Royal Gunpowder Mills

Randy Jordan

The Ballincollig Royal Gunpowder Mills in Co Cork were established in 1794 by a prominent Cork citizen, Charles Leslie. Eleven years later when Napoleon's control of France posed a great threat to Britain, the Board of Ordnance bought the mills and expanded the site, the layout of which is still visible today. By the mid-nineteenth century, Thomas Tobin of Liverpool had transformed the mills into one of the most up to date industries in Ireland, second only in size to the gunpowder mills at Waltham Abbey in Essex.

Closed for over a century, the site has now become one of the Ireland's most impressive regional parks covering an area of 130 acres of woodland, waterways and meadows. The many buildings formerly used in the manufacture of gunpowder are still scattered along the main canal which stretches for a mile and a half along the southern bank of the River Lee.

Visitors can explore the park and its ruins although the Visitors Centre, which houses the only incorporating mill in working order anywhere in the world, closed in 2002. Impresive  buildings include the crypt-like Old Magazine, the Coal store, enclosed by a 15ft high wall, the Stove House which produced the heat to dry the gunpowder and the Western Gatehouse.