Bilboa -
The Mining Village
(This village is located on the Borders of Carlow and Laois and the River
Dinin)
The
abandoned urban settlements of the Normans are not the only class of deserted
villages in Laois. The mining settlements, which date to the last century and
the early part of this are another group of villages which have left almost as
little trace in the contemporary landscape. There were three of them in
particular: Newtown, Bilboa and Moscow. Newtown was the earliest of the three,
laid out in the old townland of Boulavoneen by the Grand Canal Company in the
later part of the eighteenth century on a regular, grid-like pattern of
streets. The modern hamlet of Crettyard, a cluster of houses along the
Athy-Castlecomer road which ran along the northern edge of Newtown, is all
that survives of this miniature Johannesburg, whose straight streets have
vanished among hedgerows and crofts.
Bilboa lay at the extreme southern tip of the county, in a bleak and
beautiful and forgotten part of the plateau that forms a sort of no-man’s-land
between Kilkenny, Carlow and Laois. Without coal there would have been little
settlement at Bilboa, but at the time of writing the little cluster of
families in this beautiful area struggles to maintain its identity, and to
survive as a distinct localised community, proud of its individuality and its
tradition. Of the early mining village, only the church remains.
Not a trace remains of Moscow, which was situated north-eastwards from
Newtown Cross. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw the growth
in many parts of industrial Britain - particularly in mining districts of
villages which became little bastions of militant socialism. These came to be
known popularly as Little Moscows, and Moscow in Laois is one of the very few
Irish examples - perhaps the only one? The early twentieth century miners were
perhaps the only proletarian community in Laois with a developed class
consciousness: among them the early seeds of socialism germinated and
flourished, and the Revolution of 1917 filled them with hope of the dawning of
a new age.
Source: 'LAOIS An Environmental History'.
1983. by John Feehan.
