Last of the Pole Lathe

Wood Turners in Ireland

James Loftus (1855-1933)

James (Jim) Loftus learned the craft of wood turning from his father. The trade was a difficult one to learn and very laborious. He made his own pole lathe, it was primitive, almost medieval in appearance. In fact pole lathes similar to his were in use as far back as the thirteenth century. The craft of wood turning was most probably developed in ancient Egypt. Wood turning in Ireland was practised as far back as prehistoric times.

A model of James Loftus's pole lathe

The variety of work that could be done on the pole lathe was immense and this was purely because of it's primitive and peculiar design. The complexity and intricacy of the work produced by James could not be achieved on a modern lathe. The tools he used were made in the local forge in Borrisokane and James himself tempered and ground them.

James mainly manufactured dairy utensils, small churns and butter prints on which he hand carved his own designs. However he also made wooden pails, dishes, flower and shrub planters, centre pieces exquisitely carved for the ceilings of country houses and elegant furniture with turned legs.

The lathe in action. The operator is Jim's son Tom Loftus.

One of his grand-daughters remembered a frieze he made for a shop in Borrisokane. It consisted of an Irish wolf hound lying in a field of shamrock. This beautiful piece was fashioned from native hardwood.

Another grand-daughter, my aunt, has in her possession a beautifully carved flute also made by him on his lathe.

His business thrived and his products were sold at home and abroad. His wares found ready markets all over the midlands, the south and west of Ireland. He sold his products at fairs throughout Tipperary.

During the Great War he did a great deal of trade with wholesalers in Dublin, Cork and Limerick, because of the shortage of metal which was needed for the war effort. It was not unusual for him to send a selection of sixty or seventy dozen articles to any one of these firms at a time.

As with other wood turners James Loftus preferred to work with sycamore but sometimes used horse chestnut which gave a fresh clean finish. The supply of wood was used to the upmost efficiency.

In the case of making dishes or bowls the sycamore tree was cut down by a felling axe, it was cut into lengths according to the diameter of the dish to be turned. If, for example, the diameter was 45cm, then the length of the tree cut would be 45cms and so on.

These cut lengths would then be split in two and the heart removed and the outside of the dish would be roughly formed with a adze or a chipping axe. this rough shape would then be put on the lathe and turned. The back would be turned first and then the inside.

Gradually and with great skill in using his tools, James would shape the inside of the dish leaving a core the shape of the dish but smaller in diameter, attached to the inside. The rough dish shape was taken from the lathe and the solid core removed by driving a wooden curved wedge between it and the dish with a wooden mallet. This core would be removed neatly and returned to the lathe where the same process would be repeated. From one block of wood James could make four or five dishes of decreasing sizes with very little wastage.

James practised this ancient craft for more than sixty years, up until his death in 1933.

In later years the introduction of mass produced items from Japan and the far east began to hit the wood turning industry dramatically and the ancient craft has all but died out.

In 1935 two years after his death representatives of the National Museum of Ireland visted his small factory in Borrisokane and with the consent of his family they took the lathe to the museum in Kildare St, Dublin. Below is a picture of me on a visit to the National Museum in 1995 when they very kindly allowed me to view and examine some of the original artifacts produced by great great grandfather on his pole lathe.

The lathe and these items remain in the possession of the National Museum.  A replica of the lathe is currently on display at the Museum of Country Life, Turlough House, Castlebar, County Mayo.

Jack of all Trades.

A man of many talents.

Papa

Jack was the fourth child of James and Mary Loftus. He was born in 1884 and in 1911 he married my grandmother Mary Mackey in St Brendans Church, Birr, County Offaly. A life long love affair and marriage that lasted 58 years until his death in 1969. They met in Borrisokane where had been sent to work for the Sisters of Mercy convent as a domestic servant.

Convent of Mercy Borrisokane

After their marriage my grandparents lived in Belfast for three years before moving to Glasgow. Their address in Belfast was Herbert St in Ardoyne which is an area to the north of the city. My grandmother worked in the linen mills there while my grandfather worked in the shipyards. Jack's older brother Jim also worked in the Belfast shipyards and there is a family story that he worked on the Titanic.

During the period that Jack and Mary lived in Belfast political and religious unrest was a way of life and remained so up until very recently. At that time the third Home Rule bill was about to make waves in the British parliment. It was introduced in the House of Commons in April of 1912. At the same time my grandmother was expecting her first child.

An example of the religious tension that was prevalent at the time is illustrated by an extremely distressing experience my grandmother had while working in the local linen mill. A gun was held to her head by one of her fellow workers in the factory simply because my grandmother was a catholic. She showed great bravery and stood her ground. Her workmate backed down. It must have been one of the most terrifying experiences of her life and she was lucky that the stress did not harm her baby. She had no idea whether or not they were bluffing! My mother's eldest brother James was born in December of that year.

They remained in Belfast until 1915 just a year before the Easter Rising. Again Jack found work in the shipyards on Glasgow's Clydeside. My grandparents had seven children but only five of them made it to adulthood. Apart from James all the other children were born in Glasgow and the first child to be born there was Bridget.

She was born in January of 1916 and died four months later. On the evening of the 16th of April baby Bridget had been very unsettled as she had been suffering form a nasty cough and several remedies had been tried but nothing seemed to help. Mary paced the floor with her sick and fretful infant until eventually much to her exhausted mother's relief Bridget went to sleep. A sleep from which she would never awaken because the next morning when my grandmother went to check on her she was dead.

Bridget had died sometime between three and eight in the morning of cardiac failure. Today we would refer to this as cot death syndrome and parents would be treated with the upmost compassion and sympathy. However, that was not the case for my grandmother Mary. She was put through the nightmarish ordeal of being interrogated by the police like a common criminal and virtually accused of murdering her own baby. They showed little or no respect for the family's grief and when the investigation was over no apology was given for their atrocious treatment of my grandmother. Bridget was buried in common ground at Dalbeth cemetery , the family could not afford a proper burial or headstone.

Jack and Mary's third child Joseph was born on the 9th of August 1917. This was exactly three months after Jack's youngest brother Joseph was killed in action in France. The family struggled on as best they could. Jack's older brother Jim and his wife Lizzie lived near by and in June 1919 Joseph had a a new baby cousin called Teresa. Being little more than a baby himself and just learning to talk could not pronounce his baby cousin's name prperly and he called her "Teesie". He was extremely fond of her and as she became more aware of the world around her it seemed that Joseph's fondness was reciprocated.

One day when he was just two and half years old, Joseph was having his hair cut by his father. He was standing on a chair but like most children of his age he would not stand still and eventually toppled from it. Had the floor been clear he probably would have suffered nothing more than a bump on the head. However, the floor was not clear and part of a child's toy was lying next to the chair. It was a cleek which was a long metal rod with a hook on the end. The cleek was very popular in the early part of the 20th century and came with a metal ring called a gird. The cleek would be inserted into the gird and pulled. Children would race each other with them and they remained a popular toy until the 1950's. This particular cleek had been put under the bed but a neighbour's child had been playing in the house and pulled it out.

The back of Joseph's skull was penetrated by the cleek's hook fracturing it and for over a month he lay in hospital. Five days before his eventual death he contracted meningitis. On his death bed his father thought he heard him whispering a name. He thought he heard Joseph call for Teesie. Joseph finally died on the 20th February 1920.

Baby Teesie was eight months old when he died and within three months she too was dead after contracting measles which became complicated by broncho-pneumonia. She died on the 27th May 1920. The Loftus family had been dealt a horrendous double blow.

My grandparents and indeed my grand uncle and aunt must have been utterly devestated by their loss but they carried on with their lives as best they could and in spite of their adversities still managed to retain hope for the future. Many families of that time found themselves in similar situations but no matter how common infant mortality may be nothing in the world can prepare one for the pain and anguish the death of a child brings. It has always been a parent's worst nightmare.

Life was often hard but the family managed to survive. Jack and Mary went on to have four more children John, Harry, Mary and the youngest my mother Winnie.

Jack with his two youngest children Mary and Winnie

John, Harry, James and Mary

Mary, Harry and Winnie

During the second world war he was a member of the ARP and St Andrews Ambulance. After the bombing of Clydebank he assisted in the rescue operation pulling the injured and the dead from the rubble. This had a profound effect on him and the memory lived with him for the rest of his life. For his efforts he was awarded the Defence medal.

Although Jack did not follow his father into the family business, he did inherit some of his fathers talents and he too was a very gifted artist. He was ambidextrious and could draw with both hands. As a small child I would watch him draw with great delight and then try to copy what he had drawn.

As a carpenter he was more than capable and produced some very intricate pieces of work including a grotto for the local church. He could work with leather, cobble shoes, and mend bags. His greatest love though was his allotment where he grew cabbages carrots and potatoes which he sold to local shops and neighbours. His vegetables were all organically grown and very popular.

Papa in his beloved garden

In later years he turned his hand to gardening and in the summer months his garden was a blaze of colour.

He had a great sense of humour and enjoyed a party. His favourite tipple was guinness (what else) and his party piece was "Paddy McGinty's Goat". Below is a picture of him with his son Harry at a Hogmanay party in Glasgow the year before he died. They are dressed as Flora McDonald and Bonnie Prince Charlie. With a little bit of imagination you can see the resemblance!!!!

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The Mackey Connection

My grandmother Mary was born in a place called Derrymore a few miles outside Tralee in County Kerry on the 20th of May 1890. At the time of her birth her father Patrick Mackey (a railway gauger) was working on the construction of the Tralee to Dingle line which was in full operation up until the 1950's.

Her mother was Mary Rourke the daughter of Patrick Rourke and Bridget McCormack farmers in Shannonharbour, County Offaly.

Mary's father died when she was not yet five years old and on the 10th February 1896 three months before her 6th birthday she and her sister Bridget were placed in St John's Orphanage Birr. I have not been able to find any trace of their mother and the girls remained in the orphanage until they were sixteen spending occasional holidays with their grandparents.

Both girls went into domestic service. Bridget married her husband Tom Riordon from Limerick on the 11th December 1917. She and Tom emigrated to the United States in November 1921 and although the sisters corresponded by letter they were not to meet again until 1965 when Bridget and Tom visited Mary and Jack in Scotland.

The two photographs above were taken during Bridget and Tom's visit in 1965. The two sisters had not met since leaving the orphanage in Birr. The Daily Record wrote an article about the the reunion.

Mary also had two older brothers Peter and Martin.

Both boys lived with their maternal grandparents and Peter was a member of the Clara Senior Football team. The Clara team were Offaly Senior Football champions in 1917. With the onset of the first world war large numbers of County Offaly's young men were to be found at the Somme and other hellish battlefields across Europe.

Peter and his younger brother Martin served with the Connaught Rangers but both men were wounded very early in the war. The were both given honourable discharges and awarded the silver medal. Peter returned to Clara and in 1922 married a local girl Susan Kelly. They had one son Paddy.

Above is a studio photo of Martin and Edith taken in Belfast around 1914.

Probably shortly before he went off to war.

Martin moved to Belfast where he met and married Edith Cameron. They were married in the Holy Cross, Ardoyne on the 26th of December 1913. Upon his return from the war he and Edith moved to to Glasgow, they had five children together. Martin lived to the grand old age of 93. His wife Edith or "auntie Edie" as she was known died in 1962.

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Acknowledgements: Thank you to National Museum of Ireland for permission to use the photographs of the pole lathe.

Bibliography

A Parish History of Borrisokane. Compiled by Eamon Slevin for the Borrisokane Historical Society 1994

Tipperary by Mairtin O' Corrbui. A portrait of the county.

Tracing your Irish Ancestors by John Grenham. The amateur genealogist's bible.

 

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