Creevelea Blast Furnace

There are remains of at least eight charcoal-fired blast furnaces in Ireland, most of them built in the seventeenth century to use charcoal from woodlands, which were felled and cleared rather than managed, although several of the furnaces continued in blast into the second half of the eighteenth century. 

One of the few coke-fuelled ironworks in Ireland was built in 1852 by a Scottish company at Creevelea, near the town of Dromohair, in Co Leitrim in the NW of the Irish Republic. It stood on the site of a charcoal-fuelled furnace built by Charles Coote, Earl of Mountrath (d 1661), that was destroyed during the wars of the 1640s, but revived and worked with charcoal until 1768. The two new blast furnaces, blown by an 80 hp engine, and supplied with ore by a horse tramway, worked for less than five years but were momentarily revived, in 1861-62 using peat as the fuel. During a further revival from 1896 under the Peat Charcoal Fuel & Iron Company of Ireland just one pig of iron was cast, although the company invested capital in an aerial ropeway to transport peat. Parts of the works were demolished to provide road metals in the 1940s but one of the blast furnaces still stands.

Creevelea Blast Furnace
Information: Leitrim Tourist Office
Carrick-on-Shannon
Creevelea
Co Leitrim
Ireland
+353 (0) 71 - 9620170
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