5. Famine Roads : Brown Mountain Diamond

6 mins HD stereo

Famine Roads 6

2021

. . .

The New Line is the name of the road running outside the house, it is about 20km in length and we are on a crossroads at its centre. I am told that it is a Famine Road, that it was commissioned by Oliver Crowell. It is a single lane, unmarked, tarmac roadway that runs from the main entrance of the colonial estate in Castlecomer. The estate of some 20,000 acres was granted to Lord Christopher Wandesforde and operated by his subsequent family generations. The New Line goes from here to the village of Paulstown, a 20min drive from end to end through the hills and mountains. Between the years of 1845-1852 Irish people were being starved to death, a million died. Work houses and manual labour projects exchanged food with those starving for their work on infrastructural building projects like the building of this road, coal mining or stone cutting. They say that the road is built on the bones of the people who built it.

And this was not even 200 years ago.

The New Line.

. . .