Heritage and Community Development
The mills closed in 1903 after the end of the Boer War and the site came to be owned by Imperial Chemical Industries. In 1974, Cork County Council bought the land from ICI.
Some of the site (at the Innishmore end) was used for community development. The rest of the site was developed into a regional park. The canals were cleaned out and bridges built and greenery cleared off the surviving buildings. With the aid of an EC grant, the County Council opened a Heritage Centre in the incorporating mills area in 1993 and a working mill was reconstructed. However in 2002, the Centre closed on financial grounds.
Read more about this topic: Ballincollig Royal Gunpowder Mills
Famous quotes containing the words heritage, community and/or development:
“There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man’s life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.”
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“Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilisation.”
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“The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)