After any litterary references to this mine - journals, trip reports, surveys etc etc.
Had a good trip down to the bottom before christmas and Im keen to explore a bit more. Would be nice read up a bit on it.
Pitlamp - your're always good for refs. Anything in any TSG/Eldon/other journals
PS - Im up to date with any explorations in the last couple of years - i.e. anything by JT in the last 3 of 4 years.
It was alan Medhurst, Mark (buster) wright and myself
(T pot) that first descended this mine, however it was not by the main shaft on the first descent.
Stanley Sidebotton of Netherwater plant who was extracting limestone at moss rake quarry at the time informed me that a hole had opened up on the left hand side of the concrete approach road to the quarry weighbridge and asked if we would look at it.
The descent was via a mined out vein some two feet in width and twenty foot deep, freeclimable to a ledge, from here a series of stopes were descended to a depth of approx 180ft, here we landed at an offset of the vein, Alan placed a spit and rigged a rope, I descended on down what was part mined, part natural for a further 20ft passing a body size phreatic tube in the left hand wall (this was never entered) at the bottom of here there are numerous stacked deads in the roof heading towards the main shaft, on gaining it, i realised that I was standing on a false floor that was much undercut supported on dubious stemples. From here I could see across the main shaft to a huge ledge where the main shaft continues on downwards. Alan and buster then looked at what we had found and we then returned to the surface.
A few days later Neil walker (JCB contractor) arrived at the shaft top, he scraped away the hillock blocking the shaft and we found the mines crushing stone was the cap, this was move to the side and concrete railway sleeper were put in its place (we left the middle on out at this point to allow us to make the first descent of the newly opened shaft.
The ginging of the 5ft oval shaft was in what seemed to be in good repair and we descended it passing a few small levels to the platform that I had seen from the false floor days earlier. From here I could tell that the false floor was not a good place to stand.
Looking back to the wall a chain link tow'd man's ladder disappeared up into the blackness (can't recall if it's top was ever reached) down to the left was a hauling kibble in a blocked stope 20ft deep (my view was that is a place to dig for further gains) at this horizon there is also a bedding plane approx 1ft deep that goes all the way around the shaft, however its not a bedding, it's a collapse feature. The descent of the shaft from the ledge only went to a boulder blockage at the bottom.
There is an article in descent magazine concerning the explorations.
Apologies for the lack of dates of the descents, I can't get at my diaries at the moment.
Ps
There are the three places of interest that should be revisited, the top of the chain ladder, the stope where the kibble is and the phreatic tube above the false floor.
Pps
At the shaft top stand and look in the direction of mam tor, climb down the bank on the far side of the crushing circle at the bottom off which is a draughting hole that I didn't investigate (it may have been a climbing shaft).
Hope this helps
T po
