Gold Diggers on Cave Hill

C.Stephen Briggs mentions an interesting account of gold mania on the Cave Hill in the 1840s in
ANTIQUITIES OF THE CAVE HILL, BELFAST, AN ANTIQUARIAN NOTE
Ulster Journal of Archaeology, Vol 60, 2001

In the Mining Journal for 1846 (Anon 1846,530) there appears an interesting narrative under the title Gold Mines in Ulster. Its text runs:
Sir R. Kinahan (1) has written a large volume regarding the resources of Ireland but we believe he overlooked its gold mines, or seemed to consider them of only minor importance. 'The enterprise of Belfast', has, however, gone in advance of the worthy knight's speculations; and amongst the wonders of the Cavehill, it appears that some persons have supposed that gold is included. One individual recently had a vision of a bedstead of gold, and three statues of the same precious metal, snugly laid up there, ever since the Danish invasion, by the marauders, on their retreat. Then another person, in some distant quarter of the globe, on the same night, at the same hour, had a similar dream which he communicated, per first mail, to his Irish correspondents: who, activated by a very laudable desire to increase the resources of the country, and meet the threatened deficiency in bullion, employed three or four men to dig in the indicated spot, McCart's Fort (sic), for the hidden treasure.
Of course, if there were a golden bedstead to be found, there must be other valuable chamber furniture in the neighbourhood, such as golden ewers and various odds and ends of that description. And if the statues of the illustrious kings were cut in gold, the pedestals must have consisted of very precious marble. In fact, there was no end, at least in the imagination of the visionary, to the riches which might be found. Young Ireland was to be gratified by the glory of the old bedposts, and the searchers by their value at £31.17s 6d per oz. For 10 or 14 days, even in the stormiest weather, three or four individuals left their employment and handled pick and shovel with surprising vigour and perseverance, until they formed a major and minor pit on the highest pinnacle of the Cave Hill. The largest mine is carried down 24ft (c8 m), and measures to 18 ft (c6 m) in diameter. We are sorry to state, that hitherto nothing more valuable has been reached than solid rock.

This account helps to explain the site's present condition aand poses questions about finds which might have at one point been attributed to it. Curiously, the account does not relate contemporary interest or activity to the origins or use of the cave (illustrated in Bazley 2002), excavated into the vertical face of the outcropping basalt some distance below the fort.
MacArt's Fort, a much eroded and arguably overvisited embanked promontory fort of unknown (though probably early medieval) age , lies on a spectacularly high point of the Cave Hill ( at 368 m OD) in Ballyaghagan townland, Co Antrim (IGR J3250 7960) overlooking Belfast Lough. Although today a well known landmark, and apparently a place where 'Sunday fairs were held in the last century' (Bazley 2002), little is known of its history or the reasons for delvings or hollows apparently cut into the local bedrock which currently hinder a better interpretation of its geomorphology and archaeology. One hollow is sketched as a V-shaped depression on the section across the fort made in undated field notes by the late Estyn Evans. Evans indicated on the plan 'here by entrance is a circular pit 10 (paces) across'. This hollow, still very much in evidence today, is presumably the larger of the two 19th-century 'gold pits' to which the anonymous account refers.
As regards contemporary artefact discoveries, in James Carruthers' antiquarian cabinet at Downpatrick around 1850 there were two or three silver ornaments and possibly also a coin, all supposedly from the Cave Hill (Briggs 1983). Rumour, or some unknown contemporary printed account of their discovery, could have helped motivate this mining venture or may even have resulted from it. And since the date Carruthers' artefacts were discovered remains uncertain, an open mind must be kept on the matter. Marketable commodities like Viking silver could have been found elsewhere; the Cave Hill provenance, at that time a topical findspot, may have been invoked through its vendor's hope of facilitating a credible sale.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The writer gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Mrs Anne Given, Environment and Heritage Service, Dept of the Environment, for making the Evans notes available and for providing information from the Sites and Monuments Record.
NOTE
1. Kinehan is named in error for Robert Kane, whose book, The Industrial Resources of Ireland appeared in two editions, 1844 and 1845. Kane was knighted in 1846 (DNB). Kinahan was an important contemporary geoplogist and an accomplishe field archaeologist, who mush later was to publish a Geology of Ireland (in 1878). It is obviously relevant to this discussion that during the 1840s he was involved in mapping for official Geological Memoirs, sometimes in important mining regions.
REFERENCES
Anon 1846 'Gold mines in Ulster', Mining Journal 1846, 530
Bazley, A P 2002 'Walking with imagination', magazine of he Geologists' Association 1, No 4 (2002), 11.
Briggs, C S 1983 'A lost hoard of Viking age silver from Cave Hill, Belfast,' UJA 26 (1983), 152-3.
Kane, R 1844 The Industrial Resources of Ireland, Dublin (2nd edn 1845; repr Shannon 1971).