Westport talk on rural electrification
Rural electrification changed the lives of women in Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s.
Westport Civic Trust’s next talk will take place on Tuesday, February 13, at 8pm in the Walnut Room in the Plaza Hotel, Westport.
Patrick Duffy will speak on ‘Wiring the Countryside: Rural Electrification in Mayo and beyond in the 1950s'. At this stage in Ireland, memories of a pre-electric rural Ireland are fading fast. In the 1930s, the Shannon Scheme’s high-tension main lines ran through the countryside servicing cities and towns with a population larger than 500 - most Mayo towns were connected in early 1930s.
The launch of the rural electrification scheme in 1946 was an enormous logistical operation that aimed to connect 280,000 new consumers in Ireland in ten years, with the erection of more than one million poles and 120,000 km of line.
Parishes were adopted by the ESB as the basic units to develop the scheme. They had a social infrastructure in place with community organisations, as well as leaders who would act as promoters of the project - like clergy, for instance, who championed ‘the electric’ from the pulpit. The ESB erected the poles, connected the houses scattered across the fields and sold the new appliances to an often sceptical population.
Patrick Duffy is a former professor of Geography at Maynooth University who now lives in Westport.
