3-028-228 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches from Ireland: deserted wharfs and warehouses of Westport, 1870. 'There are people in Westport who tell you they remember the period when its enormous warehouses were stored with grain, and when a dozen ships of heavy tonnage were to be seen alongside its quays, taking in cargoes of oats, and they generally unite in attributing the decay of the export trade of Westport to the repeal of the com laws...These dismal mausoleums, as vast as pyramids, are the places where the dead trade of Westport lies buried...Nor is this the first nor the hundredth place to be seen in this country which sanguine builders have erected to accommodate an imaginary commerce...You see some great rents in the walls of more than one of these warehouses which have not been caused by their floorings giving way under the heavy burdens they have had to support; you see, too, that the stone facing of the quay is crumbling to pieces...the great bulk of these warehouses, which not merely face the port, but line both sides of an adjacent street, have been erected to accommodate an imaginary commerce, for it does not appear that the padlocks on most of the doors have ever been unlocked since the day the keys were first turned in them.' From "Illustrated London News", 1870.