen below mid centre in the image. However, what is interesting is the double line of trees just above this, now with a roadway immediately to the north. Such a feature is usually a dead give away of a former railway – however, clearly this is not the route of the railway.
Looking at the 25″ ordnance survey map online (not possible to embed), I note that the field boundaries are marked separately for the areas occupied by this feature, which would suggest a formal separation of this land area and not an accidental development.
Was the track at Inny Junction re-routed and if so, why?