Last week, I went for a ramble around some of the 1798 sites between Esker and Lucan. This week, I’m going in search of what is arguably Lucan’s most significant 1798 site: Blair’s Iron Works. It was here on the 25th May 1798, that a band of about 100 rebels led by George Cummins, who had defected from the Clonsilla Yeomanry, successfully led a raid and captured weapons before moving them up to their main army at Tara. Where, though, was Blair’s Iron Works?
The mills (or ‘works’ as I have also seen them called) were quite extensive. By some accounts, it was the biggest mill in Dublin at the time, having some 8 operational water wheels. It supplied arms to, amongst others, the fabulously-titled Royal Manx Regiment of Fencible Infantry.
Luckily, the Taylor map of 1816 still exists (and is free to peruse on the South County Dublin website). The Iron Mills were still in use by this time and are marked. The location, I must say, surprised me as it covered the lands of the Lucan scout den and some of my old primary school! I remember learning about 1798 from Mr. Healy in 4th class – but I’m not sure that anyone realised that the school was built on a potential 1798 site*. However, the waters get a bit muddied when I look at the 1821 Duncan map, which seems to show the Iron Mills on the opposite bank of the Liffey – where Sureweld is based. This makes more sense as it is still an industrial site to this day.
I ramble up through the village from the public health clinic – onetime site of the RIC barracks in Lucan. I try to get a sense of what it must have been like on the night of the raid. Today, as I walk, Lucan is thronging. There is a line of traffic descending into the village in search for non-existent car parking spaces. There are people eating ice-creams on this Sunday morning. There are long lines in search of good coffee. In fact, there are so many people in the village that I begin to wonder if there is an event of which I am unaware. I also quickly think of the €2,000,000 grant that has been given to help develop Lucan’s tourist potential. Where in the name of God are tourists going to fit if they come?!
Today’s glorious hullabaloo, however, makes for a perfect contrast to the night of 25th May 1798. That night, the town would have most likely been completely silent.
The attack would have had to come from the North – about 100 meters down from the bridge over the weir. I walk through the village to approach it – past the Italian Ambassador’s Residence, which would have been the main local seat of empire at the time. George Cummins and his band of rebels would probably have approached Lucan from Clonsilla along the Lower Road trying not to be discovered by the loyal forces that operated in the area. Lucan, indeed, would, in the 19th century, become the headquarters of the Dublin Militia, hinting perhaps that it had a tradition of loyalty to the regime that the 1798 rebellion was trying to overthrow. By the evening of 25th May, Lucan, I imagine, would have fallen under an unsettled silence. It was only two days since the mail coach was attached and destroyed here; only one day since the skirmishes with the two bands of rebels in nearby Esker.
The rebels would have mustered near the bridge. Advance scouts may have tried to understand the site – how many guards were on duty? How busy was the village? Close to 11pm, they struck. Armed with guns, clubs and pikes, they forced their way into the iron works and demanded the keys to Blair’s office. A mill worker, John Lyons, describes Cummins entering the Mills with a sword and taking prisoners until he was told where the weapons were kept. Blair, the Mill Owner, was a member of a local private protection association – an anti-rebel force of sorts. That his weapons would now be taken by the rebels was probably deeply humiliating for him. This would have been exacerbated by the fact that, after the weapons were found and taken, many of the workers from the mills apparently joined with the rebel band and marched on with them to their eventual destinations at Dunboyne and at Tara. Some were also taken prisoner and appear to have been forced to join, including a local 14 year old boy, a John Lunders.
Many of the rebels came to the Mills without weapons. They did, however, not leave empty handed. The party, now substantially armed and carrying extra weapons for the main army back at Tara, would have raced back to the bridge, moved across the Liffey and headed North along what is more or less the same route that connects Lucan with Dunboyne and on to Tara today.
I make my way down the steps at the Lucan scout den, taking a moment to consider the site across the river and what would have stood here 223 years ago. Across the river, the industrial shell of Surewelds doesn’t offer any clues to its past. On this side, I scan over the lands around the scout den and the adjacent school. At the school pitch, behind a net hung to make sure that they don’t lose more than their fair share of GAA regulation-size balls to the river, I see an irregular wall sticking out from the yard wall itself. It looks to be a rubble wall of the kind built in the mid-to-late 18th century around Lucan – it is certainly old enough to be a candidate for a direct link. There is an ‘L’ shaped building marked on the 1816 map at this location. Is this a vestige of it? Did the occupants of this building have a ringside seat for one of the first incidents of the rebellion just across the river?
I walk through a gap in the fence to the river bank, my arrival marked with a guard of honour of nettles reminding me that in the land of the short-wearers the long-trousered man is king. All is peaceful here and the Liffey slowly trundles East. Across the river, a large patch reeds has collapsed over and has formed a platform of about 20 feet by 30 floating atop the water. I count eleven ducks resting upon it, their heads nestling into their feathers, enjoying the cool waters beneath the warm heat of the afternoon.