Building Ireland (2017) - full transcript

Dublin Airport is our bridge

to the world

and the busiest place

in the country.

Millions of passengers arrive

and depart here every year.

And right at the heart

of this vast complex

is an 80-year-old modernist gem,

the original Dublin Airport

Terminal Building.

This building is all about

modernity, confidence.

It's a landmark in the history

of Irish aviation

and in the story of

Building Ireland.

(INSTRUMENTAL INTRO MUSIC)

(VO) "In this series,

our team of experts in architecture,

engineering and geography explores

the most amazing stories

of Ireland's building

and engineering heritage.

And in this episode,

we'll discover how Dublin Airport

Terminal became a cultural icon."

Subtitles By

©AMC.Karl63

(VO) "Island nations need

to connect.

In the 20th century, Ireland made

its mark in the development

of the global airline industry.

And an airport would become a

gateway to the outside world."

But what was built in Dublin

wasn't just any airport;

it was a brave, modernist statement

that echoed in a new design ethos

of functionalism, glamour

and dynamism.

(VO) "A building design

of this importance

is bound to have international

influences.

Architectural historian Ellen Rowley

is going to investigate."

What we see here is an openness

to new ideas in modern architecture

driven by clear and simple

principles.

In the 1930s, this building led

a revolution in Irish architecture.

(VO) "Engineer Tim Joyce

is discovering the complicated

mechanical systems at the heart

of a modern airport terminal."

Beneath the striking facade of

Terminal 2 is a complex building

full of clever engineering

and interconnected systems,

geared to process millions

of people, passengers

and all their pieces of luggage.

(VO) "Progress in the development

of air travel is astounding.

Airlines emerged in the 1920s

and daily flights were scheduled

between cities.

By the 1930s, intercontinental air

services had really taken off

and long-haul flights were making

the world a smaller place."

As transatlantic aviation became

a reality,

it was clear that Ireland was going

to have to play a key role;

both to facilitate refuelling

and to keep the journey as short

as possible.

Planes going in either direction

would have to stopover.

(VO) "In 1935, an international

agreement enshrined Ireland

as a key stopover in the emerging

transatlantic airline business.

The airlines and the plane

manufacturers insisted

that landing on runways offered

the most flexibility

and potential for growth."

A Pan Am delegation came to Dublin

in 1936

and their chef technical advisor

Charles Lindbergh

bluntly told the government that

they needed a runway in Ireland

by the following year.

The government was suddenly

under pressure

to build the State's first

international airport.

(VO) "Luckily, the young

Minister for Industry and Commerce,

Seán Lemass, was a fan

of aeroplanes,

and he pushed to make it happen.

The right site was essential.

Shannon in County Clare couldn't

build runways in time

and so attention turned to Dublin.

Sites were considered

at the Phoenix Park

and on reclaimed land

at Sandymount Strand.

But Collinstown north of the city

offered the best option.

It had even been a military air base

during World War I.

To get a sense of the size

of the Collinstown site

and why it was chosen, Dave Allen

from DAA Ground Operations

is going to show me around."

This would have been quite remote

from the city.

Do you think it was the best choice

of airfield?

I suppose it's good that there was

a lot of space here.

Originally when it was built,

it was on over 700 acres.

And as you look around today,

it's on a hell of a lot more than

that now.

It's also important that the terrain

is fairly flat,

well away from mountains and

that type of thing as well.

So there has to be good sightlines,

particularly from air traffic

control,

so that they can see all

the aprons, taxiways and runways.

Because, as you see today,

there's a lot of aircraft

manoeuvring all around

at the same time.

Yeah. So, thinking that 80 years

ago, that the choice of location

was actually well-made for

a 21st century airport as well.

I think it is, obviously,

because the city has come

out towards us.

So if we'd been any closer to

the city back then,

we would have been right in

the middle of the city.

And then you have the noise issues.

Ground Ops 4.

(MUFFLED CHATTER OVER RADIO)

Copy that. Ground Operations 4

is now vacated back onto 121.

I'm out of your hair there

and thanks for your help.

(VO) "The job of constructing

the airport terminal was handed

to the Office of Public Works

and their team of architects faced

a blank page.

Architectural historian Ellen Rowley

investigates the influences

of the day that helped to shape this

iconic building."

(ELLEN) "When the OPW went looking

for a chief architect

for the project, a 26-year-old

put up his hand.

He was Desmond FitzGerald,

the older brother of former

Taoiseach Garrett FitzGerald.

And by chance, Desmond had designed

an airport

as part of his college thesis

two years previously.

So he was very familiar

with modernism -

that hugely influential style of

architecture from the time."

This building has many modernist

elements,

like this uninterrupted space.

Or the visible skeleton structure

which frees up the facade.

And the expanses of glazing bringing

in an abundance of natural light.

Its curved or curving form, draw

and move the traveller in.

And movement and flow continue

to underpin

the experience of the building

once inside.

(ELLEN) "The 1930s saw the

blossoming of a whole new philosophy

of design, and a new movement

in architecture -

the International Style.

Its most famous advocate was

a Swiss-French architect,

Charles-EÉouard Jeanneret,

universally known as Le Corbusier.

This architecture prominently

featured steel and glass

and white rendered concrete."

The curved terrace is a key feature

of early modernist architecture.

It is an inside-out room where flat

roofs become useful and monumental.

Here at the airport terminal

building, curved terraces become

viewing platforms to share

in the excitement of the airfield.

(ELLEN) "Earlier architectural

styles were all about

applied decorative detail

to surfaces -

decoration around doorframes,

decoration around windows.

But here, it's the shape and

structure of the building itself

that matters.

The architects are designing

a building to serve a purpose,

but they give it artistic flair too.

This is the marriage of form

and function -

a key characteristic of

the International Style.

Shane O'Toole writes about

architecture.

We met up to discuss what was so

revolutionary about this building."

Internally the expression

of the building is about the future.

It's about a future that is far away

from the grimy, smut-cloaked

19th century slums of Ireland.

It's white, it's spotless,

it's hygienic, it's clean.

It's a brave new world.

And the white is saying that

the minute you walk in.

What image does this building

inscribe upon the visitor?

This building was described as a

liner by one of the first passengers

to fly in from England, because

people were out on the balconies

like passengers out on the decks

of ship liners.

And remember Le Corbusier had used

ships

as an important metaphor

for modern architecture.

And that placed, for the first time,

an Irish building

at the heart of international

modernism.

And it's incredible that

it's being designed in 1937.

It's finished by 1941.

And you have to think Desmond

FitzGerald, the lead architect,

is only 30 that year.

Yeah, wow!

These are kids.

I mean nobody in their 20s would be

given the opportunity to design

a building of such national

and international significance

in Ireland today.

It was a brave new world where youth

was been given its head,

but understandably so,

because only 20 years earlier,

the revolutionaries themselves

had been kids.

So these people had forged a state

in their 20s.

Why couldn't you give your best

young architects in their 20s

and 30s the most important building

in the State to design?

Because it has to be new.

It has to be international.

And these are the people who will

have the vision for the future.

These young men and women -

give it to them.

(VO) "There was certainly a lot

at stake with this project.

It was the first high-profile

airport building

ever attempted in Ireland

and the OPW design team

led by Desmond Fitzgerald were under

pressure to get it built.

The design specification -

what the building needed to do -

had to be worked out. And the design

itself would have to be special."

So what was finally commissioned

was this,

the original Dublin Airport Terminal

Building.

And you can see from the original

design drawings,

from these elevations, that there's

a crispness of detailing

and lightness of touch.

And you see that in the building

itself that the light

actually reflects off the glassiness

of the building

and gives it a transparency.

The public have access to the ground

floor and then vertically up

through these terraces so they would

have been packed with people.

Making this feel like a really

welcoming building.

(VO) "As so often happens on big

construction projects,

the design specification changed.

What was originally planned

as three storeys

was now to be a four storey

building.

But the curved shape and curtain

wall glazing was retained.

From above, the rounded ends

of the plan resemble wings,

the design responds to the shape of

the aeroplanes themselves."

The shape and form of any building

defines its character

and this building is very much

informed by its curved shape.

But it wasn't just a design

flourish.

Instead it was an inspirational

development,

not of an architect

but by a French naval aviator.

(VO) "Albert-Bernard Duval

realised that airport layouts

would be more efficient if planes

could get close to the building.

and more planes could get closer

if the shape was long and curved.

This "Duval Plan" is evident

in scores of airports

built across the world during the

late 1920s and 30s.

It was clearly on the radar of

Desmond FitzGerald and the OPW Team.

They consulted international

architecture journals,

airports and airlines,

as the terminal at Dublin is a

perfect example of the Duval Plan."

The shape of the building very

clearly illustrates

the logic of air travel.

But it also had to be functional.

And these plans illustrate exactly

how the function worked.

On the ground floor you had

the public areas

where the public arrived into

the building

and travelled out to their

aeroplanes.

And then increasingly as you move up

the building,

it becomes more managerial,

organisational.

The Met Office is on the second

floor,

all the way up to the air traffic

control on the roof.

This was an efficient elegant

design,

and prototypical for the new

industry of international aviation.

(VO) "Construction of the terminal

was more or less complete by 1940,

but the escalation of war in Europe,

or the Emergency in Ireland,

changed everything.

Dublin's brand new state-of-the-art

airport terminal was put on hold.

Three of the four grass runways

were ploughed up

to grow food during the war years."

Normally a building as unique

as this would be published

and circulated in architectural

journals upon completion.

Drawings and photographs of Dublin

Airport however were prohibited

from publication, out of concerns

for national security.

(VO) "And so, this innovative

building stayed out

of the architectural limelight

until after the War,

by which time it was already

6 years old.

Engineer Tim Joyce is over

in Terminal 2

investigating a particular challenge

for modern airports.

When thousands of passengers travel,

they bring thousands of items

of luggage."

The Baggage Handling System

stretches out across

nine football pitches, has more

than six kilometres of conveyors

driven by 1,476 motors.

When you take a plane from

Terminal 2,

your luggage also takes a trip

and it's a fascinating one.

(TIM) "At the turn of the

millennium,

Dublin Airport was bursting

at the seams.

The Dublin Airport Authority took

a decision to double capacity

and build Terminal 2 to handle

15 million passengers a year.

Not only was this the largest

construction project

in the history of the State,

but it had to be completed on a site

that was still functioning

as an airport -

the engineering equivalent

of open-heart surgery."

This building design faced

significant challenges.

One of the first systems that had

to be re-imagined

was the traffic layout

for the entire airport.

Usually you could move a building to

run a road through.

That was not an option for

the country's busiest airport!

(TIM) "Terminal 2 has many systems

engineered to do specific jobs,

and they work like the organs

of a body.

Whether electrical or plumbing,

200 interdependent systems run

the building."

Moving vast volumes of passengers

through Terminal 2 also requires

moving vast volumes of air

as efficiently as possible.

(TIM) "The public areas are designed

to accommodate

thousands of passengers every hour.

They stop at counters, they sit,

they eat, they stand around,

but nobody lives here.

This building is designed to keep

people moving."

And of course the problem of moving

people and passengers

around the 60,000 square meters

of Terminal 2

also needed clever engineering.

To make the best use of this

floor space.

(TIM) "I want to find out more about

the baggage system.

In a building this big, with so many

different check-in desks,

we all worry if our one bag is going

to get lost."

Moving millions of passengers

requires moving millions of pieces

of luggage and the solution

is a spectacular piece

of systems engineering.

I'm checking in to check out

just what happens to your bag.

Hello!

Hi! I want to check in one bag

please.

(TIM) "Luggage is directed from

check-in along a 6 kilometre network

of conveyor belts to collection

areas and then onto the aircraft.

Every item is bar-coded

and the system tracks

every piece individually,

calculating the most efficient route

to get each bag to its destination

on time.

Billy Ennis is bringing me

backstage to get a better view."

Well, Tim, all the bags come through

the central point from check-in.

They're going to come in through

the very centre

of the operation here, and turn left

onto this line.

When they come to this point,

the bags are scanned.

I think there's your bag there. Tim.

Yeah, that's mine.

So that bag is going to be actually

scanned and what happens now

is that it has to go through

the security process

and go into the X-ray machine there.

(TIM) "The bags go on a rip-roaring

journey, heading in all directions,

swerving up, down, left and right

at speed.

I wasn't surprised to learn that

the computer system

controlling all this, is the same

technology used on rollercoasters."

It can handle multiple sizes of bags

here.

You have out of gauge lines that

will handle the bags

that are too big to go in

our normal lines.

(TIM) "We're heading for the

automated sorter.

It's a busy motorway interchange

for luggage.

Each item has its own tray,

so the system knows its exact

position at any time.

Billy claims luggage won't get

lost."

Well, what we're looking at here

behind us is

what we call our tilt-tray sorter.

And it's the heart of the baggage

system.

This machine can handle up

to 4,000 bags an hour

when we're at our busiest period,

which is typically in our summer

period.

So when the bag is delivered onto

this sorter,

the bag is put on a tray.

The computer on the sorter then

takes over once that bag is read

by our scanning system

on the sorter.

And that's where the real

intelligence starts.

It tells that tray that that bag

is on, that's your bag.

It's now unique.

I know what flight it's going on.

I know what carousel and what

customer or airline

to deliver to downstairs.

This machine is a finely tuned piece

of apparatus that will deliver

your bags from check-in to the point

of collection by the operator

or the airline in less than

7 minutes on average,

which is pretty impressive.

(VO0 "In 1949, less than a decade

after it opened,

Dublin Airport Terminal was already

dealing with twice the number

of passengers that it was designed

for.

In its design, the building has

the shape and aura

of a majestic ocean liner.

There's no doubt that this building

evokes the excitement

and sophistication that has always

been associated

with international travel."

The sweeping curves and floating

balconies reinforce the theme

of dynamics in the building.

But it's in the detail and materials

that we really see the idea

of travel as glamorous and

luxurious.

The check-in counters were made of

walnut and sycamore.

And these staircases were lined

with travertine marble

with bronze balustrades

and topped off with these lovely

timber handrails.

(VO) "Everything about the building

here suggests quality.

The backroom offices were timber

panelled

but the public areas were really

designed to impress.

There were bars and restaurants

located here, and even a ballroom.

The airport became a go-to

destination for special nights out

and was a fashionable wedding venue

for Dublin's jet-setting socialites.

I met design historian Linda King to

find out more."

So we're here in the ballroom, Orla,

as you know,

which was meant to be a magnificent

space.

Apparently it had an amazing

sprung floor for dancing

and just down the corridor

you would have had the restaurant,

which was run by Johnny Oppermann.

One of the best examples of how

luxurious this was as a space

and as a destination.

If you look at the menu here

and just see...

This menu is from the late '50s,

early '60s.

It's very French, a lot of butter,

a lot a cream.

But there are dishes like

Sole Aer Lingus,

which is the same as Sole Bonne

Femme but with tomato and lobster.

Wow!

Which sounds interesting!

You know, if you wanted to really

impress somebody,

you brought them to the restaurant

at the airport.

So it's a very different concept

to what we would understand about

airports today.

The original design conceived of

more than just the bricks and mortar

of the building. Can you tell me

a little bit about that?

The building is an example of what

we call Gesamtkunstwerk,

which was this German word

that was in circulation

in the late 19th, early 20th

century,

used by a lot of the modern

movements.

It was about designing

a building,

but everything within the building,

doorknobs or furniture or whatever,

you actually thought about the whole

thing from the outset.

So Dublin Airport would be a really

good example of that.

As you've seen, there's some

magnificent details

with the staircases and the marble

and the use of brass.

And why was that important?

I think it's important with a lot

of the early infrastructural

projects of the Free State

that they were landmark buildings

designed to give a message

to the outside world about Irish

progress and modernisation.

And they were also a message to

the population as well,

as to Ireland's independence,

Ireland moving forward.

So in terms of cultural identity,

what do you think the intention

behind the building,

the language of the building

is trying to say?

It was speaking to an Ireland that

had yet to emerge,

creating an infrastructure

that would be more used by future

generations.

I mean, very few people were

travelling

up until the 1950s and 1960s.

So it was very much aspirational.

And it was very much about Ireland's

new place in the world

as a sovereign state.

When countries typically got

independence in the 20th century,

one the first thing they did was

found an airline

because it was such a symbol

of sovereignty

and it was a connection

with the outside world.

And the airports that supported

the aircraft

were very much part of that.

(VO) "For generations,

Dublin Airport has been

one of the most visited places

in the country.

Today, 32 million passengers

pass through it.

The original terminal building

still stands proud

in the middle of the airport,

engulfed by an enormous contemporary

complex.

And yet, its splendour still catches

the eye."

Dublin Airport became a symbol of

Ireland's confidence, independence

and modernity reflecting

the aspirations

of a developing island nation.

Iconic and beautiful in its form,

the terminal building helped build

an image of this nation

as fundamentally modern

and outward looking.

In the world of air travel,

the original Dublin Airport Terminal

Building helped put us on the map.

(VO "Next time on Building Ireland,

engineer Tim Joyce

is on Valentia Island."

The era of instant communication

had arrived

with the electric telegraph

and the rat-a-tat of Morse code.

(TIM) "Brian McManus is

investigating the science

of undersea cables

and Orla Murphy is exploring

the Valentia Telegraph Station."

In the middle of the 19th century,

it took two weeks for news

and information to cross

the wild Atlantic.

However on land the era of

instant communication had arrived

with the electric telegraph

and the rat tat tat of Morse code.

But you would have to cross

the oceans to wire up the world.

(TIM) "Everyone knew that connecting

Europe to North America

with a telegraph line would

transform both continents."

This island, Valentia, just off

the coast of Kerry was a hub

in the extraordinary scientific

and engineering effort to lay

the world's longest telegraph cable;

vital in creating a global economy

and in the story of

Building Ireland.

(VO) "In this series, our team of

experts in architecture, engineering

and geography is exploring the most

amazing stories of Ireland's

building and engineering heritage.

And this time, we've come

to discover how the first

transatlantic telegraph cable

got connected to Valentia.

The electric telegraph was the first

commercial application

of electricity.

The speed and convenience

of messaging changed everything

and a telecommunications industry

was born."

The wires of the electric telegraph

spread like ivy across

the continents.

The Victorian used terms like

"creating a network"

and a "web of communications",

inventing the language of electronic

communications we use today.

(VO) "Cities and countries

had telegraphic links

but linking continents was

the ultimate goal.

Engineer Brian McManus

is investigating

how they got messages across

the oceans."

Sending an electric current

underwater

is a difficult engineering

challenge.

But you can do it if you use

the right kind of cable.

Using the wrong one only leads

to failure

and disaster is a big part

of this story.

(VO) "With the technology up

and running,

a cable station complex

had to be built on Valentia.

Architect Orla Murphy is discovering

more about the buildings

and community that kept

the telegraph humming."

I'm here to explore how architecture

met the brief to accommodate

high-tech workers in one of the most

remote parts of Ireland.

(VO) "Before the arrival of

the telegraph,

electricity was just a novelty

party trick.

But scientists were intrigued

by the potential of this exciting

form of energy."

When scientists and engineers began

experimenting with electricity

at the beginning of the

19th century,

they had loads of ideas that opened

up new technologies.

Electricity was going to change

everything,

and it was going to change

communications

in the most profound way.

(Vo) "Samuel Morse and his practical

coding system helped drive

the expansion of the telegraph

to thousands of cities.

With undersea cables, Valentia would

become a globally significant hub.

Derek Cassidy is a marine telecoms

engineer

and telecoms heritage enthusiast.

He's keen to show me his latest find

as he goes to secure a late

Victorian undersea cable."

Actually here it is here.

I found it the other night.

It's a nice one.

Let's go down and have a look.

See what we see.

The cable development comes

from 1845.

Henry Bewley,

an actual Dublin chemist,

came up with the idea of extruding

gutta percha,

a type of natural rubber insulation,

over copper.

Gutta percha insulates copper

from water.

It's brilliant for sub-cables.

Because before that they had no real

way of making long lengths

of copper wire covered with

gutta percha.

That feat alone opened up

the world to sub-cables.

So the best thing for me to do

is get a piece here and I'll begin

to cut.

(VO) "Getting the right blend

of rubber-like gutta percha

as insulation and the right

protective covering

was no simple task.

If the cable was too heavy,

it would break,

and if it was too light,

it would float."

Right there you go. Through.

Are you ready?

Yeah.

Right, there you go.

There's the cable.

OK, why is it twisted?

It's twisted in such a way that

if it gets any damage

it'll actually tighten. If it's

turned it'll tighten.

Basically, you're allowed to

actually bend the cable.

So if it tightens it gets stronger.

It does yes. And the basic concept

of submarine cables hasn't changed.

They have the armouring,

the insulation and the core.

Very good.

(VO) "Plans for a transatlantic

cable were first hatched in 1854,

when an American entrepreneur

Cyrus Field

believed that the technology

was ready.

A recent survey of the Atlantic

Ocean's sea bed

gave him additional confidence.

The discovery of a natural plateau

or shelf on which

a prospective cable could be laid

meant that the most eastern part

of Newfoundland could link with

the extreme southwest of Ireland.

In July 1857, a cable-laying

expedition of ships

assembled in Valentia Bay and took

delivery of the 2,000 nautical miles

of cable needed for

the transatlantic project."

No ship could carry such

a weighty cable.

So half of it went on

the USS Niagara

and the rest on HMS Agamemnon.

(VO) "The Niagara set sail spooling

out its half of the cable,

and then in mid-Atlantic,

the Agamemnon's cable

would be spliced on and it would

complete the journey.

After just a few days,

the cable snapped

and disappeared into the deep."

A second expedition began

in June 1858.

This time, to speed things up,

the two ships began laying the cable

from the mid-Atlantic and headed off

in opposite directions.

Twice the cable broke

and twice they sailed back to pick

it up and start again.

But when the cable broke

the third time,

they had to head back to Ireland

for provisions.

(VO) "On the fourth attempt,

the cable was finally laid

on the 5th of August 1858.

American President James Buchanan

and Queen Victoria exchanged

telegraph messages and sparked talk

of a new era of world peace.

But then, 27 days later,

the transatlantic chatter fell

completely silent.

Engineer Brian McManus is going

to investigate what went wrong."

(BRIAN) "Getting the telegraph

working underwater

posed a particular set of problems,

because fundamentally electricity

and water are a bad combination.

Those first transatlantic signals

were weak and worsening by the day.

In an attempt to jolt the line into

operation, the voltage was pushed up

from 600 volts to 2,000 volts.

But the small copper wire core

couldn't cope."

Increasing the voltage simply

burnt out the 1858 cable,

but worse still, it showed that they

had an inadequate understanding

of the science of electricity

in seawater.

(BRIAN) "Electrical current weakens

over the length of a wire

because of resistance

and a cable stretching 3,500km

across the Atlantic had never been

attempted before.

Another issue was that salty

seawater got through

the insulating layer and weakened

the current.

And they couldn't understand why

the flow of electricity

seemed to slow down.

So sending a message through a cable

under the Atlantic

was hugely problematic.

The failure of the 1858 cable

was considered a huge scandal

and a Scientific Commission of

Public Enquiry was assembled

with some of the finest minds

of the era.

One of them,

Belfastman William Thomson,

who would later go on to become the

pioneering scientist Lord Kelvin,

questioned whether the cable needed

such a significant

electrical current for messages

to be accurately read."

Thomson confounded everyone

by saying that a big voltage

wasn't needed to send a signal

across the Atlantic.

Yes, he knew that the current would

diminish over the distance

but he had found a genius way of

detecting really small signals.

(BRIAN) "Thompson's radical solution

was based on adapting the prevailing

method of detecting electrical

current at the time,

the galvanometer.

I'm meeting retired marine

communications engineer Brian O'Daly

who can show me exactly

how it worked."

If we agitate a galvanometer with

a power source,

we can see the needle deflects

to one side.

But when the current amplification

was very very small,

you couldn't know whether there was

current flowing or not.

So, Thomson came up with the idea

that he would make,

not a galvanometer,

but a mirror galvanometer,

that he put a mirror into

an instrument like this,

instead of a needle.

And it turns very very slightly when

it is agitated by current.

Thomson's idea was,

he was fiddling with his monocle

and he saw that there was a

reflection on the walls

due to it catching sunlight,

as I would do so with the face

of my watch.

And when I shine the light in

we can see that it's reflected out

and it can be read on an external

surface.

And that could prove that there is

current flowing.

So a very simple solution really,

it's just like, the mirror,

a small deflection in the mirror

from the current

causes a large deflection over here.

That's right.

They needed something that would

amplify the signals

and this was the beginning

of something very very new.

(BRIAN) "The mirror galvanometer

was proven to detect signals

over 1,000 times fainter than

previously possible.

Its success allowed Cyrus Field

to raise money

for a new transatlantic cable

venture."

(TIM) "William Thomson also

recommended that the copper core

was tripled in size, with insulation

100 times more effective.

But it made the giant cable twice

as heavy.

There was only one ship afloat that

could carry such a massive cargo.

The world's biggest ship,

the Great Eastern,

was chartered for the challenge.

In July 1865, thousands gathered

at Foilhommerum Bay

in Valentia Island for the big

send-off."

There was a party atmosphere,

with singing and dancing

and a large gathering of the great

and the good, the local wealthy,

and probably a lot of the local

poor.

Of course, the cable was at the star

of the event.

From the great ship, it was hauled

by a hundred local men

across a pontoon bridge

of 22 local boats.

With the Irish end secured,

and with speeches and prayers

for a successful voyage,

the Great Eastern headed west into

the Atlantic

with its flotilla of support ships.

(TIM) "The cable was paid out

carefully and tested regularly.

Any faults were repaired on the

spot.

William Thomson was on board and

he refined the paying out mechanism

to prevent the cable snapping.

Then, two-thirds of the way across,

the cable broke

during a splicing operation

and disappeared into the water,

two miles deep.

The Great Eastern was forced

to return to Ireland."

It was yet another failure

for the transatlantic project.

But despite the disappointment,

Cyrus Field raised money for a third

attempt.

The potential profits for cable

companies was so great

that they were lining up to get

involved.

It would take a year to manufacture

the new cable,

and again the Great Eastern was made

ready.

(TIM) "In July 1866, once more,

the Great Eastern departed Valentia

and steamed out into Atlantic with

the giant cable filling its hull.

After two uneventful weeks,

it approached Newfoundland

and 50 men dragged the cable ashore,

including Cyrus Field himself.

A signal was sent and detected

by Thomson's mirror galvanometer.

On its first day of operations,

the transatlantic cable earned

a staggering £1,000.

The business boomed and

a transcontinental web

of communications was created -

an internet for the Victorian Age.

Valentia was one of those places

that really felt the impact.

Architect Orla Murphy is discovering

how the 19th century tech boom

changed the island."

By the 1870s, these once empty

fields were transformed

into a telecommunications hub

and a community.

Subtitles

(ORLA) Once the transatlantic

telegraph cable was operational,

it was clear that a new permanent

station would be needed on Valentia.

In fact, a whole campus would

have to be built for a new community

of up to 200 telegraph operators and

their families."

Despite the remoteness

of the island,

the cable station design wasn't

simply functional and utilitarian.

Instead this new community was to be

accommodated in comfort, elegance

and beauty around the shared

public space

of the gardens and tennis courts.

(VO) "Three separate blocks

of workspace and accommodation

were built.

In the northern block resided

the managerial staff.

These were homes with running water,

electricity

and rooms for domestic servants."

These houses, while quite

metropolitan in character,

also cater for the weather, with

these large glazed entrance porches

where you can take off your boots

and shelter against the wind.

They are sturdy, they're well built,

they're robust.

And they've stood the test of time

to be adaptable

and are still very much loved

on the island.

(VO) "I'm meeting one of

the residents, Gordon Graves,

who can boast a particular

connection to the first days

of the cable station and to the

early cable laying attempts."

Well my connection is from

three generations

to my great-great-grandfather

who came here in 1865 to supervise

the sending of messages

as the cable was being paid out

by the Great Eastern.

So he was operating from a little

wooden hut

on the top of the cliffs

at Foilhommerum

in the middle of nowhere.

And did your great-great-grandfather

then stay on when

the permanent station was set up

and the cable was up and running?

Yes. He stayed on and he was

appointed superintendent.

This was the first of his 44 years

here.

He always signed himself off

as Old Electric.

That was his nom de plume!

So then he persuaded his bosses

that they should build a proper

cable station nearer to more

social activities,

i.e. back at Knightstown,

instead of right out on the cliffs;

because all the operators had

to move backwards and forwards

all the time to Foilhommerum by

horse and cart.

So they knew that it would be

a much better permanent situation

to be located close to Knightstown?

Yes. All the facilities were there,

churches and schools and everything

for the families.

So it was much more compatible

family wise.

(VO) "The urban, cosmopolitan

architecture may seem incongruous

for rural Co. Kerry.

Yet, it is totally in keeping

with the high-tech work

and educated workforce."

Located at the centre of the complex

is the cable station itself.

(VO) Eventually technological

advancements would leave

the building behind and it was put

to other uses in the 1960s.

Michael Lyne worked here for over

40 years

and is showing me where the

"graphers" lived in the old days."

There was no electricity up here

since the cable station closed down.

OK, so this has been empty since

then?

It has been empty since then, yeah.

What was the average day of

a "grapher" like?

Well they worked three shifts here.

From 6 to 2 in the morning.

From 2 to 10, and then you had

the night shift,

started at ten o'clock until

six o'clock in the morning again.

So it would have been a hive

of activity

all the way through the day?

It would indeed, yeah.

I mean, if you were on the early

morning shift,

you were off at two o'clock and then

you had the evening to yourself.

And there was plenty of activity.

There were two nine hole golf

courses.

There were three tennis courts

out front.

They had cricket in a sports field

next door.

Everybody had a sailing boat

and lots of regattas, every week.

How do you think the station

affected the island?

I suppose it had a big influence

on the island

and economically as well

as everything else.

Their wages were supposed to be

equivalent

to that of a bank manager.

So you can imagine 200 bank managers

in Valentia.

Wow!

If you were walking down the village

and you met a local and a "grapher",

you would have no problem

identifying which was the "grapher".

He would be dressed in a suit with

a top hat and a waistcoat

with a gold watch and chain.

The local man then,

he'd be the guy without the shoes.

Or if he was lucky

a pair of hobnail boots maybe.

(VO) "The background chorus of Morse

code is long gone and the houses now

are in private ownership but there

are ambitious plans afoot

to convert the Cable Station into

a UNESCO World Heritage Site."

These buildings in their function

in their role, in their layout,

in their detailed design, have not

just left a mark on the island,

they've played a key role in what

Valentia is today.

(TIM) "Across the Atlantic in

Newfoundland,

the partner cable station for

Valentia is in a little coastal town

called Heart's Content. It too

closed in 1965 and is now a museum.

The Canadian and Irish governments

are working together to secure

UNESCO status as a transboundary

World Heritage Site to celebrate

the vital role of both

Heart's Content and Valentia

in the evolution of global

communications."

On this day, the 27th of July,

over 150 years ago,

a message from Newfoundland made

telecommunication history.

153 years ago, the very first

telegraph message was sent

on the very first commercial

transatlantic telegraph cable

which effectively opened up

communications across the world.

And today, along with Seán,

we are going to be talking

to Heart's Content over Morse code.

Welcome Ireland!

(APPLAUSE)

(RAT-TAT-TAT SOUND)

(TIM) "Seán's Morse message is being

carried via an electrical pulse

down a dedicated line on a sub-sea

cable -

exactly the same as the message

exchanged

with Heart's Content in 1866."

OK, what they said was:

"Our shore end has just been laid.

And a most perfect cable under God's

blessing has completed telegraphic

communication between

Heart's Content and Valentia."

(TIM) "This one simple message, on a

proven and reliable submarine cable,

ushered in a new age.

Within 15 years, there were 100,000

miles of undersea telegraph wires.

And countless telegraph stations

relaying messages,

now called "cables".

The benefits to business and

communication were obvious.

But increased international

cooperation had unforeseen benefits.

Units of electricity had to be

agreed upon,

like the watt, volt, ohm and ampere.

(TIM) "Telegraph technology

continued to develop and advance,

from manual Morse code messaging to

ticker tape, to automated readers,

to telephone and eventually radio

communications.

Societies and economies were

affected

at a most fundamental level."

This telegraph cable was a tiger

let loose in the business jungle.

Companies had to run with it or die.

The resultant stampede of

transatlantic messaging has driven

technological advances to this day.

(TIM) "I'm on my way to meet someone

who believes our communications

history and industry owes a debt of

gratitude to Valentia.

Leonard Hobbs is Trinity College

Director of Research and

Innovation."

When we look at what it was,

a telegraphic system,

how has that helped bring us

to where we are now?

What we now live with today

is instant communication.

There's 188 million emails sent

in a minute,

compared to when this cable

started in Valentia in 1866,

there was maybe four words could be

sent in a minute.

So it made the world a smaller

place.

But what also began here was

engineering,

electrical engineering

in particular.

So the world has been transformed

by communication,

by this kind of internet

connectivity technology

and it all began here on Valentia.

What are the impacts to Ireland

from the developments

that were made here on Valentia?

It was the start of Ireland's

technical journey really,

that today, you know, has led us to

the point where we've got

every multinational in the US

now has a place in Ireland.

And it all began again with I think

here,

when established a kind of a

confidence and a competence

in this new thing called engineering

and technology.

(TIM) "Today 99% of the world's

international data traffic

is carried not on satellites

but on 400 sub-sea cables

that span the world's great oceans."

The telegraph made the world

both faster and smaller,

and launched us on the trajectory

of the modern age

of digital communication.

The transatlantic telegraphic cable

was the wire that changed the world.

(TIM) "Next time on Building

Ireland, geographer Susan Hegarty

is on the Beara Peninsula looking

for copper.

The industrial archaeology

is everywhere.

(SUSAN) "Engineer Tim Joyce

is discovering the impact

of steam engines and geographer

Mary Greene

is investigating a mining boom

town."

This is the tip of

the Beara Peninsula.

It's a landscape that is stunningly

beautiful.

But its geography can make it

difficult to survive on.

In the middle of the 19th century,

the natural resources of this area

produced great wealth

and employment.

Not from the land, not from the sea,

but from the copper in those

mountains.

These hills once echoed with the

sound of heavy industry

which changed the community,

the landscape itself

and helped with Building Ireland.

(INSTRUMENTAL INTRO MUSIC)

(VO) "In this series, our team of

experts in architecture, engineering

and geography is exploring

the most amazing stories

of Ireland's building

and engineering heritage.

And in this episode,

we've come to rediscover

the Copper Mines of Beara."

Copper mining has a long history

in the area

but the boom came when new

technologies, capital and markets

brought a whole new industry.

(VO) "When the Industrial Revolution

thundered into remote West Cork,

it changed everything, and Engineer

Tim Joyce is investigating

the transformative technology."

Steam powered machinery dramatically

accelerated productivity.

There was a huge steam engine here

and this engine house

is one of the finest examples

left anywhere in the world.

(VO) "In the foothills of the

Caha Mountains,

heavy industry had a big impact

on the remote fishing village

of Allihies.

The story of this community is being

explored by Geographer Mary Greene."

It's difficult to imagine now,

but the prospect of work

brought thousands of miners here

from all over Munster.

This tiny rural village became

the new Wild West mining town

and brought stories of success,

struggle and strikes.

(VO) "The geology here is full of

tell-tale signs

of a mineral rich area.

These red sandstone mountains were

formed 400 million years ago,

when the area was covered by red

desert sands.

Later, after these hardened,

the rocks buckled

and folded under tectonic pressure.

Cracks were filled with mineral rich

fluids,

which in turn formed copper rich

quartz veins."

Copper mining has been going on for

around 4,500 years in Ireland

and some of the earlier workings are

found here on the Beara Peninsula.

And those early miners knew exactly

where to find the copper deposits.

(VO) "The Beara coastline is dotted

with stunning geological features

but the mark a copper miner needed

to look for was green.

Malachite is the characteristic

green for oxidised copper

and a sure sign that embedded within

the quartz deposit is chalcopyrite -

the copper bearing ore.

To extract the valuable chalcopyrite

you would have to dig deep

into the vein, often going below

sea level.

I'm heading down to meet

mining heritage expert Theo Dahlke.

He says it is easy to find

the copper.

I'm just having difficulty finding

him."

Hiya, Theo. I followed your

directions but it took me a while.

How are you doing?

Excellent, great to meet you.

You really found me here.

I did! It's a fabulous setting.

It's special and on a day like

this, it's just stunning.

So Theo, where are we now?

We sit at the foot of a nearly

50 metres high quartz vein.

This is actually the place where,

in 1812,

Berehaven mines was opened up

to reach the copper ore that they

were after.

I picked up a sample in there for

you and on this side,

we have it all, the white quartz,

and here the golden bits.

Oh wow!

This is the chalcopyrite.

Some say fool's gold for it,

or Peacock Ore,

because it has this shiny lovely

glimmer.

Within here you have the

speckles of green/greyish

that would be the malachite,

a staining from the copper ore.

The rain and the water transports

the copper and it builds

these green layers and the green

was always a sign for a miner.

The green was telling him that this

is where you can find some copper.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Can we have a look inside?

You want to go with me inside?

I would love to have a look!

Jeez, you are brave!

Come on, I bring you.

Brilliant, fabulous!

(VO) "Cutting into the quartz vein

to extract the ore was done by hand

using picks, chisels and wedges.

They chased the streaks of colour

in the rock face

and advanced deeper and deeper

inside the vein."

Well this is absolutely incredible!

Look at all of this green staining.

Yeah, it's amazing yeah.

So it's almost like we're in

the heart of this vein

and it's just permeated through

with this ore.

Absolutely, this is the heart

of the vein.

And it goes on this side,

it goes on that side and it's deep,

maybe another 1,000 metres,

we really don't know.

It's absolutely incredible.

It really is like Aladdin's cave

in terms of colours.

It is, it really is.

It's a playground for geologists.

(VO) "The quartz deposits,

also known as lodes,

are hidden underground but in places

are revealed on the surface

of this valley.

In 1810 when the scale of the copper

ore deposit was first reported,

the local land agent John Lavallin

Puxley saw an opportunity.

The tiny fishing village of Allihies

was about to become the centre

of a mining boom

and Geographer Mary Greene

is discovering what happened."

The Puxley family were the local

gentry

who arrived in Ireland during

Cromwellian times.

The local community were poor,

Irish speaking Roman Catholic

subsistence farmers with little

if any education.

But with the arrival of copper

mining,

everything changed dramatically.

(VO) "Puxley's Berehaven Copper

Mines attracted hundreds of people

from all over Munster. There was

work for men, women and children.

At its peak the company had work

for 2,000 people,

with twice that number living off

the proceeds."

This town was quite literally built

on copper.

But there was nowhere to house

everyone.

Irish families shared accommodation

with instances of dozens of people

living in two-room cottages.

The pubs were packed and there was

a continuous scramble to get work.

(VO) "In 1835 the most valuable

import landing into Castletownbere

was 15,000 gallons of whiskey

and Allihies was awash with cheap

labour.

But whiskey wasn't the only

valuable import.

I'm chatting with Tadhg O'Sullivan

who runs

the local Copper Mine Museum to get

a better picture of what else

was arriving in Allihies to change

the village."

John Puxley was known as

Copper John.

He was the dominant character

on the Beara Peninsula.

He was the land agent.

He was all powerful,

but he was also what you might

describe nowadays

as an entrepreneur, he was

a chancer, he took risks.

Very early on John Puxley knew that

he had to bring in expertise.

He had to bring in people who knew

how to mine.

And he went to Cornwall where

the Cornish Mine Captains

had been mining copper and tin

for many years.

These were men who were bred to be

Mine Captains.

They were the men that he depended

on to make this show work,

to make it run as he wanted it to

run.

They decided on a Monday morning who

was going to work and who was not.

So that would have created divisions

on an everyday level?

Yes, there was constant strife,

as you might say.

There was always a division.

They had their own Mine Captains

houses.

They're still in Allihies,

they're still to be seen.

They were different to the hovels

that the Irish were living in.

There was a big difference.

There was a huge difference between

the Cornish

and the local population.

(VO) "At the southern tip of the

village, the old Methodist church,

built for Cornish miners and

their families

is still part of the mining story

in Allihies.

It's now the Mining Museum and holds

a fascinating piece of archive."

This is the cost book of

John Puxley's mining operation.

And it contains an exact record of

the profits and expenditures here

at the mines.

But these accounts contain a lot

more than just facts and figures.

They provide a window into the

cut-throat nature

of the mining economy here

in Allihies.

(VO) "There was no direct employment

here.

Miners worked essentially as

freelance contractors

paying the Mining Company a rental

for tools, gunpowder

and the transport of ore.

Even their shovels were weighed

for wear and tear.

Mine Captains auctioned jobs of work

or bargains as they were called.

Miners then bid for jobs.

There was good money for difficult

or dangerous bargains,

but less for something easier.

The lowest bids always won.

Historian Ciara NiíRiain has

researched the Irish workforce

in the Berehaven Mining Company."

In the 1850s there was peak

employment in the mines

but the working conditions

themselves were very detrimental

to the Irish, people were dying.

So for example there's eh,

old miners would refer

to timber props and how timber props

that were used in mines

were actually more valuable to

the mine owners

than the Irish miners themselves

because the Irish miners

were replaceable.

And so the Irish had enough.

And they decide in 1864 to strike.

How did the owners respond

to this new retaliation from

the Irish community?

At the time there was a decline

in the demand for copper

and so the mining owners didn't

necessarily need those miners

who went out on strike and so they

kept the Cornish employed.

And the Irish decided they would

rather seek opportunities abroad

than stay with the mines themselves.

What is the legacy of the Irish

mining community's experience here,

do you think?

Well, I think they came here and

they learned a valuable skill set

that they could then bring abroad

and also how to retaliate against

these unfair working conditions.

And we see later on in the 70s/80s

when they are working in the US

and in the mines over there we see

them going out quite frequently

on strikes as miners in the US

to fight for safe and fair working

conditions.

(VO) "There were five mines working

in the Allihies area,

each with a massive complex of sheds

and buildings.

This was one of the biggest mining

operations ever seen

in these islands."

Allihies is full of signs of mining.

Within 10 metres of where I'm

standing,

there are four mine shafts,

some of which are collapsed.

The industrial archaeology

is everywhere.

(NO) "The Berehaven Mining Company

created a landscape

of industrial buildings,

from stables to dressing floors

for rock breaking to forges

and kilns for metal work.

Gunpowder was stored in magazines

with internal blast walls

to prevent catastrophic explosions.

Huge reservoirs were constructed

high up in the mountains

and provided a continuous supply of

water for processing the ore

and for powering stamps that crushed

large rocks.

Extracting the ore from the

mine shafts

was just the start of the process."

Boys were employed in this task

of landing the ore,

and they toppled their buckets into

wooden carts

that ran on tramlines down

for sorting.

(VO) "The rock was brought in

wheelbarrows to long low sheds

where women and children sorted it

for crushing and washing.

I met up with Theo Dahlke again

to get an idea of how

this backbreaking world of work was

changing during the 19th century."

In the early beginnings, the

women got the lumps of ore out

from the mine, crushing it with

her hammer and the kids,

all the kids were sitting around

her, picking up through the rubble,

getting out the bits of usable

copper.

So this gives you an idea of

how important

child labour was at the time.

And we might think, it's awful,

it's awful

but they were contributing

to the surviving of the family.

The whole village would have changed

dramatically with the introduction

of steam engine and heavy machinery

that processed the ore.

For most of the families here,

it was a disaster

because all the women and children

they lost their jobs.

And this thing here what we found

you know,

it just came out of the rubble.

This iron kibble was travelling

up and down the mine shaft,

all day long.

Where it would be filled up with the

ore that the miners broke down below

with their borers and chisels

and hammers.

We just found it here as in

two weeks ago.

This might be the only one

in Ireland.

It's a piece of history then?

It's a big piece of history.

So Susan, everything was really,

really heavy.

There was heavy steel,

there were heavy machinery,

there were heavy carts to tow.

It would look like hell.

There was fire everywhere.

There was smoke everywhere.

And you would have noise,

unbelievable noises.

That was really the sound of the

industrial revolution.

(VO) "19th century technological

advances revolutionised

the mining operations in Allihies.

Engineer Tim Joyce is on a mission

to discover

the transformative power of steam."

(VO) "The rugged Beara landscape

presented a formidable challenge to

any industry attempting to exploit

a natural resource,

especially mining."

The Cornish Mine Captains

of 19th century Allihies,

like engineers today, didn't get

to choose where they went.

Sinking a mine shaft this close to

the sea with its vast volume

of water was a risk.

The last thing you want to do

is go below sea level.

(VO) "Underground water and its

potential for flooding

has always been a danger in mining.

Thomas Newcomen's early steam

engines had become highly advanced

by the 1780s, making for a powerful

technology.

High-pressure steam in a cylinder

pushes a piston up,

moving a solid iron beam supported

on the thick walls

of the engine house.

This see-saw motion drives a set of

suction pumps

that reach deep down into the mine."

The Newcomen Steam Engine was

at the cutting edge

of industrial coal-fired technology

when John Puxley

made his business plan to advance

his mining operations.

These machines totally changed the

scale of production at Allihies.

And more copper meant more wealth.

(VO) "As more mineshafts were sunk

and as profits rose,

the Berehaven Copper Mines were

reported

in international mining journals.

Speculative investors got involved.

All year round, barges left

West Cork,

laden with copper ore for the

smelters in Swansea.

Those barges returned to

Ballydonegan Bay

bringing coal to fuel

the engine houses.

I'm with Brendan Morris,

a former Mine Manager who has a keen

interest in mining heritage

and the revolutionary impact

of steam technology."

During the industrial Revolution

copper was king.

And everybody wanted copper.

The UK needed copper,

the world needed copper.

So steam allowed them to de-water

the mines and it allowed the owners

of the mines to extract the ore

in an economically viable manner.

Because prior to this, some of these

mine weren't viable.

So they could now mine down at much

deeper levels.

What that did for them was it gave

them access to more working faces;

more working faces meant higher

productivity.

It also allowed them reduce the

costs of shipping by doing some

of the crushing underground and some

of the crushing on the surface,

to minimize the amount of rock

that actually travelled from here

to Swansea, and optimise what went

onto the ships.

So, the advent of the steam engine

allowed them to get production and

productivity to a level here where

the owners could make serious money.

(V)) "The biggest, deepest, and most

productive of all ventures

in Allihies was Mountain Mine.

It was central to the operations and

success of Berehaven Copper Mines."

Around 1856, this Mountain Mine

reached down

320 metres underground - 1,000 foot.

Puxley calculated it took a man

10 seconds to climb down one metre

by ladder and far longer to come up.

As far as he was concerned, this was

a huge waste of valuable time.

(VO) "Puxley's solution was a

Cornish invention, The Man Engine,

which was installed in a purpose

built shaft

at the mountain mine in 1862.

Hundreds of miners could be

transported hundreds of metres

but the real genius of the system

was that it could move men up

and down at the same time.

And yet each movement was only

12 feet with miners

stepping on and off as you would

with an escalator.

This Man Engine House is the finest

surviving example in the world."

(When was this mine opened?)

(VO) "There's only one way to really

understand

what this deep vein mining was like

in the middle of the 19th century.

I've been given special permission

to go underground

and University College Cork

geologist Bettie Higgs

is coming with me."

And this was one of the original

adits.

(V) "Adits, or horizontal passages,

burrow in towards the vertical

shafts,

allowing access for men, machinery

and animals."

Oh wow!

When you shine the light down, you

can see how deep these shafts go.

And the ladder there is looking very

ghostly

but that is how the miners

went down to other adits,

following the seam around. They had

to think in three dimensions.

(VO) "The workings at Mountain

Mine are a vast subterranean network

of adits, shafts, caverns

and chambers

that plunge 280 metres below

sea level, at its deepest point.

Vast quantities of rock were blasted

and removed

from inside this mountain

by hundreds of miners.

The majority of the mine is now

flooded but I'm hoping to see

what they were after,

and what they've left behind."

There's a particularly nice piece

here.

As you walk past,

look at the amazing colours of the

copper ore here.

This is one of the original

19th century adits.

So you can imagine the miners

crouching down.

So it was claustrophobic,

it was dark.

But these adits helped the miners to

get along to the main quartz seam.

Well, Bettie, what was this space?

Well this is a large cavern.

A horse would have been walking

around here driving a windlass,

which was winching material from

lower levels up to the surface.

So the ore could be brought up. It

was the beginning of mechanisation.

These horses would need looking

after though?

These horses needed looking after,

so there would be blacksmiths,

there would be tools needing

sharpening.

It was essentially a

whole subterranean world here,

practically 24 hours a day.

Amazing. It's absolutely amazing.

Bettie, what are we looking at at

this point?

The importance of this part of

the mine cannot be overestimated.

The fact that these levels and

ladders are still in place,

we can see how the miners had to

climb up, go across the platforms,

blasting above their heads,

climb up other ladders.

And with men standing below you

and you're trying to blast roof

material out, what we call stoping;

taking away more of the roof, more

of the roof, working off the ladder,

bringing the material down to this

rock level,

carting it away and then going back

up.

Again, gunpowder blasting;

extremely dangerous work.

And this stope is almost unique

in the way it is preserved,

and heading up almost to the surface

of the mountain mine.

Amazing.

(VO) "The average life expectancy of

a miner in Allihies was 32 years."

Here we are with the rock pillars.

It's amazing. Oh wow!

Wow. Yes.

It's amazing.

So here we are, Susan.

We've come to the largest cavern

in the Mountain Mine.

We are 50 metres below the surface.

So Mountain Mine was the most

productive

of all the mines around here.

And the intersection of the faults

and fractures caused perhaps

more mineralisation here than it did

in some of the other mines.

But you can imagine just working

away, in the darkness.

And at its peak there would have

been 1,500 or more miners, in teams,

bringing the ore in and out.

It's wonderful for geologists to

come in and learn more about

what happened in that century

but it's a fantastic resource

for future geologists, engineers,

social scientists,

to be able to come in here and learn

and understand

how the miners went about this.

(VO) "When the copper mines started

to close in the 1870s,

the majority of the population

in Allihies emigrated.

During the 70 years they operated in

19th century,

the Berehaven Copper Mines were the

biggest mining operation in Ireland.

Small-scale farmers and agricultural

labourers became industrial workers

in the harshest of conditions."

Geological good fortune is key

to the story of mining in Allihies.

New ideas and new machines developed

in the pursuit of profit

brought the industrial revolution

to this remote part of West Cork.

And the industrial legacy ingrained

in its community

is now being explored by new waves

of visitors.

(VO) "Next time on Building Ireland,

Engineer Tim Joyce is discovering

what's inside a Wicklow mountain."

It's one of the most magnificent

feats of Irish engineering,

fuelled by the power of Wicklow

waters.

(VO) "Susan Hegarty is exploring

the landscape,

while Engineer Brian McManus

is investigating

pumped storage power generation."

Lake Nahanagan - way up in

the Wicklow Mountains.

That's Gaelic for

"Lake of the River Monster".

And today, it does hold immense

power.

600 metres deep inside this

granite mountain

is a hydroelectric generating

station fuelled

by the power of Wicklow waters.

It is one of the most magnificent

feats of Irish engineering.

Built in the 1960s, this entirely

manmade complex

can unleash over 290 million Watts

of power

into the National Grid in seconds.

It's a crucial piece of national

infrastructure

and vital to the story

of Building Ireland.

(VO) "In this series, our team of

experts in architecture, engineering

and geography is exploring

the most amazing stories

of Ireland's building

and engineering heritage.

And this time, we've come to

discover

the Power of Turlough Hill.

Hidden away inside this mountain

at the end of a half kilometre long

tunnel,

is Ireland's only pumped

hydro station.

Four massive turbines sit in a huge

chamber carved out of Wicklow rock.

They're driven by the force of

millions of tonnes of water

that surge down from a colossal

man-made reservoir.

And because of brilliant Irish

engineering, with one gearshift,

these turbines go into reverse and

pump water from Lough Nahanagan

back up the mountain, to generate

electricity again.

Geographer Susan Hegarty is going

to explore what's special

about this area and why the

landscape has the perfect features

needed for the power station

project."

Mountain waters have sustained human

activity in harsh and rugged terrain

for thousands of years but I want to

explore how granite and glaciation

are key to understanding the power

and beauty of this landscape.

(VO) "Engineer Brian McManus is

going to discover more about

the technology and engineering that

make this scheme possible."

I want to explore the

electro-mechanical systems

in this subterranean cavern and

understand how this complex plays

a vital role in meeting and managing

the country's electricity demands.

(VO) "Building the Turlough Hill

power station

was the biggest Irish civil

engineering project of the time.

It was the 1960s, and ESB engineers

had to come up with a plan to meet

Ireland's growing industrial and

consumer demands for electricity.

The idea to harness the power of

a natural resource wasn't new

but what they proposed was

visionary.

By reusing the raw energy

of millions of tonnes of water,

they could deliver hundreds of

megawatts of electrical power

to hundreds of thousands of homes

just in time for peak demand

at tea time.

And then put the water back at

low demand times,

an economic bargain.

This tunnel was the first thing

constructed and they had to bore

into the hard granite rock to get

inside the mountain."

Wicklow granite is particularly

hard.

Cutting a tunnel into the heart of

this mountain was a painstaking

process of drilling bores, packing

in explosives and blasting the rock.

(VO) "The access tunnel needed to be

big enough to deliver

the heavy equipment that would be

buried inside this mountain.

With the tunnel complete, hundreds

of thousands of tonnes of granite

were excavated to create the Cavern

Chamber.

After 40 years in engineering,

it's a great privilege for me to

finally get to step inside.

This cathedral size space lies

at the heart of the complex

and descends through three main

operational levels

below this turbine hall floor."

The Cavern would have to hold

four turbines, their generators,

transformers and switchgear and

cranes, all on different levels.

It's ten stories tall. That's a

stack of seven double-decker buses.

(VO) "This was a complex project

that required the skills of civil,

mechanical and electrical engineers.

Different teams of engineers

co-ordinated work on 10 separate

aspects of the project - all working

to a central design.

They had to be precise, accurate and

synchronized for the plan to work.

350 workers lived on site in

temporary accommodation,

working above and below ground.

In all, 500 workers were involved

during the six years of construction

until it went into operation

in 1974.

Water holds the key to this site

and geographer Susan Hegarty

is uncovering the geological story

of this landscape

and how human activity has harnessed

the power of a glaciated valley."

(SUSAN VO) "420 million years ago,

colliding continental plates

and cooling magma formed the granite

rock of the Wicklow Mountains -

part of the largest mass of granite

in Northwestern Europe.

Much later, the Glendasan Valley

was carved out through the slow

but powerful force of a massive

glacier.

The sheltered and fertile landscape

it left behind

attracted the early settlers,

including St Kevin,

who founded the world famous

Glendalough Monastery.

In geological terms, this landscape

was also mineral rich

so the remote location of the valley

didn't deter industrial scale

mining.

Copper, silver, lead and zinc were

mined across Wicklow,

over hundreds of years, right into

the middle of the 20th century."

This site is known as the

Miners Village

and it is just one of many lead

and silver ore processing sites

that dot these mountains.

This is part of the Glendalough

Mines

and here on this dressing floor,

rock was crushed and transported

down the valley.

A process all powered by water.

(VO) "Stamping mills and crushing

rollers were all powered

by Wicklow waters flowing down the

valley,

through the narrow gorges of

the upper range.

Gravel deposits appear as natural

features

but are actually mine tailings and

waste materials from old mine works.

When searching out and surveying

the landscape,

ESB engineers were looking for a

site with the right features

for a modern, pumped hydro

power station.

And where they were going to bury it

was critical."

The most common type of bedrock

in Ireland is limestone

which is soft and easy to cut and

shape.

Granite on the other hand,

like most of the igneous rocks,

is hard and crucially

it's relatively impermeable.

Robbie, how are you going?

Susan, how are you?

(VO) "I'm meeting geologist Robbie

Meehan who knows how Ireland's

last ice age helped determine

the location of the Turlough Hill

project."

What we have is, we have this deep

armchair shaped depression

and that's a result of the ice

gauging out the bowl

that the lower lake sits in.

And it gave a natural landscape

within which you could actually

construct a pumped hydro scheme.

That back wall of the cliff there is

a couple of hundreds of metres high.

So you are looking at something

that looks like it's man-made

but it's natural.

This huge big corrie that the lake

sits in

was the birthplace of the

glacial system.

It is the area within which the ice

starts to flow out

over the landscape. And it would

have covered everything.

So the tops of the mountains were

planed, they were ground down.

They've been almost bulldozed

by the ice.

So the power of that ice is quite

incredible.

And what's unique about Lough

Nahanagan is that during the

construction of the pumped hydro

scheme, the lower lake was drained.

And there were sediments there,

layers there,

that had organic remains in them

that could be dated by scientists

to 11,500 years ago.

And that was the first time that we

had a dated layer

in the Irish landscape to that time.

And that was the last time ice was

ever on this island?

That was. The ice died off at that

time, and the climate warmed,

and the climate started to get quite

wet.

So what we've got here then is this

bog forming.

It's called blanket bog.

It envelopes and covers completely

all of the terrain underneath it.

As the vegetative remains don't

fully decompose,

they become compressed.

What that means is that over time,

peat can form.

The peat grows at a rate of, on

average, about a millimetre a year.

So if we go back down here to the

base of the peat sequence,

about a metre down, we're probably

going back about a thousand years.

And Ireland is kind of unique.

Over 10% of the country

is blanket peat.

And Ireland as well has about 8% of

the blanket peat resource

of the entire world.

And because the peat itself is a

record of past environments,

it's a really important resource.

(TIM VO) "To get water from the

reservoir on top of the mountain

to the chamber 300m below,

the tunnellers faced into the hard

Wicklow mountain once again.

This time a "pressure shaft"

was cut.

I've been given access into

the very first test tunnels sunk

into Turlough Hill so I can get an

idea of how the ESB engineers

tackled this job from both ends."

They bored 50 metre straight down

from the upper reservoir

and from below, they drilled and

blasted over half a kilometre

at an angle of 28 degrees to form

a shaft for the water.

(VO) "Excavating the raw rock, the

drilling teams tunnelled towards

each other to cut a vital artery

into the centre of the mountain.

Once the teams broke through and

connected,

they set about lining the entire

bore with steel."

The steel tube sections were

assembled on site

and carefully lowered into the

shaft.

They used a really clever rail

system to angle them

into position, section upon section.

(VO) "The rails carried the weight

of each 10m long section

and allowed for slow and careful

positioning

with millimetre accuracy.

60 steel tubes were positioned

in this way.

Welding and painting had to be

completed with the great care.

The tube would have to be ready for

the enormous force of the waters

cascading through it, so X-ray scans

were used to check the seals.

The space around the pipe was then

encased in concrete.

The pressure shaft narrows from

a diameter of 5 metres,

like this test tunnel, to 3.4

metre as it nears the turbines.

This ramps up the power of the flow,

to drive the four turbines embedded

at the bottom of the cavern."

The entire cavern is below the water

level of Lough Nahanagan.

It's a vitally important design

feature.

(VO) "It means that the turbines in

the cavern are always primed;

water pressure is constantly bearing

down on the system,

so it is never empty.

The turbines can be put into reverse

in a matter of seconds

and start pumping water back up

the mountain,

ready to start the cycle

all over again.

Curiously, before the power station

was built,

the mountain here didn't have a name

on the Ordnance Survey Map.

The engineer who recommended

the site, John O'Riordan,

decided to name the hill after his

son, Turlough.

It was a good choice.

A turlough is a lake that loses

water through a swallow hole.

Just like this lake but everything

here is man-made.

Engineer Brian McManus is

investigating how the water pressure

is harnessed with mechanical and

electrical engineering."

These valves are designed to

intercept in full flow

the torrent of water surging through

the system.

Robust engineering and clever design

underpin every moving part

in this complex.

(BRIAN) "Deep inside Turlough Hill

are the electro-mechanical systems

at the heart of this pumped-storage

generating station.

It's all located in a multi-storey

complex in the underground cavern.

I'm right down at the bottom of the

chamber.

This is where the waters surge down

from the upper reservoir

and into the inlet pipes that drive

the four giant turbines."

Each turbine has its own spherical

valve 1.7 metres in diameter

which has to absorb the 500 tonnes

of water

bearing down on it every minute.

There is no margin for error

in the engineering required to

control this flow.

(VO) "The high pressure flow of

water provides the energy

that then gets converted into

electrical power.

And this is where big engineering

kicks in.

The moving water pushes a turbine

that spins a shaft

that turns the electrical generator.

And the entire system can also be

put into reverse,

to pump water back up the mountain.

Above the turbines are the shafts

that connect

to the electrical generators

on the level above."

This shaft is now helping to pump

water uphill.

You can really feel the power.

The ground is literally shaking.

Whether it's helping to pump water

uphill or generating electricity,

it always rotates at 500rpm.

(VO) "With underground space at a

premium,

mounting everything vertically makes

for a very compact design.

The size of the cavern was

determined solely by the space

needed for these mighty machines."

Here on the top floor of the

Generating Hall we can see the apex

of the reverse pump turbine which is

assembled vertically below.

Each one consists of a turbine,

connected to this generator

by a shaft with what's called a pony

motor on top.

At the heart of each one

is a stator, a static part,

and a rotor, a spinning part.

(VO) "When the system here was being

assembled, you could see

the essential elements of

electricity generation.

The stator is made up of a ring of

wire coils.

Into that is lowered a spinning

part, the rotor,

which is made up of a ring

of magnets.

The interaction of the wire coils

in a magnetic field

produces a flow of electricity.

Turlough Hill power station can only

stay operating

for four and a half hours.

The flow of water powering the

generators stops

when the upper reservoir has been

emptied.

For every three units of electricity

generated on the way down,

Turlough Hill uses four units

to pump water back up.

To understand how this can still be

an efficient use of electricity,

I'm meeting Martin Stronge,

Hydro Stations Manager for ESB."

So, Martin, we're in the control

room here of Turlough Hill.

Can you tell me a bit about what

these screens mean

and what this room actually does?

Okay, Brian, this is not just the

control room for Turlough Hill,

it's the control room for all the

ESB hydro stations.

And you can see on this screen the

breakdown of the different types

of generation that are available

on the system.

You can see in the green,

41% of the system at the moment

is made up of renewables,

which is wind and ESB's hydro

stations.

Turlough Hill is a really,

really unique facility.

When there is a surplus of

generation on the system,

a lot of wind blowing across the

island,

it takes all of that wind

generation, it pumps the water up,

up the hill into the upper

reservoir.

And then later on when the wind has

fallen away,

it can then use all of

that water to generate again.

So the red line on the top here is

the demand

and the blue line is wind

generation.

What you can actually see is that as

the as the demand was rising,

the wind generation was falling away

and Turlough Hill would have been

called on then to meet some of the

gap there.

An its speed allows it to deliver

292 megawatts,

which is enough power for 300,000

homes.

It can deliver that in 70 seconds.

It's much faster than thermal

generation, which is, by and large,

what you have elsewhere in the

country.

So can you tell me what the role

of Turlough Hill

will look like in the future?

As we move into more and more

renewables on the system,

there will be more and more

intermittency where generation

is going up and down as the wind

changes across the day.

And Turlough Hill's speed allows us

to get the most out of

the renewable generation that's

available to us.

(TIM VO) "When searching for a site

for a pumped storage power station,

the ESB engineers knew exactly what

was needed -

a mountain with a deep natural

corrie lake at its base,

close to Ireland's biggest city."

For this mountain site to work as

pumped hydro scheme,

its natural features would require

structures of such scale

that the project team would have

to engineer the landscape itself.

(VO) "The first challenge was to

construct

one of the highest roads in Ireland.

It would have to snake up 3

kilometres through the blanket bog.

To ensure pristine views of the

surrounding landscape,

the initial stretch of high voltage

transmission cable

was buried underground.

Heather was carefully extracted and

stored, and a million tonnes of peat

removed to expose the mountain's

granite peak.

Making the upper reservoir was a

monumental task.

The granite peak was blasted flat

and the rock was used to build up

the bowl shaped reservoir's edge.

An asphalt factory was also built on

site to produce a waterproof

membrane for the inner lining

of the reservoir.

The first time the technique was

used in Ireland."

It took 2 million tonnes of

quarried granite

to make this rock-filled embankment.

It is 1.5 kilometres long

and 34 metres high.

It was designed and engineered for

one purpose:

to hold 2.3 million tonnes of water.

That's an immense weight with

immense power.

(VO) "The reservoir simply stores

potential energy.

It's ready to be released when the

engineers below

decide to fire up the generators.

Holding up water like this, is still

the best way we know to store power.

I'm heading for an artificial island

in an artificial lake

to see how that energy is released."

This is the central control tower.

It has one of the most important

functions.

Directing the flow of

this vast body of water.

It's effectively a giant tap.

(VO) "The control tower sits above

the plug hole

at the bottom of the reservoir.

This is where the stopper opens and

closes

to control the flow of water

into the pressure shaft.

Storing and releasing such vast

volumes of water

would put pressure on any system.

Michael Bruen is a fellow

engineering hydrologist

and we met up to discuss the forces

at work when you've got

2.3 million cubic metres of water

sitting on top of a mountain."

So 300 meters up, down there what

kind of pressure will it give you?

Every 10 meters of water

is equivalent

to the pressure of one atmosphere.

So, this is about 300m above

so that means that you have

the pressure of 30 atmospheres.

Plus this atmosphere here.

Plus the one that's above us, so 31.

And one way to visualize it...

Everybody has seen films about

submarines,

particularly some of the war films,.

Well the First World War submarines

would have been crushed

by the pressure at the bottom of

this pipeline.

They could go as deep as 100 meters.

Even with all the improvements

between the wars,

most of the Second World War

submarines could go to 200 meters.

They would be crushed at the bottom

of this pipeline at the turbine.

So the pressure is immense.

And part of the genius of this

design,

by building it inside a mountain is

that the granite of the mountain

is helping the pipeline contain

the pressure,

because this water is trying to

escape.

(VO) "Any leakage here could be

disastrous but this reservoir

has a special inbuilt drainage

gallery, or tunnel,

for regular inspections."

This underground drainage gallery

circles the entire reservoir

along the inner slope of the

embankment.

It collects seepage from

the concrete-asphalt lining.

(VO) "Anyone who works with water

knows

there is no such thing as 100%

waterproof."

Under the immense water pressure

bearing down on the embankment,

seepage is constantly monitored.

Incredibly almost 50 years since

its construction,

seepage is only a quarter litre per

second.

Testament to the design, civil works

and labour that constructed

this reservoir.

(VO) "This project is one of the

great feats of Irish engineering,

but it is effectively hidden away,

buried deep within this Wicklow

mountain, unseen and unheard."

This power station is an integral

part of Ireland's

modern sustainable transmission

system.

You might think this is the

future of electricity generation,

but Turlough Hill has been up

and at it since 1974.

(VO) "Next time on Building Ireland,

geographer Susan Hegarty

is investigating the secrets behind

planning Ireland's

first new town in 300 years."

Constructing a new town at Shannon

to service global industry

was a turning point in rural

development.

(VO) "Architect Orla Murphy explores

the radical 1960s housing

that was built.

And geographer Mary Greene discovers

how the first pioneering settlers

built a community."

In the bleak 1950s, amid economic

stagnation and emigration,

they started building factories

and a brand new town

on the northern marshy bank of the

Shannon Estuary.

It seemed like a crazy scheme -

Project X -

an urban development in rural

County Clare,

and the world's first air-age

industrial estate.

And it was an idea that didn't stop

there.

(SUSAN VO) "International industries

arrived and created work.

This led to an economic development

model

that helped change the global

economy."

Constructing a new town at Shannon

to service global industry

was a turning point in rural

development and in Building Ireland.

(SUSAN VO) "In this series, our team

of experts in architecture,

engineering and geography examines

some of the amazing stories

of Ireland's building and

engineering heritage.

And this time, we've come to

discover

the origin of Shannon Newtown."

In a little under 10 years, this

landscape was totally transformed.

And that's really interesting for me

as a geographer.

Shannon Newtown was built on

a radical vision...

..for economic development using

the latest ideas in town planning.

(VO) "This was a project full of

ambition;

factories, offices, shops, homes

and schools

were built on a green field site.

There were even plans for futuristic

office blocks.

Shannon was a model for rapid

development

and the idea would reverberate

all around the world,

and it transformed the lives

of millions, especially in China.

Shannon was Ireland's first new town

in 300 years and architect

Orla Murphy is investigating what

exactly was built."

The first housing development here

didn't just have to build homes

for Shannon's new workers.

It had to lure them here.

Drumgeely Hill was a bold statement

of intent that this town was going

to be different and fundamentally

modern for 1960s rural Ireland.

(SUSAN VO) "How a community of

pioneering settlers took root here

is being explored by geographer

Mary Greene."

Flash economics and fancy new flats

are all very well but how do you

build community in a town where

everybody is from somewhere else?

(SUSAN VO) "Shannon Airport

was a beacon of modernity

in a depressed west of Ireland.

With the arrival of the jet engine

in the 1950s,

the activity and jobs here were

suddenly under threat.

If planes didn't have to stop-off to

refuel, maybe the jetliners

could be encouraged to stop-off for

other reasons.

That was the idea of the catering

manager at the airport,

Brendan O'Regan; a man with a vision

to transform Shannon."

On a research trip to America by

boat, another idea occurred to him.

If ships could have duty free,

why couldn't planes?

Shannon Airport became the first

airport in the world

to have a duty free shop. And that

inspired an even bigger idea.

(SUSAN VO) "O'Regan wanted to do for

industry

what duty free had done for

shopping.

He envisioned a special

manufacturing zone

attached to the airport where

international companies could make

and export their goods -

all tax free.

With political backing, the Shannon

Free Airport Development Company

was established in 1959 and was soon

offering hundreds of jobs.

And the new workers were promised

housing."

The very first factories that came,

there were eight companies that set

up here initially.

(SUSAN VO) "I'm meeting Olive Carey

to learn about the first wave

of residents who put down roots

here."

Some were from the surrounding

areas, of course,

but a lot of them were returned

immigrants from England,

in particular.

People who had emigrated in the

1950s looking for work saw

the opportunity presented here

at Shannon, jobs and houses,

and my own family being one of those

who came back in the very early

1960s.

And what was it like growing up in

this area then?

I loved my time here in Shannon

growing up.

First of all, there was great

freedom.

So coming to Shannon was

just open countryside.

Our playmates were the children of

the industrialists

who came here first.

So my schoolmates were Dutch

children, American,

English, South African.

It was a very cosmopolitan group

of people who were the pioneers

who came to live in Shannon

in the beginning.

And were people taking a risk

to come back here?

They certainly were, especially in

the early days,

because this was an experiment

really.

It wasn't known if it was going

to succeed or not.

But they were willing to take

the chance.

(SUSAN VO) "By 1961, the Rippen

Piano Factory, Sony

and diamond company De Beers had all

moved into Shannon's new factories.

463 workers were employed in the

trade zone,

with plans for many more.

Housing these workers was a priority

for the development company;

attractive, modern accommodation

suitable for families

and single people was needed.

Orla is discovering what was built,

and why."

It was the 1960s, international

architecture was modern, functional,

minimal, influenced by the likes of

Le Corbusier and Mies Van Der Rohe.

Multi-storey apartment living was

simple in form and function.

It was a new type of housing that

could be constructed quickly

and cheaply.

(ORLA VO) "Large scale construction

in concrete was all the rage

at the time, in an architectural

style that was called Brutalism.

Some said the apartments built here

were like workers' housing

from the Soviet bloc.

It was certainly an unusual

development in Ireland.

and it was unprecedented in a rural

context."

In the 1960s there were still houses

in County Clare

without electricity

or running water.

Stepping into one of the new homes

here in Drumgeely Hill

was like stepping into another

world.

One that was warmer, drier,

more convenient, more elegant.

One that was ultra-modern.

(ORLA VO) "The new residents of

Shannon had to learn the features

of apartment living, sharing

conveniences like laundry rooms

and rubbish chutes.

The one-bedroomed apartments were

dubbed 'bachelor flats'

and families were enticed here with

the latest in mod-cons."

You know, it's hard to imagine it

now,

but when these flats were built

they were the height of modernity.

So much so that the ESB even made

their own handbook for tenants

to advise them how to use the new

technology in their apartment.

It's called Welcome to your

All-Electric Flat.

And it details how tenants can use

the infra-red heating

in their bathroom.

How they are advised to de-frost

their refrigerator regularly.

The flats have lovely timber parquet

floors

and they have electric underfloor

heating and tenants were advised

to only switch them on in October

and then switch them off again at

the end of April.

So it is wonderful to see how

tenants were advised

how to use this new technology.

(ORLA VO) "The apartments had

built-in wardrobes

and fitted kitchens.

Every block had a mixture of one,

two and three bedroomed apartments.

All of the accommodation was

subsidised

and only available to those working

on the industrial estate.

The housing for this new workforce

was managed by Shannon Development's

Cian O'Carroll."

Why did they decide to build

multi-storey housing

here on Drumgeely Hill?

It was simply because a very quick

solution had to be found

to the housing problem.

A number of the early industries

here felt that they couldn't succeed

unless people came to live within

walking distance

of their place of employment,

particularly as many

of these companies operated

on a 24-hour shift basis.

And they came to us in Shannon

Development who had of course

sponsored the industrial estate,

and said, look,

their industries would fail unless

this kind of accommodation

was provided, and this was the only

piece of land readily available

at that time.

And it was very attractive from the

point of view

that it commanded beautiful views

of the estuary.

Private enterprise wouldn't have

been a viable option.

So we developed Shannon because

really there was nobody else there

available, and we had the ability

and the drive to get things done.

This was architecture as an

expression of the brave new world.

One where calling into your

neighbour for a drop of milk

for your tea, would bring you out

into a walkway in the sky

with a magnificent view out over

the Shannon. It was a nice idea.

(SUSAN VO) "As the industrial estate

expanded,

so too did plans for a whole new

town.

Building a town from scratch was not

at all unusual

in an international context

at the time.

Urban planning was actually a

thriving new international practice,

fuelled by the need to rebuild

after the devastation of the Second

World War.

Plans for Shannon's new town were

shrouded in mystery

because of its enigmatic code name:

Project X.

Fergal McCabe is one of Ireland's

foremost experts in town planning

and is familiar with the Shannon

Town project.

He knows why it was called

Project X."

It was a secret. Brendan O'Regan's

vision was for a new town

and there was a lot of local

opposition.

People naturally wanted the housing

to be in Newmarket-on-Fergus

or Clarecastle. But O'Regan wanted

a new plan for Shannon.

So he worked with the architect

and town planner Frank Gibney,

and it was kept firmly under wraps

and known only as Project X.

And what was unique about that

particular plan?

Well it differed from the Shannon of

today in the sense

that it was inspired by the Shannon

itself.

The whole centre was to be on the

banks of the river facing south,

taking in the whole history,

the romance of the Shannon,

and then build backwards

to the airport,

unlike the plan that got

implemented,

which was starting in the airport

and working back to the river.

What was the thinking in town

planning at that time

that influenced this layout?

Certainly the dominance of the car

is a consideration. It was a grid.

It was a rectangular grid laid

on the landscape,

designed to accommodate cars,

large avenues

anticipating high volumes of cars.

They imported what's called

the Radburn system

from the English new towns whereby

the housing is grouped around

a little green, the car parking

is separate;

It tends to give you a large areas

of rather bleak car parking

at the rear.

The peculiar thing is that the

individual houses

have very little private space,

whereas there is an awful lot of

public space.

So that tends to give a rather

windswept appearance.

A little, I would even call it

lonely.

In Gibney's plan, the avenues

were all curved.

You'd never actually have the long

vistas that you get here.

There would have been more of a

sense of enclosure

and probably more interesting.

And not as windswept.

Not as windswept!

(SUSAN VO) "As you walk around

Shannon's housing estates,

it's easy to see how pedestrian

walkways allow movement

away from streets.

But when you really get moving

around,

all the open space reminds you just

how close you are

to the Shannon Estuary.

The regular southwesterly gales

howling in from the Atlantic

needed another intervention.

The planners couldn't change

the wind

but they could provide shelter

from it.

And nature's way of doing

that is trees.

In 1968, 28,000 trees were planted

to protect the town.

(SUSAN VO) Landscaping the

neighbourhood became a priority.

Locals also saw growth in the

industrial estate

and thousands of jobs materialising.

But the 300 families now living in

Shannon

were still in search of a

town centre.

Housing estates sprung up everywhere

but it meant that early residents

arrived into a new town lacking

crucial facilities."

Town planning may have become a

science.

But building a community is

always a more chaotic affair.

The story of that community is the

story

of the next couple of decades

in Shannon town.

(SUSAN VO) Geographer Mary Greene

is going in search of that story."

Nothing about Shannon's development

was haphazard.

Critical to the project's

sustainability

was its new community. And there was

a plan for that also.

Building a new town on an open plain

beside the Shannon Estuary

was a huge project.

The tax-free industrial zone

operated by Shannon Development

attracted international companies;

factories were built and jobs

created.

Accommodating workers meant

building new houses.

All the elements were there to build

a new town

but this mightn't be enough to build

a new community.

Planning consultants, mindful from

the British experience of setting up

new towns, advised Shannon

Development on the social needs

of new residents.

A community officer was appointed

to welcome newcomers,

iron out any difficulties they may

have and promote

and co-ordinate activities for the

community.

(VO0 "Wolfe Tones GAA club was

founded in the late 1960s

with the support of Shannon

Development.

It was an initiative that helped

create an identity in a new town.

Some of Shannon's first residents

recall the earliest days

of the community here."

My father used to always call it

Tií na nOÓ

because there were no old people.

I came here with four children

and they always enjoyed their

childhood in Shannon

where I watched everything grow,

as Seaá did.

It was like the building site,

it was just mud. No trees, no grass.

As I said, my kids lived in

wellingtons for a long time

because there was nothing.

What was it that attracted you to

Shannon?

In the '50s, we were caught very

badly on the economic scene.

It was so bad that, you know,

one thought in terms

of "pull the plug out of the Bog of

Allen and let the place go down."

Emigration was fierce.

Out of the blue was this story of

hope, change, a house and a job.

And to be able to do that as part of

an overall regional development,

it was stirring stuff.

It was practical patriotism then.

Being part of creating the

resurrection of the country.

How did the community start to

build itself?

The people who moved into Shannon,

they got together and decided

that we are a community,

we're not just a housing estate.

We have a wonderful musical society,

drama groups

organized here in the town.

And I suppose central to everything

really has been

this wonderful club here,

the GAA club.

So through the schools and through

the GAA club

and the various clubs in the town,

we have managed to knit a whole

community together.

That is where our strength really

is.

The Shannon Town Project Plan

highlighted the development

company's preoccupation with

advancing a sense of community

among its town's population of

1,600 people.

As stated in the plan, "within a few

years Shannon will be a town

in the full sense with a population

of 6,000 people.

It will be a place which many Irish

people will regard as their home.

The development company is aware of

its heavy responsibility and plans

to develop the town so that its

residents and Ireland

as a whole will be proud of it."

(MARY VO) "Interestingly, the

leadership on this pioneering

project came, not from central

or local government,

but from a regional development

company.

I'm discussing the New Town

experiment with Fr Harry Bohan,

a sociologist with a longstanding

commitment

to community development."

Well, I suppose if I was to put it

in a nutshell now,

Shannon and the developments that

took place here were to be

the countergrowth area to Dublin's

growth.

And the people who drove it

were local people,

committed to the area and committed

to what Shannon was all about.

So, community then is much more

than just building houses

for industrial workers.

Absolutely. That's what I learned

and brought back

from my studies in England.

That I saw the massive housing

estates that were bringing about

serious damage to family life.

The concept here in Shannon wasn't

just about housing people,

it was about building community

as well.

This was the first school,

there was a community centre built.

There were a lot of services like

playing pitches

and things like that.

They all grew up.

And a lot of that was the initiative

of local people.

I'm a deep believer, you cannot have

economic development

without social development, because

we're talking about people,

and people need people, and

community.

These concepts have to be as much

part of economic development

as the economy itself.

You can't measure the health of a

nation by GNP or GDP,

you can't measure the health

of children or families

or anything in that kind of way.

(SUSAN VO) "An increasingly

globalised world

brought with it external threats.

Shannon's special tax status became

increasingly irrelevant

after Ireland joined European

Economic Community in 1973.

The oil crisis in the '70s

restructured global economics

and Ireland became less attractive

as a source of cheap labour."

As Shannon entered its second decade

in the 1970s, there were great plans

for innovation and growth

in the Free Zone and in the town.

(SUSAN VO) "In reality, the growth

of Shannon had more or less stalled

by the early 1970s.

But plans were still drawn up for a

futuristic new town centre.

A modern and bold statement of

intent for the civic ambitions

of Ireland's newest town.

But the plan was shelved because the

population didn't grow as expected.

At a time when its socio-economic

achievements should have been

more carefully nurtured,

many feel Shannon was overlooked."

As the flow of new investment into

Shannon slowed,

the flow of ideas out of Shannon

gathered pace.

Word began to spread around the

world

of the success of the Shannon model.

(SUSAN VO) "The Industrial

Development Organisation

of the United Nations became very

interested in Shannon's story

and how it might be relevant to

countries of the developing world.

Shannon was an example of how

populations

might be lifted out of poverty.

Courses were run to share the

Shannon success story

with foreign visitors.

Now retired, Brian Callanan was a

Shannon Development executive

at the time."

People like Columbia in South

America, Sri Lanka in Asia,

Egypt in the '60s and early '70s

began to look at Shannon more

carefully.

The big breakthrough was

the involvement of China,

because they wanted to find a way

to combine the Communist system

with the free market system.

And I remember vividly, we had a

group over

and it was a training course

in 1980,

led by a man called Jiang Zemin,

who actually subsequently became

President of China.

He was a senior minister

and he meant business.

And the training course involved use

of incentives.

How do you manage your customs

procedures?

But then as we began to talk more

and more,

the talk turned to rural poverty.

And then we told about the Irish

Famine,

and the rural poverty and the rural

emigration

that our great-grandparents and

grandparents experienced.

And they understood that because we

were sharing a similar cultural

experience and they saw it like we

did as a way out of rural poverty.

(SUSAN VO) "The Chinese immediately

followed Shannon's example

and set up a Special Economic Zone

in Shenzhen,

a small town of 30,000 people.

Today it's a Chinese super-city

of 10 million people

with an economy bigger than

Ireland's.

There are 20 such Chinese Special

Economic Zones,

and they generate nearly a quarter

of China's GDP.

The Shannon Model has been central

to China's transformation

into an economic superpower."

So Shannon therefore has a special

place among China's leaders?

Yes, Shannon is like a kind of a

holy grail because this was the area

where the Chinese special economic

zones originated.

And I think there was maybe three or

four deputy presidents,

senior ministers who come here just

to see

where the Chinese special economic

zones came from.

(SUSAN VO) "The Shannon model has an

impressive legacy.

More than 110 overseas companies

have opened subsidiaries here

since 1959.

And today, Shannon Group is still

a powerful driver

of economic growth for the region."

The idea of the Shannon Free Zone

and its purpose-built town

travelled far and wide.

And it was crucial in building the

Ireland of today,

and in changing the global economy.

It did achieve its purpose.

Thousands of people are still living

and working in rural County Clare

at the cutting edge of innovation

and enterprise.

Next time on Building Ireland,

Orla is exploring the Marino

housing schem in Dublin.

It remains a prime example

of the garden suburb idea.

A public housing development

designed with people in mind.

Susan investigates the geography

of the area and its people.

And Ellen Rowley discovers just

what's so special about these houses.

In 1922, the new Irish government

set about solving its capital city's

appalling housing crisis.

Dublin had some of the worst slums

in Europe and a radical housing

scheme would have to be built within

walking distance its city centre.

1,500 homes were built in Marino,

on Dublin's Northside,

and they are just as desirable today

as they were in the 1920s.

These homes offered comfort and

dignity through clever design.

And above all else, a bright future

for Dublin's working classes.

What they built here in Marino was

a landmark public housing initiative

and vitally important to the story

of Building Ireland.

Building Ireland explores some

of the most exciting stories

from Ireland's building and

engineering heritage.

And this time, we've come to explore

the Garden Suburb of Marino.

This suburban public housing scheme,

inspired by radical town planning

ideas from the Garden City movement

was the first of its kind in Ireland

and one of the first in Europe.

It remains a prime example

of the Garden Suburb idea -

a public housing development

designed with people in mind,

with access to nature, public space

and facilities.

Innovative features like indoor

toilets and front and back doors

for everyone were new to Irish

public housing.

Architectural historian Ellen Rowley

is discovering

what was so special about these

houses.

There was an elaborate master plan

for Marino,

but despite this common approach,

there was great variety and detail,

and 10 different house types

were built.

But Marino wasn't just houses.

Geographer Susan Hegarty

is looking into what was done

to build a community.

Schools, shops, a library and

a health centre were all built

as part of an ambitious master plan.

I want to explore the rural

and urban landscapes

that put Marino on the map.

At the turn of the 20th century,

Dublin, then the second

city of the British Empire, was

notorious for its tenement housing

and poor sanitation.

The crumbling Georgian mansions of

the gentry were now occupied

by thousands of casual workers and

their families

who struggled to earn a decent wage.

In 1913, during a year of industrial

strife, seven people were killed

and 100 left homeless when

two tenement houses

on Dublin's Northside collapsed.

The Church Street collapse caused

public outrage

and led to an inquiry.

It reported that 20,000 families

were living

in one-room flats in tenements.

A tenement museum is now located

at 14 Henrietta Street,

itself a notorious tenement back in

the day.

I'm meeting housing policy analyst

Rhona McCord.

A place like this, you could have

over 100 people living,

with families all basically in one

room.

They found 36% of people were living

in tenements,

no running water and very little

heat.

And most of these people would have

been considered the working poor.

As the city has been drained of

resources and more and more people

are being crowded in, you have an

increase in diseases,

things like tuberculosis and very

high infant mortality rates.

So it's all to do with the

cramped nature of housing.

Disease doesn't know class,

it just spreads.

And at the same time,

there was no alternative

accommodation being built.

So you ended up with the density

increasing and people living in more

and more poor conditions as time

went on.

So the political pressure around

housing, it wasn't just a question

of people campaigning for housing.

It was it was a question also

of people being worried

about the issue. The middle classes

and the political classes

and thinking that living so close

together in tenements,

this industrial class, if you like,

the transport workers and so on,

who were being organized into

trade unions,

were talking to each other.

There was a bit of a red scare, if

you like, going on.

And they wanted those people

dispersed.

They figured if they housed people,

that this threat would subside.

So you've a city that is gaining in

population, but at the same time

is becoming poorer.

So the challenge to rehouse people,

then becomes huge, actually.

Yes. There was obviously a huge

need.

And I think from the start

of the century,

up until around the housing inquiry

in 1913,

there was a gradual understanding of

what that need was and a political

pressure growing to find some

solutions to the housing crisis.

Dublin Corporation wanted to build

houses and had acquired 50 acres

of rural land on the northern edge

of the city, at Marino.

Exciting plans for a large housing

scheme were drawn up in 1914,

but nothing happened.

World War One interrupts momentum,

the Easter Rising destroys the city

centre,

and the War of Independence

paralyses progress to build housing.

Dublin wasn't alone in its

housing problems.

Many of Britain's big industrial

cities had similar issues.

Dickensian slums were a legacy

of the industrial revolution.

One social reformer had a vision

to change all that -

a man with a very Dickensian

sounding name, Ebenezer Howard.

He came up with the idea of

the Garden City -

a combination of the best of town

and country.

Howard argued that the cramped city

slums were morally corrupting

and bad for the productivity of the

working class.

His Garden City would be a new kind

of town with a healthy blend of city

and nature arranged in small

clusters of urban and green space.

After the establishment

of the Irish Free State,

the administration moved quickly on

the social housing issue.

A million pound grant -

a massive commitment -

was approved by the new government

in April, 1922.

Within weeks, contractors broke

ground on the State's

first public housing scheme.

Architectural historian Ellen Rowley

is looking at exactly what they

built.

The Marino scheme had propaganda

value for the new state;

quality housing would be provided

for citizens

to a standard not seen before.

This was going to be an alternative

kind of urban living.

Every family moving here would have

an individual house,

with its own front door and garden.

Suburban living for the masses

was to be the future of housing for

Dublin.

City architects,

like Horace O'Rourke,

were charged with designing mass

housing.

Following the British example,

O'Rourke introduced variety.

There were 10 different house types,

all two storey,

in terraces of four, six and eight

units.

Terraces were staggered and

corners were canted,

breaking the lines of view.

Each terrace has a different outward

design,

a distinct sense of character from

that of its neighbour.

The endless rows of Victorian

housing,

built for workers across

industrial Britain,

would not be repeated here.

All houses had a ground floor living

room, a parlour and kitchen scullery

with a larder and coal cellar.

Depending on the type of house,

there were two, three or four

bedrooms upstairs.

And every house was planned with

a bathroom.

What we see now as ordinary - that

is an indoor toilet -

was in fact extraordinary.

I want to find out more about these

houses, so I'm meeting local

conservation architect Fergal McGirl

at a home he has recently restored.

Cycling around Marino, I noticed a

great variety of detail and colour.

Can you tell us about that?

I think they used a lot of variation

in external finishes to break up

what was effectively a very large

estate of 1,500 houses.

The roofscapes, also I think, are a

particular characteristic of Marino.

For example you see on this house

and other houses in the estate,

where they used the terracotta

pantiles on the roof.

And they are particularly noted at

say corners and intersections,

where they seem to delineate

different parts of the layout.

Slating was engaged or used

extensively

within the estate as well, it's

quite a characteristic of the area,

particularly in the Mansard blocks,

like the block behind me,

where the slating became effectively

the front elevation

of the upper floors of the house.

Marino Estate was built at an

interesting time.

Can you tell us something about the

materials and fabric used?

Well, Ellen, it was a very

interesting time

in terms of construction technology.

We were transitioning from building

in what was called the traditional

way, which was the way the

Victorians and the Georgians

had built with things like solid

leaf brick walls, lime mortars,

lime plasters, and we were

transitioning into the modern era

where we are starting to build

with things like concrete,

concrete blocks, cavity walls.

The cavity wall was a very new

technology at the time.

This house, I was involved in some

of the work on it.

It's got a fair face concrete block

finish.

There is a lot of variation

in the texture of the blocks.

I speculate almost that these blocks

were made on site

because they don't to me look like

a factory made unit.

It looks to me that they were almost

handmade locally.

it was quite a brave and innovative

move for the Irish Free State

to build one of their first major

public housing schemes with this,

I suppose in some ways,

untested technology.

Beyond the masonry and mortar, the

challenge of transforming buildings

into happy and healthy homes also

required planning

and shaping the outdoor space.

Everyone was to be provided with

their own front and back garden

to encourage residents to grow their

own vegetables.

A large proportion of Dublin's

population were migrants

from rural areas.

the thinking was that they had a

deeper connection to agriculture

and to the land.

The approach reflects an Ireland

striving to establish itself

as an independent, self-sufficient

nation.

This was architecture and planning

with a social purpose:

to improve the everyday lives of

working people.

How that environment was shaped

would be crucial to the success

or failure of Marino.

The original 1919 plan for Marino

was greatly influenced

by the fashionable Garden

City philosophy

with housing radiating

from a large central boulevard,

creatively laid out so that

residents

has easy access to parkland.

However, the plans changed, giving

the eventual layout

more of a Garden Suburb identity.

Joe Brady, from UCD's Geography

Department,

has a particular interest in Marino

because he grew up here.

To find evidence of Garden City

thinking,

Joe suggested we get a bird's eye

view.

If I take you back to the 1890s

and say if,

if Dublin Corporation was

building an estate this size,

they would probably have built a

very geometric suburb with all

of the roads at right angles and

running parallel to each other.

But this is a very different

concept.

So here we are right in the Circle.

And you're looking at something

which is quite distinctive.

There's nothing like it. Look at the

geometry of it.

But also look at the variations that

are in it.

What really comes to the fore is

that it changes in colour.

And this is all designed to try and

give you an impression

of the countryside in the city.

So Joe, tell us what we're looking

at here?

These are, in fact, cul de sacs,

an arrangement of houses with their

own green space.

But it's private because there's one

road in, one road out

and the only connectivity is the

interesting connectivity

behind the houses.

You can walk in behind the houses

and do all sorts of things there.

And I must admit, as kids, we did

all sorts of things in the lanes

as we called them.

The whole thing is that this is a

neighbourhood and the circulation

patterns are designed to get people

moving around each other,

meeting each other.

But at the same time, there is no

sense that this is a gigantic suburb

built at all the same time.

What you have are a variety of

different urban spaces,

and each of these little spaces

creates their own community.

The original design for Marino

proposed a sophisticated hierarchy

of public spaces, and a wide array

of different house types.

Due to cutbacks, the final design

was less distinct.

But in spite of that, because

of the scale of the houses,

the arrangement of the public

spaces, and the fact that you can

drive into it but not through it,

gives Marino, as it's built, a real

sense of community.

Geographer Susan Hegarty is

discovering more about the area.

I'm doing a bit of urban

orienteering

and rediscovering the outside edge

of Dublin City.

Before this massive housing scheme

was built,

this area was all wide open

countryside.

The Marino Housing scheme was

largely built on the old estate

lands of the first Earl

of Charlemont, James Caulfeild,

who left us a notable architectural

legacy.

The most famous landmark of the area

is Marino Casino -

a folly built by Lord Charlemont

in the late 1700s.

Like many aristocrats of his

generation, young Lord Charlemont

undertook the Grand Tour

of Europe,

visiting the sites of great art and

architecture of the classical era.

Italy clearly made an impression

on the young lord.

On his return, he remodelled his

house and called it Marino,

and built this little house or

"casa-ino".

It's hard to imagine now,

but even in the 1920s,

this was the edge of the city.

Dublin inner city residents

would have regarded this

as the countryside.

Corporation planners mapped new

access and transport arteries into

the area to give it connectivity

and to help define the shape of the

growing city.

By far the biggest and most

impressive of these access arteries

is this one, Dublin's 100ft

cement highway,

because this was one of the first

places in Ireland

where poured cement was used for

road construction.

The main carriage way is 40 foot

across,

with two particularly wide

30-foot pathways.

We now know it as Griffith Avenue

and it's the longest tree-lined

avenue in Europe.

Once the Marino housing scheme

got underway,

plans were set in motion for public

transport and amenities.

It's no surprise that a brand new

Catholic church was built

for the brand new parish of Marino,

with schools to cater

for 1,500 children.

Other services, including a health

centre, were also built.

I'm heading for The Tuesday Club,

a group for local senior citizens,

to learn more about life here since

the 1920s.

I was born in Marino 85 years ago.

So that was my connection.

And has your family been here

all these years?

My father and mother bought

the house. I think it was 1924.

I came when I was two, 1936.

So, em, we came from Essex Street

It was great to move to.

Especially after being so many

people in the centre of the city.

Like, there was nothing only just

fields all along Fairview.

What makes Marino so special

as a place?

Like, if you were short of sugar,

you'd go next door

and that would be great.

And sure, the lady next door used to

make dresses for my sister

and my cousin, and her daughter,

but like...

It's completely different now.

You see, there was no money really

in those days.

Everybody knew one another.

And as I said, just, kids all played

together in the Green.

We were all reared together,

you know.

Now you didn't go really out of...

We live in a circle, in a green.

And we didn't really leave that.

We all played together and we went

to school together.

It must have been important for the

parents to see this happening?

Of course. Yeah.

You could put your children out

and watch them from the houses.

Because it was absolutely a great

idea.

They all had gardens. We all had

gardens.

The gardens gave, how would I say,

a little bit of dignity.

> Pride.

Yeah, pride. Good girl!

Our parents came from inner city,

out into the suburbs and they were

proud of their houses.

They were very proud of their houses

and their net curtains and...

All things like that were washed

and polished and...

Don't do anything like that now!

After the first phase of 248 houses

was completed,

4,500 families applied for them.

The cheapest house cost £400, about

25,000 euro in today's money.

Distribution was ultimately

by lottery.

But other houses being built in

Marino also attracted attention.

One of the more interesting features

here is that the houses

at the edge of the scheme appear

to be bigger, more impressive

and of a higher architectural

standard.

These are the houses of the

so-called "Reserved Areas".

These Marino Houses were privately

built, for private sale

and they were far more expensive.

Ruth McManus has researched and

written extensively about Marino.

What was the purpose

of the reserved areas?

It was a pragmatic response

to a problem.

The Corporation wanted to build

high-quality housing at the edges

of the scheme - the main roads along

the edges of the scheme,

the main frontages.

It couldn't afford to do it itself

so it decided instead to lay out

these plots and make them available

for other builders.

It was done for the very first time

here at Marino.

It was such a success, not just in

terms of housing quality

but also in adding social mix to the

scheme, that the Corporation decided

to continue with it and it continued

to apply this idea of reserved areas

in all of its schemes

for the next 50 years or so.

So in a sense, it was kind of master

planning the area as a whole,

in terms of both social mix

but also a variety of design?

Yes, they wanted to have

high-quality housing.

This was the sort of the shop front

of the scheme.

It was showing off the best of the

best here.

Only families with a minimum of four

children could apply for houses

under the public allocation scheme.

Dublin Corporation opted for

on a system of rental-purchase.

Residents would ultimately be owners

rather than tenants,

buying their houses with mortgages

lasting over 40 or even 60 years,

paying the Corporation directly.

It meant that only applicants

in regular paid employment

could afford the repayments.

Dublin's tenement poor were

effectively excluded.

Do you think Marino was designed

to be special?

Well, I suppose one of the things

that you find when you come

to Marino, if you're not familiar

with it,

is how quickly you get lost in what

seems to be this maze of streets

and beautiful green areas and so on.

And while that design is not very

useful

if you're trying to get around it,

it actually adds to this sense of

community and enclosure, I think.

And again, I suppose when they were

designing this,

they were drawing on the best of the

Garden City movement.

So they knew... they pretty much

knew what they were doing, I think,

in that respect.

So you get this...

The scale of Marino is manageable,

I think. It's a very human scale.

Everything is sort of nicely

proportioned at this human scale.

And the overall size of the scheme,

I think, works.

1,400 houses - it's big enough to

create a community,

but it's not too big.

And do you think, as a public

housing initiative,

that it was a success?

It had a unique combination of

things that happened

just at the right time in the right

way.

It was the mix and the combination,

I suppose, of the design elements,

the garden suburb idea,

the mix of people who came out here.

They were you know, described as the

aristocracy of the working class

in one of the newspapers.

But what they were doing was taking

that group of people out of mix

in terms of the tenements.

So better houses in town would then

be available.

And it sort of had this filtering

effect

or levelling up it was sometimes

called as well.

It's interesting that that was

by design, you know,

it sounds quite deliberate.

Yeah, I suppose it all came together

so beautifully at Marino.

You might wonder why don't we have

hundreds of places like this?

And I suppose the cost of developing

Marino was very substantial.

So when, when the Corporation

continued its program

in Drumcondra, for example,

they compromised on size.

They later on compromised in terms

of variety and design,

because all of those things add to

the cost.

But here at Marino they wanted to

make it beautiful.

And the best it could be.

So it's sort of a tantalizing image

of what could have been, I guess.

Almost a century after

its construction,

Marino's original home buyers might

not recognize

the half-million price tag

for some houses around here,

but they would have no difficulty

recognizing the streetscape.

It has hardly changed.

Marino was an ambitious development

by a new State

that wanted to house its people

with dignity.

Maybe it was too high a benchmark.

Maybe it was too idealistic.

Maybe it was too expensive.

All we know for certain

was that it was never repeated.