NO SILVER LINING

THE SILVER MINE AT BARRYSTOWN, BETWEEN WELLINGTONBRIDGE AND BANNOW NEVER DELIVERED PROMISED RICHES. DAVID TUCKER LOOKS AT THE HISTORY OF A WEXFORD ENTERPRISE WHICH IS NOW ALL BUT FORGOTTEN.

THERE is little to show of the silver mining operations between Wellingtonbridge and Bannow which once held out the hope of financing Henry VIII’s Tudor court and English plans for further expansion financed by the country it had occupied. Travelling out of Wellingtonbridge, a much later brick-built chimney at Barrystown dominates the road to the bay, a leftover of a 19th Century attempt to revive the mines, a curiosity in a land scattered with ruins.

Its chambers flooded with water, shafts sealed up, there is nothing else to remind people of the presumed or past riches beneath their feet, save the odd piece of lead ore still to be found in gardens throughout the Wellingtonbridge area, and perhaps the odd piece of silver too.

Locals tell of a simple memorial at Ballyoughton Church of men who died during the 16th Century mining, but there is no sign to be found there, no graves with crumbling headstones commemorating or confirming local folklore about how they met their fates.

In times past, silver ore, mined by Germans, was carried from the mine across the northern edge of Bannow Bay to the adjacent town of Clonmines, where it was smelted and cast into ingots to finance English expansion into Ireland.

While they may have more ancient origins. the first official reports of mining in the area only emerge in the 16th century, when the Barrystown vein was given the title of the Royal Silver Mines.

While Henry VIII had the area surveyed in 1546, it wasn’t until 1551 that work began on the orders of the new king Edward VI.

The king’s agent and German miners brought in to mine the deposit fell out, however, over allegations of drunkeness and incompetence, and the mine was abandoned in 1553 after a dismal showing of silver.

An attempt to revive it during Elizabeth I’s reign also failed and it wasn’t until the 19th Century that the mine again yielded up its treasures, with 1,381 tons of ore being extracted.

Local historian Tom McDonald said the most succinct account from contemporary sources of the Barrystown mines in the mid19th Century is to be found in the pages of The Wexford Independent, from March 31, 1877:

‘About the year 1840 the mines of Barrystown were again re-opened. A gentleman from Cornwall experienced in such matters, had them in charge but the Famine came and with it the general decay of business, which caused the works to be discontinued.’

A year later, reports in the Wexford Independent and the Wexford Conservative on October 21, 1841 and October 23, 1841, do not clearly identify the company or individuals responsible for the re-opening of the mines.

The Independent account says: ‘A lease of the mine for 31 years, we understand, has been procured from the owner of the property, the Rev. [Richard] King, at a royalty rent of one-sixteenth part of the ore raised and a liberal grant of surface for the necessary operations has been obtained, with an allowance of the first 12 tons of duty ore to assist in the cost of getting it opened.’

The Wexford Independent on October 8, 1845 carried an item, first published in the Irish Railway Gazette, which while largely and tediously technical, did give details of the extent of employment there:

‘ There are at present, employed 16 men on tribute; forty on tut-work; breaking ore on tut-work, ten; surface labourers, six; pitmen, smiths, carpenters, eight; dressers including girls, twelve; buckers, six; boys filling and landing, four – in all from 102 to 120.’

The Wexford Guardian on January 28, 1846 was guarded in its estimate of the prospects