School: Kilmaine (B.)

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   The house I now occupy was built as a grain store some years before the Great Famine. A man named Fair from Westport built it. He was a buyer and exporter of corn. Big tracks of land around Kilmaine in those days were cultivated by the landed proprietors, like Rutherford of Turin. There was a market in Kilmaine and Fair bought most of the corn and had it temporarily stored in the building which was 51 feet by 22 feet and 30 feet high. It contained five storeys of lofts supported by huge beams of yellow pine. The building was capable of holding thousands of tons of corn. the corn was brought in carts to Westport quay where it was shipped to England or some foreign country.
   During the famine years the store was used as a temporary "hospital" to shelter victims of the famine. The local tailor, Hyland, pointed out to me the fire-place in an adjacent barn where he often saw the porridge bring cooked for the inmates of the store.
   In the townland of Kilquil a temporary wooden hospital had been erected to shelter sick persons during the famine. The filed containing the site was called "Sick-house" field. The site of the "Sick-house" may still be seen and a mound beside a stone fence marks the places where many of the victims of hunger were buried. The writer was told by an eye-witness that in conveying the patients from the Kilquil "Sick-house" to the

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   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Topics

   1. place-space-environment
      1. local lore, place-lore (~10,595)

   Language

   English

   Collector

   John Igoe

   Gender

   Male

   Occupation

   Principal

   Address

   Kilmaine, Co. Mayo