This weekend, real furnaces light up the 1,000-year-old ring fort in Caherconnell, and the best way to watch iron ore become a blade is to chat to the blacksmith standing close enough to feel the heat of it.
Caherconnell is a stone ring fort located on the Davoren family farm in the heart of the Burren and the heritage site offers guided tours, a sheepdog demonstration and the Mountain Haven Café. The Furnace Festival takes place at the fort once a year, over two days, and it all happens next weekend.
More than 50 blacksmiths, iron smelters and trainee smelters travel in from Ireland, the UK, Europe and the USA for the fourth Caherconnell International Furnace Festival, on Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 August.
Gwilym Stanley and Alan Doyle of Irish Bloomery Iron organise the festival each year where these specialists travel from Ireland, the UK, Europe and the USA for two days of live, open-air iron smelting and blacksmithing. Iron ore dug from Slieve Elva in the Burren, and cut from bogs in County Offaly, goes into the bloomery furnaces this weekend, which will be lit across the fort roughly one every two hours as ore is smelted into iron blooms.
Blacksmiths hammer that iron into replicas of objects excavated at Caherconnell in previous digs: arrowheads, knives, clothing pins, spearheads.
“We always look forward to this time of year, when the festival comes around,” says Sean Davoren, managing director of Caherconnell. “It’s fascinating to watch these guys turn iron ore into utensils and weapons.
It makes our fort come alive before our eyes. Gwilym and Alan from the Irish Bloomery Iron run a great event, and this year we have an extra special guest, world-famous blacksmith Alec Steele will be here, so it’s well worth a trip to the fort to catch the show.”
Caherconnell Stone Fort is open 10am to 4pm across the festival weekend and tickets are available at www.caherconnell.com.
