Ballybrado

My parents bought Ballybrado with 260 acres in 1936 for about £3000 and sold it in 1947 for, I think, £15000. It had a mile and a quarter boundary with the river Suir where my father enjoyed fishing for salmon and trout. Of particular interest to me was the ‘hot bulb’ engine in the farm yard, used to generate 240 V DC power for the house. The engine had an 8 foot diameter flywheel from which a canvas belt drove a dynamo via 10” pulley. The engine was started by heating the hot bulb situated at the head of the single cylinder between the air inlet and exhaust valves with a paraffin blow lamp. The belt was removed from the large flywheel and men climbed on the spokes to rotate it one way and then the other to compress the air in the horizontal cylinder until they got the piston to ‘top dead centre’ with the wheel rotating in the right direction. At which point the engineer would inject fuel into inside of the hot bulb causing it to ignite and drive the piston to continue the rotation of the wheel and the normal automatic four-stroke sequence, of exhaust valve open and closed, air valve open & closed, air compressed, fuel injected and explosive expansion, was initiated. The fuel injection rate was governed by a two weight centrifugal governor. I think the fuel was paraffin or ‘TVO’, tractor vaporising oil. It was not diesel. The exhaust went to a perforated brick box outside the engine room. The driving belt was first hooked over the dynamo pulley and then ‘slipped’ onto the rotating fly-wheel. The direct current from the dynamo was transmitted to the lead-acid batteries in the house via a 400 yard long armoured copper cable. I remember when it was being cut up during the war that the diameter of the core was the same as an old penny. The return current was via the armouring and earth.

A ‘wind charger’ attached to the top of the tallest tree near the house was the replacement but only a few lights could be switched on and they were very dim.

I also remember drinking water being collected by galvanised bucket from the well on the edge of the inches. Tap water was pumped up to a tank in the middle of the field between the Farm House and the Main House by a small horizontal single cylinder engine. On one occasion (I was not there) the man starting the engine got his tie caught in the crank shaft and only managed to stop the engine by grabbing the fly-wheel.

Thrashing was a great occasion and grain was stored and turned on wooden floors above stables to dry it.

Later, a combined-harvester was bought in conjunction with Dan Heffernan. The tractor wheels were steel with cast iron lugs. To travel on roads wooden blocks were cut and bolted between the lugs. Old car tyres were cut up and nailed onto the wood.