These Irish name elements are associated with this record in the Logainm glossary.
An element’s translation is a clue, rather than a complete explanation of the name. Its form and meaning depend on local history and the full Irish name.
Recorded forms
Béal Átha Gabhann· Irish · main form · validated name
Silvermines· English · main form
Place & story
Mines before the modern industry
Definite documentary references place mines at Knockaunderrick in the Silvermines district by the early seventeenth century. Mining rights granted in 1631 brought efforts to extract lead and copper, followed by workings equipped with smelters and silver-refining facilities. Later enterprises worked a variety of deposits. The district's history encompasses lead, zinc, copper, silver and barytes, with repeated closures and renewed investment as prices and technology changed.[2][3]
The twentieth-century mines
Mogul's exploration programme began drilling in 1963 and identified a substantial orebody. Production started in 1968 and continued until 1982, extracting zinc and lead ores. Geologist Eamonn Grennan, who later co-authored a history of the area, participated in the renewed exploration programme from 1970. The separate Magcobar operation at Ballynoe worked barytes until September 1993. Its large excavated pit subsequently flooded, leaving a conspicuous feature of the former mining landscape.[3]
Conserving the engine houses
Between April and July 2008 five nineteenth-century mining buildings in the Silvermines–Shallee district underwent conservation. They included the Shallee engine and crusher houses, the calamine building and crushing-engine house at Ballygowan, and the Ballygowan pumping-engine house. The project cost approximately €347,000 and combined local efforts with work by public bodies and the Mining Heritage Trust of Ireland. These buildings preserve the machinery spaces of earlier industries amid the much larger traces left by twentieth-century mining.[2]
Folklore & tradition
The fair in the village calendar
Surveyor P. V. Mulcahy's Irish Tourist Association report of 7 May 1945 recorded the village's former four annual fairs: 1 May, 8 June, 12 September and 25 October. By his visit only the May and June fairs remained. They dealt chiefly in goats and sheep. He described the May fair as a major social occasion drawing people from throughout the district, comparing its place in local life to a pattern gathering.[4]
Both counts use the 2016 settlement boundary, allowing like-for-like comparison. CSO supplies the 2022 count on this older boundary for comparison only. The official 2022 Built Up Area has different boundaries.
View population figures
Silvermines — Census 2016 settlement footprint — census population
Silvermines, North Tipperary — Census town, CSO 2006 report
2002–2006: census town
269people · 2006
These are the historical areas published in the 2006 census report. Boundaries may differ between censuses and from modern settlements. Legal towns, environs and suburbs are shown separately; none has been combined into a modern settlement total.
View population figures
Silvermines, North Tipperary — Census town, CSO 2006 report — census population
Silvermines, North Tipperary — Census town, CSO 1996 report
1991–1996: census town
202people · 1996
These are the historical areas published in the 1996 census report. Boundaries may differ between censuses and from modern settlements. Legal towns, environs and suburbs are shown separately; none has been combined into a modern settlement total.
View population figures
Silvermines, North Tipperary — Census town, CSO 1996 report — census population
These figures use different area definitions. Read the boundary note before comparing them.
Silvermines, North Tipperary
Published census settlement populations
310people · 2016
Settlement boundaries changed during this period. Differences may reflect boundary changes as well as population change. Where a 2011 legal-town-and-environs count is shown, it has not been recalculated onto the 2016 settlement boundary.
placenames
