By Brian Igoe
By Brian Igoe
By 1800 there were just two overnight stops on the Post Coach from Dublin to Cork, in Kilkenny and Fermoy, and by 1810 it was being done non-stop in 24 hours. By 1815 the coaches from Belfast to Dublin were averaging eight miles - Irish miles - per hour! And then came Charles Bianconi.
In 1800, in Italy, the north of Italy just to the south of the Alps, in the Lombardy village of Tregolo, most people earned their living from silkworms, from silk culture. The Bianconi family were one such. There were four boys and a girl. One of the boys was named Charles. Charles Bianconi.
Young Charles Bianconi was not a diligent scholar.
That is the first paragraph of the chapter, which then goes on to look at Andrea Faroni, Dublin, Temple Bar, near Essex Street, in Dublin, Waterford, Carrick-on-Suir, Charles Morrissey's boat, River Suir, Clonmel, Society for Visiting the Sick Poor, House of Industry, Jaunting Car, Clonmel and Cahir, Battle of Waterloo, Tipperary, Limerick, Thurles and Cashel from Clonmel, he extended the route system to Carrick and Waterford, by 1818 Ross had been added to his network, by 1819 Wexford, then Enniscorthy, Kilkenny, Dungarvan, Cork, Mallow, Tralee, Cahirciveen, Roscrea, Athlone, Sligo, Mail Coaches, Bianconi's cars, Bians, railways, Belfast and County Down Railway, the Cork, Bandon and South Coast Railway, the Dublin and South Eastern Railway, the Great Southern and Western Railway, and the Midland Great Western Railway, Canals, Grand Canal, 1756 , the River Shannon, Arthur Guinness, Athy, Barrow Navigation, Royal Canal, Maynooth, Mullingar Longford, the Newry canal, the Coal Island Canal, the Upper and Lower Boyne, the Ulster Canal, the Ballymore and Ballyconnell, 'passage boat', and 'fly-boat', Dublin to Tullamore, the Diolkos waggonway, Woolaton Waggonway, Stockton to Darlington Railway, Liverpool and Manchester Railway, Dublin and Kingstown railway, D&KR, the Atmospheric Railway, Dalkey, Ulster Railway Company's first line, from Belfast to Lisburn.
The Book is called 'The Story of Ireland'.
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