Ballinahinch Marble Quarries

Notes:

In the early 1820s local landlord, Richard Martin (1754-1834) of Ballinahinch, known as 'Humanity Dick' on account of his championing of animal welfare, opened a Connemara Marble quarry on his estate at Barnanoran that employed between 150 and 170 men who were engaged in extracting and sawing the stone. Much of the marble utilised during the early and mid nineteenth century was obtained from the famous "Ballinahinch Quarries" situated in the valley on the Owenglin River at Barnanoran. The raised blocks were either manufactured by water power at the quarries or left raw. From there the blocks were transported six miles to Cloonisle pier for shipment; Martin laid out this road and had the noted public works engineer Alexander Nimmo construct a pier. Such investments suggested confidence in the long-term viability and future of the family quarrying trade.

Like at D'Arcy's estate further west at Clifden, Thomas Weaver of The Hibernian Mining Company also examined the extraction potential of Martin's quarries. In his 1825 report Weaver stated that Richard Martin had reached an agreement with a London trader to supply him with his decorative stone. The price per ton (or 12 cubic feet) of Martin’s green marble began at £6 for blocks and slabs "extending between 2 and 7 feet in length, by not less than 1 foot broad, and of indeterminate thickness" and a supplementary £1 for every foot of additional length. Martin’s statuary marble [most likely raised at Cregg, which is the principal white marble quarry in Connemara] was to obtain £12 per ton for slabs of 12 feet to 14 feet in length with an added £2 per ton "for every additional foot of length exceeding 14 ft. So that a column of 20 ft in length would be worth £24 per ton". It appeared that the attainable price for Connemara Marble, both the green and white varieties, was very much dependent on the size of the blocks that could be excavated from the quarries. A shipment of green, dove and white marbles from Richard Martin's estate at Ballinahinch lay at a wharf near Waterloo Bridge in the summer of 1826 waiting to be fabricated into architectural ornament in the capital.

The Ballinahinch area was visited in 1825 by Charles Lewis Giesecke, Professor of Mineralogy at the Royal Dublin Society, who reported that Martin’s quarries produced "solid masses of an enormous size", which were cut into slabs on site for tables. During their tour of Ireland in the 1840s Samuel Carter and Anna Maria Hall visited the workroom of a polisher, named Clare, in Galway, where they obtained a large slab of the green marble raised from Martin’s quarry at Ballynahinch. They noted that the marble being quarried at D'Arcy's Clifden establishment at that time was not so good. The slab measured 3 feet in length by 2 feet in breadth by about an inch and a half in thickness, and they paid £3-10s for it. Regarding the marble, they proclaimed, "it is not too much to say that it would be impossible to procure a specimen to surpass it in beauty from any quarry in the world." (Hall & Hall, 1843, p. 464). Manufactures from Ballinahinch marble were exhibited at the Great Exhibition in 1851 and stone from this locality was used in the columns of the Museum Building (1853) and in the Oxford Museum (1860). It is also probable that the Connemara chimneypiece that was presented to George IV and which is now in the Carlton Club, London, came from Ballinahinch. The price of Connemara Marble from the Ballinahinch Quarries in 1858 was 6s. per cube foot and it was raised mainly for export.

Thomas Martin, son of Richard Martin, inherited the family estates in the early 1830s. He died in 1847 during the famine and his only daughter and heir, Mary Laetita, was left a severely bankrupted estate, which was publicly auctioned by the Encumbered Estates Commission in 1850. The Martins' Connemara estate was acquired by the Law Life Assurance Company in 1852, to whom it was heavily mortgaged. At this time this company also occupied the townlands of Tievebreen, Lissoughter, Cregg and Derryclare, all of which contained economical deposits of Connemara Marble. In 1872, Richard Berridge purchased the Martin estate, including quarries at Ballinahinch and Lissoughter, from the Law Life Assurance Company. Richard Berridge's son, Richard, inherited the estate, which remained in the family until 1915. By the late-nineteenth century the Ballinahinch Quarries, leased by Messrs. Sibthorpe and Son of Dublin since c.1870, had fallen into disrepair due to the severe road, which entailed a steep ridge between Owenglin and Ballinahinch over which the blocks had to be carted. Sibthorpes ceased working the Ballinahinch Quarries in 1878 as sufficient stones for the market could be raised cheaper at another quarry at Lissoughter, which they also operated.

Peter Rafferty leased the Ballinahinch Quarries in the 1900s. A specimen of Ballinahinch Marble presented to the Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge by A.L. Reade, Esq., Blundellsands, Lancashire, was described by John Watson in his 1916 publication as: "largely made up of Noble Serpentine, but it contains much calcite in addition, and is therefore capable of being carved without fear of fracture, which renders it suitable for decorative purposes." (Watson, 1916, p. 59). Kinahan described the colours of the Ballinahinch Marble as "very delicate and fugitive, which makes it unsuitable for any outside work." (Kinahan, 1889, p. 176). The Ballinahinch Quarries are currently owned and operated by the Joyces and extracted marble goes to produce tourist souvenirs, high-grade jewellery, furniture and decorative cladding.