Nestling in the Wicklow mountains, the village of Ballyknockan has been sending out artisans in the art of stone-cutting for the last 170 years. The area around the Blessington lakes is larded with granite quarries, and monuments and buildings from this stone, shaped and formed by expert hands, decorate towns and cities all over Ireland, and, in some cases, places far beyond our shores.
In this finely produced and illustrated volume, the joint authors cast light on a little known pursuit, providing a history of these craftsmen and their tradition, highlighting examples of their work and examining the uniqueness of the place they come from. So, if you want to know about millstones, cornstands, troughs and the Ballyknockan Warthole, this is the book for you. But being social history, it contains much for a wider public also.