Silverminesproject

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Imagining Silvermines; a psychogeography

Background

In response to the original brief laid out by the Arts Office, this visual artist residency has been very much directed towards art in the public realm. For an outsider like myself, that meant looking very closely and carefully at the context of North Tipperary in an attempt to discover where exactly the public realm was to be found. In some ways the public realm is both more and less obvious in a rural context; far more of it is open to view, but equally far less of it is public space of the kind one encounters in an urban setting.

Silvermines attracted me for many reasons. Initially it was the name, and the history of mining that intrigued me; but when I got there, the place was so untouched by the Celtic Tiger, with almost no evidence of packaging for tourism that I was curious. It was the intriguing mix of public and private spaces that kept me coming back. The abandoned mineworks that lie all around the area are both public and privately owned areas; they speak of the privatisation of resources that lie out of our sight, and the consequences of that.

Then I was lucky enough to hear of Eamonn and Maire de Stafort. They very kindly took me in and gave me tea; but more than that Eamonn gave me a wonderful account of the history of the place. I told him of my idea, and he reccomended that I contact the local principal, Billy Grace.

On another evening I met Tommy Hickey whose family have lived in Silvermines for generations. His great grandmother's father and cousin were killed in the mine. He had wonderful tales to tell about the mining, and how it came to pass that the mine was left in such a terrible and toxic state. I started looking up toxicology reports on the internet.

The project Imagining Silvermines; a psychogeography was my response to a perceived complexity, a collision of history, ecology, myth and memory. The Space Shuttle arrived in Silvermines on July 4th and took on the identity of the Imaginary Museum. This is a project in which the local community are the central element; the collection in the museum consists exclusively of what they bring. There has been extraordinary generosity and sharing of feelings about this place. A steady stream of local people from very young to very old have passed through and all of them have questioned me carefully about the project and responded with great humour and openness.

The first day that I arrived in Silvermines I just walked around; I sat in the Cuan Mhuire meditation garden (formerly the site of the Catholic Church) and listened to birdsong. It was like paradise!

In the centre of the village, near the school are some lovely green areas and a great modern version of the Handball alley.

Behind the school up the hill are some of the mining works.

Heap of material, leftover from 19thC mine works (area where women and children worked). Marks paper like raw sienna or perhaps some kind of ochre

On the left is the 19th C minig area and amongst the ochre slag heaps is an area called the Green Basin

Photos of slag heaps and 1950's crushing plant; Green Basin top middle - all photos in this series by Clive Moloney

On one of the days that I was there artist Eileen Healy came to visit. We walked around this area and we talked about the 'shadow' nature of the mining works. The village has a quaint feel when you come into it, and so close by is this other world, full of toxic slag heaps and poisoned rivers. The fact that the mining works are so untouched, so unsanitised makes it feel like walking through the shadow of the village, in the Jungian sense of that word - all that is ignore, repressed, forgotten, denied. Everywhere has it, but here it's very visible.

These 1950's mineworks are also used for shadow activities, like teenage drinking, graffiti and burning out cars.

About a mile out of town is the Macgobar Mine.

Macgobar works seen from the town in evening sunshine; crushing plant at Magcobar.

Magcobar (Magnet Cove Bariums) was a Texas-based mining company that came to Ireland in the 1960's. The state granted them the mineral rights to the area. The farmers had no rights to the minerals under their land, so they really had no option but to sell up to Macgobar.

Some held out for longer (and for better prices) than others, but John 'Fiery' Gleeson, with some assistance, traced back the ownership of his farm to 1660, when Charles 2 granted it to his family in return for their loyalty to the crown during the Civil war and the Cromwell years. What made that so important was that the King was the owner of the mineral rights; so in that granting of the land the rights to the minerals remained with the Gleeson family! Some say that 'Fiery' got a big sum of money, though he was never prepared to say how much!

But as a final aside, he also got permission to remain in his house on the land while his mother was still alive - she went on to live to 100!!

The main area for mining was the place where stood the Dun Aille or Dunally castle, home originally to the O' Kennedy clan and subsequently to Col. Henry Prettie, a Cromwellian solider who recieved the lands in payment for his services during the Cromwellian campaign. One of his descendents was granted a peerage and took the name Lord Dunally after the castle.

The castle was demolished and open-cast mining was carried out for Barytes, a mineral with a number of functions including use for oil drilling rigs. It is now flooded and takes the form of a bright green lake - local people say it is the Biggest Hole in Europe (man-made).

A few years after the closure an attempt was made to locate a Super-dump in the hole. Through a concerted campaign by the town this proposal failed to succeed. One of the factors in that campaign was that when the open-cast mine had water pumped out of it, all of the wells in the area would run dry. This shows how much the local water is connected to these areas of mining.

Another couple of miles on is the Shallee mine. This is by far the largest mine complex and has been mined over a couple of hundred years (closed finally in the 1950's).

image from Inter-agency report

For more images of the Shallee mines follow this link to collaborative project research