islandavanna

Updated: May 7, 2025

Islandavanna is one of three stations of the reclamation works, and is occupied by about a third of the four hundred and fifty men now at work. In the summer seven hundred were employed, but the present season is not so favourable for getting stone and pushing on operations.

Bernard Henry Becker - Disturbed Ireland: Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81.

But when I say that I have seen scores of flights a quarter of a mile long, that I have seen reaches of water so full of ducks and other water fowl that they looked like floating islands, I only give a faint idea of the quantity I have beheld between Islandavanna and the abortive ocean steam-packet port of Foynes.

Bernard Henry Becker - Disturbed Ireland: Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81.

A large number of rafts are being laden with stone to be presently towed down to the reclamation works. As we steam down the Fergus towards its junction with the Shannon at "The Beeves" rock, the stream spreads out to a great width, enclosing several islands, green as emeralds, of which Smith's Island and Islandavanna are, perhaps, the principal.

Bernard Henry Becker - Disturbed Ireland: Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81.

Yet the small peasant cultivators on an islet near Islandavanna flatly refused to work at the "slob." Smoking a pipe and looking at a cow and calf grazing was a more congenial occupation, so they preferred staying at home. The slob work was too hard entirely.

Bernard Henry Becker - Disturbed Ireland: Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81.

As the tail of the saurian may be said to stretch into the water high above Islandavanna, so may his head be said to project from that pretty patch of verdure.

Bernard Henry Becker - Disturbed Ireland: Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81.

Islandavanna is already a peninsula being connected with the mainland by a massive stone causeway, traversed every half-hour by a locomotive, hauling a train of trucks laden with stone, which, passing over the end of the island, runs out into the water to the "tip end," as it is called.

Bernard Henry Becker - Disturbed Ireland: Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81.

By the way, I saw at Islandavanna, or rather at the other end of the causeway which connects it with the mainland, a man who once employed that expression in the menacing manner I have previously alluded to, with the effect of causing the foreman of the works to seek occupation in another and far distant land.

Bernard Henry Becker - Disturbed Ireland: Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81.