What is a Butter Road?
Butter roads were routes used by Irish dairy farmers to haul their butter to market in the centuries before mechanized transit.
Any road leading to and from an Irish dairy farm could be considered a butter road.
But the first purpose-built butter road opened in 1 May 1748. It was a turnpike toll road constructed by John Murphy of Castleisland, a key market town Co. Kerry, the center of a milk-producing region.
For centuries butter has been an important cash crop in Ireland. Until the late 19th century, Irish dairy farmers churned their own butter, usually salting it and packing into 56-pound barrels called firkins.
But dairy farms and the markets where the butter was sold were far apart. Rural Irish roads were often little more than muddy trackways. Getting those firkins to market using horses and carts was as challenging as it was dangerous.
The British Parliament passed an act calling for construction of the butter road since demand for Irish butter was increasing.
Travelling on the butter road could be treacherous. This was especially true on the return trip from Cork when farmers often had money from the butter they had sold and robbers would lie in wait.
John Murphy, builder of the Castleisland to Cork butter road did not profit from the innovative venture – building a mostly straight road in Ireland was novel at the time.
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While a butter market had been established in Cork by 1730, the Cork Butter Exchange run by a group of butter merchants, didn’t open until 1770.
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As the butter business became more organized with advent of cooperatives and mechanized creameries, transportation improved. Even as butter began being ship by railroads, the butter road was still in use.
Butter days – An Irishman’s Diary on the Cork Butter Exchange and the world’s largest butter market
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But Irish dairy farmers were no longer solely dependent upon it to get their product to market.
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Today, the route is called the Old Butter Road and it is paved modern roadway.