Allihies
| Allihies TOWNLAND Irish: Na hAilichí | |
| County Cork | |
|---|---|
 View over Allihies and Ballydonegan Bay | |
| Location | |
| Location: | 51°37’60"N, 10°1’60"W |
| Grid reference: | V593442 |
| Data | |
Allihies is a townland in the civil parish of Kilnamanagh, in County Cork. The townland of Allihies is at the western tip of the Beara Peninsula.
The name 'Allihies' is from the Irish 'Na hAilichí|', meaning 'The cliff fields'.[1]
History of copper mining
From the Bronze Age the area had been a site of copper-mining. In 1812 John Lavallin Puxley (1772-1856) established a company to operate the Berehaven copper mines at Allihies.
During the following century, between 1812 and 1912, 297,000 tons of ore were recorded as passing through the smelter at Swansea in Wales from the mines at Allihies.[2] Drilling during this period by the Berehaven company took place throughout the townland of Allihies, and the adjacent townlands of Cloan and Kealoge.
Three ruined Cornish engine houses are visible from Allihies. The most visually prominent is the Mountain Mine man engine house, located on the skyline above the village, and installed by the noted Cornish engineers Michael Loam and Son in 1862.
In the late nineteenth century, newly developed sources of copper ore were being worked in Africa, the Americas and Australia. A resulting fall in the worldwide price of copper led in 1884 to the closure of the mining operations at Allihies. The area saw large-scale emigration, with many of the miners finding their way to newly-developing mining centres in the United States and Canada. Among these centres is Butte, Montana, where many families (Lowneys, Harringtons and others) trace their ancestry to Allihies and the Beara peninsula.[3]
Can-Erin Mines during the 1950s and 1960s dewatered the Mountain Mine and conducted evaluation drilling, resulting in an assessment that a reopening was not economically viable, given projected operating costs and world copper prices. The company noted, however, that the Mountain Mine "has significant untested resource potential".
The Mountain Mine engine house has recently (2003) undergone conservation by the Mining Heritage Trust of Ireland.[4][5] The completed conservation project and some of the underground mine workings were the subject of the TV documentary programme "Townlands" on RTÉ One in 2005.[6]
Daphne du Maurier’s novel Hungry Hill is a fictionalized saga of several generations of a mine-owning dynasty and based loosely on the history of the Puxley family.[7]
Events
The annual Allihies Festival traditionally takes place on 15 August. It usually features horse racing - a practice probably dating from the time of more widespread use of horses and ponies in the copper mining industry. It takes place in a setting between the ocean and the surrounding mountains. The festivities now extend through the week and feature music, bale tossing and other events.
In 2008-9 the village also hosted the Michael Dwyer Festival of Traditional Irish music, which commemorates the life of a Beara musician and composer.
Children of Lir legend
The mythical story Children of Lir is well known in Ireland, with several areas claimed as the landing spot of the swans after their 900-year journey on the seas. One version of this oral tradition holds that the children of Lir were buried in Allihies. A site associated with this tradition is located near the village.
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Allihies) |
References
- ↑ Mills, Anthony David: 'A Dictionary of British Place-Names' (Oxford University Press, 2003) ISBN 978-0-19-852758-9
- ↑ Williams, R.A. (1991). The Berehaven Copper Mines: Allihies, Co. Cork, SW Ireland. Sheffield: Northern Mine Research Society. ISBN 0 952117304.
- ↑ Sweeney, Bernadette (2014). Performing Exile: Oral Histories of Montana’s Irish. In New Perspectives on the Irish Abroad: The Silent People? (Ó hAodha, Mícheál and Ó Catháin, Máirtín, eds.). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. p. 3.
- ↑ "Mining Heritage Trust of Ireland - Béara". http://www.mhti.com/mines_in_ireland_files/berehaven.htm.
- ↑ Morris, John (2003). "The Man Engine House, Mountain Mine, Allihies, Co. Cork: A Pictorial Record of Conservation Works in 2003". Journal of the Mining Heritage Trust of Ireland 3 (December): 33–40.
- ↑ Raidió Teilifís Éireann/RTÉ (2005). "Townlands: Beyond the Dark Mountain". RTÉ.
- ↑ du Maurier, Daphne (1943). Hungry Hill. London: Gollancz.
