"We'd been searching for months for the right kind of stone - limestone or granite. We were on the point of commissioning a quarry in Carlow for stone when we heard about the workhouse." Paddy Harte, the joint chairman for the Journey of Reconciliation Trust, is talking about the old Mullingar Workhouse on one huge wing of which demolition began yesterday.
The trust was established to commemorate Famine victims and those who died in the first World War. The "Journey of Reconciliation" is one which leads to Flanders, where the two-acre Island of Ireland Peace Park is being created at Messines Ridge. The centrepiece of the park will be a 100-foot round tower. The cut limestone will be used to face the Flanders tower which is scheduled to be completed by October. The entire 200 tons of stone from the workhouse will be incorporated within its structure.
The stones of the Mullingar Workhouse are infused with history. Only months after it opened, the Famine was reaping its bitter harvest of the starving, and almost 1,000 people were seeking refuge inside it. Towards the end of the 19th century the part of the building known as St Anne's Block was set aside and used as an infirmary. In 1936, when a new county hospital was built, the infirmary patients were transferred there. St Anne's entered another poignant phase of Irish social history by serving as a TB hospital until its closure in 1962. Since then it has remained empty and it is this enormous wing of the workhouse building which is now being demolished.
Fifty thousand Irishmen died in the first World War, poets Francis Ledwidge and Tom Kettle among them. In total, 250,000 men enlisted from Ireland and went out to fight: a part of Irish history long lodged in the national psyche as uncomfortably as a rogue pebble in a sock.
Two hundred of the men who died in battle were from the Mullingar area alone. One of them, Maurice Dease (24), from Levington, had the distinction of being awarded the first Victoria Cross of the war. Dease died at Vimy on August 23rd, 1914, and is buried near Mons. Another young Mullingar man who died, William White (22), gave his home address as the workhouse.
Yesterday, a group of people gathered at the back of the workhouse at 9 a.m. to witness the first symbolic stages in the process of demolition, which begins in earnest next week.
"My church did little to remember the 30,000 Catholics that never came back," said Paddy Harte . "We want now to commemorate all of those who went out to defend what they believed in for the first World War."
Iarnrod Eireann and Irish Ferries are both giving their services free to assist in the huge task of transporting the stone to Messines.
After demolition the stone will be cleaned on site and packed in one-ton bags which will be transported to Dublin port in one of Iarnrod Eireann's Roadliner trucks. The job of demolition and transportation will be complete within a month.
Staff from St Mary's Hospital, which is located in the remaining wings of the workhouse, were out with their cameras to witness the first stone being dislodged from the roof. "We're sad and delighted at the same time. The building as it is now is only an eyesore," Nuala McDonnell, the acting matron of St Mary's reflected. "Maybe we'll make it over to Flanders some day to see the tower itself." Yesterday, the demolition workers were raised up in the cage of a Teleporter machine to lift their mallets against that first symbolic stone. The stone proved to be as solid and unyielding as its history, fixed there in the roofline like a stubborn old tooth for quite some minutes before finally falling to the ground, its memories going with it.