Howard mausoleum, Kilbride, Co. Wicklow http://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/18th-19th-century-social-perspectives/howard-mausoleum-kilbride-co-wicklow/

Published in 18th-19th Century Social Perspectives, Gems of architecture, General, Issue 2 (March/April 2013),Volume 21

The Howard mausoleum, erected in 1785. (NIAH)

Sitting on a small rise a mile north of Arklow, overlooking the River Avoca, is a monument described by John Betjeman as the largest pyramid tomb ‘beyond the banks of the Nile’. It stands on the highest position in the ancient cemetery of Kilbride, dwarfing the ruins of the adjacent medieval church, and is easily seen from most points within a two-mile radius.

 

When Ralph Howard of Shelton Abbey was made 1st Viscount Wicklow in 1785, he decided that no longer would a departed Howard be buried in cold clay; their bodies would be housed in an edifice more befitting aristocracy. Philosophical Enlightenment was at its height, and to speak of Egyptian, Athenian or Roman architecture was to display not only education but good taste. The new mausoleum, Howard decided, would be a pyramid.

The design is believed to be the work of an English sculptor and stonecutter, Simon Vierpyl (c. 1725–1810). Vierpyl was well acquainted with Enlightenment taste, having spent almost a decade in Rome producing souvenir copies of ancient sculpture for the well-heeled on their Grand Tour. He was brought to Ireland by James Caulfield, 4th Viscount Charlemont (1728–99), and soon became known for his designs based on ancient civilisations. He worked closely with architect William Chambers on Castletown House, Charlemont House in Rutland (now Parnell) Square in Dublin, and the Casino at Marino. According to The dictionary of Irish architects (http://www.dia.ie/architects/view/5439), he appears to ‘have done relatively little purely sculptural work’ in Ireland, being employed chiefly as a stone-carver, mason and clerk of works. The Howard mausoleum does not appear in the list of works accredited to him.

The pyramid’s outer cladding is of granite blocks. The base is approximately 27ft square; the walls are perpendicular to the height of 6ft, at which level the slopes begin, meeting at the pinnacle some 30ft above ground level. A sarcophagus on the north side records that the monument was erected in memory of an earlier Howard and as a place of burial for the family. North of the pyramid is a small Egyptian-style structure with a temple front that is often taken for part of the mausoleum, but this leads to a second chamber that houses a minor branch of the Howard family.

Access to the inside was gained by a small door in the north wall—now sealed—from which a narrow corridor of about 8ft or 9ft leads to a chamber 10ft square. This has a curved brick roof, about 15ft from the floor at its highest point. The wall facing the short corridor and the walls to the right and left each contain nine niches for coffins, three rows of three.

The coffins were inserted lengthwise so that each niche opening is only 2ft 6in. square, receding about 7ft. A slab, on which the biographical details of the interred were carved as on ordinary headstones, was fitted to seal the niche. The fourth wall has only six niches, three placed vertically on either side of the chamber entrance, making a total of 33 coffin spaces in all—masonic symbolism or just a handy number? The strange thing is that only eighteen are occupied.

The first interment was of Ralph Howard’s daughter, Isabella, who died at the age of nineteen in December 1784. As the pyramid was not built until the following year, it is reasonable to assume that Isabella was buried in the graveyard and re-interred in the mausoleum when it was ready. The last interment of which we have a record took place in 1823, but folklore states that there was another. For weeks following the interment of an infant family member, tenants living at Kilbride reported the sound of a child crying at night. The body was, we are told, removed and interred elsewhere, after which the crying is said to have stopped. The pyramid was sealed and never used again.  HI

Jim Rees teaches history and communications with County Wicklow VEC. He and fellow local historian Pat Power were given access to the interior of the pyramid in 1986. Series based on the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage’s ‘building of the month’, http://www.buildingsofireland.ie.

Arklow’s explosive history: Kynoch, 1895-1918

http://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/arklows-explosive-history-kynoch-1895-1918/

Published in 18th–19th – Century History, 20th-century / Contemporary History, Features, Issue 1 (Jan/Feb 2006),Volume 14

The establishment of the Kynoch explosives factory in Arklow was due to the vision and ambition of two men, Arthur Chamberlain and A.T. Cocking. Arthur Chamberlain was a Birmingham industrialist and brother of the famous liberal politician Joseph Chamberlain. In 1888 Chamberlain joined the board of Kynoch and set about reviving the fortunes of the ailing company. In 1891 he became chairman of the board and within twelve months he had turned the company around. In 1893 the engineer A.T. Cocking approached the company with a proposal for the manufacture of a new explosive, cordite, which had recently been developed by Alfred Noble, the inventor of dynamite. Cocking was confident that cordite was set to replace gunpowder as the explosive charge in military and sporting munitions and in industries such as mining and engineering.
For centuries gunpowder had been the explosive charge used in bullets for small arms and in shells for artillery, but with the arrival of faster-firing rifles and bigger artillery pieces in the late nineteenth century the need for a new and more efficient explosive that produced less smoke had become urgent. By combining two existing and notoriously unstable explosives, guncotton and nitro-glycerine, Alfred Noble had made the breakthrough and created a smokeless explosive that was more powerful than gunpowder. Yet unlike gunpowder, cordite was unaffected by moisture or temperature, making it a very safe explosive to handle and to store. Unless it was contained within a strong chamber like a bullet or shell cordite wouldn’t explode: when it was ignited in the open air it burnt away harmlessly.

Arklow chosen over Brittas Bay

After his early success with the Birmingham factory Chamberlain was ready to expand. In November 1894 he told the directors that he had secured a modest order of ‘600 tons extending over three years’ from the British government. In the same month Chamberlain and Cocking visited two possible production sites in Wicklow—Arklow’s north beach and Brittas Bay, five miles up the coast. Chamberlain and Cocking finally settled on the Arklow site over the more remote Brittas Bay alternative. The north beach was situated less than half a mile from the harbour at the mouth of the Avoca River, making it easy to ship explosives to England. There was a rail connection nearby, and the town itself, with a population of 5,000 people, offered a ready workforce. Apart from this there was one other major advantage to the Arklow site, one that almost certainly clinched the deal. At the mouth of the Avoca River there was an existing chemical factory, the Arklow Chemical Works.

Two women loading a bogey car-the factory had an extensive network of bogey tracks to facilitate the movement of chemicals and explosives around the site. (G.D. Kelleher, Gunpowder to guided missiles)

Although the works had been in abeyance for some years, after an inspection it was clear that the factory was capable of producing the necessary chemicals to render Kynoch self-sufficient in the manufacture of cordite. Soon afterwards the purchase of the Arklow Chemical Works was completed, and in July 1895, a mere eight months after Chamberlain’s first visit to Arklow, the factory was producing cordite.
On the opening of the Kynoch factory the mayor of Dublin and several MPs made a public announcement to voice their gratitude for the new enterprise, saying ‘we feel it is our duty to convey to you the expression of our thanks for opening a new industry and a fresh source of employment in Ireland’. On one of his first visits to Arklow Chamberlain met the local parish priest, Father Dunphy, who assured Chamberlain that the people of Arklow were eager to work. One detects more than a hint of desperation amongst the Irish camp for this ‘fresh employment’. The town had a long seafaring tradition and in the mid-eighteenth century was one of the greatest fishing ports in Ireland or Britain, with a huge fleet of oyster boats, sloops, trading vessels and small coasters mooring in what was then a muddy estuary. But by the late nineteenth century the local economy was struggling and the prospect of a major new source of employment was very welcome.

Industrial disputes

The factory, which Kynoch proudly boasted to be ‘the biggest of its kind in the world’, initially employed 260 people made up of men, women and teenage boys and girls as young as fourteen. Women and girls were employed in the less dangerous parts of production such as the preparation of cotton for ‘nitration’ to make guncotton and in the filling of cordite cartridges for the mining industry. Women were by far the lowest-paid, earning around four shillings a week.

A Kynoch marketing pamphlet extolling the virtues of the revolutionary new explosive, cordite. (Birmingham City Archive)

Young boys, also employed in the preparation of cotton and as assistants with the ‘cordite presses’, were paid double the wages earned by their female counterparts. The average weekly wage for men was twelve shillings, rising to sixteen shillings for those involved in the most dangerous parts of production in the appropriately named ‘danger houses’. These wages were about the industrial average for Ireland at the time, but a family would have struggled to feed, clothe and keep themselves warm during winter on this tiny income. It’s hardly surprising, then, that during its 22 years in operation the factory was plagued by countless strikes by dangermen, bricklayers, electricians, boilermen and boys preparing cotton, invariably over pay.
The first dispute, and by far the most bitter, took place only four months after the factory opened in October 1895 after an explosion occurred in one of the ‘drying houses’, blowing one of the employees to pieces. The factory was closed until further notice and some of the workers said that they would not return unless they received an increase in pay. Relations between the workers and the management deteriorated even further when it was claimed by the management that the explosion might have been caused deliberately.

Seaward view of the factory. Note that many of the smaller buildings in the foreground are ringed by mounds of sand to protect surrounding buildings in the event of an explosion. (Under five flags: the story of Kynoch works 1862–1962)

In the investigation that followed, the company was exonerated of responsibility and it was stated that the explosion might have been accidental or deliberate. The report said that a short while before the explosion a wine bottle had been found in a trough that was used to move nitro-glycerine from one building to another and could have caused an accident if it had flowed into the vat at the end of the trough and hit the bottom. Around the same time a match that had been resting on a bogey track was ignited as a bogey wheel passed over it. The report concluded that the above incidents pointed to a possible attempt at sabotage with the express intention of then asking for more money. The Wicklow Newsletter refuted the allegations as ridiculous and was of the opinion that the bottle had simply been hidden in the trough and that the idea of trying to cause an explosion by placing a match on a bogey track was almost laughable.
Chamberlain’s response went much further than the report. In what could best be described as a slanderous outburst he said, ‘There has been characteristic cowardice on the part of the work people in not informing their superiors of wrong doing’. In defence of the workers Father Dunphy argued that ‘In the long established industries of this kind in England, explosions have occurred through the recklessness of the workmen, skilled though they be, and one has not heard them accused of malice’, and he in turn accused the management of ignoring his warning regarding recruitment and ‘that officials had employed felons, tramps, drunkards and men of the most indifferent character’. These arguments had little impact on the management or Chamberlain, and eventually the workers returned to work without any wage increase.

Accusations of anti-Irish agenda

Despite this early setback the initial order was completed, and company records show that bigger orders from the army and navy followed; the factory expanded, taking on more workers to meet the increased demand. Between 1900 and 1903 the factory received huge orders for cordite to supply troops fighting in the Boer War in South Africa. After the war the demand continued until 1907, when the factory suffered a major blow: a batch of cordite was rejected, with the government claiming it to be inferior. Following this a large quantity of the explosive was seized from the factory, and rumours of a possible closure began to circulate. This was not the first time that cordite had been rejected for not meeting the required standards; on this occasion, however, the government made the even more serious claim that the cordite contained mercury, something that was absolutely prohibited as it had the effect of distorting tests on the product.
Once again Chamberlain reacted aggressively and strongly denied the claims. He pointed out that the particular batch in question had actually been supplied in 1901 and that the test for detecting the minute quantities of mercury did not exist at that time. Chamberlain also claimed that the company was being treated unfairly, and at a meeting of the shareholders in 1909 revealed that one of the inspectors, Captain M.B. Lloyd, had overlooked the presence of mercury in cordite from another supplier, Curtis and Harvey, a company the captain subsequently joined as a director. Chamberlain decided to have the matter settled in court; after four years the case was concluded in the House of Lords, ending in a photo-finish with blame being apportioned equally between both sides and the company being awarded the pathetic sum of £200.
The general opinion in Ireland was expressed by Mr Cogan MP when he said: ‘when any attempt was being made to revive industry in Ireland, the brains of British officialdom were got to work to discover the most insidious method of destroying that industry’. From the very outset there had been unjustified objections to the planting of a factory in Ireland. The director of contracts in the War Office at the time, George Lawson, believed that the site was inappropriate because ‘it was separated by a considerable sea channel, i.e. when our needs are sharpest this might prove to be a considerable disadvantage’. As it turned out, during the First World War huge quantities of cordite were shipped to Woolwich from Arklow without a single serious incident.
In fact Chamberlain only managed to secure the initial order to manufacture cordite in Arklow by putting political pressure on the British government. The government understood that Kynoch would be supplied with ‘cordite pulp’, an almost completed product, from another manufacturer and that Kynoch would only be doing the final processing in Ireland.

Workers queuing up outside the factory. (Birmingham City Archive)

This was Chamberlain’s original intention, but once he visited Arklow and purchased the Arklow Chemical Works this was no longer the case. When the government discovered that Kynoch would not be manufacturing the product in Britain but in Ireland they objected, and it looked like the order was going to be withdrawn. Not to be thwarted, Chamberlain approached John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, to lobby the War Office not to obstruct the building of the factory, and following a deputation to London the objections were dropped and approval was given, somewhat begrudgingly, to manufacture cordite in Arklow.
If an anti-Irish agenda did indeed exist it could never actually be proven. Chamberlain nonetheless stated openly in an interview to Arthur Griffith in 1907 that ‘it was a definite part of English policy to prevent any serious industrial or commercial development in Ireland’. While Chamberlain may simply have been venting his anger at the loss of revenue caused by the dispute, and although his commitment to industry in Ireland probably extended no further than his ability to make a profit there, he did, however, prove that there was an element of favouritism in the way that the government chose to deal with the issue of cordite production. Nevertheless, his litigation deepened an already serious rift between the company and its most important customer, and no more orders were forthcoming until the beginning of the First World War. Luckily the factory remained open and struggled on, sustaining itself with orders from industry and sporting munitions.
In October 1913 Arthur Chamberlain died, and in true dynastic style his son, Arthur Chamberlain, stepped into his father’s shoes as chairman of the board. As a man Chamberlain senior does not appear to have been an endearing or charming character: quite the opposite. Even the company biography described him as ‘of ascetic appearance and grave demeanour . . . and a detachment which at times came perilously near ruthlessness’. As an employer he was very opposed to organised labour, and yet in other ways he was progressive and almost altruistic. The company built two rows of terraced houses in Arklow for the management. Inside the factory there was a large canteen and a recreational hall that had a reading room and billiard tables; the same hall was frequently used for dances and other social functions for all the workers. Chamberlain was also the first employer ever to institute ‘sick clubs’ and a shorter working week of 48 hours. However, his generosity didn’t always extend to his Irish employees. There were no ‘sick clubs’ for the workers in Arklow, and while their English counterparts were earning a top wage of 22 shillings per week, wages in the Arklow factory remained fixed at what Cocking referred to as the ‘native rate’ of 16 shillings per week.

First World War boom (in more ways than one)

With the outbreak of war in Europe the issue of the ‘mercury’ dispute was conveniently forgotten and the factory once again received very substantial orders to meet the colossal demand for munitions on the western front.

The final product. These bundles of cordite were then packed into wooden crates, shipped to Woolwich and used as explosives in bullet cartridges and artillery shells. (Birmingham City Archive)

Kynoch constructed dozens of new buildings, and the site of the factory now extended over one and a half miles northward from the mouth of the Avoca River up the entire length of the north beach and beyond. The number of employees increased from a pre-war figure of 600 to almost 5,000. Special trains and charabancs were put into service to transport the new workforce coming from many of the surrounding towns and villages, even from as far south as Wexford town and as far west to Shillelagh. A garrison of 100 soldiers was brought in from County Cork to protect the factory. Employees, now working around the clock, were offered substantially more pay, with wages increasing to £2 per week. The traders, and in particular the publicans and those with boarding houses, benefited significantly from the war boom. Workers flocked to the local drinking houses in great numbers, to the alarm of the management, who feared that it would adversely affect productivity; but after negotiations with local representatives the opening hours were restricted to from 10am to 2pm and from 5pm to 10pm.
The new employment that the war brought to Arklow and the surrounding areas was no doubt very welcome, but local people also knew that there was potentially a high price to pay for working in such a dangerous industry. The explosion in 1895 was only the first of four fatal accidents and numerous minor accidents that occurred before the war. In 1907 one man died when a fire broke out in an acid house. In 1910 two men were blown up while pushing a bogey containing arkite paste, and a similar accident happened one year later, again killing two men and damaging fifteen buildings. There was, however, another less deadly but more insidious and more prevalent danger, that of toxic fumes from the nitric and sulphuric acid. The Institute of Civil Engineers in London were of the opinion that ‘the fumes were extremely injurious to workpeople’, and the Wicklow People said that ‘fumes had resulted in a number of men having been either wholly or partially incapacitated from further work owing to the noxious gases’.
When the factory went into war production all the workers were issued with a rulebook briefly outlining general safety regulations, but with the huge increases in production safety was obviously a secondary concern. The number of injuries increased to the point where it was necessary to open a hospital. Almost 900 cases were reported while the hospital was in existence, 135 of which were classified as serious, which is an average of almost one a week; many of the injuries would have been burns inflicted by acid. In 1917 the ministry for munitions produced an extremely comprehensive handbook with very detailed guidelines on safety in munitions factories. Ironically it was in this year that the Arklow factory had its worst accident. At four o’clock on the night of 21 September the town was rocked by a massive explosion. Tragically, 27 men died and six were seriously injured. There was some suggestion that the explosion might have been caused by a German submarine attack, but the inquest that followed concluded that it could not be attributed to any malicious attack and a verdict of accidental death was recorded. A more plausible explanation offered by one of the employees at the time is that ‘men had been drying hankies on the steam pipes which could become very hot causing them to ignite’.

Closure

When the factory went into war production the workers were issued with this rulebook, briefly outlining general safety regulations. Nevertheless, the number of injuries increased to the point where it was necessary to open a hospital. (Birmingham City Archive)

Five months later the factory was hit by another disaster, the news that it was to close. The people of the town no doubt anticipated a major reduction in the number of workers once the war ended, but the announcement that it was to close altogether came as a great shock. There was consternation at what they saw as a very bleak prospect once the factory upon which they had become so dependent had gone. Locals felt that it had contributed to the war effort, and even the management, who had so damningly criticised their Arklow employees when it first opened, said in 1907 that ‘From none of our works or factories do we get more valuable service than from our factories in Ireland’. Some felt resentment in the light of the recent accident and the lives that had been lost, and again there were accusations of a conspiracy on the part of the British government against Irish industry.
In reality British government policy had little bearing on the final fate of the Arklow factory. As early as 1915 negotiations were taking place for a grand conglomerate, Explosive Trades Ltd, to buy up, then merge and rationalise 40 explosives manufacturers in the UK, including the factory in Arklow. Large numbers were let go in stages throughout 1918, and by 1919 only 100 workers remained. By the end of 1919 it was down to a mere handful; then the sale of the factory was announced, machinery was dismantled and removed, and most (but not all) of the buildings were knocked down.
Very little remains of the 200-odd buildings that once littered the coastline of the north beach in Arklow. The handful of stone structures that were left standing have now almost entirely disappeared. The sea too has reclaimed some of the site, and with it, one feels, a part of Ireland’s industrial heritage. A stranger walking along the north beach would have no inkling of the small but significant part Arklow’s chemical industry played in the monumental events of the early twentieth century. Although the factory buildings are gone, what remains is proof that there did exist the desire and the ability in Ireland to be part of a modern industrial economy, but that opportunity, certainly in the case of Arklow, was to be denied until much later, when its chemical industry again flourished and is still flourishing today.

Anthony Cannon is a graduate in History and English currently working for the London Metropolitan
University.

 

 

Further reading:
J. Rees, Arklow: the story of a town (Arklow, 2004).

 

The forgotten ‘Fishery’ of Arklow http://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/the-forgotten-fishery-of-arklow/

Published in 18th-19th Century Social Perspectives, 18th–19th – Century History, Features, General, Issue 1(Jan/Feb 2013), Volume 21

Arklow fishing boats being repaired, as sketched by George du Noyer in June 1861. (RSAI)

References to fishing grounds off Arklow can be found in Patrician legends and medieval documents. Over the centuries the activity and the area became synonymous, so that by the 1800s the ‘Arklow Fishery’ denoted both the practice and the place. The entry for Arklow in Lewis’s Topographical dictionary (1837) begins: ‘This place . . . appears to have been occupied as a fishing station since time immemorial’. At first glance, ‘this place’ might refer to the town as a whole, but the article goes on to say that ‘[Arklow] is divided into the Upper and Lower Towns, which latter is called the “fishery”’.

A place apart 

This separateness had already been observed twenty years earlier by the parish rector, Revd Henry Lambart Bayly, who wrote that ‘[the fishermen are] a race distinct from the other inhabitants, occupying a separate part of the town’. The centrepiece of his article in William Shaw Mason’s Statistical account or parochial survey of Ireland (1816) is a map in which the ‘Town of Arklow’ and the ‘Fishery’ are clearly separate entities. 

Griffith’s Valuation, compiled for Arklow in 1854, also cites ‘The Fishery’ as a distinct location, even though it was never officially designated a townland. In fact, of 917 properties 471 (over 51%, mostly of the poorest-quality houses) are listed as being in the Fishery. Given this semi-official status, it is surprising that it does not appear in Liam Price’s Place-names of County Wicklow (1967). Despite Price’s omission, the Fishery was a substantial and recognised location. 

Where was it? 

Pinpointing its location is more difficult than establishing its ‘separateness’. Contradictory demarcations throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries show that its boundaries were not fixed. They were prone to move seaward, as more houses for the poor were built on the eastern fringe, especially during rapid increases in population in the early 1800s and again in the aftermath of the Famine, while the western edge, abutting Main Street, grew more prosperous and was thus subsumed into the perceived respectability of the ‘Upper Town’. Despite its shifting locale, there was a general understanding as to what part of the town was implied when the ‘Fishery’ was referred to. 

What was it? 

The Fishery should not be viewed as a specific set of streets and lanes but as a community with a distinct heritage and lifestyle. Families whose livelihood was gleaned from the sea but who lived in lanes at the west end of the town and off Main Street were as much part of the ‘Fishery’ as those who lived in the eastern end adjacent to the harbour. It was not so much an address as a way of life. This is fundamental to understanding not only how that community worked but also how it came into being, evolving from a centuries-old fishing industry, and how it disappeared when that industry faded into insignificance as the local economic base changed in the first half of the twentieth century.

A way of life 

Map of Arklow in 1816, showing the ‘Fishery’ to the east of the main town. (William Shaw Mason (ed.), Statistical account or parochial survey of Ireland [1816])

The Fishery’s identity was shaped by its relationship with the sea, the lives of its inhabitants regulated by the various types of fishing throughout the year. A calendar different from that of land-based people was created and adhered to, and this had wide-reaching implications. For example, the fact that many of the men followed migratory shoals of herring and mackerel led to serious misrepresentation of population figures in the Fishery when censuses were taken. The 1901 census was taken on 31 March, and the 1911 census was taken at roughly the same time of year. Each shows a remarkable scarcity of young and middle-aged men in the Fishery—they were mackerel-fishing off Kinsale and Baltimore. 

The same nomadic nature of their profession makes it difficult to chart their professional successes and failures. Catches, quantified by tonnage and monetary value, were recorded at principal landing ports such as Kinsale, Dublin and Ardglass. The port of Arklow had not been sufficiently developed to become an official landing station, so catches by Arklow fishermen are for the most part lost in regional and national figures; the true value of their work to their community is thus impossible to ascertain from official data and is better indicated by secondary, perhaps more anecdotal, sources. These anecdotal sources repeatedly refer to the community’s fortunes fluctuating between relative affluence and penury. They also agree that such was their affinity with the sea that even in times of greatest hardship the fishermen would not engage in other forms of work. They had, however, no objection to their wives and children augmenting the family income by mending nets and selling fish.

An independent streak 

Arklow in 1886. By now the Fishery had expanded south and east of the bridge, while the western edge, abutting Main Street, grew more prosperous and was thus subsumed into the perceived respectability of the ‘Upper Town’. (Ordnance Survey)

Hard taskmaster though it could be, the sea gave them a degree of economic independence unknown to the small farmer or landless labourer and helped shape their dealings with authority. They might show deference to secular power and position when so inclined, but that did not mean that they were submissive to it. An example of this was their blatant disregard for the law banning daylight drift-net fishing for herring in the late 1890s. At first they simply ignored it, then they forced through legislative change more suited to their requirements. This success indicates both a well-organised ability to lobby and, perhaps, a justification of their boast that their fleet was the ‘best manned and best equipped in Ireland’.

This independent streak also seeped into their relationship with religious authority. They followed or ignored the strictures of their successive parish priests as they deemed appropriate to circumstances. For example, in 1812 Fr Edan Redmond complained to the archbishop of Dublin that the fishermen had formed a combination (a union or cartel), taking an oath not to sell oysters below an agreed price. He condemned the practice and ‘explained to them the nature of an oath and the criminality of taking one unless accompanied by the conditions prescribed by God Himself’. Receiving their assurances, he was ‘confident that it would not happen again’, but he soon discovered that his confidence was misplaced. 

Even after the 1860s, when parish priests had became their de facto spokesmen, they continued to practise pre-Christian prayer and ritual in tandem with more orthodox observances. An example of this twin-track approach was evident on 1 May each year. Bluebells and primroses were laid on the doorstep the night before to welcome the Virgin Mary, to whom the month of May is dedicated by the Catholic Church. Later that day a bonfire of furze bushes (called gorse or whin elsewhere in the country) was lit and danced around to welcome Belenus or Bel, the Celtic god of summer. This welcoming of both the Virgin Mary and a supposed rival on the same day by the same people indicates the level to which the two belief systems could be accommodated. 

In further bids to hedge bets, the line between prayer and piseog was often blurred. If a mirror were used for washing and shaving on board a boat, the user had to avoid the bad luck of catching the reflection of the moon in the glass; a boat should never head north (away from the sun) as it exited the harbour, even if the destination lay to the north; and a boat should be turned towards the sun immediately prior to ‘shooting’ (casting) the nets. These deferences to—perhaps reverence of—the moon and the sun sat in comfortable coexistence with the sprinkling of holy water over the nets before shooting; the crew also received a light sprinkling. The nets were then shot over the starboard side with the words ‘away nets in the name of God’. Starboard was favoured as that was supposedly the side over which Jesus told Peter to cast his net. Once the nets were shot, there was nothing to do but wait and hope—and recite the rosary.

Different communities of interest 

Arklow fishing boats under sail, as sketched by George du Noyer in June 1861. (RSAI)

The Fishery community was not homogeneous; it comprised different communities of interest. Sources such as the List of claims for the relief of suffering loyalists (1799), documents in the State of the Country Papers and RIC reports show that there were diverse political and religious allegiances. Sometimes these divisions led to sectarian tension and conflict, from the 1798 Rebellion and its aftermath to the twin campaigns for Home Rule and land reform. Perhaps surprisingly, many Arklow fishermen took a very active interest in the Land League. The sea may have been the one unifying element, giving Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter the same livelihood and the same pattern laid down by the fishing-season calendar, but it did not make them clones.

‘Girl power’ 

One of the most striking features of the Fishery was the important role played by the women. Because of the absence of the men for considerable periods, the women not only controlled the domestic sphere but also dealt with matters usually considered to be part of the male domain. Their literacy levels, as recorded in the 1901 census, were higher than those of the men, although this comparison might be skewed because of the inadequacies of the census returns referred to above. The high rate of female literacy (79% compared to 54.5% for men in the Fishery and 72% generally in County Wicklow) was mainly due to the Sisters of Mercy, who began teaching the girls of the town in 1876. Their education included not only literacy and numeracy but also the importance of personal, domestic and community hygiene. 

Better education often results in higher expectations, and it is likely that this was one of the driving forces behind not only the improvement of living conditions in the Fishery but also the eventual migration of families out of the area and into new public housing developments in the first half of the twentieth century. With this transference of population, a way of life and the flexible locale known as the Fishery were entering their final stages. 

Its demise 

The demise of the Fishery was a protracted affair. With each new council housing scheme from 1910 to 1950, families left the congested lanes for new homes in areas that had been green fields. Those who remained in the better houses of the Fishery still spoke of it as a separate entity, but it had become more a nostalgic touchstone than the vibrant community it had been for over a century. 

Today, new arrivals into the area, Irish and non-Irish, know nothing of its past and refer to where they live by the appropriate street names rather than as ‘in the Fishery’. This is understandable. The Fishery does not appear on modern maps, road signs or nameplates, in electoral registers or census forms. It is a place-name only in the mental landscape of a diminishing few, and in a decade or two it will have dropped out of usage. When that happens, the fact that it once existed will be forgotten, and the lives of the people who lived in that part of Arklow—that ‘race distinct from the other inhabitants’—will be of relevance only to the historically curious.  HI 

Jim Rees teaches history and communications with County Wicklow VEC. 

Further reading 

J. de Courcy Ireland, Ireland’s sea fisheries: a history (Dún Laoghaire, 1981). 

F. Forde, Maritime Arklow (Dún Laoghaire, 1988). 

J. Rees, The Fishery of Arklow, 1850–1900 (Dublin, 2008). 

J. Rees, ‘The Arklow yawl’, in C. Mac Carthaigh (ed.), Traditional boats of Ireland: history, folklore and construction (Cork, 2008), 389–97.