1824 is the year that the Scots engineer Alexander Nimmo bought a lease from the landlord at Ballynahinch, Thomas Martin, and set about the creation of a village around the harbour that he had started building two years previously. The council in Roundstone are now in the process of planning events next summer in the village to mark this birthday.
200 years makes Roundstone a relatively new town or village in Ireland; however, Connemara had always been virtually cut off from the rest of Ireland and had been almost the mini kingdom of the Martins since Cromwellian times. There were many coastal communities scattered along the coastline and on the many islands, but no roads, only tracks, paths, or bridleways. It was easier to connect by sea. Clifden is relatively young as well, having been founded by John D’Arcy in 1812.
There were only three notable buildings existing in what became Nimmo’s village in 1824: The Fort, about a kilometre on the north side, The Old Store, used by smugglers on the one existing wharf and Seafield House, which was to become the Franciscan Monastery.
Nimmo knew the area well as he had been employed as an inspector of bogs to study the possibilities for drainage in 1811. On, counting 143 lakes in Roundstone Bog from the summit of Errisbeg he probably gave up on the hope of doing much drainage there. He came back to Roundstone in 1822, having been made “Engineer of the Western District”, employed by a charity, the Mansion House Committee, and the Department of Fisheries, at the time of a potato famine. The object was to build piers and harbours with local labour, consisting of people who needed money to buy food.
Nimmo is perhaps one of the most overlooked characters in the history, not just of Connemara, but of Ireland, in this period. He was a child prodigy and having qualified from St. Andrews and Edinburgh Universities he became headmaster of Inverness Academy at the age of 19. During the holidays he mapped a number of Scottish counties. The famous railway and bridge engineer Thomas Telford recommended him as an engineer for the Irish Bogs commission in 1811, so he left his job and came to Ireland. It was in 1813 that he first worked in Connemara and suggested a coast road to what later became his village of Roundstone. It wasn’t built until he came back in the 1820s. He left in 1814 to study public works in France, Germany and Holland.
When he returned in 1822, he also had a private practice. He owned a house in Marlborough Street in Dublin and built a house, Corrib Lodge, in Maam Cross. He brought his brothers, John and Georgeand Mary, either his sister or niece, with him. It was they who settled in Roundstone. Alexander didn’t have the time. He was also involved in the construction of the new railways between Liverpool, Leeds, Bolton, Manchester, and surveying navigation on the Mersey. There follows a list of his work over the next few years.
He surveyed what is now the DART line to Kingstown, Dun Laoire. Planned the harbours in Dunmore East, Cobh, Castlemaine, Knightstown, (where he was also employed by the Knight of Kerry to lay out a plan for the town) Ballyvaughan, Cleggan, Nimmo’s Pier in Galway and the quay in Clifden. The notable arched bridge at Poulaphouca and the Blackwater Bridge in Youghal is his and the Sarsfield Bridge in Limerick where his inspiration was the Pont de Neuilly in Paris. It is estimated that by 1828 he had planned and designed about 40 piers and mapped approximately 12 charts including Roundstone and Dublin Bay.
What makes Roundstone so important in all his work is that he bought the lease himself, when a local farmer was claiming compensation for damage as the pier was being built. Maybe he also thought the magnificent view from his harbour to the Twelve Pins was worth the price! He also set up a shed for curing fish on the wharf. It is unlikely he ever stayed for long in his village and it was his brothers, John and George who oversaw the building of the houses on the main street. They gave a grant for any new resident building a two-story house. Being Scots Presbyterians, they built a church or kirk in 1840 and they are probably buried there in the graveyard or vault. The church was demolished about 1930. Unfortunately, Alexander suffered a decline in his health and died aged 49 in 1832, unmarried and intestate, which is one reason, so little is known of him personally. Some of his modern-day admirers are inclined to think that he died of overwork. He was a humanitarian, never criticising the thousands of Irish workers he employed or their religion, which was common amongst many visitors to the country. He was buried in an unmarked grave in a long gone Church of Ireland graveyard in Marlborough Street and was reburied with all the rest in Mount Jerome cemetery.
The only two books written about him are Kathleen Villiers Tuthill’s “Alexander Nimmo and the Western District” 2006 and Noel P Wilkins, Professor of Zoology NUIG “Alexander Nimmo, Master Engineer, 1783-1832, Public Works and Civil Surveys”, 2009, (Irish Academic Press). Tim Robinson, who lived in Nimmo House at the end of the pier in Roundstone, wrote eloquently about Nimmo in his book “Listening to the Wind”, 2007.
The 200th birthday of the village is a chance to highlight his work and contribution, not just to Roundstone, but to the country.
