North Atlantic Skyline - - Photographs from the west of Ireland (Galway, Mayo, Clare, Limerick, Roscommon and even Leitrim)

She got the gold mine, I got the shaft

No atheists in a coal mine - picture at the mouth of the main shaft of the Arigna Coal Mine, Co. Roscommon.

We each have our own idea of what constitutes hard work - an extra hour staring at a computer, actually doing the hoovering when asked or a day at the bog. But there are some jobs that define the concept of hard work. Such is coal mining.

I have a particular interest in coal mining - my grandfather worked anthracite from the mines in Castlecomer, Co. Kilkenny. Arigna in Roscommon shared a common trait with the Castlecomer mines - narrow seams, making it even more awkward for the miners to hack out the coal from the surrounding rock. But unlike the 'Comer mines, the coal in Arigna was poor - this fact didn't make it any easier to chisel from the ground. A miner in Arigna would hack three tons of coal a day with a pickaxe using only candlelight to guide him.

Think if someone asked you to shovel 3 tons of rock into a trailer. While lying on your side. In the dark. How about if you had to hack it from a rockface first. As the disaster in China this week demonstrated, mining remains a dangerous business. In Arigna, the biggest killer wasn't the dynamite used to blast out the paths to the coal seams, or tunnel collapses. Instead, it was a fine white dust kicked up by the drills that the miners used in the latter years of the mining operation, enfeebling the strongest and most formidable of men. It was silicosis, cuased by inhaling dust from the silicate rock that surrounded the coal. The simplest of solutions - a hosepipe of water attached to the drill to keep the dust down - took years to adopt.

The mine is a tourist attraction - it's story told by men who worked there - and well worth a visit. My own gallery is here, and there's some interesting info. on a local site here.

Posted by Monasette at November 30, 2005 12:25 AM