Mayo memories: A fire crane, saving turf and homemade butter

By Tom Gillespie

I REALLY feel sorry for our younger generation who will no longer have the luxury of experiencing the pleasures of an open fire in their homes - something that was highlighted following Storm Éowyn in January.

Such a comfort is now outlawed in all new builds and fireplace-less homes are now, sadly, the new norm.

What would our ancestors think?

They grew up with large open kitchen fires being their only means of cooking and heating.

Their lives revolved around them and they were innovative in how they utilised the fires, with turf being the fuel of choice, when they had no other.

While we lived in the town I had several country cousins who I visited regularly and I was always intrigued with the ingenious, practical and effective ways they depended on the fire. One could say they had fire-proofed the art.

The fireplace photograph above will be alien to younger readers who would not have seen an old-fashioned open fire with a crane and all the skillet pots that were used for daily cooking.

The main cooking utensil was the iron skillet pot. It would either swing from the hook of a hanger or stand down in the ashes. There were also skillets of brass or bronze which appear to have been cast in one piece.

They were thick and heavy and look as if they would wear and endure for ever. In fact, a great many more of these would have been still in existence but that in Jacobean times a quantity were called in and melted down for bronze coinage.

A later form of skillet was made of wrought brass, much thinner. This kind had a projecting rim, the brass being brought over a wired edge, and they dropped into iron holders on three legs.

Large brass cauldrons were used for heating milk in cheese making. Iron trivets, on which any cooking pot could be stood, or anything placed to keep warm, were in many good patterns.

Frying pans had handles that were very long, sometimes as much as three-and-half feet.

Chimney cranes, also known as fireplace cranes and pot cranes, were a feature of the homes of the American Colonial period and 18/19th century western Europe.

Although the chimney crane may be thought to be a Yankee invention, in was common in both Irish, British and American homes of the era.

The purpose of the crane was to allow a cooking pot to be swung away from the fire, preventing burn injuries to the cook as well as regulating temperature of the pot.

The chimney crane was an important step in open hearth cooking as it allowed cooks to be more creative.

For centuries before the iron crane was introduced, Colonial and European fireplaces used a chain that hung from a green wooden chimney lug pole, with a fixed iron pole directly over the fire.

The chimney crane, by contrast, was bolted to the wall and was hinged in order to swing easily. Numerous pots, kettles and other items could be hung on the crane to simmer and cook over the flames.

In the simplest cottages the usual cooking utensil was the three-legged iron pot. It could either stand in the hot ashes on its three short legs or hang by the swinging handle.

I can still vividly recall visiting my grandmother, Katherine Gillespie, in Creagh Villa - now the Lough Lannagh Holiday Village - on the Westport Road in Castlebar. It would have been in the mid '50s. She had a large open fire in the breakfast room. There she baked her brown bread, placing it in a three-legged skillet with a lid.

This was placed on the burning turf, with red hot cinders covering the lid.

Nearby was a butter churn and we all took turns, as children, in churning the ‘country butter’. When the brown bread was cooked, it was roughly sliced and coated in butter - delicious.

The country butter was a lot saltier and had a different taste to what is available today. It was all homemade and was a staple diet in all country homes.

Likewise, households had their own chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys. In Creagh Villa there was an ageing cock who had an aversion to women and would fly at any females that approached the house. I remember my mother running down the orchard with the cock in full pursuit.

Eventually, when the cock was killed for the table, he was given to my mother. However, when he was plucked his carcass was so black and blue from all the kicks and blows he had received from the those he chased that he was only fit for dog food.

Cousins I visited in Ross, likewise, had a large fireplace, and again the brown bread was a speciality.

All these households had their own turf supplies. But a day in the bog was anything but pleasurable. It was hard, back-breaking work, but in the end rewarding.

Those few left, who still save turf today, have the convenience of having it cut and spread by a hopper. Back then turf was cut using a two-sided spade called a sleán. Then it had to be turned, footed, and when seasoned moved out to the road for transportation home.

My uncle, blacksmith Denny Fahey, had a forge at Newantrim Street in Castlebar. In the 1960s when demand for the shoeing of horses fell off, Denny, diversified and manufactured hand-made sleáns, which he sold countrywide.

By a strange coincidence, prior to the opening of the Museum of Country Life in Turlough, villagers in the area were invited by Mayo County Council to visit the former reformatory school in Daingean in Co. Offaly, where artefacts destined for Turlough were housed.

I accompanied the group and during a a walkabout through the thousands of article stored there, I came across a sleán made by Denny. I wonder where it is today?