Analysis: The briquettes were not only once a convenient, inexpensive fuel for Irish people, they were also an industrial design icon
The open fireplace, once the heart of many Irish homes, is fast disappearing along with traditional fuel sources which are being phased out in favour cleaner, greener energy. While this is good for the environment, it is important to acknowledge the great cultural change this brings to domestic Irish life. The ongoing demise of turf is surrounded by controversy, its place in Irish material culture eulogised and acknowledged as profoundly important. However the recent death of its cousin, the Bord Na Móna peat briquette was met with little fuss. In 2023 this industrially produced peat fuel was consigned to history as commercial production ceased.
Bord na Móna peat briquettes were not only once a convenient and relatively inexpensive fuel for Irish people, they were also an industrial design icon. Remembering them with fond nostalgia is conflicting for those who acknowledge the deep historic, cultural and geographical place of the bogs in Ireland's past, and the important role they will play into the future in terms of climate and biodiversity. For, commercial and industrial peat production, and wholescale stripping of the bogs, was disastrous for the environment.
Yet for centuries, the rhythm of rural Irish life was dictated by the demanding task of turf cutting by hand, it was used to fuel the hearth of Irish cottages, an important enabler of Irish domestic life.
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From RTÉ News, end of an era as last peat briquette factory closes
In the wake of World War II, Ireland faced fuel shortages, and Bord na Móna, a state-owned company tasked with developing Ireland's peatlands for economic benefit, stepped up production of peat briquettes. These were a marvel of milled peat, mechanisation and industrial design. Briquettes were clean, crumb free, uniform, stackable, and easy to light, offering a refined alternative to the more labour-intensive traditional turf. The bale of briquettes offered consumers convenience completely free of the hardship of gathering their own fuel.
Unlike turf, which is air-dried and retains some moisture, briquettes underwent a mechanical process of drying and compression that meant a denser, drier fuel that burned more easily. The segmented shape that emerged in the 1960s later contained the imprint 'BMN’ on each segment. The eventual three segmented, stackable form, uniform dark brown, with a tape that held them together that doubled as a carrying handle, became widespread in Irish homes.
If traditional turf represented the rusticity of the Irish cottage, then the Bord na Móna peat briquette was the perfect embodiment of the aspirational 1970s Irish bungalow. These modern dwellings, often derided by some as "bungalow blight," were, in their own way, a form of vernacular architecture, representing the dreams of a generation seeking to elevate themselves beyond their rural, farm-based origins.
When my family moved from Dublin into our bungalow in Sligo on the eve of the 1980s, the plot of land on which the house sat came with turbary rights, we were told. My father never used this patch of the bog the house had been bequeathed, opting instead, to buy bales of briquettes to fuel the house. In a 1978 article in The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Kevin C Kearns wrote "Briquettes possess maximum appeal to urbanites because of their uniform size, shape, and ease of storage […] They have not only become a standard fuel of the working class, but are welcomed in fashionable Dublin where the open fire has become something of a status symbol recently".
For my father, choosing briquettes over turf was a quiet act of defiance against his own rural upbringing, not wishing the hardship he associated with authentic rural life on his own children. And he was not alone, many Irish people from this era had similar aspirations for the next generation, building bungalows so their own children could enjoy modern comfort and convenience, unlike the primitive dwellings they had grown up in. Even the smell of briquettes was sweeter and less acrid than the turf smoke that permeated the countryside. Children like me would have been envious of our farming friends’ trip to the bog, with the tales of craic. And I marvelled with a macabre imagination that every time we opened a bale of briquettes that the remnant of a bog body would be pressed within one.
For Bord na Móna the briquette was a commercial success, with a uniquely Irish design. Their success was even acknowledged by inclusion in the highest offices of the land. During a courtesy call to President Michael D. Higgins, I saw them in Áras an Uachtaráin, neatly stacked in the marble fireplaces, peat sculptures ready to be lit. There they were quite at home amidst other national design symbols - the Irish stuccowork, the Donegal carpets, the Egan harp - a quiet affirmation of their place in the national consciousness.
John Sheahan’s "Marino Waltz," which became the theme song from the Bord na Móna peat briquettes advertisement, once exuded warmth and joviality from our television screens, perfectly encapsulating the comfort and familiarity they brought to homes in the late twentieth century.
However, despite having a lower energy content than coal, peat and peat briquettes are the least climate-efficient fuels for global warming, releasing more CO2 per unit of energy produced and the burning of such fossil fuels has a detrimental effect on air quality. The fuel had held sway from the 1960s, but by the 2020s Bord na Móna, in its necessary shift from "brown to green," was focusing on renewable energy. The era of the briquette was at a close, whether consumers liked it or not. I continued to use briquettes in my own home, and had stockpiled some until the day I called to my local co-op last year to be told ‘they can’t be got’.
While its widely agreed that stopping production was the right thing to do, the memory of the BNM peat briquette provides a deep-seated nostalgia for those who recall simpler times accompanied by the warm glow of an open peat fire. I kept my last remaining one when I finished burning the final bale. It's a tangible link to a past that, while recent, already feels distant.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
