Matthew Parkes
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You are right I think on the name – Sadlers or Saddlers. I forgot to mention that despite our best efforts to get to talk to someone behind the project we didn’t and suggestions for what to do with it got distorted into a rather crap feature – it was spraycreted and left as a tunnel you could go into from the bar but with no sense to any of it. I suggested that if they could keep it at all it could be gated so you could see into it from the beer garden at the back of the bar, and an explanatory panel or sign to make sense of it.
Tis hard to explain/convince people sometimes….
MatthewAs a new person here I just want to point out a few details and references relating to several topics herein:
Clontarf lead mines – contrary to an earlier post citing me, there was a lead and silver mine at Clontarf – although the Dublin Port Tunnel story was a hoax, there was a mine on the shore in the 1756-1770 period. It was situated approximately at the bottom of Castle Avenue I think, right on the edge of the sea. See Cowman, Des 2001. The metal mines of Dublin City and County, c. 1740-1825. Journal of the Mining Heritage Trust of Ireland, 1, 61-66. This also cover mines at Loughshinny, Killiney, Dalkey, Dolphins Barn and many other minor sites. The Killiney mine is surveyed and discussed in Barnett, John 2006. Quarries, Mines and Railways of Dalkey. Journal of the Mining Heritage Trust of Ireland, 6, 17-21. There’s also an article on the superb Ballycorus tunnel in that issue.
For details of any mine site in the country the best starting place is Cole’s 1922 Memoir, reprinted by the Mining Heritage Trust of Ireland in 1998. See http://www.mhti.com for details of all mining heritage journals and publications. They are all available from me via the website and if you mention this forum I shall give a decent discount. Better still I invite you all to join the MHTI and indulge your underground interests a little more!
Collins Barracks area
There is a bar whose name I do not remember to the left of the Aishling hotel near Heuston Station which yielded a natural cave of quite unusual nature when the site was redeveloped. See Meehan, R. and Parkes, M. 1997. A small cave within Quaternary deposits at Parkgate Street, Dublin 8. Irish Speleology 16, 9-10.Around the same time we examined another hole found in the same general area but on the city side of Collins Barracks, again in a redevelopment site. I think it is now apartments or offices and probably a car park where the hole was. It was alsocontained in sand and till of Ice Age origin, but had been dug out by hand (pick marks on the walls and so on) with several levels and alcoves. It yielded some horse remains of late medieval age or such as far as I recall, and was thought to have been excavated as a stable. I have pictures somewhere and probably a copy of the report we provided to the archaeologists at the time, if anyone is really desperate to see them.
As I also look after the Speleogical Union of Ireland (SUI) Library and journal sales you can contact me through http://www.cavingireland.org for further information etc on cave stuff.
Lastly, if anyone wants to write up any interesting underground sites, both journals and newsletters of MHTI and SUI are always interested in relevant material – don’t be afraid to offer something, however big or small.
Matthew Parkes
