Electricity Comes To Rural Ireland in 1946
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- čas přidán 19. 02. 2024
- On 5 November 1946, the Electricity Supply Board (ESB) embarked on the Rural Electrification Scheme to bring electricity to rural and remote areas of Ireland.
The scheme, known as ‘The Quiet Revolution’ brought huge socio-economic change affecting the working, social and domestic lives of people all over Ireland. The first electricity pole was erected on 5 November 1946 at Kilsallaghan in North County Dublin with the first lights being switched on at Oldtown, also in North Dublin, in January 1947.
Fifty years after rural electrification ‘The Late Late Show’ looks back at this time of change with guests writer Alice Taylor and sports commentator Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh who recall the arrival of electricity in their homes.
Alice Taylor describes life before electricity with oil lamps and candles. Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh says the most dramatic change on domestic life was the amount of light people suddenly had in their homes. He also describes the fear that some people had of being electrocuted.
People were ultra cautious about it but they still welcomed it.
Gay Byrne introduces this segment with a display of early electrical appliances including a toaster, a kettle, a heater, as well as a pre-electric iron, and shows how they worked.
A film from the ESB Archives shows a priest turning on the power somewhere in rural Ireland and providing electricity to the area.
This episode of ‘The Late Late Show’ was broadcast on 1 November 1996. - Zábava
My older friends about 85 years old now, remember farms in Iowa finally getting electricity. Rural areas were the last in the USA to get power. I enjoyed this video, thank you.
That happened about 1945 at my grandparents’ ranch in Idaho. Before that the radio and a few lights were powered by a bank of auto batteries charged by a generator hooked up to the windmill. There was an old fellow in his 90’s in the 1990’s who lived in a canyon who had hooked up turbines hooked to generators in a series of sluices that diverted water from the creek - micro hydroelectric!
I remember an uncle telling me that they still had the horse-drawn fire engine where he lived as a boy, in Kent. It was the twenties, but I'm sure he mentioned they had petrol powered pumps, replacing the old steam boiler. I love the wee hydro power plant, fiddlejohn!
An elderly farmer from the west of Ireland informed me that he and his mother spent a week white washing the interior of there cottage as the new electrick illuminated there dirty walls|.
Aww bless 😊
Excellent, they saw the light
The ESB came to our house in Kildare about the early sixties. I well remember the lads digging the holes for the poles and all the bits of strange looking cable lying around when they were done. There was only one socket and that was for the wireless in the kitchen . A couple of years later my dad came home with a record player and a couple of Jim Reeves records. God knows where he found them. When I bought/ found a copy of Led Zeppelin I drilled a hole from the kitchen to my bedroom so I could play it there because it was a bit noisy I suppose. Happy old times. Thanks for posting.
Ha Ha excellent, No place is a home without Jim Reeves, Led Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy & Rory Gallagher records
When my parents first got electricity in the 1950's, my Mom told me that the first thing she noticed was that she could see every stain in the house. She did not like that she told me.
Unfortunatly leather sole shoes were still widespread then. Brought a lot of folk down to earth, literally!!
My wife remembers it coming to Carlow in 1951
No idea what year my auntie and uncle got electricity, but they were by the canal on the Shannon hydroelectric scheme, so I'd guess early on. It was the mid 1970s before they got piped water, though. I can remember going to the well for drinking water and the downpipes from the gutters terminating in 40 gallon oil barrels for washing water.
Do many or even any houses still have The Sacred Heart lamps?
My late MIL (from Meath) here in the US had one, and a Santo Nino one.
@@fiddlejohn9305 Had to search for a Santo Niño Lamp. Not exactly the same thing, the Irish lamps were red tubular lamps with a cross as the filament.
Thanks for the reply, I've learnt something new.
@@COIcultist I suspect she got the Santo Nino lamp from her brother who was a priest in rural Mexico. She had several Sacred Heart pictures in her house but not a lamp.
I remember when we got our first tv we had to fiddle around with the pole outside and wait for the knock on the window to get a good reception
Remember getting in the light in the mid 50s ....first appliances were a kettle and a heater and an electric Sacred Heart lamp....5 house plugs - one for a radio- and two outside lights!
I remember the first time we got gas light fitted in our home, it was a big move up from the Tilley lamp and as Gay said it was not that long ago because we were young so those types of happenings stay fresh in our minds for evermore, For once in our lives we had on up on the local better off farmer families in our areas as we I recall people coming to our little council cottage just to see how well the gas light worked
I emigrated just as electricity was about to be installed in rural Ireland. Air conditioning, which I had, was very important then in the U.S. and not widespread. My Supervisor did not have any I, just off the boat; (The Mauritania) did; a point of pride on my part, not so much for my Supervisor, who was annoyed by my air-conditioned affluence as a just-arrived emigrant.
I remember being 4 or 5 in the early sixties going to my grand parents in Co Roscommon no electricity or running water. We thought it was great fun lighting the oil lamp at night. The downside was in winter time it was so dark and dreary we were put to bed very early.
They beat some rural Aussies by a few years
My mom living the west of ireland didn't get electricity until the mid 60s
Fab video 🤗
The ESB published an excellent book to celebrate 50 Years of Rural Electrification in Ireland (1990's) - full of interesting facts and funny stories from sourcing the the roadside poles and shipping them from Scandinavia via Irish Shipping to the various ESB teams who roamed the countryside informing the new era and benefit of using electricity. Demonstrating teams would make a pot of tea using boiling water - but some refused to drink it in case they got electrocuted. Another crew returning to their lodgings for the night and passed one house in darkness [where they earlier demonstrated a fitted light], curiously they knocked on the door and asked why they didn't use the new light....only to be told "Sure they only demonstrated that during the day"
👍👍
the end of rural Ireland they just did not know it at the time
It was done on the cheap . 40 amps if you were lucky . Sometimes that was shared .
And we still get plunged into darkness regularly as the wires come off the poles in the wind. Specially in the west where i am . 7 power cuts since January 1st.