How the museum was born
The Dunne family decided to build a museum to celebrate 100 years in business. To rebuild the museum in the exact position of the old workshop. A number of decisions were made :- to purchase a Ranson 5 HP stationary steam engine an exact replica that Charles Dunne used to run the sawmill in the 30’s used, a corncracker and rack bench pictured here in these photographs.
As the original structure was in such bad condition, in the interest of health and safety the Dunnes were advised to construct a new building – pictured here.
Joe and son Ian searched Ireland & UK until they found to find a steam engine to run the sawmill again as the original was broken up for scrap in 1957 and sent to Hammond Lane. Here is a photograph of one that was found in running order however it was decided the cost of £44,000 sterling was prohibiting Joe from purchasing it. After a lot of searching they located an old sawmill in Clover Hill, Co Cavan where they found a beautiful 1927 black stone single cylinder engine. A deal was struck with Jim Sherry however the engine was so buried and hidden that they had to remove the roof of the shed and lift it out be crane shown here in this picture. It was loaded onto a truck and commenced its journey to Rahugh where it was re –built by PJ O’Rourke. Here is a picture of the old Black Stone diesel engine in running order in the museum.
Here are the photos of the construction of the new museum and in this photo you can see the museum is starting to come together where the big countershaft and pullies are being installed. The push bench is in situ, here you can see the boys tightening the belts on the pullies that drive the rack bench.
Shown here is one of the earliest photos of the workshop circa 1960, as you can see Dunnes have travelled a long way from 1950 to 2008. Charles Dunne would be very proud of the journey his small workshop has taken.