Sir, – I loved Rosita Boland's piece on rural electrification, "Let there be light: the day all Ireland went electric," (Weekend, October 29th).
I remember the first night electricity came to our village near Swinford, Co Mayo in the 1950s. We spent the whole night checking to see if the neighbour’s lights were still on. Most people just had one light in the kitchen.
One of our neighbours was asked how many wall sockets he wanted. He said, “All I will ever need is none.”
Another lady said she found the electric light very useful for lighting the tilley lamp. The country must be full of little snippets recording the historic electrification of rural Ireland. It would be interesting to collect these treasures.
– Yours, etc,
TOM GRUFFERTY
Dorset,
UK.