The Month of March ... Celebrating the Inner Irish in All of Us - Chapter 12
To whet your appetite and help you prepare to celebrate the upcoming MAJOR INTERNATIONAL HOLIDAY, St. Patrick's Day, I thought I would share a few photos and a wee bit of the story about a trip we made to Ireland. I will post a wee bit each day until St. Patty's day. Hope you will follow along.
I thought it might be a good idea to re-introduce you to the cast of characters in this story. The purpose of this trip was to return the ashes of my wife's mother, Mary, to her homestead in Drumshanbo, County Leitrim, Ireland.
Chris, my wife
Eric, her son, the surfer, aviation student at Western Michigan and NOW farm hand
Barbara, her sister
Ed, her father, the man who never took a bad photograph,and NOW honorary Irish
Me, her husband
Wee Bit No. 12 -Well this fine morning, Maírín (Maureen) has just delivered another one of her savory breakfasts served up with a side order of rainbows, and we decided to motor on over to the Arigna coal mine. Neither Ed nor Chris had ever been to a coal mine, and we thought this might make for an interesting experience.
Coal was an important resource in Ireland, in terms of satisfying the need for home heating, fueling the power stations and providing mass employment for the many communities where coal was found. Coal mining was a way of life for generations. Fathers and sons worked together underground in dimly lit tunnels, struggling to coax this precious commodity from the native rock where it had formed in shallow seams, seldom exceeding 20" in thickness. Coal mining was a dangerous occupation to be sure, but paid well enough to support a family.
The Arigna coal mine is located in County Roscommon, close to both Counties Sligo and Leitrim, and perhaps a one hour drive from Fraoch Bán, Maírín and Seamus Heron's bed and breakfast where we stayed. Given very clear directions from Maírín, it was an easy destination to find.
There were two basic methods of mining in Arigna. Opencast, where huge tracts of land were open cut and terraced by mechanized excavators, like the strip mines in parts of Ohio and western Pennsylvania, and underground mines, like parts of our south. The mine we visited in Arigna was the underground variety.
Underground, or "drift mining" consisted of a main tunnel with branch tunnels located every 15 to 20 feet. This intense exploration assured every opportunity to harvest every bit of the precious available coal. Coal was chiseled and hammered from the "coal face," loaded into carts called "hutches" and hauled the length of the tunnel on rails - a mini version of a modern train rail.
There were four coal mining occupations. A "drawer" filled the hutches with coal and pushed them down the rail to the main tunnel system. A "brusher" used explosives to advance the main tunnels. A "coal cutter" performed the chiseling or hammering of the coal seams to produce broken chunks of coal from the "gob," or coal face, and a "shoveller" assisted the coal cutter and made piles for the "drawer" to load. In a tunnel perhaps 7 feet in height, the coal seam was 10 to 20 inches thick, and could be located at the height of a man's chest.The coal-cutter would have to crawl on his belly to break the coal and pry it from the grip of the surrounding rock. Since he could barely move, the work of the shoveller became quite important.
In Ireland, it was common for boys to leave National School by the age of 14 to work underground in the mines. All young men began their coal mining careers as "drawers," filling hutches and pushing them to the main tunnnels. A newbie miner would have to work 4 - 5 years before having the opportunity to work at the coal face. For all of its verdant beauty, life could be quite hard at times in Ireland.
The quality of coal at the Arigna mines was poor - soft and fast burning, not like the hard anthracite we mine in many areas of the U.S. In the 1980's, the Irish government planned to build a low grade coal burning power facility suitable for the kind of coal produced by the Arigna mines, but the plan never came to fruition and the mines were closed for good in the '90's. The economic impact of this decision can still be felt today as almost every family in Arigna depended on the mines for its economic sustenance.
In 2003, the Arigna mine reopened, but this time not for the purpose of extracting coal, but as a living museum. Visitors now had the opportunity to travel down into the mine and experience first hand, how it feels to be in a tunnel, underground, with no natural light and to witness how the tunnels were shored up with timbers and steel to keep them safe.
Our tour guide for the mine had previously been employed by the Arigna coal mining company and had been asked to return to the mine to lead the tours. He was a wealth of first hand information and had many stories to tell.
In case you have missed previous chapters, links are below:
If you would like to know why I chose Seacoast New Hampshire to make my home, click here to email me, and I can make a real convincing argument for you to choose it too! Or, if you would like to do your own home search, sign up NOW on my website for our exclusive Home Scout Program.
Life is better when there are flowers in the garden!
Comments(14)