Sir, – Since learning recently of the impending demise of the peat briquette, I have failed to notice any reference to the name by which they were popularly known when I was a child in the late 1940s and 1950s.
Following my mother’s daily instructions to light the fire in the grate, which invariably employed the previous day’s Evening Mail (we lived in Dublin) as a fire-lighting aid, I would then journey to the outside coalhouse for an bucket-full of “Lullymores” to complete the task.
Bord na Móna’s interesting website details the history of how turf briquettes were developed and produced at their factory on Lullymore Bog, near Rathangan, Co Kildare.
I think I’m correct in saying that the technology devised at Lullymore for extracting and milling the peat, and converting same into briquettes for both domestic and industrial consumption, was subsequently adopted in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. – Yours, etc,
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PETER McILWAINE,
Manor Kilbride,
Co Wicklow.