Stone Buildings and Walls

The remains of my granny's ancestral home built in pre famine times

A friend of mine told the following story recently, ‘Many years ago (circa 1983/4) I visited the Aran Island of Inisheer (the smallest one). I was intrigued watching a man dismantling a stone wall to move a cow from one patch of land to another. In my towny ignorance I enquired, "Would it not save a lot of time to have a gate”.to which he replied, Sure what's your hurry?. I never forgot it. To that man, there was daylight and darkness. No rush needed with dismantling and rebuilding a stretch of wall.

When I heard that story visions of the west of Ireland flashed into my brain. I vividly remembered all the stone walls dividing fields and acting as boundaries along roadsides. Stone walls were part of rural Ireland since the ice age. We have the Burren in County Clare with all those limestone rock formations. Connemara is full of stone walls while we also see them in west and south Kerry.

I visited my granny’s ancestral home which was built with stone in prefamine times. The house and lands were sold but there was a preservation order stipulating that the original stone walls of the house and sheds had to be maintained. We had a family reunion there and it was an emotional tearful scene for the American, Canadian and English relations who visited here for the first time. Some of their ancestors had left these stone walls behind them in 1855 when they headed for Oregon. Cameras went into overdrive.

Post the 1845-1847 famine in Ireland a lot of Irish men emigrated to England and America, and they obtained employment in building and in particular stonework. My grandfather Daniel Callaghan was one of those people.He only stayed there for over and a year and came home to marry Nell O Connel in Ardfert.

I remember doing a tour of St Patricks Cathedral in New York, one of the city’s most iconic landmarks. It was built between 1858 and 1879 while the spires were completed in 1888. I was amazed that this proud edifice of the Catholic Church in America was funded and built by poor Irish immigrants. Many of them were skilled stone masons who had learned the trade at home in Ireland. It was a statement for them that Catholics had arrived in New York, and they were staying there where their monument for Irish Catholics was standing proudly and named after St Patrick, their patron saint.

Likewise in Great Britain Irish stonemasons were in great demand for building some of the great edifices such as The House of Commons. They did a lot of the stone carvings and the structural masonry. Sadly, at that time the Irish workers lived in overcrowded slums and some of them were lowly paid for hauling stone and mixing mortar all day every day.

In building the Palace of Westminster a significant portion of the skilled and unskilled workforce was Irish. They worked long hours, were poorly paid and were discriminated against both socially and economically. The first anti Irish slogans with “No Irish need apply” appeared as early as the 1840.sLater in the post-World War 2 era it was common to see such slogans as “No blacks, No dogs, No Irish need apply. My father lived in London during this period and those prejudiced job notices remained etched in his memory to the day he died,

Irish stone masons were also heavily involved in building the railways. I loved the Pogues 1984 song about Paddy working on the railway which is notable as an historical record of The Irish building workers in England. I quote you one verse.

In 1844, I landed on the Liverpool shoreMy belly was empty, my hands were raw with working on the railway, the railway

I'm sick to my guts of the railway Poor Paddy works on the railway

At home in Ireland, we have many beautiful carved stone buildings especially around the Merrion Square quadrangle in Dublin city. Here we have Dail Eireann, The National Gallery, The National and Natural History Museums and several government departments. Most of the stone for these was carved out by stone masons in Ballyknockan Quarries in County Wicklow and transported to Dublin by horse and cart with each one-ton load taking a day to deliver. Ballyknockan Granite was also used in Amiens Street and Connolly Street Stations, Pearse Street Garda Station, Nelson’s Pillar, the Bank of Ireland in College Green, the Customs House, the Four Courts, and Trinity College.

We also have Wicklow granite in our GPO on O Connell Street, Dublin which was such a central part of our 1916 rising. It has survived and stood the test of time.

Things have changed since then with 45% of monumental granite now coming from China and a further 25% coming from India. I believe some headstones come ready made nowadays with only the inscription to be engraved here in Ireland.

I sent a draft of this piece to my 84-year-old cousin in Connecticut in the USA. He related to me about the Irish stone masons who emigrated there years ago and together with Italian and German stone masons they built many dry-stone walls which are still there today. I recalled a visit to him some years ago and we walked along many of them. It was like home from home seeing all those stone walls.

In 2025 in the USA things are changing.There's another point about stone walls these days:  They now are copied by, definitely, the upper one percent, economically, of the population.  

Another first cousin of mine lives near a modern day "farm", of over a hundred acres, owned by a retired CEO of a company. in Boston  He has done very nice things to the property . The walls are perfectly aligned; built of dry stone; absolutely level on top.  They also are devoid of character, The walls of west Kerry and the Blaskets were built to keep sheep and cows in; they were thrown together, I think, by the men who owned the land and needed to get the job done..  Birds nested in them.  Goats and people climbed over them.  Seventeen year old bold boys talked girls into getting on the other side of them for a while.  That's missing from all these artisan walls.  They have no history. They do not speak of the place and the people.

I wonder will all the glass cages now being constructed along Dublin’s Quays and around the country be as fresh and strong 100 years from now. We will wait and see.