40cm x 34cm Limerick
James Pierce was born in Kilmore in 1813. His father had a forge in the village where he learned his ironwork skills. In 1839 James opened a small foundry specialising in making ‘fire fans’ in Allen Street, Wexford at the age of 26. Eight years later in 1847, he moved to the site previously occupied by the Folly Corn Mill at the junction of Distillery Road and Mill Road. Here he established the ‘Folly Mills Iron Works and Agricultural Machinery and Implement Factory’ (later known as the Mill Road Iron Works).
In 1856 James was contracted to build a new bridge over the Slaney linking Carcur and Crosstown to replace the old 1795 Wexford Bridge linking the town and Ferrybank. The bridge was over a quarter of a mile long and remained in use for almost 100 years until 1959 when the new Wexford Bridge was built. The Folly Mills Iron Works also forged the elaborately designed iron railings and gates for the twin churches, completed in 1858. He also built the cast-iron conservatories at Castlebridge House and Edermine House (for Sir James Power of the Power Whiskey family).
Pierce’s Foundry was further developed when James’s son Philip (d.1895) joined his father to run the firm. They worked together for just two years until James died in 1868. His other sons Martin (d.1907) and John (d.1926) also joined the business and Pierce’s became the largest agricultural machinery manufacturer in the country with a workforce of 1,000 by 1914. They had offices at Rue de Flandre in Paris and in Rio de Janeiro and their products were shipped all over the world.
Two other foundries opened in Wexford at either end of the town. The Star Iron Works was established on reclaimed land off Trinity Street and close to the south railway station. Selskar Iron Works was set up also on reclaimed land opposite the north railway station (the site is now occupied by Dunnes Stores).
However, commercial success was interrupted in August 1911 during the infamous ‘Lock-Out’ when the Pierces sought to prevent workers from joining the ITGWU. Soon all of the foundries in the town had followed suit leading to a series of pickets and protests which were not resolved until February of the following year.
Pierce’s were exporting horse-drawn farm machinery to Africa and North and South America, Australia and across Europe up until the 1920s. They had offices in Paris and Buenos Aires. In the early 1900s Pierce Bicycle Works operated on the site of the earlier Bishopswater Distillery for about 10 years but without great success. When the old distillery was demolished in the 1940s Pierce’s built housing for employees along the street front (Alvina Brook, 1946). They also built houses for senior managers overlooking the foundry at Avenue de Flandre, Mulgannon Road (1939) and at Casa Rio, Distillery Road (1947) for middle management. Park House (originally Ballyboggan House, built c.1780) was the Pierce family home in the north of the town.
However, as the use of tractors became more common, Pierce’s failed to modernise and continued to manufacture for the ‘horse era’. The business inevitably declined and in 1964 the Pierce family sold the business. Pierce Engineering’s last owners, Waterford Stanley, closed the plant in 2002 with the loss of 62 jobs. The site was sold to Tesco who opened their supermarket in 2007.
The enormous Pierce’s Foundry site
