Bus Tour 1
We started with tea, coffee and scones at Lullymore Heritage Park and a demonstration of cyanotype photography and peat paper making to showcase workshops we will do later in the year. The first stop on the tour was the site of the Allenwood Power Station. Here Harry Doyle and others gave insights into the work practise, conditions and described the infrastructure and how the cooling tower worked. Landmark structures across the midlands such as these were demolished in the late 1990s and early 2000s. We then visited the site of Lullymore briquette factory where John McGrath and Arthur Voigt told stories about the work and the ploys people used in trying to trick the company into giving extra briquettes. We stopped at the Ballyteague turf camps which were being built during “the emergency” but were never finished. Frank Morgan gave us an interesting overview of life in the camps, how and why they were built and how the sudden end of the war after the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an end to the need for harvesting turf at the time. We then had lunch and more scones at the mass rock nearby.
After lunch we drove through Coill Dubh, the Frank Gibney designed Bord na Móna workers village. We then passed the old Timahoe works and tip head before stopping at the new Timahoe North Solar farm with a view across to the Drehid recycling facility (dump) and the Jobbers Pole. On the way back we drove past Carbury mushrooms (site of Drummond turf camp built during WW2 to house workers) and stopped briefly at Lodge bog to see an intact bog. Back in the Heritage Park Brian Dempsey showcased his archive of images relating to the sites we’d visited during the day. Ray Stapleton then gave us a tour of Lullymore Heritage Park.
