Category : Stories

Sub Category : Historical Fiction

Toar is a stretch of land and bogland in the rural Midlands that is occupied by people who have lived in this lovely quiet part of Ireland for many generations. My own family started here in 1864 when John " the clock " Feery married Essie Donohue, they had seven children, their youngest child Jim was my grandfather. For fifty year's of their lives they lived in a homemade peat hut in the wilds of Ring bog, when they lost their land and cottage to the bigger stronger McCormack family. Despite the hardships of their lives great grandfather lived to be 100yrs old, and grandfather lived till he was 94.
Toar has a long and interesting history for a quiet out of the way Townsland. In the last forty years many new big homes have been built and the government have taken most of the peat from our ancient bogs, were we spent a magical childhood. Back then there was just the old cottages that were built in 1910/12, every summer we used to white wash the outside of the cottage, everyone done it they kept them clean and tidy, but not everyone knows where this started from.
The local Toar house Estate was our close nieghbours, at the end of our boreen, " lane ", you got over a fence and you were on the land of the Estate that was always immaculately kept. At the end of the 1600s English man Charles Pilkington built Toar House and her gardens. Soon after he settled in he noticed many of his Tennant farmer's kept their humble cottages immaculately white. He discovered that the landscape of Toar which all belonged to him, was rich in limestone and the tenant farmer's burned small quantities of it on their farms to produce enough hydrated lime that made the solution that whitewashed the farm house, or cottage.
So seeing it's potential he had the old stone building built on the edge of Bunnykill bog that had the two kilns built into the gable wall like two big ovens, here they burned the limestone in layers of burning peat, it would burn slowly for three to four days. The bog they got a constant supply of turf to keep the fires going and the huge stretches of Estate land was a minutes walk away and all the limestone they needed, it was an instant buisness and work for three men as they sold it by the horse cart load to farmer's for the land, and for the builders to make their mortar. 
Pilkington never partook in the buisness leaving it to the community, and lime was produced here up untill the late 1930s or early 40s.