The Irish parliament was always anxious to encourage the discovery and development of viable mineral deposits. Apart from any industrial use, an adequate supply of fuel is a necessity of everyday life, and in Ireland its importance was further emphasised by the cold, damp climate. Ireland was chronically short of fuel; for example, Wakefield, writing about Co. Meath at the beginning of the nineteenth century, declared that:

Some parts of this country are very badly supplied with fuel. Each cabin requires at least twenty-five kishes [large wickerwork baskets] for the consumption of one winter … one ton of coal is equal to fourteen kishes of turf at 4s 4d each and a ton of coal costs 34s.

Prices for turf were regulated by supply and demand. They appear high, but varied throughout the country; for instance, in Co. Westmeath Wakefield found that it was 2s 10d a kish at Mullingar, while at Reynella it was 1s. At Grange, Co. Limerick, the price was 1s 7d a kish, giving an average fuel bill of £2 per cabin per year. In Co. Fermanagh turf was delivered to the barracks at Enniskillen for 1s 4d a kish, while coal was shipped to nearby Ballyshannon for 31s 6d a ton (£1 11s 6d). Thus, when an estate included a bog, turbary rights were often a valuable part of the lease.

Turf was usually cut from a bank and then stacked on the bog in such a way as to allow the wind to blow through and dry it. When it was dry it was brought home either in a kish on a man or animal’s back or attached to a slide cart, which moved more easily over the tussocky surface of the bog. Turf burnt to a dusty ash with a soft glow and a pleasant smell, but no great heat. Throughout the century coal, readily available from England, was burnt on the east coast where a cash economy allowed its substitution for turf.

Quality, availability and marketing all enabled Britain to compensate for her diminishing forests with coal and iron. Irish coal seams had problems with both quantity and quality. The largest coal deposit in Ireland lies between Killarney and the Shannon estuary, west of Limerick. It is very difficult to mine and the mines are subject to flooding.

In the late eighteenth century the Castlecomer coalfield, near Kilkenny, had an output of about 40,000 tons a year. Coal from it was transported via road to Athy and then by the Grand Canal to Dublin at a cost of just under 25s per ton. This was quite a large enterprise as the colliery employed 600 miners and a substantial number of overseers, carpenters and other support staff.

Although the coal was actually extracted for about 10s per ton, Wakefield calculated that with the addition of freight and other charges the proprietors made less than £3,000 p.a. Furthermore, he considered that the coal’s ‘sulphurous quality renders it both disagreeable and pernicious to health’, particularly for asthmatics, and he observed that old age was not common among the inhabitants of Kilkenny. But it was the local fuel, and ‘the common people burn the coal in small grates of four bars and not quite a foot wide, and generally without a chimney.’ Some of the citizens, including the Earl of Ormonde (who died at the age of 64), were reputed to be quite attached to this form of fuel.

The two northern coalfields – Ballycastle, Co. Antrim and Coalisland, near Dungannon, Co. Tyrone – produced poor-quality bituminous coal. In 1736 Hugh Boyd, an able and energetic entrepreneur, acquired the rights to the Ballycastle coal-mine and, with substantial support from the Irish parliament, developed the town, building a glass furnace, an iron foundry, salt pans, a brewery and a tannery.

However, despite the application of state-of-the-art technology, including the use of railroads to bring the coal out of the mine, it was only moderately successful. The parallel mines dug into the cliff face proved difficult to ventilate, and strong tides kept silting-up the harbour used for shipping the coal. By 1786 the town was described as ‘decayed’.

Nevertheless, the Boyd family were still mining coal in 1809, when Wakefield reported that Mr Boyd paid the miners 5s 5d per ton and sold it at the pit mouth for 10s 10d per ton – the measure worked by the miners being equivalent to 1.5 tons as sold at the pit entrance. Wakefield further calculated that the miners earned 1s 2d to 2s per day but they had perquisites of land at a moderate rent, grazing for their cows and fuel for their own use.

The Co. Tyrone Coalisland colliery, which the Newry canal was originally planned to exploit, mined about 68,000 tons in 1809. This was sold at the pit-head for 16s 8d per ton. The Irish parliament, always anxious to find a local supply of coal for the expanding capital, offered a bounty for Irish coal transported to Dublin. The bounty covered the freight charge of 5s per ton – 4s from the pit to Newry via the canal, and 1s from Newry to Dublin as back cargo. The mine employed 140 miners who were paid £1 1s per week to work a five-foot seam approximately 210 feet underground. Unlike most mines, the Coalisland colliery remained operational throughout the century and beyond.

The problem with Irish collieries was a combination of the quality of the coal and the economics of production. In some English collieries coal was delivered to the pit-head for as little as 3s per ton. Freight across the Irish Sea was comparatively cheap and many collieries, such as those in Lancashire and Wales, were within easy reach of the sea.

The Irish iron industry was essentially a fairly small-scale forge and foundry response to local needs. Its two main components, pig-iron and coal could be more cheaply imported than acquired locally. Arthur Young stated that in the 1770s there were foundries at Belfast, Newry and Dublin; although he ‘believed there are no others in Ireland’, this is very unlikely to have been the case.

Young himself declared that Waterford had a foundry ‘for pots, kettles, weights and all common utensils, while Messrs King and Tegent had a foundry, employing 40 hands, which produced heavy products including anvils and anchors’. At the end of the century there were three foundries in Cork and the environs. Smiths earned from 6s to 24s, while the more specialised nailers, for nails were handmade, earned from 10s to 12s a week.

Apart from such basic essentials as pots, pans, horseshoes and nails, iron was increasingly used in agrarian implements. The most universal of these was the spade, and there were innumerable variations of this common tool to suit conditions and customs. Spade manufacture was among the early beneficiaries of water-powered industrialisation, being undertaken locally in specialised spade mills.

By the end of the century water-powered spade and splitting mills were fairly common. Despite attempts to produce iron locally, the pig-iron for the east coast foundries came mainly from Britain, where production costs were lower and sea transport cheap and convenient. Imported Swedish iron was used for work requiring high-quality metal.

Capital for the exploitation of mineral deposits was usually supplied by the local gentry and aristocracy. A fairly typical example of aristocratic entrepreneurship occurred at the beginning of the century, when Lord Shelburne had a number of small charcoal furnaces for smelting iron on his estate in Co. Kerry. Charcoal was the traditional smelting agent, for it contained only traces of minerals that might react disadvantageously with the iron ore.

Water was essential for the forges to work the iron blooms and drive machinery. In 1701 Shelburne and John White erected two furnaces and a double forge at Blackwater, and in 1711 White sold his interest to Shelburne. By 1731 these ironworks and two others had yielded a profit of £27,000, but by 1755 they had all ceased to operate, probably because of deforestation.

In the early 1780s Young declared that the principal Irish smelting-furnace was at Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, and that:

Its produce annually, when at work may be about 300 tons … there is another of the same sort at Mountrath, in the Queen’s County, but from the great scarcity of charcoal it does not work above three or four months every third or fourth year; when this furnace is at work that at Enniscorthy is idle.

The most capital-intensive attempt at establishing a viable smelting works in eighteenth-century Ireland was at Arigna, at the south end of Lough Allen. Here it was hoped that the combination of ore and coal might provide a suitable foundation for commercial success, and in the 1780s Mary Reilly and her sons installed a state-of-the-art plant at considerable cost. In 1789 they applied to parliament for a grant to offset at least part of the cost. The investigating committee reported positively, but lack of available funds forced the Chancellor of the Exchequer to quash the committee’s recommendation. In 1793 the Reillys went bankrupt.

At this point the Arigna enterprise was taken over by Peter La Touche (1207), MP for Co. Leitrim and a member of the famous Dublin banking family. He may have felt that the Reillys’ failure had been caused by under-capitalisation and that they had been unlucky in the timing of their request for a parliamentary grant, or he may have been influenced by the potential of the uncompleted Royal Canal, since high transport costs had been a major factor in the Reillys’ failure. Nevertheless, La Touche was equally unsuccessful and, before he handed the enterprise over to a Mr Roper, possibly lost as much as £80,000 on it, as he later claimed that the gates of Arigna iron on his estate had cost that amount.

The Arigna experiment was almost certainly doomed, but this is to view it in hindsight. To be commercially successful an iron industry requires, in addition to good quality iron ore, suitable fuel, an experienced workforce, and adequate markets and marketing facilities for a product of its weight and bulk.

Apart from transport difficulties, there were probably major scientific problems resulting from fuelling the furnace with coal. Although iron ore is one of the commoner metals found on the earth’s crust, it varies very considerably in type and quality and the presence or absence of ore is not necessarily an accurate guide to the potential success or failure of an iron industry.

More importantly, iron is usually found in combination with other minerals, which blend with it during the smelting process and consequently affect the quality of the product. Coal also contains diverse minerals and, except under unusual circumstances, does not smelt satisfactorily without further treatment, usually coking, to remove unwanted elements. This chemical reaction was not fully understood at the time of the Arigna venture.

The Reillys probably felt bitter at the government’s lack of support, for in May 1797 John Foster (0805), the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, received a letter warning him that:

The foundry which belonged to Mr La Touche at Rigna (some place in Connaught) … they have settled principles of disloyalty there, and it is almost impossible to find a man in that quarter of the country who is not a United Irishman. Mr Reilly, who held the foundry before Mr La Touche, is most active in this business and gives the lower orders of the people every encouragement, and that he will, when it is necessary give them a cannon. It is understood he has eight pieces concealed. I hope the foundry has supplied him with no balls, of which care should be taken the men being all disaffected.

The will-o’-the-wisp of potential mineral resources periodically revived by discoveries of coal, iron, copper, tin, lead, cobalt, manganese, and even silver and gold, has flickered through Ireland’s economic development. Unfortunately, the seams of coal are flawed and the other mineral deposits have proved, often after repeated failures, not to have long-term commercial viability. The discovery of minerals is often circumscribed by their quantity, quality and ease of production. In this respect Irish mining ventures have had a more chequered career than those of many countries.

Wakefield, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, noted that there were formerly lead mines in counties Armagh, Down, Waterford and Dublin, and that mines were currently being worked at Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford and Glendalough, Co. Wicklow. The latter mine, he declared, ‘amply repays the proprietors’, Lord Henry FitzGerald and Lord Essex.

The mining technology at Glendalough was state-of-the-art, using small trucks on railways for the miners to wheel the ore out of the mine, while the water flowing through the Glendalough valley powered the bellows of three coal-fired smelting houses producing 10 cwt of lead daily. The labourers were paid 10s per week for smelting crop ore, 12s for tail and 13s for sluggs or refuse. The lead was sent about 30 miles to Dublin in 1 cwt bars.

Another lead mine was operated by Lord Leitrim near Errigal, Co. Donegal. An example of import substitution was the siliceous sand found in quantity at Muckish mountain. At the end of the century, it was being shipped to Belfast for use in a glass factory ‘where it is substituted for that which used to be imported from England. It is supplied at the Bay of Ards for two guineas per ton.’

Industrial development in England was closely watched not only by politicians, economists and businessmen but also by Irish landlords, who were as anxious to discover coal and other minerals on their land as their English counterparts. For example, in 1736 a search was made on the Abercorn estates in north Tyrone. It was supervised by an imported expert, Mr Ryon, who was not entirely welcome in that closed community.

The agent reported initially that ‘Andrew Gillbreath … has found some small coals among the stones which look very well’, but a month later, possibly with a wry satisfaction, he reported that ‘the coals he [Ryon] took out of the pit were put in by some of the men employed in the work.’ Nevertheless, Ryon persevered with his mineral exploration; the agent reported suspiciously that he ‘still continues to work at the lead mine … but as I and most people in this country are strangers to this affair, I can as yet have only his word for it.’ In the event, no great mineral discoveries were made on the Earl of Abercorn’s Ulster estates.

Copper was found in numerous small deposits throughout the country. In the 1720s Madame da Cunha wrote to her nephew, Lord Kenmare, that ‘Lord Shelburne has found a copper mine of great value on his estate, and as it is in your neighbourhood who knows but you may have the same good luck.’ Minerals seldom came singly; this could be advantageous or disadvantageous.

In this case Lord Kenmare was fortunate and a copper mine, also containing cobalt, was opened at Muckross. It ceased to function in 1754, but at the end of the century Ross Island was leased from the then Lord Kenmare to mine copper. This mine was liable to flooding, but the company hoped to overcome this difficulty with the help of the most recent advances in technology.

A 35-horsepower engine was purchased to pump out the mine, probably of a similar design to the Newcomen atmospheric engines then in use in South Wales and Cornwall. The pump was reputed to be capable of throwing up 1,000 gallons of water a minute from a depth of 72 feet, and it consumed 1.5 tons of coal in 24 hours, but as it worked in accordance with the amount of water in the mine its average running costs were difficult to calculate. When the Muckross mine was fully operational it produced 200 tons of ore a month.

Many landlords regarded their mines as they did their land and leased them to mining companies, thus avoiding the problems and expense of operating them. The mining company in turn contracted the working of the mine to small gangs of two or three miners working under a leader. The gang leaders agreed to mine the ore on a piecework basis, employing their own labourers and providing their mining tools.

Arrangements about major equipment varied from mine to mine. In this case the company furnished buckets to remove the water from the mine and horses to draw up the ore, which was carried overland to Tralee and shipped from there to Swansea, where 30s to 39s per ton was paid for it. When the mine was working to capacity, about the end of the century, it was quite a large concern, employing 500 people, but when Wakefield visited it a few years later it was approximately £11,520 in debt, and by 1810 it had closed. In its sudden boom and equally sudden bankruptcy it was a typical early industrial enterprise.

Other minerals included gold, and there was great excitement in 1795 when a nugget weighing 22 ounces (624 g) was found in Co. Wicklow. A minor gold-rush ensued: De Latocnaye reported that ‘thousands deserted their homes and occupations, all rural employment was at a pause; and had not harvest been gathered in at the time of discovery a famine must have followed.’ Reporting the find to the Duke of Portland, Lord Lieutenant Camden said that he had arranged for it to be taken into the charge of the Revenue Collector of Wicklow, who had been given an adequate detachment of soldiers ‘to prevent the plunder of the ore and preserve the peace of the county’.

In the event the discovery did not prove a commercial proposition. De Latocnaye also mentioned that ‘there is in this neighbourhood a very considerable copper mine. The first expenditure on it amounted to £60,000 sterling before the company had any return whatever. It is at present [1796] in a state of great activity and employs about 300 workers.’