Cork Red Marble Quarries

Notes:

Cork red marble was not widely exploited before the time of the original GSI surveys of the county in the early 1850s, which made no mention of quarrying activities. The Railway Commissioners Report of 1837, which comprehensively lists all of the working quarries in Ireland, records quarries on Little Island that produced fine grained grey dimension stone, but no Cork Red Marble Quarries. Robert Kane referred to a marble, similar to that of Armagh red marble and "elegantly variegated with yellow and purple", being available in 1844 (Kane 1844, p. 244), while George Wilkinson the following year referred to "a peculiar seam of reddish limestone" raised in the vicinity of Cork, which was a dull colour, compact and of a slaty texture, difficult to work, but formerly used to some extent for chimneypieces (Wilkinson 1845, p. 177).

The first explicit reference by the GSI to the extraction of Cork Red Marble was published in the explanatory memoir in 1859 following a survey of the Churchtown area. Edward Hull in 1872 referred to reddish and variegated marbles at Midleton, Churchtown and Little Island quarries, and later, in 1889, George Kinahan documented quarries producing "the best Irish reds in the market" in the localities of Boreenmanagh, Little Island and Churchtown near Cork and at Fermoy, Middleton and Buttevant. He stated that all except those at Boreenmanagh, Fermoy and Midleton are of one type, known in the market as "Cork Reds", which are the conglomaratic variety. He described the Midleton stone as a "warm-dove colour to rich variegated marble", while those at Boreenmanagh and Fermoy were "semi-transparent, mottled, or clouded with white and grey".

It was not until the publication in 1905 of the GSI memoir, which accompanied a new geological map of the city of Cork and Cork harbour, that the workings of Cork Red Marble were discussed. At this time the surveyor, George W. Lamplugh, disclosed that the principal locality for red limestone that was quarried as ornamental stone was at Midleton. The formerly extensively exploited "Cork Reds" from Little Island and Boreenmanagh were no longer productive. Extraction of the Cork Red Marble ceased in the mid 1900s and the quarries are not in production at present.