Context
Had this one on my 'to do' list for a good few weeks now, after spotting a cryptic reference to it on the web and then searching on here for it. Finally got myself a decent pass out to have a crack at it and post an updated report as the last one on here was done in 2014 - time and trauma gets to us all, especially abandoned fluorspar mines and I was interested to see what condition it was in a year down the line. The weather was purely miserable and I nearly missed the mine as there was thick fog in Weardale this morning and I couldn't see damn thing out of the side windows of the car. Eventually got my bearings, parked up and dropped down from the road to the mine site itself, pottered about on the surface for a bit then got stuck in to the meaty underground stuff that I'd come for in the first place.
History
Springing up in high Weardale at the end of the eighteenth century, Grove Rake was initally designated a lead mine, but the veins that the two shafts tapped into proved to be relatively low in yields of lead and relatively high in yields of fluorspar (aka fluorite or CaF2 - calcium fluoride). It then operated as a dual lead/fluorspar mine for a while but it wasn't until the mid-twentieth century that today's main attractions were driven into the hillside: Rake Level, a horizontal drift trending roughly ENE and Firestone Decline, a formidable drift tilted at a gradient of 1 in 4: each drift promising to pierce the upper and lower limits of the ore veins that run through this part of Weardale. The mine continued to operate right up until the end of the twentieth century, finally giving up the ghost in 1999 and being abandoned ever since.
Due to its remote location, it hasn't suffered too badly from vandals and thieving pikeys, although the easternmost shaft's headgear has gone and the various buildings have suffered to a certain degree from random vandalism and looting. The westernmost headgear still stands, although the stairs have been cut away in an attempt to stop people accessing the steelwork. It hasn't worked ......
:
The visit
Due to the crappy weather, I had a quick potter about on the surface when I first got there and checked out the various buildings but headed underground fairly quickly as the light was garbage for photos. First up, a trip down Firestone Decline:
The first few yards of Firestone are concrete-lined, although there have been several cave-ins, casting spoil into the tunnel and necessitating a bit of clambering and crouching to get over:
The original tub rails are still in place, which is pretty unusual for a mine like this - they've usually been salvaged either by the miners or by scrap merchants: again, testament to how remote this site actually is.
After you exit the concrete section, there is then an awesome impressive thirty or forty yards where the tunnel is hewn from the solid rock - the echoes in here are phenomenal, just from footfall:
You then pick up the standard metalwork further down the decline which contains some fairly arse-clenching roof voids above it and some seriously large rocks balanced precariously on the metalwork.
There is a pretty insistent trickle of water that follows you down from the top of the Decline but more and more is finding its way in through the refuges at the side of the tunnel and it gets wetter and wetter the further down you go, until .....
This was the limit for me: at this point, the water reaches roof height and I didn't fancy risking a swim! The water was a really unusual greenish yellow at this point if I held my lights at the right angle - never seen a colour quite like this in a mine before. The roof was in a pretty poor state here as well with lots of fresh spoil on the floor and voids above. Not a place to stay too long!
Heading back out, I tried to get a couple of shots that showed the gradient inside the Decline:
It was only at this point I realised just how cold it had been on the Decline - coming out into the fresh air again was like walking into a sauna and my lens immediately fogged and didn't clear for twenty minutes whilst I poked about some more at the surface, finding the original shaft for the easternmost headgear (covered by some flimsy wooden contraption) but not liking what I saw in terms of going down for a look!
Once my lens had cleared, I grabbed a few surface shots before heading off into Rake Level.
The entrance to Rake Level (as seen through a blurry, filthy lens ....):
Rake Level is flooded to well above knee height from the first few metres in and it was chest deep within ten metres after a bit of a squeeze through a substantial roof fall (visible on the next photo down) - VERY cold water awaits you after the roof collapse (which has left a surface crater of no small dimensions) and made doubly cold as I soon found out that crawling around somewhere in the past had opened up a couple of holes in my right wader leg ....
The water aside, Rake Level is a really beautiful drift: the metalwork, meshing at the sides and the colour of the rock plus the ochre water all combine to make it a great place for photography:
It's fairly low work at first with the roof not far above the head - it does open out after a little while though. You have to be really careful with your footing though as the original tub rails are still in situ and VERY slippery if you stand on one - I nearly went for a swim on three separate occasions.
Further into the drift, you spot a bulge in the wall where a tub loop was put in to enable greater traffic through the drift:
According to the survey I have of the mine workings (dated May 15), the drift eventually bears right on a bearing of 100 degrees and there are plenty of other workings to be seen further in - I was getting cold, hadn't got my gas detector with me and just had one of those feelings so took one last photo and headed out, intent on coming back wearing warmer gear and with my Altair4! Discretion being the best part of valour etc.
The roof fall looking back towards the entrance:
The entrance from just inside the Level:
With that, I was preparing to head back to the car, having given up on the idea of getting on to the headgear for a clamber up top. Had one last look, ditched my tripod, DSLR, lights and backpack and managed (with a good deal of swearing) to climb up onto the first section of tantalising ironwork, putting another hole in my waders as I did so. Here are a few shots from my phone of the headgear:
Looking down!
Shot of the mine site from the top of the headgear (Firestone Decline can just about be seen here):
Couple of general shots from the short walk back to the car:
There you have it: a great place for a proper good explore! I'm going back properly kitted out to get further in to Rake Level - if I was feeling properly mental, I'd borrow some scuba gear and see how far I can get into FIrestone but that needs someone with bigger balls than me!
Thanks for reading.
Had this one on my 'to do' list for a good few weeks now, after spotting a cryptic reference to it on the web and then searching on here for it. Finally got myself a decent pass out to have a crack at it and post an updated report as the last one on here was done in 2014 - time and trauma gets to us all, especially abandoned fluorspar mines and I was interested to see what condition it was in a year down the line. The weather was purely miserable and I nearly missed the mine as there was thick fog in Weardale this morning and I couldn't see damn thing out of the side windows of the car. Eventually got my bearings, parked up and dropped down from the road to the mine site itself, pottered about on the surface for a bit then got stuck in to the meaty underground stuff that I'd come for in the first place.
History
Springing up in high Weardale at the end of the eighteenth century, Grove Rake was initally designated a lead mine, but the veins that the two shafts tapped into proved to be relatively low in yields of lead and relatively high in yields of fluorspar (aka fluorite or CaF2 - calcium fluoride). It then operated as a dual lead/fluorspar mine for a while but it wasn't until the mid-twentieth century that today's main attractions were driven into the hillside: Rake Level, a horizontal drift trending roughly ENE and Firestone Decline, a formidable drift tilted at a gradient of 1 in 4: each drift promising to pierce the upper and lower limits of the ore veins that run through this part of Weardale. The mine continued to operate right up until the end of the twentieth century, finally giving up the ghost in 1999 and being abandoned ever since.
Due to its remote location, it hasn't suffered too badly from vandals and thieving pikeys, although the easternmost shaft's headgear has gone and the various buildings have suffered to a certain degree from random vandalism and looting. The westernmost headgear still stands, although the stairs have been cut away in an attempt to stop people accessing the steelwork. It hasn't worked ......
:The visit
Due to the crappy weather, I had a quick potter about on the surface when I first got there and checked out the various buildings but headed underground fairly quickly as the light was garbage for photos. First up, a trip down Firestone Decline:
The first few yards of Firestone are concrete-lined, although there have been several cave-ins, casting spoil into the tunnel and necessitating a bit of clambering and crouching to get over:
The original tub rails are still in place, which is pretty unusual for a mine like this - they've usually been salvaged either by the miners or by scrap merchants: again, testament to how remote this site actually is.
After you exit the concrete section, there is then an awesome impressive thirty or forty yards where the tunnel is hewn from the solid rock - the echoes in here are phenomenal, just from footfall:
You then pick up the standard metalwork further down the decline which contains some fairly arse-clenching roof voids above it and some seriously large rocks balanced precariously on the metalwork.
There is a pretty insistent trickle of water that follows you down from the top of the Decline but more and more is finding its way in through the refuges at the side of the tunnel and it gets wetter and wetter the further down you go, until .....
This was the limit for me: at this point, the water reaches roof height and I didn't fancy risking a swim! The water was a really unusual greenish yellow at this point if I held my lights at the right angle - never seen a colour quite like this in a mine before. The roof was in a pretty poor state here as well with lots of fresh spoil on the floor and voids above. Not a place to stay too long!
Heading back out, I tried to get a couple of shots that showed the gradient inside the Decline:
It was only at this point I realised just how cold it had been on the Decline - coming out into the fresh air again was like walking into a sauna and my lens immediately fogged and didn't clear for twenty minutes whilst I poked about some more at the surface, finding the original shaft for the easternmost headgear (covered by some flimsy wooden contraption) but not liking what I saw in terms of going down for a look!
Once my lens had cleared, I grabbed a few surface shots before heading off into Rake Level.
The entrance to Rake Level (as seen through a blurry, filthy lens ....):
Rake Level is flooded to well above knee height from the first few metres in and it was chest deep within ten metres after a bit of a squeeze through a substantial roof fall (visible on the next photo down) - VERY cold water awaits you after the roof collapse (which has left a surface crater of no small dimensions) and made doubly cold as I soon found out that crawling around somewhere in the past had opened up a couple of holes in my right wader leg ....
The water aside, Rake Level is a really beautiful drift: the metalwork, meshing at the sides and the colour of the rock plus the ochre water all combine to make it a great place for photography:
It's fairly low work at first with the roof not far above the head - it does open out after a little while though. You have to be really careful with your footing though as the original tub rails are still in situ and VERY slippery if you stand on one - I nearly went for a swim on three separate occasions.
Further into the drift, you spot a bulge in the wall where a tub loop was put in to enable greater traffic through the drift:
According to the survey I have of the mine workings (dated May 15), the drift eventually bears right on a bearing of 100 degrees and there are plenty of other workings to be seen further in - I was getting cold, hadn't got my gas detector with me and just had one of those feelings so took one last photo and headed out, intent on coming back wearing warmer gear and with my Altair4! Discretion being the best part of valour etc.
The roof fall looking back towards the entrance:
The entrance from just inside the Level:
With that, I was preparing to head back to the car, having given up on the idea of getting on to the headgear for a clamber up top. Had one last look, ditched my tripod, DSLR, lights and backpack and managed (with a good deal of swearing) to climb up onto the first section of tantalising ironwork, putting another hole in my waders as I did so. Here are a few shots from my phone of the headgear:
Looking down!
Shot of the mine site from the top of the headgear (Firestone Decline can just about be seen here):
Couple of general shots from the short walk back to the car:
There you have it: a great place for a proper good explore! I'm going back properly kitted out to get further in to Rake Level - if I was feeling properly mental, I'd borrow some scuba gear and see how far I can get into FIrestone but that needs someone with bigger balls than me!
Thanks for reading.
