AR
Well-known member
The following trip report relates to a mine; if you have no interest in man-made underground spaces then you can save yourself precious time by stopping reading here and going to another thread. Otherwise, to paraphrase the late, great Vivian Stanshall, read on, dot dot dot.
For some time there had been murmurings among the non-prophet disorganisation that is the ATAC about Slaley Sough and the internal winze often referred to as Thunder Shaft; in particular John had been voicing a strange desire to see what was down the bottom of it. No matter that it had previously been written that the shaft was blind (Flindall & Hayes 1971), ?well, we don?t know for certain there?s nothing there until someone?s been down for a look? was his response.
February 17th had been provisionally mooted as the date for our foray into Slaley, and in the run up to this Scott emailed the group with the fateful words ?so are we going to let John go down the shaft while we sit around eating cake??. Although said in jest, this prompted a flurry of discussion about who would bring the cake and what sort of cake should we have, so it was agreed that there would indeed be cake. Niki kindly volunteered to do some baking, John said he?d bring the necessary string and scaff, so all was set.
Thus, at around 7pm on the 17th of February, a little band assembled at Goodluck Layby, twinned with several multi-storey car park stairwells due to its lingering aroma of old wee. Once kitted up, there was then the discussion of how to find the sough; my personal preference is to go up the footpath past Dunsley Springs and come down to the entrance but the group choice was for following the road and going upslope, so off we went. One of a passing group of cyclists shouted ?get underground!? at us, to which I will only observe that people riding bikes should think twice about shouting things at people carrying long scaff bars lest they suddenly turn sideways at an ?inopportune? moment?.
Having reached a point somewhere below the sough entrance, or so we thought, we started upwards in the fine old tradition of blundering around the steep slopes of the Via Gellia in the dark in hopes of finding a mine, preferably not by falling into it. Finding the ground underfoot composed of very loose rocks, I took a detour to the right but guessed the loose rocks were part of the mine tip, and soon I could see the bulge of the tip up ahead. One last push on, and I was looking at the ruined coe and entrance of Slaley Sough, and flopped down to get my breath and let the others catch up.
Once rested, the Sherpa-ing began in earnest so I picked up one of the scaff bars, ducked under the tufa screen and over the pile of fallen blocks, into? wet mud. At this point I began to regret mistakenly picking up my old grey-soled suretreads instead of the newer caving wellies, as the tread is no longer so sure and they have holes in them. Oh well, that?s what neoprene socks are for! The muddy section was relatively short but the passage height soon got to hands-and-knees, so now the musical accompaniment of the clanking of a scaff bar repeatedly being picked up and put down a few feet at a time enlivened our progress. Before too long the sough proper met the tramming level and the roof upped to just-about-walking height, so I leaned the scaff bar up and turned right to look at the smaller of the two winzes in the mine.
This one is about 10m deep and blind at the bottom, as blind as the person who dropped their lamp down there would have been without it. Yes, resting on the mud at the bottom was what looked like a ?bike-light? headlamp with separate battery box so if it was you who dropped it down there, it?s still waiting for you to come back and collect it. The rest of the party were starting to come through so it was time to head in the other direction and ferry the scaff bar to the head of Thunder Shaft. This was an easy stroll along the tramming level of the mine, noting the remains of sleepers on the floor and the faint impressions of long-removed rails ? other visitors to this mine please note, look where you?re treading! Passing a dripping raise going up and a small incline going down, I got to the point where the level divides at a pile of toadstone gunge. Thunder shaft is located a short distance down the right-hand branch, a winze of 45m or thereabouts which takes its name from the echo which rolls back up when you throw a rock down into the water. Some suicidal nutter apparently free-climbed across it in 1905 to write his name and the date on the far side, and at head height there are a series of well-cut holes and notches for timbers of uncertain purpose. The vein at this point is a chossy mess of mostly calcite with no sign of ore so I can?t see the notches being intended to support working platforms for overhead stoping, leaving only the possibility that the vein kept dropping lumps on the miners? heads so they put in a roof to prevent sore noggin syndrome.
With the bar at its required location I decided to crawl over the pile of gooey clay and head off down the left-hand passage. This long level, driven in the second half of the 19th century, goes on for what seems like an eternity following a vein which rarely, if ever, shows any sign of lead ore; I can only guess that it was driven as some sort of philanthropic project to keep the miners of Bonsall in employment as any serious business would have given it up pretty quickly as a bad job. One raise, presumably going up to the base of the toadstone had a large pile of colourful fragments of said igneous grot at its base while in other places it had permeated the vein fault and was merrily dribbling out. After what seemed like an age, I got to the forefield where the miners finally got fed up (or point where the backers finally got fed up of paying out for nothing and told the miners to go forth and seek proper gainful employment). Here, I could hear a faint sound and on stopping to listen carefully, what seemed like the siren song of distant running water was coming from somewhere. The freshness of the air was also notable, that far down a blind heading it should have been stuffier than a taxidermist?s workbench but instead it felt good and clean.
Scott and Niki turned up at this point so I asked them to stop and listen, and they too could hear the song of the siren, and they could so we set to listening at every crevice and crack and found the one that the sound was coming from. Was it running water or instead air forcing its way through small cracks? Given Slaley Sough?s location under a major toadstone bed, most of the mine is dry apart from a few places where water comes down from raises, and the long drive is pretty arid so water seems less likely, but you never know ? the fresh air could be the result of water-blast effect down one of the surface shafts on Bonsall Lees. I have my suspicions about which shafts could go to a suitable depth but that?ll have to wait for another day, particularly since investigation would involve dismantling and rebuilding a beehive cover. :-\
So, we headed back down the level to the shaft to find John had gone down down the rope while Mart and Art peered over the top and passed occasional comment on his progress. Mutterings about cake were starting to grow louder, especially after Mat checked on time and found it was nearly pub o?clock so Niki opened the casket (OK, Tupperware tub) of earthly delights. Inside were pieces of home-made blackcurrant sponge cake, lightly dusted with coconut, each individually wrapped in clingfilm. If you are not already drooling, then you should be as the cake was soft, moist and absolutely delicious, and furthermore, provided great entertainment to the group as Scott tried to eat his piece in what can only be described as a pelican-inspired manner. With solids out of the way, thoughts turned to liquid refreshment. As John was still on his way back up the shaft there was a brief discussion about how to speed things up so we could get to the pub ASAP, rope hauling was dismissed as being too much like hard work so we instead opted for shouting down that Scott was eyeing up the last bit of cake. This seemed to do the trick, and John was soon catching his breath at the top of the rope before decamping for his cake, while the derig team went to work. John recounted that the shaft was flooded to a depth of 2-3m at its base with water trickling in from a bedding plane but the suggestion of a level could be seen under the water, and there was a date of 1963 written on the wall. Halfway down, a short level went east for about 10m to a forefield, while the shotholes were all large diameter, suggesting a contemporary date with the long level.
With everything derigged, it was time to turn the beer magnet on, for the Song of the Siren is as nothing to the Call of the Barleymow. Picking up a scaff bar, I headed back down the tramming level and into the sough. Once again, it was hands, knees time as we exited to the industrial sound of two scaff bars ringing in an echoing level, move over Einsturzende Neubauten for the ATAC are coming through! Just one more obstacle to deal with, namely the steep daleside in the dark.Without too many foul oaths and imprecations, we got down to road level and pausing only to right a fallen road sign, it was back to the cars to change and retire to that oasis of fine ale and good company that is the Barleymow. Biere du Jour (for Tuesday is French night at the ?Mo) was Black Hole Brewery?s ?Cosmic?, a fine dark bitter I?ll be looking out for in future. Now, I just need to persuade John to write up his findings down the shaft for the PDMHS newsletter?s Observations and Discoveries section, or alternatively, we find the person responsible for the date of 1963 at the bottom and demand they pull their finger out and publish ? fifty-two years is quite long enough to have sorted out a write-up! :read:
Reference
Flindall, R.B. & Hayes, A.J. 1971 ?The Adit Workings on the North Side of the Via Gellia? Bull. PDMHS Vol. 4 no. 6
For some time there had been murmurings among the non-prophet disorganisation that is the ATAC about Slaley Sough and the internal winze often referred to as Thunder Shaft; in particular John had been voicing a strange desire to see what was down the bottom of it. No matter that it had previously been written that the shaft was blind (Flindall & Hayes 1971), ?well, we don?t know for certain there?s nothing there until someone?s been down for a look? was his response.
February 17th had been provisionally mooted as the date for our foray into Slaley, and in the run up to this Scott emailed the group with the fateful words ?so are we going to let John go down the shaft while we sit around eating cake??. Although said in jest, this prompted a flurry of discussion about who would bring the cake and what sort of cake should we have, so it was agreed that there would indeed be cake. Niki kindly volunteered to do some baking, John said he?d bring the necessary string and scaff, so all was set.
Thus, at around 7pm on the 17th of February, a little band assembled at Goodluck Layby, twinned with several multi-storey car park stairwells due to its lingering aroma of old wee. Once kitted up, there was then the discussion of how to find the sough; my personal preference is to go up the footpath past Dunsley Springs and come down to the entrance but the group choice was for following the road and going upslope, so off we went. One of a passing group of cyclists shouted ?get underground!? at us, to which I will only observe that people riding bikes should think twice about shouting things at people carrying long scaff bars lest they suddenly turn sideways at an ?inopportune? moment?.
Having reached a point somewhere below the sough entrance, or so we thought, we started upwards in the fine old tradition of blundering around the steep slopes of the Via Gellia in the dark in hopes of finding a mine, preferably not by falling into it. Finding the ground underfoot composed of very loose rocks, I took a detour to the right but guessed the loose rocks were part of the mine tip, and soon I could see the bulge of the tip up ahead. One last push on, and I was looking at the ruined coe and entrance of Slaley Sough, and flopped down to get my breath and let the others catch up.
Once rested, the Sherpa-ing began in earnest so I picked up one of the scaff bars, ducked under the tufa screen and over the pile of fallen blocks, into? wet mud. At this point I began to regret mistakenly picking up my old grey-soled suretreads instead of the newer caving wellies, as the tread is no longer so sure and they have holes in them. Oh well, that?s what neoprene socks are for! The muddy section was relatively short but the passage height soon got to hands-and-knees, so now the musical accompaniment of the clanking of a scaff bar repeatedly being picked up and put down a few feet at a time enlivened our progress. Before too long the sough proper met the tramming level and the roof upped to just-about-walking height, so I leaned the scaff bar up and turned right to look at the smaller of the two winzes in the mine.
This one is about 10m deep and blind at the bottom, as blind as the person who dropped their lamp down there would have been without it. Yes, resting on the mud at the bottom was what looked like a ?bike-light? headlamp with separate battery box so if it was you who dropped it down there, it?s still waiting for you to come back and collect it. The rest of the party were starting to come through so it was time to head in the other direction and ferry the scaff bar to the head of Thunder Shaft. This was an easy stroll along the tramming level of the mine, noting the remains of sleepers on the floor and the faint impressions of long-removed rails ? other visitors to this mine please note, look where you?re treading! Passing a dripping raise going up and a small incline going down, I got to the point where the level divides at a pile of toadstone gunge. Thunder shaft is located a short distance down the right-hand branch, a winze of 45m or thereabouts which takes its name from the echo which rolls back up when you throw a rock down into the water. Some suicidal nutter apparently free-climbed across it in 1905 to write his name and the date on the far side, and at head height there are a series of well-cut holes and notches for timbers of uncertain purpose. The vein at this point is a chossy mess of mostly calcite with no sign of ore so I can?t see the notches being intended to support working platforms for overhead stoping, leaving only the possibility that the vein kept dropping lumps on the miners? heads so they put in a roof to prevent sore noggin syndrome.
With the bar at its required location I decided to crawl over the pile of gooey clay and head off down the left-hand passage. This long level, driven in the second half of the 19th century, goes on for what seems like an eternity following a vein which rarely, if ever, shows any sign of lead ore; I can only guess that it was driven as some sort of philanthropic project to keep the miners of Bonsall in employment as any serious business would have given it up pretty quickly as a bad job. One raise, presumably going up to the base of the toadstone had a large pile of colourful fragments of said igneous grot at its base while in other places it had permeated the vein fault and was merrily dribbling out. After what seemed like an age, I got to the forefield where the miners finally got fed up (or point where the backers finally got fed up of paying out for nothing and told the miners to go forth and seek proper gainful employment). Here, I could hear a faint sound and on stopping to listen carefully, what seemed like the siren song of distant running water was coming from somewhere. The freshness of the air was also notable, that far down a blind heading it should have been stuffier than a taxidermist?s workbench but instead it felt good and clean.
Scott and Niki turned up at this point so I asked them to stop and listen, and they too could hear the song of the siren, and they could so we set to listening at every crevice and crack and found the one that the sound was coming from. Was it running water or instead air forcing its way through small cracks? Given Slaley Sough?s location under a major toadstone bed, most of the mine is dry apart from a few places where water comes down from raises, and the long drive is pretty arid so water seems less likely, but you never know ? the fresh air could be the result of water-blast effect down one of the surface shafts on Bonsall Lees. I have my suspicions about which shafts could go to a suitable depth but that?ll have to wait for another day, particularly since investigation would involve dismantling and rebuilding a beehive cover. :-\
So, we headed back down the level to the shaft to find John had gone down down the rope while Mart and Art peered over the top and passed occasional comment on his progress. Mutterings about cake were starting to grow louder, especially after Mat checked on time and found it was nearly pub o?clock so Niki opened the casket (OK, Tupperware tub) of earthly delights. Inside were pieces of home-made blackcurrant sponge cake, lightly dusted with coconut, each individually wrapped in clingfilm. If you are not already drooling, then you should be as the cake was soft, moist and absolutely delicious, and furthermore, provided great entertainment to the group as Scott tried to eat his piece in what can only be described as a pelican-inspired manner. With solids out of the way, thoughts turned to liquid refreshment. As John was still on his way back up the shaft there was a brief discussion about how to speed things up so we could get to the pub ASAP, rope hauling was dismissed as being too much like hard work so we instead opted for shouting down that Scott was eyeing up the last bit of cake. This seemed to do the trick, and John was soon catching his breath at the top of the rope before decamping for his cake, while the derig team went to work. John recounted that the shaft was flooded to a depth of 2-3m at its base with water trickling in from a bedding plane but the suggestion of a level could be seen under the water, and there was a date of 1963 written on the wall. Halfway down, a short level went east for about 10m to a forefield, while the shotholes were all large diameter, suggesting a contemporary date with the long level.
With everything derigged, it was time to turn the beer magnet on, for the Song of the Siren is as nothing to the Call of the Barleymow. Picking up a scaff bar, I headed back down the tramming level and into the sough. Once again, it was hands, knees time as we exited to the industrial sound of two scaff bars ringing in an echoing level, move over Einsturzende Neubauten for the ATAC are coming through! Just one more obstacle to deal with, namely the steep daleside in the dark.Without too many foul oaths and imprecations, we got down to road level and pausing only to right a fallen road sign, it was back to the cars to change and retire to that oasis of fine ale and good company that is the Barleymow. Biere du Jour (for Tuesday is French night at the ?Mo) was Black Hole Brewery?s ?Cosmic?, a fine dark bitter I?ll be looking out for in future. Now, I just need to persuade John to write up his findings down the shaft for the PDMHS newsletter?s Observations and Discoveries section, or alternatively, we find the person responsible for the date of 1963 at the bottom and demand they pull their finger out and publish ? fifty-two years is quite long enough to have sorted out a write-up! :read:
Reference
Flindall, R.B. & Hayes, A.J. 1971 ?The Adit Workings on the North Side of the Via Gellia? Bull. PDMHS Vol. 4 no. 6
I've dug it out for you, happy to give you a lend - I'll put it in the post, just send it back when you've finished with it.
It did seem to be very effective at getting 7 people out underground, so it may be a useful ploy for diggers trying to attract new recruits......
