At the beginning of the 1900s, the owners of the barytes mine located at the base of Mount Corrin built a cable car system to transport the barytes to a jetty at the coast where it was loaded on to waiting ships. The base of one cable car pylon can be seen about 40m off the path to the south between Waymarker Numbers 969 - 970
External Links:
https://durrushistory.com/2011/10/08/baryte-mines/
Link to History Of Baryte Mines in West Cork

From Pat Crowley https://durrushistory.com/2011/10/08/baryte-mines/ :

This was originally worked as a copper mine by the Rev. Traill of Schull, assisted by Captain William Thomas in 1840 and they sold 19 tons of copper. They discovered barytes or barium sulphate, a heavy white mineral, used for paint, papermaking for which in the 1850s there was a limited market. An early use was by Josiah Wedgewood in the making of pottery. In 1863 Captain Thomas was chartering boats c 160 tons and shipping the barytes to Messrs Martyn Dennis Liverpool and around 150 people were employed. That year there was a serious flood which resulted in the mine being non operational for a period. In 1867 the mine at what was described as Cahirolickaney Mountain was inaccessible and Captain Thomas built a road from the mine to the Dunbeacon Road nearly a mile long in three weeks. It was marked by a celebration with ‘creature comforts’ in abundance, followed by a dance. Before the road was built the farmers had to carry sea sand and manure along the line of the rocky bed of a river and scramble up the mountain as best they could with back load on horses, men and women. The road was called Wilson’s after one of the promoters by Father O’Regan. There were quite a number of fatalities in the operation of the mine which were mentioned in the local press.

In 1851, 2,500 tons were raised compared to only 800 tons in three other centres in the former United Kingdom. The material was washed, dried, crushed and milled. It was then produced as barytes flour; this was packed into bags and sent to an island jetty in Dunmanus Bay by an aerial ropeway 1.23 miles long. From 1909, the boats carried coal to Dunbeacon and left with barytes. During the War men dived there looking for remnants of coal. Prior to that the ore went by horse and cart to Schull pier. The mine also produced a small tonnage of copper (bornite) and approx 22,000 tons of fine barytes. It was worked by a Liverpool Company controlled by the Roe Brothers; one of the assistant Managers was Mr. Barton. The mine used to be all lit up at night and it looked like a city. At its height up to 500 were employed, supervised by Welsh miners. The nembers employed in 1915 were 150 described as highly paid. Among those who worked there were the father and uncles of Danno Mahony of nearby Derreenlomane the World Wrestling Champion. Bells rang to call the labourers to work in the morning. A report in 1923 described the treatment of the ore as ‘washing, drying, in a revolving furnace, crushing, rolling between steel rollers and milling’. In 1917 a major fire caused extensive damage, including the underground workings. Although repairs were carried out, the mine never recovered its former level of activity. In 1922 the then Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction reviewed the recent history of the mine and commented on it being burnt down in July 1920. Mr Lynburn of the Department expressed a hope that in time with a more relaxed regime re explosives it might re open.

A line of timber pylons ran from the mine site down the steep hillside all the way to Dunmanus Bay. The pylons, anchored to triangular concrete-and-stone foundations, supported a continuous aerial rope and a number of cable cars. The system was powered by a gas engine. The foundations are all still in situ and can be followed to the sea. The ships which carried away the ore landed coal and during the War people dived in the area seeking lumps of coal.
Five hundred men had worked at the mine between 1917-18. Mine water was pumped by a ‘balanced bob’ with the engine house being sited over the main shaft. The gas engine house was located adjacent to the pump house. The mining company entrusted the job of making ore-bearing cable-cars to a local carpenter cum pit-sawyer named Willie Coakley. He seems to have played a considerable role in erecting the aerial ropeway system and in weaving wicker cable-cars to transport ore from mine to sea.

Boats landed at a pier of which a buoy still survives. The Atridge, Shannon and Hegarty families from Rossmore across the Bay jointly owned a fishing boat. They would regularly cross to trade potatoes, vegetables and meat for tobacco and brandy. The Captain was Captain was generally Captain Bousy and afterwards the Attridges were known as the Bousys. It was the custom for the miners to play football at a field near the mine every Saturday afternoon.
On the first trial of the aerial ropeway, a number of baskets were laden with barytes and sent down the steep hill to their destination, a pier at Dunmanus Bay. From there it was exported to Liverpool, London or Glasgow. However, on releasing the baskets it was discovered that the braking mechanism on the aerial ropeway had failed. On reaching journey’s end, the run-away cable-cars demolished a portion of the aerial rope and caused extensive damage to the system, presumably several pylons were torn from their foundations.

A local wit composed a poem to commemorate the event – the poem was titled Coakley’s Apparatus’ One line of the poem describes the wicker basket in euphemism as ‘a donkey who would never have a foal’.At the Dunbeacon side there was an area of houses now derelict which in the early 20th century was a hive of activity and centre of music and dancing known as the ‘Station Heights’. Many of the families were associated with the mines.When the mines closed many of the miners went to the coal mines of South Wales or to the USA. One of them was Denis John L O’Sullivan, his father originally from Kilcrohane ran a pub in Durrus, who went to the USA and returned. He had a pub in Durrus Village which is still run by his son Danny.

From D. Cowman The History Of Baryte Mines in West Cork:
One (unlikely) account of the discovery of baryte at Dereenalomane (variously spelled) was that local ship-owner, James Bennet, used stone from there as ballast, that its nature was identified at its destination and reported back to him (Hallissy, p 10). In any case, in 1851 a consortium calling themselves Bennet, Justice and Co. placed an ad in the Mining Journal offering crude baryte "of excellent quality and colour at reasonable terms" (MJ 1851 p.485). Reportedly a buyer was found in Liverpool who was prepared to pay 22/6d per ton. 1,400 tons of undressed baryte were said to have been raised over 15 months by 3 miners and three labourers at six to seven shilling per ton yielding 40% profit after transport (MJ 1854 p. 166). Presumably they reached the maximum depth for cheap extraction at 15 fathoms (about 28 meters) on a lode 2 ¾ feet wide (MJ 1854 p 166). When visited in 1853 the mining operation was said to be "extensive" (Triphook).

The reason for the various cautions in the paragraph above was that this was part of a promotion for a new company whose subsequent behaviour showed lack of any integrity. Details of that are given elsewhere (Cowman and Reilly, p. 101) but may be summed-up thus: in January 1854 London "directors" set up a company with the catch-all name Bandon (after landowner, the Earl of Bandon) Sulphur and Barytes Copper Mining Company. Complaints that the enterprise was a scam soon followed, countered by the usual laudatory reports on the prospects of the mine, mainly anonymous. In July 1854 the directors decided to re-launch themselves as the Barytes Company of Ireland. Shareholders saw through this ploy and the controversies continued. Some baryte may have been raised in 1854 and 1855 but not enough to pay for the London establishment. By late 1855 the bubble had burst and miners were reported to have gone unpaid. Dereenalomane was revived in the early 1860s, at least on paper, by Martyn, Dennis & Co. of Liverpool recorded as owners 1862-'75 (Min. Stats.). This may have been a holding company or agency as a Bandon Barytes Mining Companywas operating there in 1866 (Cundick 2002) although there is no annual record of production. This seems to have been re-formed as British Barytes Companyfrom 1872 with a nominal share value of £50,000 (MJ 1875 p 799). They were reported to have immediately shipped four cargoes of baryte probably to Birkenhead where they had opened a processing plant the following year (MJ 1872 p 864 & 1873 p 1267).  Adescription of the mine in 1872 comments adversely that processing did not take place locally but that about 5,000 tons of crude sulphite of baryte had been shipped out every year since 1862. Then the mine was shallow 40 fathoms (about 75 meters) deep but the baryte "appears inexhaustible".  Asteam engine did the pumping and winding (SE 23/11/1872). In praising the "liberality" of the Earl of Bandon a correspondent says that he sent a box of mineral samples to the two local national schools to stimulate geological awareness (SE 18/10/1873). He was well ahead of his time! In 1875 they were said to have shipped out spar rather than baryte (MJ 1875, p. 799).  That seems to have ended the operation as that same year they surrendered their lease (Matthews indenture). Possibly it was this company that had investigated nearby townlands, especially Portiroe which was said to have been discovered by William Thomas in 1867 and "proven" by his brother Charles in 1872 (MJ 1873 p. 1427 & 1875 p. 845). When visited in Oct. 1873 "several tons of splendid barites" had been dug out of trenches in a valley there in search of a main lode (SE 16/10/1873). Presumably it was never found as no more is heard of this. Dereenalomane probably lay idle from 1875 and 1883 when it was reopened by John T. Matthews operating as Durrus Barytes Company. He sent his son John Hobson Matthews to supervise the opening of the mine and he was there when Charles Thomas sank on to a baryte lode which had been previously missed. The miners were each given a celebratory two shillings which Matthews hoped would be drunk in moderation! Young Matthews also drew a peculiar sketch of the mine showing a winding engine with smoking chimney that must have been there from some earlier phase. (Matthews' diary and indenture). Despite the finding of the new deposit the output was small, peaking at 1000 tons in 1884, declining thereafter in both tonnage and number employed, with closure in 1887.

Dereenalomane was revived in 1899 by Arthur Cave under the name Mount Gabriel Barytes and Umber Co..  He also revived the eponymous working (see above). From 1902 an E.J. Whelan was managing both mines for a renamed entity The Irish Barytes and Umber Company. Dereenalomane was their major operation, however, with pre-war employment varying considerably ranging for 17 in 1909 to 83/82 in 1912-'13. It was visited in 1909 by a local man who refers to a diesel engine there and to a 185 hp gas powered mill (SS 6th Nov. 1909 letter). Production figures are available for 1903-13, a peak strangely being in its final year, 13,110 tons (worth nearly £10,000) and a low of 888 tons (£666) in 1907 (Min. Stats.). Otherwise there is little reportage of this phase except for two accidents there in 1905; a falling stone killed one that Spring and other was disabled by a rock fall while he was drilling that Autumn (SS 15th April & 4th Nov. 1905). In 1907 the engineer, Harold Jones, who had survived the accident at Scart the previous year was killed in Dereenalomane (SS 7th & 21st Sept. 1907). Four tons of baryte fell on a miner there in 1912 (SS 21st Dec. 1912). At some stage post 1909 an aerial ropeway was constructed to transport the baryte for shipment from Dunmanus Bay. One of its buckets injured a boy in 1913 (SS 1st Nov. 1913). The mine may have lain idle briefly but it was restarted in 1914 by a London based Dunmanus Bay Barytes Companywith Frank Ahler as manager. Possibly the costing behind this was based on a processing plant with the refined baryte being sent by  the continuous aerial ropeway to a jetty on the bay (GSI, MRO 0146; MJ 1915 p.116 ad). By 1916 there said to be 150 working for the company earning 27/6d per week thereby creating a shortage of agricultural wages (SS 22nd Jan. 1916). Specialised people such as engine drivers got 30/6d (SS 23rd Oct. 1915). The aerial ropeway was vandalised in 1920 during the "troubles" the cable being cut and wagons thrown into the sea (CE 10/4/1920) which presumably put an end to the operation. The remains of the pylons are still there but the mine was apparently never worked again. Ex-manager Ahler must have really believed in the mine because over 30 years later (1951) he was back again in Dereenalomane drilling - presumably with no positive result (GSI MRO 0146 & 0147, Mineraí TeorantaReport). It was only with difficulty that members of MHTI found any evidence at all of mining there during visit in 2004.