Mullingar Famine Graveyard Committee hold soup kitchen re-enactment

re-enactment

On Wednesday June 24 last, shortly before 7.30pm the history enthusiasts started to make their way along the Royal Canal bank toward the Mullingar famine graveyard. There was sombre air to proceedings.

The air was thick with the smell of turf smoke as the soup bubbled in the The Famine Pot under the watchful eye of Eoin Corrigan, the appointed superintendent of the soup.

It was a balmy summer evening. To make their way there many of the attendees had traversed the path along the Royal Canal link from Lough Owel. This short journey shares ground with the famine walk many made in a bid to escape hunger and death 180 years ago.

The graveyard is around a mile in old money from the Mullingar Union Workhouse. The workhouse complex was built between 1840 and 1842. Due to the devastating impact of the Great Famine, the small field that was then on the Castlepollard Road was established as a pauper burial ground to inter the many victims who tragically perished in the workhouse.

For more than three decades, the committee has held an annual ecumenical commemoration in the Robinstown Famine burial ground. This year’s milestone anniversary of the first total failure of the potato crop in 1846 attracted a wide variety of visitors of all ages.

The 2026 event featured a soup kitchen re-enactment. The participants were issued with soup tickets, vouchers that would allow them to be issued with one bowl of soup and a piece of bread.

That was to evoke the soup kitchens set up all over the country during the “food crisis”. That form of relief certainly saved many lives but it was also a humiliating experience for those who had to queue publicly with their food vessels, bowls and billycans to receive their rations.

The group made their way in through the gate of the graveyard, circling the burial ground that some historians have estimated may contain the remains of as many as 5,000 people. There is a stirring beauty about the event that first began in 1994 at the time of the 150th anniversary of the Famine.

The grass is trimmed short, the wavy-edged leaves of the dock burst through the earth. The surface undulates, there are what may be stones, or perhaps burial markers dotted around the field. At a couple of places, there are solitary trees, incongruous in the open area. The gateway, the memorial at the entrance and the black cross in the centre of the field all emphasise the hallowed nature of the spot.

That sanctity of the location was incorporated into the ceremony. The musical accompaniment to the procession was provided by Dick Hogan, Eamon Battle, Val Johnston and Enda Finnerty. Enda also gave a rendition of Johnny McEvoy’s The Famine Song.

After the short ecumenical service, historian Seamus O’Brien gave a presentation on the historic significance of the soup kitchens in Westmeath: “During the summer of 1846, 180 years ago this year, people watched anxiously over their potato patches as fears spread of a repeat of the pestilence which destroyed half their crop in 1845.”

Seamus outlined the many factors that turned adversity into disaster: “The wet weather during the summer of ‘46 lodged much of the oaten crop and turf remained unharvested in the sodden bogs. The public works wound up in July and the food depots closed in August.

“Labourers in Ballinagore sent a memorial to the Lord Lieutenant in September 46 asking him to save them from a second visitation and imploring him “to relieve us in our present distress”. Robert Peel was replaced as PM by the Whig Lord John Russell but the government policy of laissez faire – no state intervention – during a community crisis remained the same. The editor of the Westmeath Guardian, Richard Purdue, informed his readers with deep regret that a second fearful visitation had befallen the potato crop.”

Seamus told how three million people in Ireland faced immediate destitution, starvation and famine. This directly affected one third of the population of Westmeath.

The government’s response saw the recently closed public works reopened and task work, a system where the destitute were required to perform heavy manual labour in exchange for meagre food or wages, was introduced.

The numbers employed on those famine relief projects in Westmeath increased dramatically from 672 in October 1846 to 4,755 by mid-December. When the works started, the distress of the people was apparent as the infirm, children of widows, women and labourers ganged together breaking stones in quarries, cutting down hills, filling hollows, draining rivers and building walls.

Seamus acknowledged the works of charitable organisations like the Irish Relief Association and the Society of Friends – the Quakers: “The first and prototype soup kitchen was set up in this union during the winter of 1846 by the Quakers in their so-called “Little Pennsylvania” of Moate.

“Dr Bewley and the parish priest Fr Peter Murray set up a soup kitchen committee but handed over responsibility for the running of the soup shop to a ladies committee.”

The historian told those present where the idea for the tickets they held came from: “Initially they employed two cooks and used a 40-gallon boiler into which they put six pounds of beef, seven pounds of onions, and three quarters of a pound of peppers to make the soup. They had to get a larger 100 gallon boiler in 1847 as distress increased.

“The committee issued red tickets to those who could afford to pay for the pint of soup and a quarter pound of bread. Black tickets were issued to those who queued for gratuitous rations. Hundreds of these huge cast iron cauldrons were imported in 1846-1847.

“Many were manufactured in the Quaker foundry at Coalbrookdale owned by Abraham and Alfred Darby. They were distributed to 27 counties and to all but one of the 26 District Electoral Divisions in the Mullingar Poor Law Union – Lynn was the only outlier as resident landlords set up their own soup shop there and labourers there were living near the ongoing railway works.”

Many of the cast iron cauldrons similar to the one in the centre of the field last Wednesday can still be seen on farms repurposed as drinking troughs, as ornaments in gardens, in museums, workhouses and famine graveyards.

Seamus concluded by thanking Westmeath County Council, Ger Brennan for loaning the famine boiler and all who contributed to the commemoration.

He explained that the committee hoped to unearth further evidence on the history of the burial ground with a geophysical survey to be carried out by the Discovery Programme under the auspices of the Heritage Council in July: “This survey will detect by two methodologies, earth resistance and magnetometry, where the burials are and we will receive a full report detailing the results of the investigation,” he concluded.

The graveyard is a wonderful place for reflection and contemplation. The committee’s annual ecumenical memorial service serves as a poignant ceremony to honour those who perished during The Great Hunger.