School: Castletown
- Location:
- Castletown, Co. Meath
- Teacher: Owen Maguire
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0711, Page 303
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: Castletown
- XML Page 303
- XML “Famine Days”
- XML “Famine Days”
- XML “Famine Days”
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)a man of the name of Cahill. He died in a field close to the Railway Crossing and was buried in Castletown Churchyard.
- During the famine years people died in great numbers. The blight came on the potatoes and they all rotted. There lived in Ricetown at that time a man named O'Connor. He knew the Famine was going to come and he bought in a large supply of wheaten meal and flour. He made loaves with the flour and sold them for one shilling and sixpence each. He stored up the wheaten meal and would not sell it to anyone. After a year or so he threw it all out in a river that was in front of his house as it all had rotted. O'Connor had a grinding mill and ground any sort of corn. This mill was worked by a water wheel. He ground for a large number of years. The mill fell in thirty years after O'Connor emigrated to America but did not return. There is a lane leading up to this place. Its name is Carr na corca.
- There was a Mr. O Connor who lived in Gravelmount. He filled the granaries of Gravelmount with indian corn. He was selling it at half a crown and then(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Paul Reid
- Gender
- Male
- Informant
- Mr M. Reid
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- 58
- Address
- Knock, Co. Meath
