Slatequarries

Slates were produced in the area for hundreds of years from quarries cut into the local landscape. With the benefit of water power industrialization commenced and the miners were able to follow the best seams of slate down into deep quarries.

At the Ormond Quarry a sculpture festival saw the building of The Miners Egg a modern slate sculpture it stands near where the mining of slates was carried out at a number of sites in the Linaun Valley for over eight hundred years. A thriving industry at the turn of the 20th century with an employment force of almost five hundred people in the Ordmonde and Victoria Quarries. The finished product was widely sought after having won the Gold medal for Slates in both Dublin and London. It was firstly transported to Carrick and by train to the port of Waterford for export. The mines ceased production with the closure of the Ormonde Quarry in 1932 (