The largest and heaviest meteorite to hit Ireland and the UK in historic time

By Dr Patrick Roycroft

On a clear, cloud-free, morning, at about 09:00 on Friday 10^th September 1813, the warm tranquility pervading northeast Limerick was unexpectedly torn asunder by a frightful noise, strange atmospheric smoke, and large stones falling from the sky. This was the arrival of the Limerick Meteorite, the largest and heaviest chunk of the Asteroid Belt to hit Ireland and Great Britain in recorded history. As it shot through the Earth’s atmosphere at about 16 kilometers per second, the Limerick Meteorite broke up into a variety of fragments, producing numerous thunderous shock waves that terrified and perplexed the locals. Each large fragment, the larger ones being termed a ‘mass’, was subsequently given a name based on where exactly it landed. The largest of them all landed in the townland of Briska Beg and became known, after some distortion of the place name, as the Brasky Mass.
 

The Brasky Mass is, therefore, the largest, and heaviest, fragment of the Limerick Meteorite. Originally, it weighed some 65 lbs, but over the years, after people taking bits off, that has reduced down to a still very imposing 59.5 lbs, or 27.06 kg, which is its weight today. It is about the size of a football.  The Brasky Mass landed on the estate lands of a Mr Christopher Tuthill Esq in northeast Co. Limerick, burying itself at least two feet into the hard earth and described at the time as having a sulphurous smell and still warm. Mr Tuthill lived at Faha House and the meteorite was delivered there shortly after it’s landing place was discovered.

How the Brasky Mass came to be in the National Museum of Ireland is a story of luck, the finer details of which are still being worked out. What we can say at present is something like the following. Mr Christopher Tuthill, who had taken original possession of the Brasky Mass, passed his house and estate to his son George Tuthill, and we know George owned it by 1837. George married and had children, and one of his daughters subsequently married into a neighbouring land-owning family, called the Taylors. The happy couple then moved to the Taylor estate in about 1859, and they took the Brasky Mass with them, presumably as a present from George. The Taylors lived in Hollypark, a few miles from Faha House, and there the meteorite stayed for possibly two or three generations. However, during the 20^th century, the Taylor estate became too much to manage and its last owner, a Miss C. E. Taylor, decided to sell up and auction everything off in about 1938.

The Brasky Mass was part of this sale. But it was not recognized at the time as anything special, so ended up as part of a cheap job lot of ‘miscellaneous items’. This lot was bought by local farmer John Collins, also a resident of the Hollypark area. The reason John Collins bought it was sentimental. John’s grandfather had previously worked for both the Taylor and Tuthill families and was the man who physically transported the meteorite from Faha House to Hollypark back in 1859 following the Tuthill/Taylor marriage and house move. The meteorite now sat proudly on the mantlepiece above the fireplace in a small farmhouse in Hollypark. What happened next?

Enter a man called J. A. Morrison. In late November 1945, he was an Irish Land Commissioner and doing work in the Hollypark area. He visited John Collins’ farm and when invited in to the small house, noticed the large odd rock over Mr Collins’ fireplace. This prompted a discussion and the realization by Morrison that here was something extraordinary that had gone ‘missing’ for some 132 years. Remember that from the public, and scientific, perspective, this meteorite fragment had appeared in 1813, had initially been written about in the newspapers, then had effectively disappeared into private hands, nobody knowing who had it or where it was.
Morrison got agreement from Mr Collins to take a sample. This was sent to a Dr O’Connor of the National Museum of Ireland and Professor Henry Seymour of University College Dublin, and they, in turn, sent a piece to Dr Max Hey of the Natural History Museum in London. The results were unambiguous: this was the missing Brasky Mass. Farmer John Collins then sold it to the National Museum of Ireland in July 1947 for £100. And it has been in the museum ever since.

The Brasky Mass is one of the museum’s ‘hidden treasures’. It has been displayed at least twice, but only for relatively short periods. First, at an exhibition celebrating Irish meteorite falls (of which there have only been 8) that took place at the National Museum of Northern Ireland in 2013, curated by Dr Mike Simms. Second, as part of the ‘Trove’ exhibition, which was held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2014/2015, curated by Dorothy Cross. The National Museum of Ireland itself intends to put the Brasky Mass on longer-term display when a suitable case, and display area, can be found.

What about the meteorite itself? Before hitting Limerick, it formed a part of the early Solar System about 4.6 billion years ago and is classified as a H 5 Chondrite. The ‘H’ means it is high in the element iron. Much of this iron is contained in the iron sulfide mineral troilite (FeS), and it may be sulfur derived from this mineral that Tuthill’s workers smelled when they found it in Briska Beg. Other minerals in the meteorite are olivine and an iron-rich enstatite. The ‘5’ refers to how much heat and deformation it suffered while still out in space: in this case, the rock has been metamorphosed, has been sheared, and contains mineral veins, all of which means it suffered at least one period of being hit and deformed by another of its asteroid friends. And it is a chondrite, which mean it contains many ‘chondrules’ which are round blebs of rock that are among the first things to condense from the proto-planetary disc when planets just start to form. The level 5 metamorphism also means that these chondrules are no longer sharp but have diffuse, slightly melted, edges to them.

The Brasky Mass is unique. It is the largest and heaviest meteorite known from Ireland or Britain, it was a witnessed fall, it was collected at the time, and it is from Ireland. Other fragments from the Limerick Meteorite (which might, before it split in the atmosphere, have been 50 kg, or ~110 lbs, in total) are in museums and collections all over the world: even the Vatican has some fragments. And there is one fragment, appropriately, in the Limerick Museum. But amazingly, the second largest fragment of this meteorite, a lump weighing some 24lbs (10.8 kg) is missing! It is not in any museum. Most likely it is still in private hands, probably unbeknownst to someone. Could it be propping open a cow shed door? In a rockery? Or sitting on your mantlepiece, perhaps?