September 17. To Castlemartyr, the seat of the Earl
From Rostellan to Lota, the seat of Frederick Rogers, Esq., I had before seen it in the highest perfection from the water going from Dunkettle to Cove, and from the grounds of Dunkettle. Mrs. Rogers was so obliging as to show me the back grounds, which are admirably wooded, and of a fine varied surface.
Got to Cork in the evening, and waited on the Dean, who received me with the most flattering attention. Cork is one of the most populous places I have
Item | Value |
---|---|
Hides, at £1 each | £64,000 |
Bay and woollen yarn | 294,000 |
Butter, at 30s. per cwt. from 56s. to 72s. | 180,000 |
Beef, at 20s. a barrel | 291,970 |
Camlets, serges, &c | 40,000 |
Candles | 34,220 |
Soap | 20,000 |
Tallow | 20,000 |
Herrings, 18 to 35,000l. all their own | 21,000 |
Glue, 20 to 25,000 | 22,000 |
Pork | 64,000 |
Wool to England | 14,000 |
Small exports, Gottenburg herrings, horns, hoofs, &c., feather-beds, palliasses, feathers, &c | 35,000 |
Total | £1,100,190 |
Average prices of the nineteen years on the custom books. All exports on those books are rated at the
Bullocks, 16,000 head, 32,000 barrels; 41,000 hogs, 20,000 barrels. Butter, 22,000 firkins of half a hundredweight each, both increase this year, the whole being
Export of woollen yarn from Cork, £300,000 a year in the Irish market. No wool smuggled, or at least very little. The wool comes to Cork, &c., and is delivered out to combers, who make it into balls. These balls
Prices.
Beef, 21s. per cwt., never so high by 2s. 6d.; pork, 30s., never higher than 18s. 6d., owing to the army demand. Slaughter dung, 8d. for a horse load. Country labourer, 6d.; about town, 10d. Milk, seven pints a penny. Coals, 3s. 8d. to 5s. a barrel, six of which make a ton. Eggs, four a penny.
Cork labourers. Cellar ones, twenty thousand; have 1s. 1d. a day, and as much bread, beef, and beer as they can eat and drink, and seven pounds of offals a week for their families. Rent for their house, 40s. Masons' and carpenters' labourers, 10d. a day. Sailors now £3 a month and provisions: before the American war, 28s. Porters and coal-heavers paid by the great. State of the poor people in general incomparably better off than they were twenty years ago. There are imported eighteen thousand barrels annually of Scotch herrings, at 18s. a barrel. The salt for the beef trade comes from Lisbon, St. Ube's, &c. The salt for the fish trade from Rochelle. For butter English and Irish.
Particulars of the woollen fabrics of the county of Cork received from a manufacturer. The woollen trade, serges and camlets, ratteens, friezes, druggets, and narrow cloths, the last they make to 10s. and 12s.
A very great manufacture of ratteens at Carrick-on-Suir; the bay worsted is for serges, shalloons, &c. Woollen yarn for coarse cloths, which latter have been lost for some years, owing to the high price of wool. The bay export has declined since 1770, which declension is owing to the high price of wool.
No wool smuggled, not even from Kerry; not a sloop's cargo in twenty years, the price too high; the declension has been considerable. For every eighty-six
From the Act of the last sessions of Great Britain for exporting woollen goods for the troops in the pay of Ireland, Mr. Abraham Lane, of Cork, established a new manufacture of army clothing for that purpose, which is the first at Cork, and pays £40 a week in labour only. Upon the whole there has been no increase of woollen manufacture within twenty years. Is clearly of opinion that many fabrics might be worked up here much cheaper than in France, of cloths that the French have beat the English out of; these are, particularly, broadcloths of one yard and half yard wide, from 3s. to 6s. 6d. a yard for the Levant trade. Friezes which are now supplied from Carcassone in Languedoc. Friezes, of twenty-four to twenty-seven inches, at 10d. to 13d. a yard. Flannels, twenty-seven to thirty-six, from 7d. to 14d. Serges of twenty-seven to thirty-six inches, at 7d. to 12d. a yard; these would work up the coarse wool. At Ballynasloe Fair, in July, £200,000 a year bought in wool. There is a manufactory of knit-stocking by the common women about Cork, for eight or ten miles around; the yarn from 12d. to 18d. a pair, and the worsted from 16d. to 20d., and earn from 12d. to 18d. a week. Besides their own consumption, great quantities are sent to the north of Ireland.
All the weavers in the country are confined to towns,
Rode to the mouth of Cork Harbour; the grounds about it are all fine, bold, and varied, but so bare of trees, that there is not a single view but what pains one in the want of wood. Rents of the tract south of the river Caragoline, from 5s. to 30s.; average, 10s. Not one man in five has a cow, but generally from one to four acres, upon which they have potatoes, and five or six sheep, which they milk, and spin their wool. Labour 5d. in winter, 6d. in summer; many of them for three months in the year live on potatoes and water, the rest of it they have a good deal of fish. But it is remarked, at Kinsale, that when sprats are most plentiful, diseases are most common. Rent for a mere cabin, 10s. Much paring and burning; paring twenty-eight men a day, sow wheat on it and then potatoes;
Before I quit the environs of Cork, I must remark that the country on the harbour I think preferable, in many respects, for a residence, to anything I have seen in Ireland. First, it is the most southerly part of the kingdom. Second, there are very great beauties of prospect. Third, by much the most animated, busy scene of shipping in all Ireland, and consequently, fourth, a ready price for every product. Fifth, great plenty of excellent fish and wild fowl. Sixth, the neighbourhood of a great city for objects of convenience.