by
Brian Gabriel
One of the first things we would notice if we could go back in time would be the darkness. Once the sun had gone down people had only candles to give them light and these candles were smoky and smelly. The late Thomas (Tommy) Walsh, who lived at 3 St. Patrick’s Terrace, The Hill, was the last lamplighter in Blarney to perform the onerous task of lighting and extinguishing street lamps.
He was well liked by the local children who would follow him about The Hill and The Gulley on dark evenings while he lit the lamps, which were hanging from lamp posts and to watch the shadows that the lamps would throw on the ground. He was also regarded with warm affection by the people of Blarney. At appropriate locations throughout the village, street lights were installed. At night the streets were lighted by oil lamps in glass enclosures at the top of a pole about 3 metres tall.
Every evening Tommy would make his rounds walking a regular circuit lighting the lamps individually and in the early morning he would travel his route once again to extinguish them.
His job as lamplighter could at times be quite demanding because it was subject to bad weather and carrying a ladder and a container of replacement kerosene over distance was exhausting. Kerosene is a petroleum derivative which is called paraffin in the UK, Ireland, parts of Asia and South Africa. It is widely used as jet engine and rocket fuel, but is also commonly used as a cooking and lighting fuel in Asia, where it fuels outboard motors on small fishing boats.
A lamp-post was a tall cast iron metal post on which an outdoor lamp for lighting a street was mounted. These old lamp posts, painted green but minus the top portion which held the lamp can still be seen at a few locations around the village. It seems unusual to me, that one of the complete lamps was never actually salvaged for posterity.
The lamps were fuelled with paraffin oil and paid for by Cork County Council. Using a strong pole which had a hook at the top, Tommy gingerly brought down each lamp from its post, They had a central burner with the paraffin enclosed in a metal container and a metal tube which contained a circular wick that could be raised or lowered to control the intensity of the light or the amount of fuel being consumed. A glass chimney was fitted around the wick to protect the flame and to control the volume of air to the flame. All of this was secured inside a weather protective four-sided glass enclosure with a vented cowl. Glass or metal reflectors were fitted to the roof of the frame of later models to increase the intensity of the light produced. This worked to a degree but the light was still fairly dull. Tommy also had to clean the reflectors and glass. Tommy lit the wick, made his adjustments and using his pole, rehung the serviced lamp. Hanging from the lamp-post, it lit up the pavement with a soft yellowish light in a not very large circle beneath the lamp but not the roadways as the small flame and the general lack of a reflector resulted in very limited spread of light. It was still very dark in the distance between lamps and streets with only a few houses might not have any lamps at all. It seems that fuelling the lamps, trimming and replacing the wicks and lighting them was considered time-consuming and expensive.
People were dependent upon Tommy and the lamplighters of earlier years to light the street lamps before dark so people could walk about at night in relative safety. The lamps had to be lit by dusk on winter days but not lit at all during the bright summer months. Children who went out after dark often made do with a short candle inside a jam-pot for light. Twine was wound around the neck of the pot and securely formed into a loop to make a handle for carrying it. Blarney on winter evenings, before public electric lights, was a dark and somewhat scary place with only a limited number of oil lamp-posts for light.
When the electric public lighting did come to Blarney and used in place of oil lamps, Tommy’s job became redundant. The new lighting switched on as daylight faded and was time-controlled to switch itself off at mid-night except on Christmas night when it was left on all night.
Some of the locations, not in any order, where the lamp-posts were situated were: by the National School on St. Ann’s Road, on the road in front of Church of the Immaculate Conception, the Village, the Gulley, Shamrock Terrace, the Priest’s Steps on Station Road, top of Telephone Terrace, Mangerton Terrace and others. Some have been removed but others, usually painted green, can still be seen in their original locations. The remaining lamp-posts still left were manufactured by the iron foundry firm of Merricks of Parnell Place, Cork.
Saint-Exupery, author of “The Little Prince”, wrote about a lamplighter: “When he lights his street lamp, it is as if he brought one more star to life. When he puts out his lamp, he sends the star to sleep. That is a beautiful occupation.”
Tommy’s trade died out with the advent of electric lighting. All of the lamp locations and many more were equipped with this new type of lighting which made lamplighters redundant. They were completely gone by the 1950s.
On Thursday 2nd May 2024 the lecture of the Blarney and District Historical Society is ‘If Those Walls Could Talk – Internments and Executions – Cork 1920/23.’ Guest Speaker: Gerard O’Rourke, Historian and Author, has written best-selling books on the history of the Donoughmore area. This evening, he speaks about the prisoners and the conditions they had to endure during their incarcerations, while sometimes awaiting execution, in the gaols of Cork and other parts during the troubled times of 1920 to 1923
A limited number of ‘Old Blarney’ Journal back issues are still available on www.blarneyhistory.ie