‘Utter ruin’: when the ‘Night of the Big Wind’ hit Westmeath

We’ve had our fair share of storms in Westmeath in recent years, but thankfully, nothing compared to what was experienced one bitterly cold winter’s night 181 years ago.

On January 6 and a portion of January 7, 1839, the country was pummelled by a severe European windstorm which swept across the island without warning, leaving a trail of devastation in its wake.

At the time, it was recorded as one of the fiercest storms to hit Ireland since the 1500s. It damaged or destroyed a quarter of the houses in north Dublin, killing hundreds of people.

Only Munster managed to survived the worst of it, but this monstrous wind – which swept in from the Atlantic, and reached hurricane force by the first moments of Monday, January 7 – wrecked property and person across snow-covered Connacht, north Leinster and Dublin, and Westmeath was in the middle of its destructive path.

In Westmeath, Athlone appears to have suffered greater damage than Mullingar.

The January 14, 1839 edition of the Freeman’s Journal reported that “a temporary hospital, built the time the cholera raged here, and situate on the banks of the canal, recently rented and used as a corn store by Mr. Ch[r]istopher Farrel, corn-dealer, was levelled to the ground, burying beneath the ruins a quantity of wheat and oats.”

Athlone’s Connaught Street “suffered most severely”, while on the Westmeath side of the Shannon, the malt house at Dillon’s Brewery was completely blown down. Trees, roofs, slates, wood and masonry weren’t safe from the wind’s path.

There are conflicting reports as to what happened in Mullingar. A report from Saunders’s News-Letter announced that Mullingar “suffered severely by the hurricane of last night to the utter ruin of its inhabitants”.

The newspaper’s correspondent reported having just arrived back from the townland of Clonhugh, near Ballinafid, where “woods and plantations are completely destroyed, with the exception of a few trees standing here and there”.

“To give an idea of the destruction done, would be to suppose the woods and plantations a corn field laid after a storm and rain, exhibiting here and there a few stalks standing,” the correspondent wrote.

“Trees of fifty and sixty years old were snapped in pieces like glass, and others blown down.

“Many of the houses of the inhabitants, both in the town and neighbourhood, have been levelled to the ground, some burned, and scarcely any escaped damage.

“Hay and oats lie scattered in all directions, and, in fact, such a scene of devastation and misery was never seen in this part of the country as now presents itself to the view.”

On January 10, the Freeman told a slightly different story, though its correspondent was more struck by the damage to rural areas than the town itself.

“It would shock any person to see the country between Mullingar and Longford,” the correspondent wrote on January 8, 24 hours after the storm settled, explaining that several farmers had lost all their livestock.

“No fire occurred in Longford town, but in the surrounding villages several houses and haggards are consumed to ashes. Only one or two houses in the suburbs of Mullingar are burned, but in Mo[a]te dreadful destruction has been done with fire, sixty houses are burned, and it is not yet known how many lives were lost.”

The damage in Moate was corroborated by a correspondent from the Tuam Herald, who wrote of the south: “More than one hundred houses have been destroyed by fire; and we have heard that the principal part of the town of Moat[e] is destroyed.”

In its January 12 edition, Saunders’s News-Letter featured a more detailed account of the devastation in Westmeath, assessed by its correspondent on January 10.

It was stated that the “hurricane” rose at 10.30pm on January 6, and those who had gone to bed were “soon roused by their windows being blown in, or their roofs stripped, and many persons who occupied old buildings abandoned them altogether”.

Fortunately, no lives were lost in Mullingar. But several “small cabins in the outskirts of town were burned, and almost all rendered untenable”.

A land surveyor named Russell had his offices and haggard burned to the ground at Walshestown. One of the wards at the jail in Mullingar was “on fire for a considerable time”.

The military barracks “came in for the full fury of the blast”, and 1,300 panes of glass were broken.

Clark’s and Murray’s Hotels in Mullingar suffered severe damage, as did the church, and the Presbyterian meeting-house.

According to Saunders’s News-Letter, Clonyn Castle in Delvin, the seat of the Marquess of Westmeath, “suffered severely; a stack of chimneys fell on the roof, and went through it; the windows were also broken, and the trees in the demesne were torn up by the roots”. Other “noble mansions” also sustained damage.

In Castlepollard, two houses were burned, and in Ballinalack, some houses were stripped of slate and other materials. No lives were lost in either district.

Kilbeggan was also hit hard by the brutal storm. A contemporary account described its destructive nature: “There was at first a rumbling noise, like thunder, heard, which was followed by a rushing blast of wind, which swept across the town like a tornado, and shook the houses so much that the glass and delft were thrown from the shelves.

“Those who were in bed hastily jumped up and dressed themselves. Many ran out of the houses into the fields and gardens, and in several instances where the inmates fled, the houses were soon levelled to the ground.”

In a haunting premonition of the Famine which would follow eight years later, farmers across the west and midlands suffered severe damage to stocks of hay and corn; as a result, livestock began to starve in the months following the storm, resulting in huge losses for farmers.

In Westmeath and beyond, the Night of the Big Wind, as it became known, became an important fixture in Irish oral history, and stories – some factual, some exaggerated – were passed down through the generations.

Certain folk traditions in Ireland held that Judgment Day would take place on the feast of the Epiphany, January 6. When this super-hurricane landed on the country, many believed that the end of the world was imminent.

In 1909, memories of the event were still relevant. When the British government introduced the state pension system that year, there were several people who didn’t possess documentary evidence of their date of birth.

In that case, state administrators would ask people if they had a memory of the 1839 storm, to determine whether or not they qualified for payment.