STEP BACK IN TIME
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STEP BACK IN TIME
Click Here to Contact me Jennifer Walsh
or Click
Here to view slideshow's of my photo's
Feel free to view or sign my guest book or guest map
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SEAWEED HARVESTING IN ASKEATON & BALLYSTEEN BY MICHAEL D. RYAN
Seaweed was vital resource in coastal and estuarial areas all down the centuries. even up to less than fifty years ago, seaweed was a much valued ingredient for renewing the fertility of the land especially for potatoes. in the 1940's you could see great piles of the dark weed piled on the green and being drawn away by farmers. along the shore in Ballysteen the seaweed rights were very clearly marked and jealously guarded. there are many stories of askeaton boatmen making raids on the Ballysteen seaweed plots and there was little resistance to such raids. there were also drowning tragedies relating to seaweed gathering. a stories appeared in the 'Clare champion' the first issue of 4th march 1977 relating to an incident in 1887, and the stories read; shot over seaweed rights three askeaton men were shot while taking seaweed on the shore near kiladysart pier last Wednesday, one hundred years ago. the men who were shot in the back and hands, were severely wounded. it is understood that the incident arose out of a dispute over seaweed rights. three respectable local farmers were arrested and much excitement prevailed in the district. it appears that a group of five men from askeaton crossed the Shannon, a distance of about nine miles, in a boat on the shore near Kiladysart. the site was on the estate of Cahercon, the property at that time of Colonel Charles White, Lieutenant of Clare. the men , having arrived, soon set to work but they were observed by the owner who was engaged on some business on his farm. he came up and asked them to stop cutting the seaweed, they bluntly refused and continued with their work. the owner made off to a neighboring house and found a gun and having returned he again asked them to leave, it is alleged his brother took the gun and fired it at the men wounding three of them, the others were incensed and they pursued the perpetrators to the house where the gun was obtained. there the door was bolted and the askeaton men who had their seaweed knives drawn, were kept at bay. many years before a similar incident occurred in the same area, which resulted in a death. today the seaweed they fought for and literally died for is piled high on the rocks, or washed out to sea by storms, nether used of wanted. Irish seaweed industry website
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