Metalworking site, Lauragh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Metalworking
On a southwest-facing slope above the valley of the Croanshagh River in the Lauragh area of Kerry, a set of partly collapsed stone walls sits quietly in pasture, largely obscured by overgrowth.
What remains is the three-sided structure of an early eighteenth-century iron-smelting furnace, built directly into the hillside so that the slope itself formed the fourth side. It is not the kind of ruin that announces itself. The interior and the ground to the southwest are strewn with rubble, and slag, the glassy, porous waste material left over from smelting iron ore, has been found scattered in the fields to the south and southeast.
The furnace is said, according to local tradition, to have been constructed in 1708, and the historian McCracken, writing in 1965, recorded it under the townland name Glenmore (Derreen) and noted it as the property of the Orpen family, who were operating it in the early eighteenth century. The walls still show something of their original character: the northeast wall stands 1.6 metres high and runs for six metres; the southwest wall, built from uncoursed rubble with large stones at its base, has an exterior height of 6.7 metres. One section of the northwest wall is noticeably thinner and rougher than the rest, suggesting it was rebuilt at some point as an ordinary field boundary, the industrial origins quietly absorbed into the agricultural landscape around it. The smelter did not operate in isolation. Charcoal to feed it was produced at a network of nearby sites, including a hut site, two enclosures, and two dedicated charcoal-making sites identified in the surrounding area, which together give a sense of how organised and labour-intensive early modern iron production in rural Kerry actually was. By the time the Ordnance Survey mapped the area in 1846, a limekiln, used for burning limestone to produce agricultural lime, had been recorded at the same location, the industrial function of the site having shifted entirely in the intervening century.