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  • 21 Aug, 2019

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Avoca, County Wicklow
Avoca (Irish: Abhóca, formerly Abhainn Mhór, meaning 'the great river') is a small town near Arklow, in County Wicklow, Ireland. It is situated on the River Avoca.

The Avoca area has been associated with its copper mines for many years and the valley has been celebrated by Thomas Moore in the song "The Meeting of the Waters". The name of the song derives from the meeting of the Avonmore and Avonbeg rivers, about 3 kilometres from the village of Avoca. The song is said to have been written under a tree, the stump of which remains by the Meetings. Avoca is also famous for its handweaving, with Avoca Handweavers based there.

Avoca has been used as a filming location for several films and television series. The BBC series Ballykissangel was filmed there. In 1967, Avoca was one of the locations used in the film Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon, and it was the setting for the comedy film Zonad which had a general Irish release in 2010.

The red kite, recently reintroduced to Ireland, is now commonly seen in and around Avoca.

Toponymy

Avoca was once known as Newbridge. It subsequently became known as Ovoca, and then in Victorian times as Avoca. Ptolemy mentions the river Oboka on his early map of Ireland. The official name of the village is now Avoca in English and Abhóca in Irish. None of the other names are used today.

Mining

Copper mining is reported to have begun in the Avoca River valley around 1720 and it continued, with interruptions, until 1982. Earlier mining, perhaps dating back to the Bronze Age, may have occurred. The East Avoca site, today, is composed mainly of a number of rock waste spoil heaps, abandoned quarries (Cronebane and East Avoca open pits) and disused roads. The largest spoil heap, Mount Platt, was built up from waste rock excavated from Cronebane open pit. There was a mineral tramway built from the West Avoca mines, through the village (on the opposite side of the river) and on to Arklow Harbour. The route of most of this was subsumed into the Dublin-Rosslare railway line, but an arch and a tunnel under the road from Rathdrum to Avoca remains.

Avoca river at Avoca village; note copper-coloured stones on the river bed

Transport

Avoca lies on the R752 regional road linking Rathnew with Woodenbridge. The village is served by Bus Éireann route 133 from Dublin (66 km) and Wicklow (21 km) to Arklow (10 km), with two departures in each direction on Mondays to Saturdays and one each way on Sundays.

There has been some local political pressure to reopen Avoca railway station, from which passenger services were withdrawn on 3 March 1964, almost 101 years after its opening, on the Dublin-Rosslare railway line, on 18 July 1863.

International relations

See also: List of twin towns and sister cities in the Republic of Ireland

Avoca has a town twinning agreement with Bromham, Wiltshire in England.

Notable people

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ "Sapmap Area - Settlements - Avoca". Census 2016. Central Statistics Office. April 2016. Retrieved 28 March 2020.
  2. ^ "Abhóca/Avoca". Placenames Database of Ireland (logainm.ie). Retrieved 19 October 2021.
  3. ^ "Ballykissangel". Wicklow Film Commission. Archived from the original on 18 July 2011. Retrieved 5 December 2010.
  4. ^ "Dick urges Council to "Get together with CIE to reopen Avoca Station"". Retrieved 1 November 2007.
  5. ^ "Avoca station" (PDF). Railscot - Irish Railways. Archived (PDF) from the original on 26 September 2007. Retrieved 9 September 2007.
  6. ^ "WELCOME TO BROMHAM". Bromham Wiltshire. Retrieved 7 October 2020.
  7. ^ "Boxing commentator Noel Andrews is laid to rest". Independent.ie. 4 December 2012. Retrieved 27 April 2022.
  8. ^ There is a landscape view of Avoca in the National Gallery of Ireland, Bodkin p. 76
  9. ^ "Enter the cosmos". Hot Press. 24 June 2003. Retrieved 27 April 2022.
  10. ^ "Oliver Byrne: The Matisse of Mathematics - Biography 1810-1829 | Mathematical Association of America". Retrieved 12 March 2023.
  11. ^ Priest, Christopher (15 August 2012). "Harry Harrison obituary". The Guardian. London. Guardian Media Group. Retrieved 27 April 2022.
  12. ^ Two sources from 1842 show either option as Kavenagh's "native place": (1) Register (Van Diemen's Land), Description lists of convicts convicted locally or arriving on non-convict ships (1842), page 111; Lawrence Kavanagh; age 33; "New Bridge, County Wicklow" (Ancestry.com); (2) Indents of Convicts Locally convicted or Transported from Other Colonies (Van Diemen's Land), Marian Watson indent 1842; Lawrence Kavenagh (Police No. 860); age 30; native place: "Redrum, Wicklow".
  13. ^ "Atlas of Irish Mathematicians". cardcolm. Retrieved 27 April 2022.
  14. ^ Alborn, p. 375.
  15. ^ Hagan Introduction Irish College Rome Archive.
  16. ^ Coyle, Colin (13 October 2013). "Wicklow wife in Jackass divorce". The Times. Retrieved 26 April 2022.
  17. ^ "Donald Pratt". Irish Independent. 22 October 2006. Retrieved 27 April 2022.
  18. ^ [1] Greystones Archaeological & Historical Society.
  19. ^ Gillespie, Sarah M. (2017). "Wynne, Emily Adelaide". In McGuire, James; Quinn, James (eds.). Dictionary of Irish Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  20. ^ [2] Irish Independent.
  • Timothy Alborn, An Irish El Dorado: Recovering Gold in County Wicklow, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 50, No. 2 (April 2011), pp. 359–380. Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The North American Conference on British Studies. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/658187. PDF.
  • Bodkin T. (1920) Four Irish Landscape Painters: George Barret R.A., Irish Academic Press, 2nd ed. 1987. ISBN 0-7165-2405-8 [3]
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