School: Kilberry, Athy (roll number 13165)
- Location:
- Kilberry, Co. Kildare
- Teacher: Sara Rowan
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0781, Page 100
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Kilberry, Athy
- XML Page 100
- XML “Storms”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- (continued from previous page)About the 24th Feb. 1856 occured what is spoken of in this district as the "Big Snow". The snow drifted during the night and in some places was packed firmly against the one door of the small houses and when the people rose in the morning, they found themselves imprisoned. Very few of the people had any implements inside to cut away the snow from the doors and windows.
For many years after, no one in the district would retire on a winters night without first making sure that there were a few implements such as a shovel or spade inside.
The snow was to be seen in the dykes until the month of May.
Hundreds of sheep were lost, many cattle and many birds lost their lives in this great Snow Storm. Hackets' Cross on the road from Ballylinan to Stradbally, is still pointed out by the older people as the scene of the dreadful occurance, where in this same storm three brothers named Hacket were returning to their home from the Curragh Camp, about ten miles from this district. These ill-fated men, unable to proceed on their journey unyoked their horse from the car and took shelter under it. The snow fell so thickly that is a short while(continues on next page)
- Informant
- Sara Rowan
- Gender
- Female
- Age
- 50
- Occupation
- Múinteoir
