At the beginning of February Michael and Paul Keating visited the Commons and spent the afternoon in the Old School. They are the sons of Patrick Keating who along with business partner Gilbert Howely established Kealy Mines Ltd. in 1978.
Michael and Paul shared their memories of Kealy Mines and their fathers fascination with mines and mining and the difficulties that he and the mines encountered. As young teenagers the Kealy boys went to work with their father during their school holidays, both worked above ground. Michael being the elder also worked underground over a couple of summers. Like all young miners he started off hurrying or pushing the tubs to the bottom of the crank and was well supervised when he was underground. They also remembered that their mother like most miners wives fully supported her husband but had little idea of the dangerous and extremely hard work that he and the miners did.
Michael lights the carbide lamp in 2012
In 2012 the Keating family presented a carbide lamp to the Old School in memory of the miners and their fathers involvement in the area. This generous gesture was the start of the collection of artefacts now kept on display in the Old School. They also brought their fathers theodolite, with lights- specially designed for underground use to the gathering. That evening and since other ex-miners and their families also brought artefacts from their times in the mines and these objects help give an actual link to this fascinating and dangerous heritage.
Lamp and other artefacts in The Old School
.
In time we will bring you more of the Keating family stories of mining in Slieveardagh.
More about Kealy Mines Ltd can be found in the Tipperary Coalmines website:
This month
has got off to a good start for our coal mining heritage. Geological Survey
Ireland has included the Tipperary Coalmines Website in their online Events
and News section.
While
assembling the material for the blog and websitewe were in contact with Geological Survey
Ireland for permissions to use images of old abandonment plans and material about the mines in the Slieveardagh Coalfield given to us in 2013. Geologist
Siobhan Power of the Information Programme offered to promote our site through
a link to it and on their social media.
This is the introduction to the Tipperary Coalmines website in the Geological Survey Ireland ‘Latest News’ page
02 February 2022
The Tipperary Coalmines Website acts
as a virtual museum for the historic coal mining of the Slieveardagh Coalfield,
Co Tipperary, which operated into the 1980's. The website has been released on
behalf of the Slieveardagh Mining Interest Group, and has many engaging
features including: Virtual Tours; information on mining artefacts; and details
on the mining history and heritage that still exists in the local communities
today.
The human stories and heritage
surrounding the collieries are the core focus of the website….. Accounts from
miners that worked across the Slieveardagh Coalfield are a website highlight
and give an insight into the gruelling yet rewarding work that was done.
This is a great recognition of the importance of the mining history, we only have the coal mining heritage because of geology and we thank Geological Survey Ireland in helping us spread the awareness of this history.
This article on the miners of the Commons and Ballingarry was published on the 7th of Janurary 1922
Thank you to Terry Dunne of Peelers and Sheep who tweeted this article from 100 years ago.
Transcription of the article in the Transport Union Newspaper the 'Voice of Labour'
All power to the Soviets. The miners here, whose patience is
exhausted waiting for the much-lauded mining company to come to their relief,
have bravely taken into their own hands the working of some of the mines. All
power to them. They are the first of the boys of sweet Slieveardagh to do the
proper thing- namely, to keep themselves and their wives and children from
dying with hunger and want when the way and the means were at their hands.
Those fine Irishmen are miners who can work, and are willing to work, still
work is denied to them. What are they to do? If the bloated capitalist was to
answer, he’d tell them “ Wait until the Free State would function, and then
there would be plenty of work for all in mines and factories.” But the bloated,
idle parasite, while giving such an answer wouldn’t feel the want of anything
himself. Go on, brave workers of the Commons and Ballingarry, work the mine.
What the Lord put at your feet for your benefit, stoop down and pick it up.
Allow no enemy to stop you without knowing the reason why? Where does the Free
State come in if men are still to be slaves? But we won’t be slaves. He who
would be free himself must strike the blow: labour’s arm alone can labour free.
Up, the Commons’ Soviet and the O.B.U.!
The O.B.U (One Big Union) was a radical labour union formed
in Western Canada in 1919 and dissolved in 1956.
As was the way, the arrival of the new Free State did not improve the life of the miners, post first World War it was recorded that there was no dynamite and commercial mining had stopped. During the 1920's the small basset mines became the dominate way of reaching coal in the Slieveardagh hills for the next twenty years until the arrival of the State mining Company Mianrai Teoranta. See tipperarycoalmines.ie websiteMines Sites / Virtual Tour page Mianrai Teoranta 1941- 1952
Another record of the Commons and Ballingarry miners being in difficulty was in 1848. This piece is from the tipperarycoalmines.ie websiteMines Sites / Virtual Tour page The Commons Colliery19th Century
During the Young Irelanders' Rebellion of 1848, colliers from the
Commons and Ballingarry joined the insurgency. In response to the
situation the Mining Company of Ireland, fired a quarter of the workforce, and
put the rest on half-time.
The company's half yearly reports from 1842 on recorded that there was
too great a quantity of unsold coal, more culm than coal was being
purchased by farmers for lime kilns. In 1844 the miners were on a four day
week with full pay but from 1846 to 1852 (during the great famine) there was
very little demand for coal. The miners involvement in the Young Irelanders'
Rebellion gave the Mining Company of Ireland an excuse to fire a quarter of the
workforce and reduce the remaining workers hours. It seems that they did not
need the miners to work as they had more product than they were able to sell.
In 1853 Guinness's bought coal from the Mining Company of Ireland and the
Colliery and miners did work on, with the Commons Colliery abandonment
plan dated 1887.
Does anyone have any information about a miners strike at Copper Colliery in the late 1950's probably 1957.
The strike was broken on the eve of a settlement that would have provided for safety measures including masks and wet boring. The two Union leaders (brothers from The Commons) elected to represent the striking miners were blacklisted and no longer had jobs in the reopened mines. They and their families emigrated in the early 1960's. Sadly both men died young from 'Coal Mine Dust Lung Disease'. Does anyone have any recollections of this strike or any records, reports or newspaper articles from the time, any information will be added to the website tipperarycoalmines.ie
Look in the Related Projects page of tipperarycoalmines.ie to find out about a project from 2017 The Commons Ghost Village all about the Commons Village in the 1960's
Welcome to the launch of the Tipperary Coalmines Website
created on behalf of the Slieveardagh Mining Interest Group. We have been
working on projects relating the mining in Slieveardagh for ten years. These
years saw us gathering information, holding get-togethers and culm dancing
sessions; working on numerous and varied projects enabling ex-miners to
record and share their stories of the mines, hosting field trips to the now disused
mine sites and making many pots of tea. We have met the most honourable,
entertaining, interesting, intelligent, loyal and memorable people since we
started on this journey. To say we were happy to have undertaken this project
is an understatement. We feel honoured to have had the opportunity to work with
such great people, and about this most important heritage. We hope you will
enjoy journeying with us and that you too will share our admiration of the
brave miners of the Slieveardagh Hills.
Margaret (Grace) O' Brien and Katy Goodhue.
The Mine Sites/Virtual Tour page uses the material from the National
Heritage Week county award winning blog and Virtual Tour of the Slieveardagh
Coalfield that received funding from the Heritage Council Community Heritage Grant
Scheme. Each site included has a history of that site, images, maps and the Michael
‘King’ Cleere short site specific video.
For those of you who followed the Heritage Week blog there are two new pieces ‘A
Short History’ of the mining activity from the 1820’s to the 1980’s, and the
visit to Foilacamin Colliery and Mine Shaft in the north of the coalfield. The
Foilacamin video features Michael and Andy Lawlor, the last man we know to have
gone to work at the bottom of the Foilacamin Shaft.
The Gallery page allows you to scroll through a selection of
photographs taken at gatherings and events run at and from The Old School since
2012. There is a page of images of Artefacts from
the Old School Mining Museum, which will see more items added and a Genealogypage with an introduction to how to go about finding your ancestors, miners or not by geneaologist Noreen Maher of hiberniaroots.
All three of these pages are just a start and will be added to over time. The genealogy page is a place that histories of Slieveardagh miners and mining families can be stored and that individuals who have researched families can share their findings.The first additions to the genealogy page will include the interesting history of Slieveardagh native Richard Sutcliffe miner and inventor of the first underground belt conveyor. And we'll blog to let you know when we have it in the web page!
There is a page featuring Related Projects that have either
been undertaken in the Old School or have been influential in the development
of the website. Here you can watch ‘T’was a Terrible Hard Work’, or find out
more about the specially prepared map on the Coalmining Heritage of
Slieveardagh.
The tipperarycoalmines.ie website was designed by Sarah Loh of White Setter Design. We thank Sarah for all the work she put into the development of the site and especially for her creative solutions to all the requests made during that time.
If you want to see one of Sarah’s clever solutions look at
Dr Richard Clutterbuck’s map Slieveardagh Coal Mining Heritage. This
map was specially prepared for the Old School Mining Museum in 2020 and when we
wanted to include it in the website we asked Sarah for a way of zooming in on
the map and she came up with the magnifying glass effect!
We are very grateful to Tommy and Alma Cooke of Ballincurry
Windfarm who followed the Heritage Week blog project and have given sponsorship
towards preparing the website, thus ensuring that this really important history
is recorded for the future. Roisin O’Grady, Tipperary Heritage
Officer also helped us realise this project with support through
the Creative Ireland Programme.
The Covid pandemic has impacted on the whole world, and we
have really missed all the in-person events we took for granted. Our answer was
to try and find other ways to connect and are pleased that this website will be there for the future and easy to access but still wait and hope for a time when we can meet in person safely again.
Please enjoy visiting this new website,
it will be added to it over time and we’ll let you know through the blog when
new material is added.
And finally, The Slieveardagh Mining Interest Group wish all a Happy New Year.
After our busy summer of virtual events we submitted this article to the Tipperary Star about the important coal mining heritage of the Slieveardagh Hills. Included are photographs of some of the people who shared their histories and memories with us during the last year. Our thanks to the Star for publishing it today.
Since Heritage Week we are pleased to have secured sponsorship from Ballincurry Windfarm and the Creative Ireland Programme to put all the information, images, videos and maps into a new website tipperarycoalmines to be launched this coming Saturday 1st January 2022.
In the meantime here is one more virtual site visit, this time to Foilacamin, where the 300 ft deep shaft was used in both the 19th and 20th Centuries. And the video this time features Michael 'King' Cleere and fitter Andy Lawlor who worked on pumps at the pit bottom.
The remaining structure on the Foilacamin Colliery site is
the closed off entrance to the mine shaft.
Foilacamin is at the North of the coalfield
We know that Foilacamin
Colliery was leased by the Mining Company of Ireland in 1835 and was worked
by them until the late 1880's.
Through cross referencing the Ordnance Survey Ireland Historic Maps we have found out some more information.
Foilacamin Colliery and the road the mine site is beside are not on the
historic 6" colour map (created some time between 1829 and 1842).
25" Historic Map showing Foilacamin as being Coal Mine (Disused)
On the later 25” historic map (produced between 1888 and
1913) the Foilacamin site is marked as 'Coalmine Disused'. So between the two
mapping times the mine has been worked and abandoned. The road that it is on this
later map was probably built as part of the Mining Company of Ireland’s
infrastructure plan for the coal field. It makes access to the Commons colliery,
leased at the same time quite easy; and also connects to the main road towards
the central area of the coalfield. Today
there are still low stone walls running the length of the road in addition to the
more usual ditches and hedges.
The mine shaft at Foilacamin is 300ft deep and was also an
important coalfield site in the 20th
Century. When Ballingarry Collieries
opened the mine at Gurteen in the 1950’s the vertical shaft at Foilacamin was
used to house a powerful water pump operated using three phase electricity (with
a backup generator in case of mains power cuts). It was manned 24/7 and water
was pumped out of the old workings and kept away from the new underground
workings at Gurteen.
Pipes and Valve at the top of the shaft
The men who manned the pump were ‘fitters’ or electricians
who mostly worked underground for the mining companies. In this era of mining electricity
was central to all the operations, the tools the miners used were powered using
compressed air, there were powerful electric ventilation fans in use to draw
through air and ventilate the workings, and electric pumps used to remove water
to the surface or to underground adits. The coal cutter introduced late in the
working of Gurteen Mine also used electricity.
Christy Lawlor, an
electrician working for the mines was at Foilacamin the night in 1964 when the
water broke through from the old workings to an area being worked for coal at
Gurteen. Seven miners were trapped by the influx of water and tragically the
mine manager on duty, Mr Gannon was drowned. Christy realised there was a
problem when the water stopped coming up from the pump, there was a phone on
the site and he rang over to Gurteen to alert them that something had happened.
Christy’s son Andy
Lawlor was born across the road from the Clashduff mine site the same year
as it was opened in the 20th Century. Like many sons he followed his
father into the mines as a fitter apprenticed at and then working for
Ballingarry Colliery from 1964 to it’s closure. He is the last man we know to
have gone down the Foilacamin shaft, his task was to maintain the pump.
Andy vividly recalls going down the 100 yard deep shaft (91.4
meters). The section above ground was stone and below that it was ‘squared off’
with big timbers all the way to the bottom, some of the timbers were from the
19th Century and some had been replaced in the 1960’s. To reach the
pit bottom the men were individually winched down the shaft standing in a
specially made 2’ wide half barrel, a long stick was used to push against the
wall of the shaft to keep the barrel from spinning as it went down. There was a
‘false bottom’ about half way down the shaft with four ‘roads’ going off it,
one of them may be an adit, or tunnel to drain water. The heavy wooden floor of
the false bottom had a trap door below which the shaft continued down
vertically with no more roads off it until the actual pit bottom where there
were more roads again. Andy also remembers in addition to the electric pumps he
worked on there was also a big steel steam pump from an earlier period still in
situ at the bottom of the shaft. The spanners use to maintain the steam pump
were wrapped in canvas and stored up in the timbers above the pump, Andy took
them down and looked at them then put them back where they had been left many
decades before. The most striking memory Andy recalled was that there were five
small wooden tubs full of coal still at the bottom of the shaft. The wood was
still quite sound as the carpenter with him sawed into one and sawdust came out.
We have no idea why five full tubs would have been abandoned at the pit bottom
at the end of the 18th century.
Michael ‘King’ Cleere
introduces Foilacamin Shaft and Andy Lawlor recalls being winched to the Pit Bottom.
Foilacamin Mine Shaft in the 1980's
The disused mine at Foilacamin still has a large spoil heap
on the site. A small mine house or office has been incorporated into a bigger
house. The shaft has been capped with concrete and the entrance bricked up
using stone from other small buildings that were on the site.
This mine area is an interesting example of the cyclical
activity of mining. It, like many of the other colliery sites in the area was returned
to on more than one occasion. Today except for the presence of the shaft and
spoil heap it would be difficult to realise that it had ever been a busy
industrial site.
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.
The Slieveardagh Mining Interest Group received the Award Certificate in the post following the online award ceremony.
Margaret O'Brien, Michael 'King' Cleere & Katy Goodhue
We are delighted to be the National Heritage Week Tipperary County Award Winner.
Margaret O'Brien steers the efforts we make to have our mining heritage remembered and saved for future generations, she has been instrumental in organising all the projects we have undertaken to date at the Old School and in the community. We thank Margaret for always being ready to encourage and support all the Mining Interest Group's ventures.
We send special thanks to Michael who featured in all the videos and has so much knowledge of and interest in sharing the mining history and heritage of Slieveardagh.
Katy Goodhue put together the blog and video pieces for the Old School Mining Museum and we thank her for her continued interest and her ability to find ways of interpreting our mining history.
Daniel Quin & Kelvin O'Brien
We also thank Daniel Quin who provided additional voice for some of the video pieces and said that even he found the different ways the mines were accessed was clever and interesting.
We thank Kelvin O'Brien for all the history he has shared with us about Ballingarry Collieries and his uncle Tommy O'Brien and family. He also has made links on behalf of the Slieveardagh Coalfield area with mining areas in Britain.
We also remember Kelvin's cousin Billy O'Brien RIP, who was always there for the Mining Interest Group and ex-miners, he would have worked tirelessly to on this project and encouraged Kelvin and the group to keep gathering and sharing this history.
We thank the Mining Interest Group who helped behind the scenes, preparing the sites and checking facts, and all the people who responded to the posts especially those of you who shared memories, photographs and facts that we can save for the future.
This was a busy summer for the Old School Mining Museum, even if everything was virtual. We want this very small coalfield to be recorded as part of international coal mining history. We want the men who worked underground to be remembered with respect for doing their dangerous life limiting work of extracting coal from under the hills.There are more blogs to come and plans for both new virtual and in-person events. We are determined to raise the profile of our mining heritage, locally, nationally and internationally and this project for Heritage Week 2021 has moved us forward, the award gives us added official recognition for our local history.
If you are interested in contributing to this heritage by sharing your memories of mining times, old photographs or equipment or objects used in the mines please get in touch with us either through the blog or at tippmines@gmail.com
Finally, we thank the Heritage Council for the Award, send congratulations to all the groups who took the time to put together projects and participated in Heritage Week. We also send our huge congratulations to another Tipperary Project who was the overall winner of the Heritage Sharing Award, theCahir Women's History Group with the excellent Daughter's of Dún Iascaigh Walking Tour.
Virtual Field Trip of Slieveardagh Coalfield shortlisted for the Tipperary County Award
We are delighted to let everyone who followed our Heritage Week 2021 virtual tour of the local mine sites know that we have just got word that we are shortlisted for the Tipperary Local Authority Area award.
The National Heritage Council's National Heritage Week Awards celebrate the most engaging projects organised by National Heritage Week participants. There were over 1500 projects submitted this year. And our project is shortlisted!
The Awards Ceremony will be hosted by Journalist and TV Presenter Anne Cassin on Wednesday 20th October at 12.30. The Ceremony will be broadcast live at www.heritageweek/awards
Recording and sharing the history of Tipperary's Coal Mining Heritage continues to be very important.
The Virtual Tour engaged with interested people all over the world, and we thank all the people who followed the tour and especially those of you who shared stories and photographs, and the people we have interviewed who have yet to see their stories online.
Over 30 years after the last mine closed is is more important than ever that we ensure that Tipperary's Coal Mining Heritage is remembered and honoured. The success of this project comes from the engagement of everyone who joined the Old School Mining Interest Group, ex-miner Michael 'King' Cleere and artist Katy Goodhue on the virtual tour. Thank you everyone. This award shortlist recognition is really appreciated.
And finally today: It is a matter of urgency that Copper Steeple is saved.
There is still lots to do for this important Heritage. Copper Steeple is the landmark feature of the entire Slieveardagh area. It needs a conservation assessment to see what is required to consolidate the damage at both the top and bottom of the structure. Being 96' high this means using a lot of scaffolding as well as the experts to do the assessment and the subsequent work.
This week we are hoping that we can name more miners photographed in the 1940's. These men would have been born sometime between about 1900 and the 1920's. The photographs are taken by M A Keating for Mianraí Teoranta earliest date 1941 latest 1949. It is thought that they are most likely to have been taken in 1942 early in the the working of Ballynonty mine.
1940's Ballynonty 2nd from left Paddy Brennan
1940's Ballynonty 2nd from right Ned McGettigan
These two images are from the one photograph taken at Ballynonty. Paddy Brennan's daughter Magaret Brophy and Ned McGettigan's son Donie confirmed that these two men are their dads. This has us hoping that more men might be named.
We have no names for any of the men in the next two images, maybe you have wedding photographs of your parents or grandparents and you may recognise a face here.
Another photograph taken at Ballynonty with no man named
And the other half of the photograph above again with no names
We have got so used to taking lots of photos of people and taking selfies now-days that even artificial intelligence suggests which of your friends is in a photograph.
We still have no names for these miners from two generations
Even if you do not recognise any of these great men, you probably have photographs taken on film and printed on paper and probably nothing to do with mines or miners. Do your family a favour and name and date them for future generations.
And if you can name any of the men please let us know!
Removing Culm (graded coal) from a bunker under the Gantry at Gurteen
In Gurteen the miners extracted the coal and it came to the surface. Before it was sold it was cleaned of muck and stone and graded or sorted by size.
The coal came to the surface in the big skip and was emptied in one of two silos under the tracks in 'The Landing' (a big shed) and fed onto the first of three conveyor belts. It then moved onto the second belt to the 'Washery' where stones were removed by hand and the coal washed . On the third conveyor belt it traveled along the 'Gantry' to the 'Crusher' and on to the 'Grader'. The coal was graded by size.There were six bunkers for the graded produce- the first was for the few stones that had got past all the sorting and cleaning, then Culm or Duff, next the Grains, bigger Peas, bigger again- Beans and finally Nuts- the biggest coal.
The smallest produce culm or duff has a special history of use in household fires in the Slieveardagh area when made into Culm Balls.
In our blog about Mardyke Colliery 'duff' was mentioned in one of The Mining Company of Ireland's Reports from 1849. Seán O'Brien who grew up in Killenaule, read the blog and it reminded him that culm was marked on the dockets from Killenaule Creamery as duff. He wondered where the word duff for culm came from....
The Oxford dictionary states that duff is 'Coal in the form of small particles and dust: small coal, slack. Also duff coal.', it is not an Anglicised version of dubh (black) as it was also being used in Colliery reports in England.
Two references to Duff from the time of the working mines are:
In 1887 the Pall Mall Gazette informed the readers that 'One ton of common duff coal has generated as much steam as two tons of good bituminous coal.'
In 1925 H M Cadell's book The Rocks of West Lothian. An account of the Geological and Mining History of the West Lothian District. stated 'The mixed coal from the pit is now cleaned, washed, separated out and classified into round coal, 'nuts' of various sizes, 'pearls' and 'duff'
Collecting Coal from Ballynonty by Horse or Donkey and Cart
Seán shared his memories from the 1940's and 50's of the Slieveardagh coal mining area. He recalls purchasing Culm at Killenaule Creamery where it was marked on the docket as Duff, he also made 'a few trips for culm' directly to Ballynontymine with a donkey and cart loaned from Hanlys of Killenaule', and as he says 'Better still, with the same cart I went to the Ballinastick/Acres (?) area for Culm also, produced from a verticle shaft called a 'Basset''
Does anyone have a photograph of or more information on Hanleys of Killenaule or of anyone working the bassets in the Slieveardagh Coalfield
Locally Duff or Culm could be sourced from the collieries, collected from the streams and river banks where it was washed out from the mine workings and was also was a product of the much smaller Basset or Bell Pit Mines. There were basset mines across the Slieveardagh coalfield, they were usually family enterprises, much of what they mined was used in their own households or sold locally.
The duff or culm was mixed with Yellow Clay to make Culm Balls.Yellow Clay was found across the area, if a farmer had yellow clay on his land he would often allow other families to bring a cart of good clay to his land and exchange it for the useful yellow clay.
Most of the recorded history of mining and fuel production in the area is of the men who worked in the mines.
Culm ball were usually made during the Summer by hand or using a culm ball shooter. Families made the balls for their own use treading the mix, making the balls and drying them to store for the winter. If a horse was available a large quantity of culm and clay could be prepared by walking the horse on the mix.
After our early blogs Geraldine Healy commented 'as with every Heritage Project women have been airbrushed out' and I know they didn't go down the mines hacking away at seams but in Cornwall they had an important role in grading and sorting the product.' So unlike Cornwall there were no women working with coal at the mines in Slieveardagh, but many woman worked hard converting the otherwise nearly useless culm into Culm Balls.
Local Women spent the summers making culm balls for the next year. They would make them for their own use, and also work for other people. Presentation Convent in Ballingarry used Culm Balls as their main fuel and annually a large group of local women spent two full weeks making culm balls for the next year. Local landowners and big farmers also employed groups of women making culm balls.
Adding Yellow Clay to the Duff or Culm Heritage Week 2016
From Culm and Clay to Fuel: 'Dancing the Culm'
A ring of culm was spread on the ground and trampled down.
The yellow clay was dried and broken down to dust and added to the culm.
Water was gradually mixe into the pile to act as a binding agent.
The pile was 'danced' to mix the culm, yellow clay and water together.
The dancing continued till the mixture was very sticky.
Then it was made into culm balls, either by hand or using a culm ball shooter.
The balls were then fully dried in the open or beside the fire and stored.
Single, Double and 4-Ball Culm Ball Shooters
Finally today we have an excellent film made in 2017, Roisin O'Grady, Tipperary Heritage Officer is pleased to share this Story from the Slieveardagh Landscape .
Michael 'King' Cleere visits Slieveardagh National School, now known as 'The Old School' where he was a pupil, Lickfinn Mine where he worked, and finishes up in Glengoole at Buddy Brennan's Dancing the Culm.
This film is one from the series 'Stories from the Landscape' and was funded as an action of Tipperary Heritage plan by Tipperary County Council and the Heritage Council.
If anyone has any names of the women who worked making the Culm Balls for the Convent or others, or information or memories about their own basset mines or experiences of making Culm Balls please share them with us to add to our important mining history of the Slieveardagh Hills.
Tools from the Mines: Compressed Air 'Jigger' & Spanner
Today is the last day of Heritage Week 2021 where day by day we have brought you on a Virtual Field Trip of the Slieveardagh Coalfield. We have used a blog platform so everything we have put up and mostly shared through Facebook pages is there to stay and we plan to add to it. We have an interview with the last man down Foilacamin Shaft, and 'culm balls' and 'tallys' all to come soon.
We are revisiting the film T'was a Terrible Hard Work today, it was made in 2009.
This award winning short film animated and directed by David Quin is about coal mining in the Slieveardagh Coalfield. It features the voices of local miners Michael Heaphy, Tony Ivors, Nicholas Morrisey, Joe McEnery and Sean Lyons who shared some of the mining history and their memories. These men told these stories over a decade ago and this film is proof of the importance of continuing to collect and record our mining history. These men represent the mining community all of whom we wish to remember.
T'was a Terrible Hard Work Director David Quin 2009
And now our tour guide Michael 'King 'Cleere comes up out of the mines, but doesn't get past the local shop! Michael's interest in remembering and sharing the local history has educated and entertained groups since he lead our first Heritage Week tour in 2015. He still has more to tell...
There is always more to find out and we thank all the people who are following the blog and especially those who shared photographs and their memories during the week. If you come across any more history of the mines we can include it here.
Today our new messages include the memory 'miners as black as the coal, the miner who came to work for his brother, and the miner who locked the door on the last day and kept the key!
Thank you to Margaret Molloy who tells us 'Manys the evening I sat in the car waiting to see the wheel turning bringing up the Bogey out of the mines at (the) end of (the) shift full of miners as black as the coal.
Margaret's great visual memory is of Gurteen. The offices and car park were up a hill from mine yard so she could watch the winch wheel for it's movement knowing that the miners would soon be up and finished their shift.
Kelvin O'Brien's father Terence was one of Tommy O'Brien of Ballingarry Collieries Ltd. brothers. Along with his other brother Frank, Terence came over from St Helen's in England. Terence had become an experienced miner in Sutton Manor and Bold Colliery. Kelvin moved with his family to Clashduff at the age of two living there at the mine entrance until the family moved to Clonmel.Kelvin shared a picture of Terence taken when he was working in St Helen's
Terence O'Brien 1932 -1998
This picture reminds us that miners were young men, often 'going down' when they were as young as 14 years old.
And the Key.... Heritage week's theme is 'Open the Door to Heritage'!
Michael Moroney shared a fascinating story about a friend in Galway with an heirloom key.
'I have a friend who lives in Galway. His father, Tom Hickey, was from Ballingarry. His grandfather, also Tom Hickey, worked in the mines and on one of the occasions when the mines closed, his grandfather,Tom Hickey.... locked the door when it closed.
The big key with which his grandfather closed the mines hung above the fireplace in Galway for years afterwards.... and is still in the Hickey family.... Tom Hickey died about 1963, aged 83.
We don't know which mine he might have closed... Knockalonga in Coalbrook worked untill about 1910, so he would have been the right age to be working there. Ballingarry Coal Mining Company was working at Woodpit or Copper in 1898, again we don't know when it ceased operating so maybe Tom Hickey closed one or other of these mines. Do you know more about Tom Hickey?
And finally, if there are any miners wives or children (or miners, or their neighbours) who would be interested in sharing their memories and stories of the mining times, please contact us through either the blog or our Facebook page or at tippmines@gmail.com
We also want to collect and share more photographs, and record the names and dates of the Miners of the Slieveardagh Coalfield.
Underground in Lickfinn. Patrick Keating's son Michael revisits in 2013.
Lickfinn mine was worked in the 1940's and reopened in 1978 and was the last commercial mine in the Slieveardagh Coalfield
Lickfinn or Young's mine had been opened in the 1940's by Mianraí Teoranta.The ground had not been worked for over 30 years when Kealy Mines Ltd acquired the lease to that part of the coalfield and reopened the crank.
Irish Times 26th July 1979
Kealy Mines was established in 1978 by Patrick Keating and Gilbert Howley, it's name being a combination of their two surnames. Patrick Keating had previously worked for Tommy O'Brien. Gurteen had closed six months before the Oil Crisis and it was hoped that the reopening of mines in the area would not only bring employment but that the increased retail cost of coal would make it a profitable return to mining and bring some prosperity to the area.
Underground Lickfinn
30 years earlier Mianraí Teoranta had worked the No 2 seam. Kealy Mines were going much deeper to the No 1 seam seam. They employed 50 people.
They reopened the original one track crank or entrance used by Mianraí Teoranta and dug deeper to the 19th Century Lickfinn drainage adit (underground tunnel) that still exits at Ballynonty.
The old shaft or crank (Mianraí Teiranta's mine entrance) went down 700'. It's crank was about 40 degrees, while Gurteen's was much steeper at about 80 degrees.
It took six or seven months to clear the old shaft out and make it safe. Work started in 1978 and the men received £10 a shift and there were three shifts, the day, evening and back shift and the men changed shift each week.
Michael Morrissey was one of the miners employed, and he got an unusual task in the first phase of reopening the mine. He recalls the event for us:
'We cleaned up the crank 700' down and we met the tunnel, a level road, 'The Level' they call it.'
They met the Mining Company Of Ireland's Lickfinn Drainage Level or Adit, it used gravity flow to take the water away from the workings.The level still drains water from all across the coalfield. Lickfinn shaft is a couple of miles away from the mouth of the adit at Ballynonty.
Lickfinn/ Ballynonty/ Duggans Drainage Level or Adit
They broke through the adit, dammed it on both sides, piped the water and carried on down at 45 degrees and had gone another 40' when bad weather came bringing a huge volume of extra water. It came along the level and up and flowed over the dams. The water was only draining slowly down the level, and now with the extra volume it was building up and coming back.
Michael recalls 'we had three or four submersible pumps that pumped 10.000 gallons a minute- if you stood in front of it (the water) it would knock you.'
They made a 50' sump for the excess water but soon even with the help of the pumps it too was full.
'The underground staff said to the manager you'd be better off closing it down now and waiting for the good weather to come... It was going down slowly but it was blocked below at the level. There were breaks down in the level and no one could get to it so someone suggested I go down and come up through it, I had a good bit of experience with mining and was handy like, I'd fit through a place where a big lad would get caught.
So the next morning Michael Morrissey and his trusted friend Mickey Russell went on the mine lorry down to the adit or Duggans Level exit at Ballynonty.
We went into the level, and we went along and there was a big heap of stones down..... you'd get through, some of the O'Brien's men had got through, (at the time when Gurteen Mine was working) I could see where they had left their hand prints on the wall in the 'miar'- the stuff that comes off the water in a flood it was real yellow like mead. We had to plough through that for 2 miles ..... we got to the main breach and there was a rock down that I suppose was 30' long by 10' thick, it came down and shut the level off...
Michael realised that this was probably the blockage that was causing the water to back up at Lickfinn. The water meeting this rock had washed a deep shore or sump out behind it.
'I had a rope on me and Mickey was back about 30' just in case I walked into a sump or something- he'd have something to pull back on.'
So Mickey came up along and up onto the rock keeping hold of the rope and Michael went down into the water to the bottom of the sump.
'I went down to the bottom of it and there were five props in it, mining props.. road legs and they were about 7' or 8' long and they were stuck in the shore, the five of them wedged in holding the water, and I pulled them out and the last one I pulled out took me into the shore with the force of water, it was all built back up along... millions of gallons.... I caught the rope and I got out of it...
The roaring water going through the tunnel filled it to the roof, the men sat on the rock for about an hour and a halfrecovering and watching the water level go down. They then carried on clearing all the way up to Lickfinn. The water was hitting them in the face, Michael was caught at the back of his neck and in the chest but they ploughed on and eventually came out at the new opening at Lickfinn. Now the water went down the adit and away from the workings.
Mickey Russell and Michael Morrisey 2020
Michael says 'A badger wouldn't go up where we went but we had to stay going'
This extremely hazardous task was recalled by Michael Morrisey in the modest way and with the great visual memory that the miners from Slieveardagh Coalfield have. Mining was a very unsafe and difficult job, the men looked out for each other and every day their workplace brought more unknown dangers.
The water from the new working was pumped up just 260' to the adit and did not have to be pumped up 960' to the surface. The mine was worked by Kealy Mines up until 1982, when the cost of pumping and the high proportion of duff or poor quality of coal used up their remaining capital and they ceased working the coalfield.
Michael 'King' Cleere worked here and describes how excess water got into the mine workings, and the problems it caused.
Flair Resources, a Canadian based public company trading as Tipperary Anthricite Ltd bough up the operation hoping that the rising cost of anthricite caused by the Oil Crisis would yield them good profits. Coal cost £10 a ton in 1971 rising to £160 a ton in 1982.
By 1983 80 people had been employed with the help of IDA funding, but flooding was becoming a major problem, and weeks were lost in down time. Their pumping equipment did not match the volume of water entering the mine. In December 1983 Tipperary Anthricite went into liquidation, Flair Resources following in 1985. Large debts were left behind and and enquiry was established to examine it's commercial and financial state of affairs.
Detail of Lickfinn Yard Plan 1985
In 1989 Emerald Resources acquired a State Mining Lease for 602 ha of the Slieveardagh Coalfield. The lease was for 20 years and they were based at Gurteen but after 2 years they were gone, ending any further commercial mining in Tipperary.
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.
