WHAT is reputedly one of the biggest remaining famine pots in Ireland is up for sale in Kilmore Quay.

Carpenter Brendan McGarry said he bought the huge pot several years ago from a man in Bridgetown.

'I know very little about it and don't know where it was used and neither did the man I bought it from, but it's fantastic,' he said.

Brendan is currently looking for would be buyers prepared to part with in the region of €1,150 for the pot which is almost two metres in diameter.

'I was thinking of seeing if Darina Allen is interested,' said Brendan, who is currently working at the Irish National Heritage Park.

Hundreds of the pots were imported into Ireland by the Quakers during the famine of the 1840s.

An inscription on a similar cast iron famine pot in the grounds of the hospital in Clougheen Co.Tipperary reads:

'A plague wind blew across the land

fever was in the air

Fields were black that once were green

and death was everywhere.'

Food made in the pots consisted of soup made from peas-meal or oatmeal or both, in the proportion of 8oz of meal, to one gallon of water, well seasoned with onions, pepper & salt and thickened with seasonal vegetables. Three million gallons of soup per day were required in Government institutions.

By August 1847, about 3 million people were being fed each day in total. However, in the Autumn of 1847, the government shut down the soup kitchens. They expected that the next crop of potatoes might be good and told poor people that they could go to the workhouses for help.

Wexford People