Remnants of Ireland’s agricultural past can be found surviving in all corners of the island, none more so than in Wexford’s south west coast where former millstone quarries exist today.
These millstones found their way from these coastal quarries across the country to function in mills to grind cereals for the production of bread.
One quarry that produced these millstones was at Harrylock, on the Hook Peninsula where the evidence of a once thriving industry can still be seen today.
The quarry at Harrylock was where the old red sandstone found there was used to make the millstones.
Research on this topic has been extensively undertaken by Dr. Niall Colfer, a Co. Wexford native.
The old red sandstone millstones, according to Dr. Colfer, had a “grinding surface that did not polish or wear easily, but maintained a coarse working face that aided the cutting of the cereal”.
Dr. Colfer detailed the area of Harrylock, stating that it was an area that “farmers and fishermen had acquired a skill in working stone that was passed on through generations and then applied to millstone manufacture”.
It was regarded as “more than simply occasional work, but a vital source of employment during the mid-17th to mid-19th centuries”.
It was an industry that was deemed a “viable…alternative to fishing and farming” for locals due to the “decline in the size of landholdings”.
These stonemasons were found in a farm house cluster overlooking the cliffs at Harrylock millstone quarry, where the occupants of the cluster also farmed in dispersed plots of land in the surrounding fields.
To cut out a millstone, Dr. Colfer explained that a double-ended handpick was used to quarry a circular trench around the selected piece of sandstone, which was marked using a compass with one point placed in a small hole created in the centre point of the intended millstone.
The trench was cut roughly twice the depth of the intended millstone.
Triangular wedge pits were made under the intended millstone, into which wooden pegs were inserted.
The incoming tide or water poured into the trench caused the pegs to swell and the resulting pressure split the rough-out millstone from the underlying bedrock, leaving the circular remains of the trench or ‘dish’, with the wedge pits and ‘scar’ of the removed preform.
The millstones could then be transported by boat directly from the place of manufacture, thereby removing the cost of moving the millstone by land.
With more modern techniques being used for milling grain becoming widespread in the 19th century, coastal quarries began to decline.
Today, these marks left from where the millstones were cut centuries ago are still present to remind us of the skills that were passed down through generations of farmers and labourers who learned stonemasonry.
It is an aspect of Ireland’s agricultural past that can still be found where the many millstones shipped around the country survive today, and particularly at those quarries such as Harrylock where these essential tools of food production were made, and their impressions still evident on the coastline to this day.