Broomhill Drift Mine

Broomhill Mine Entrance

 

Broomhill Drift Mine is at the southern end of the Coalfield

Michael 'King' Cleere continues his journey round the Slieveardagh Coalfield visiting the site of Broomhill Drift Mine. Here the mine was accessed by clever use of its location in relation to the coalfield. 

In 1837 when Samuel Lewis visited to gather information for his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland he noted that the coalfield lay under 115 different properties and that ‘the hilly area was very favourable to allow for relatively easy drainage on a small scale’. 

Water is one of the biggest problems facing mines as when it collects in the working area it must be drained off. This can be done by pumping it away which needs specialised equipment and is costly or as in the case of Broomhill it could be drained away down an underground tunnel or adit. An adit is a near horizontal tunnel driven into the side of a hill. 

At Broomhill 

• A nearly level tunnel was driven into the hill 
• the tunnel reached the coal
• The tunnel was used as a mine entrance
• The tunnel was used for ventilation 
• The tunnel was used to drain water out (as an adit) and kept the working area drained.

The mine entrance was cut into the hill, it also allowed for ventilation and drainage

There were many small mines being worked in the area.The men who opened the mine at Broomhill made skilfull use of the features of the local landscape of the Slieveardagh Hills to reach coal through a self-draining adit or tunnel.

Over the 19th Century the hilly landscape was of benefit not only to small mines like Broomhill but also to the Mining Company of Ireland, the main lease holder. The Mining Company of Ireland both removed water by pumping and also invested heavily in excavating underground tunnels (adits) for the sole purpose of draining water from the mines, but the tunnel at Broomhill tunnel was even more useful!

All the mine sites are on private property and are not open to the public. Annually during Heritage Week our Mining Interest Group have sought permission from the landowners to visit. Derelict buildings can be dangerous, please do not trespass. 

Thank you to all who read our blog and watched the video yesterday, it was great to hear back from some of you!

Noreen Hibernia Roots puts into words why we are doing the blog......

 'They (the mines and miners) may no longer exist but it's history is now recorded online.' 

Michael Keating, thank you for bringing us really visual childhood memories of the miners...

'remember as a boy seeing them coming up after a shift, all u'd see was eyes and mouths'
'God be good to those departed miners, God bless the ones still living...... took a different kind to do that work, they were even deducted for the light on their hats'

Johanne O'Rourke Corbett shared an image of her brothers pay packet from 1955.

'showing that the miners were charged for the explosives they had to use and the light'

Pay packet from 1955

This pay packet is from Ballingarry Colliery when Clashduff colliery was being worked. Deductions were made for light, tools and explosives. Of the £13 - 2 - 2  earned, charging the lamp had cost 1 shilling 6d and the explosives (because this miner was a 'fireman', who set the charges to blast into new areas of the mine) had  cost 11 shillings and 9d. Each miner also had a mine number used as a reference for everything he did and was always on the pay packet Johanna's brother's number was 102. 

Please keep sharing the memories. If you have photographs of miners when they were young or of any thing relating to the Tipperary Coal Mines we can include them in our blog as a permanent  record of this unique coal mining history of Tipperary.