Lead Mine, Caher, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Mining
In the pastureland north of the Roughty River in County Kerry, a lead mine has quietly vanished back into the ground.
There is nothing to see at surface level now, no spoil heaps, no ruined engine house, no obvious scar in the landscape. The last of its shafts was infilled within living memory, meaning that people who knew it as an open working are likely still alive, yet the site has effectively ceased to exist as a visible feature.
The mine appears on the 1846 Ordnance Survey six-inch map, which shows a rectangular structure of roughly twenty metres in length alongside a series of nearby shafts. That mid-nineteenth century date places it within a broader period of lead-mining activity across Munster, when small-scale extraction operations were attempted across the region with varying degrees of success. Lead mining at this scale typically involved sinking vertical shafts to reach ore-bearing veins, with any surface buildings used for processing or storage. The 1846 map captures the site at what may have been a working or recently active phase, though the record gives no indication of how long it had been in operation or when extraction ceased.