Report - Various Underground Sites - 2014

[Humpa]

Right, its that time of year that I've collated enough photos to warrant a report

Now I'm not one to explore dark, underground places but there's just something about it which is nice every now and then. So here is my take on a few places

Middleton Mine

I'd always fancied looking around here and the opportunity arose one night so i jumped in the car with DemonHunter and off we went. Apologies there aren't many photos, I had my camera set up wrong

Middleton Mine is located 4 miles south-west of the small town of Matlock. The mine works the Hopton-Wood Limestone which occurs underneath Middleton Moor. Middleton Moor is on the southern margin of an area of the Peak District known as the The White Peak, a block of carboniferous limestone stretching 50 kilometres north to south and 20 kilometres west to east. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when Hopton-wood limestone was first extracted on the site now occupied by Middleton Mine. Certainly by the 1900's there was a well established dimension stone operation at the site. It was a surface operation and was cut where the Hopton-wood outcrops on the eastern flank of Middleton Moor in the middle of the village of Middleton-by-Wirksworth.

Dimension stone operations continued until the 1950's when due to the rapid development of concrete technology the demand for natural stone products fell. Derbyshire Stone, the then operators and owners of the site, had pre-empted this fall in demand by developing a small processing plant to crush the limestone to supply the steel and sugar industry.

Towards the end of the decade the situation with the surface operations reached a point where it became increasingly uneconomic to keep stripping the overburden (which was increasing in depth as a quarry cut into the moor) to gain access to the high purity Hopton-wood beds. The Company was reluctant to lose the customer base it had built up with the processed products, so the decision to commence underground operations was taken.

The company at that time were operating a lead mine in Matlock and moved two of the personnel to Middleton. Work on a drift access was started on February the 4th 1959 and to date approximately 16 million tonnes of high grade limestone have been extracted for the underground workings.

At present Middleton Mine consists of 35 kilometres of workings covering an area of 1400 metres west to east and 800 m north to south. Middleton Mine is divided into five main production areas by normal faults.

In 1968 Derbyshire Stone was absorbed into the Tarmac Group who ultimately put the mine up for sale towards the end of 1990 along with two other units located in Derbyshire which formed it's Industrial Product Division The three Units were purchased by Croxton and Garry Limited who were owned equally by Pluess-Staufer and Blue Circle at the time of the purchase. Pluess-Staufer are now the sole owners of Omya Croxton and Garry.

Now on with the pictures...

Next up is Cambrian Slate Mine - Wales

Again this was a last minute jobby. Many visits later, DemonHunter and I finally found a way in. The cambrian mine was mined until 1937 then the workers found out they could earn more farthings by shoveling snow in and around the area! (That bit i nicked from Telfs report!)

Finally here are a couple of images i took from around the Ecton area in Derbyshire. I have no idea what these tunnels were but they were nice for a couple of hours one night

Thanks for looking

Peace..

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[Camera Shy]

Excellent selection mate, those 2 from Ecton are especially good.

 

[Humpa]

Excellent selection mate, those 2 from Ecton are especially good.

Cheers man wasn't too sure if they'd come out well

 

[anubis]

Love image 2 mate

 

[Ojay]

Nothing wrong with a dark wet hole

 

[Humpa]

Nothing wrong with a dark wet hole

Admittedly at first i was skeptical, now its great fun

 

[Nick0]

The last photo is my fav!!