The Lisdrumgormley Lead Mines are a deposit in Ireland that was mined for

lead Lead () is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Pb (from Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a Heavy metal (elements), heavy metal that is density, denser than most common materials. Lead is Mohs scale, soft and Ductility, malleabl ...

as early as the 1840s. The underground workings consisted of narrow, 1.5m-wide slopes above a northwest–southeast-trending level. It was the subject of further exploration during the mid-1950s when the original shaft was reopened to a depth of 21 meters.

History

Initially Lisdrumgormley Mine was part of the North Eastern Mining Company of Ireland. It was formed on Monday 6 April 1846 at The Angel Hotel in Liverpool, with Capt James Skimming (Annaglogh) as its Agent. The North Eastern Mining Company also encompassed nearby Annaglogh Mine, Coolartragh (Bon
Mine
Lemgare Mines and Hop
Mines
near

Castleblayney Castleblayney (; ) is a town in County Monaghan, Ireland. The town had a population of 3,926 as of the 2022 census. Castleblayney is near the border with County Armagh in Northern Ireland, and lies on the N2 road from Dublin to Derry and L ...

. Lisdrumgormley was recorded in 1922 as being under development by The Farney Development Company. Assays of over 22% Pb were recorded at the location by the Mining Corporation of Ireland in 1956. The access to the underground mine was by way of a shaft apparently almost 50m deep.

Condition and shaft collapse

The plug of this shaft collapsed in 2012 revealing a cylindrical shaft, collared in stone, dipping steeply east. The shaft was subsequently back-filled and fenced by the

Office of Public Works The Office of Public Works (OPW) (; legally the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland) is a major Government of Ireland, Irish Government agency, which manages most of the Irish State's property portfolio, including hundreds of owned and ren ...

(OPW) on behalf of the

Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military * Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative division within a country, ...

(DCENR) in 2012 at the landowner's request. Unfortunately, a horse from a neighbouring farm which had wandered into the property fell into the collapsed shaft and was lost.

Remains

A largely overgrown waste dump and a disused outbuilding are the most obvious traces of mining on the site. A depression approximately 20 x 10 m in size adjacent to the waste heap may be a consequence of further subsidence above the underground workings. Mineralised material in the waste dumps consists of

greywacke Greywacke or graywacke ( ) is a variety of sandstone generally characterized by its hardness (6–7 on Mohs scale), dark color, and Sorting (sediment), poorly sorted angular grains of quartz, feldspar, and small rock fragments or sand-size Lith ...

sandstone cut by thin dolomite veins containing

galena Galena, also called lead glance, is the natural mineral form of lead(II) sulfide (PbS). It is the most important ore of lead and an important source of silver. Galena is one of the most abundant and widely distributed sulfide minerals. It crysta ...

as well as sandstone with

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The Atom, atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen Tetrahedral molecular geometry, tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tet ...

and

carbonate A carbonate is a salt of carbonic acid, (), characterized by the presence of the carbonate ion, a polyatomic ion with the formula . The word "carbonate" may also refer to a carbonate ester, an organic compound containing the carbonate group ...

, with or without galena or

barite Baryte, barite or barytes ( or ) is a mineral consisting of barium sulfate (Ba S O4). Baryte is generally white or colorless, and is the main source of the element barium. The ''baryte group'' consists of baryte, celestine (strontium sulfate), ...

. The only tangible mine feature that remains on the site is the waste dump. Boulders within this dump do provide evidence for the mineralisation but it was found that they were not particularly impressive examples and were insufficient to warrant County Geological Site (CGS) status for the site at that time.

References

{{Reflist Lead mines in the Republic of Ireland County Monaghan