Another query arising from a chat with someone who lives on top of
the Grassington Mines in Yorkshire. They and their neighbours draw
water from boreholes sunk into the Grassington Grit (here, three
layers of sandstone separated by thin beds of shale) not more than
100 yards from the nearest vein. As these beds are the ones which
also hosted the ore-shoots, the shafts have been sunk through them
into the underlying limestone.
The deepest shafts (around 300 feet), which are either lined with
drystone walling or nothing, were sunk between 1820 and 1860 -
long before freezing and grout injection methods. I know from the
mine ledgers that many of them were sunk down boreholes, which
took water into levels driven underneath them. Although the mines
were abandoned in 1881, an adit still drains the open shafts.
I wonder if anyone has come across references to keeping such shafts
dry (presumably by putting puddle clay behind the lining) during their
working lives?
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Mike Gill
President and Recorder of the NORTHERN MINE RESEARCH SOCIETY
Britain's foremost mining history society at:-
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/~RBurt/MinHistNet/NMRS.html
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