History of Glenariff Forest Park

With the decline in the mining industry the railway company began to develop a passenger service to supplement the diminishing freight and ore carrying side of their business. This did a great deal in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries in opening up the Glens to the public and to trade in general. The company rented Glenariff Glen, made footpaths and opened it as a major tourist attraction in 1889. A tea house was added in 1891 at the bottom of the Glen and a motor charabanc service between Parkmore Station and Cushendall further stimulated trade in 1906. Passenger services on the Ballymena - Parkmore line ceased in 1930. The Age of Steam, which came to the Glens because of the iron ore, has now gone like the mines, but the tourist industry it gave birth to continues to flourish amid the natural beauty that is Glenariff.

In Antrim iron ore was mined from 1867 until 1925. In the 16th Century the manufacture of iron in Ireland was a healthy industry, the ore being imported from Lancashire. Smelting was done using charcoal made in the forests of the Lagan Valley and the Lough Neagh basin. By the 18th Century the forests had been cleared and iron working was reduced to the treatment of imported pig iron.

Iron ore was discovered close to Newtown Crommelin in 1843 by Nicholas Crommelin along with deposits of bauxite from which aluminium is produced. Nicholas Crommelin built a small furnace, still standing today beside the Skerry Water at Newtown Crommelin, and attempted to smelt the ore. It was not successful and the experiment was abandoned. In 1866 James Fisher, a Barrow-in-Furnace shipowner, who had come to live in Cleggan took an interest in the presence of the iron ore. He began outcrop mining along the hillsides but soon had to tunnel to follow the ore bed underground.

James Fisher's success soon attracted attention and a number of companies began mining operations. Production of ore rose rapidly from 33,000 tons in 1870 to 100,000 tons a year later. This expansion in production put a severe strain on transportation which was by horse and cart either to the railway at Ballymena or to the pier at Red Bay. An attempt to mechanise the transportation was made in 1872 by constructing an aerial ropeway from Cargan to Red Bay. Unfortunately this was sabotaged in 1873, probably by carters whose business's were being threatened. Then in 1875 the first public narrow gauge railway in Ireland was opened from Ballymena to Cargan and extended the following year to Parkmore and Retreat. With the opening of the railway ore production rose steadily each year to peak at 230,000 tons in 1880. Annual production fluctuated from then until 1907 after which output declined rapidly until in 1925 mining ceased altogether.

The deposits of bauxite that had been discovered in 1843 were first mined in 1881 producing between 1300 and 4000 tons of 'aluminous ore' per year until 1920. During the Second World War when the demand for aluminium for aircraft manufacture soared and foreign imports were difficult to obtain the Antrim mines were again opened and produced 296,000 tons between 1941 and 1945

The characteristic U-shape of the valley has produced a particular farm type. The pattern is that of striped or ladder farms, each with a holding running from the marshy valley meadows, up slope through the arable land of the hill slopes, to the rough grazing under the basalt cliffs. The development of this field pattern can be easily seen from early Ordnance Survey maps. The mountain tops were farmed under a "rundale" system. Originally a Scottish term it meant that each farmer, according to the size of his farm in the glen, could graze a certain number of sheep on the mountain.