 |
Most property in Rossnowlagh-Coolmore destroyed in
Night of the Big Wind
210,021
Hits worldwide on Ballyshannon Musings .com since it started in 2012.
Thanks to all who have followed it including the new viewers on Facebook. I
will publish the top ten most popular blogs of all time on Facebook in the next
10 days. See if any you liked made the list. Number one and most popular is
“The Night of the Big Wind”. No.2 will follow tomorrow.
|
This was Ireland’s most
famous storm and locally it did a lot of damage in the Ballyshannon, Bundoran
and Rossnowlagh areas. After a calm day on Sunday 6th January 1839
which was dull, cold, with snow showers, the winds started to pick up on Sunday
evening. A westerly gale got stronger by midnight and there were hurricane
force winds between 2 and 4 o’clock on Monday morning. As the storm took place
in darkness it was more frightening for local people. Nationwide the depression and the hurricane force winds
were raging until things started to calm down around 5 a.m. Oíche na Gaoithe
Móire as it was called in Irish was used as a point of reference in 1909 when
the old age pension was introduced. People who could prove they were over the
age of 70 were entitled to a yearly pension of £13. Many people had no written
evidence of their age as record keeping was not always the best. If a person
could prove that they remembered or were around on the Night of the Big Wind
then they got the pension. In the Ballyshannon area the frightening cholera
epidemic raged in 1832, followed by the destruction to property caused by the
Great Wind in 1839 and the 1840s brought the Great Famine. Small wonder that
people at the time felt that the end of the world was near. Two of the churches
in Ballyshannon, St. Anne’s and St. Patrick’s had to be rebuilt as a result of
the storm. Surviving records only focus on buildings like churches but the
damage to private property and agriculture was also very severe. In Bundoran the bathing boxes were nearly all blown down or unroofed. Several private residences were also severely damaged. The “The Derry Journal” gave a report on local conditions:
We have not heard of any lives (man or beast) being lost in the town. The country was not so fortunate----several families buried beneath the ruins of their dwellings. Along the sea coast the destruction of property is melancholy.
 |
| Bathing boxes destroyed at Bundoran in Night of the Big Wind |
St. Anne’s Church on Mullaghnashee had to be replaced
This church stands on the
highest ground in Ballyshannon, overlooking the channel from which the hurricane
force winds battered the building. The building was so badly damaged that it
was beyond repair. Curiously the only part of the church that was salvaged was
the tower (on which there is a clock today). The tower belongs to the earlier
church which had been built in 1735. Church services had to be held elsewhere
as the huge task of building a new church began. The new church was built
speedily by 1841 at a cost of roughly £3,500.
This new building was attached to the original tower, but the new
building was wider than the building destroyed on the Night of the Big Wind.
This meant that some tombstones had to be removed and a visit to the inside of
the church today, reveals two plaques on the south facing wall which refer to
this. A plaque to the Allingham family and one to the Major family who would
have resided at Camlin, mentions that the people named were buried underneath
the new church walls.
 |
St. Anne's Church (left) and St. Patrick's Church (right) had to be rebuilt. They are
the two highest buildings at the top of this painting by Maud Allingham
|
St.
Patrick’s Church had to be rebuilt
The roof of St. Patrick’s
Church on Chapel Street was very badly damaged and this church was rebuilt with
the foundation stone laid in 1842 by Rt. Rev. Dr. McGettigan, three years after
the Night of the Big Wind. Daniel Campbell from Pettigo built the new church at
a cost of £1,380 with additional costs to window glazers and other
sub-contractors. Amongst the fund-raising for the new church was the visit to
“The Big Meadow” by Fr. Matthew the great Temperance crusader who drew an
estimate crowd of 20,000 to the church and “The Big Meadow”. Even before the
Night of the Big Wind, Fr. Cummins P.P. had started to fundraise to rebuild the
church which had been built on the site in 1795. The church was in a poor state
and undoubtedly the Night of the Big Wind made matters worse and speeded up the
building of the present church.
St.
Joseph’s Church Damaged/The Methodist Preaching House on the Mall damaged
St. Joseph’s Church on
the Rock which had only been built in 1835 suffered much damage and this must
have been disheartening to the congregation as they had raised funds for the
new building just four years earlier. All this destruction and rebuilding came
just as the Great Famine was about to begin in 1844. The present Methodist
Church on the Mall (now houses a veterinary practise) was built in 1899 and so
the building damaged on The Night of the Big Wind, the Methodist Preaching
House on the Mall , was an earlier building.
 |
St. Joseph's Church was only built 4 years when it was badly
damaged in the Night of the Big Wind
|
On the sandbanks at the
bar in Ballyshannon, because of the great movement of sand, the banks were the
lowest they had ever been. Boats could now pass to areas where the tide had not
reached before. Indeed boats could reach areas a half a mile from where they
had ever been before. The shifting of sand saw immense volumes blown nearly two
miles up to the town of Ballyshannon. Cartloads of sand could be gathered in
the immediate vicinity of the town. At Bundoran the bathing boxes were nearly
all blown down or unroofed. In the
countryside any hay or grain was destroyed and this led to a crisis in fodder
for animals and anxiety over how people would survive.
The sea rose to
such a height from Bundoran to Rossnowlagh and Coolmore that people did feel
that the end was nigh. Houses and barns were torn down and in the Rossnowlagh-Coolmore areas there was scarcely
a house left standing. Local people in Bundoran, Rossnowlagh and Ballyshannon feared that the hurricane was a sign that the end of the world was near. This was a natural enough reaction to the fiercest storm in living memory and the fears of people who found it hard to understand.
Read about local events in the 1918 Election, the War of Independence, the Civil War and the Boundary Commission which established the border in Ballyshannon Genealogy and History. Also includes lots of local history on Kilbarron and Magh Ene areas.
A Local History book available in a quality limited hardback edition with dustcover as above in : A Novel Idea Bookshop Ballyshannon, Local Hands and Four Master's Bookshop Donegal Town and for postal delivery contact the author anthonyrbegley@hotmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment