In the Peak leadmining area hawthorn bushes were the favourite tree to plant by a shaft. Nellie Kirkham told me that miners planted them mostly by their coe or climbing shafts. I don't know why, perhaps it was superstition as miners were known to be very superstitious people. She said that if one was looking for a lost shaft, view the landscape for disturbed ground i.e. mine hillocks, and if there was an old hawthorn bush with a pile of rocks near it, especially in a hollow, that was an indication of the site of a possible shaft. Of course in the days we were exploring old lead mines the Derbyshire mine capping programme had not been carried out or even thought about - I can still remember how to cap a shaft with stone, even build a beehive. I remember a member of our group jumping on the chock stone after we'd capped one just to prove it was solid! There was also a very strong Derbyshire superstition concerning hawthorn, it was unlucky to pick the flowers and bring them into the house, and similarly bring hawthorn wood into the house to burn.
David, I'm very glad that at long last the Peak Park Planning Authority have seen the sense of preserving the flora and fauna that thrive on the old mine hillocks, which as you say are more preserved than the mine sites, but at least this legislation helps to preserve what remains of the surface of the mines. When I studied geology at Derby Technical College way back in 1951 one of the first things we were taught was to recognise what plants were growing on the surface, as this knowledge would tell us what rocks were beneath. The flower that immediately springs to mind is the minature yellow petaled Mountain pansy (see "The Lead Legacy") which grows on lead infected ground - visions of Magpie mine surface in late spring, also Bonsall Moor. In my lifetime I have seen such a lot of lead mining landscape interfered with and removed by mining firms opencasting with no regard for flora or fauna; for the minerals (barytes, fluor, calmine, calcite etc.) left in the hillocks left by T'owd man who by the laws of the Barmote Court could do nothing with them, they were just waste material. When I went to live in Bonsall in 1978 it was the start of the fluorspar "boom", opencasting (with and without planning consent) had started with a vengeance on Bonsall Moor and Masson Hill, and with a rambling friend who was trying to save footpaths and bridleways the pair of us constantly visited and wrote to the Peak Park offices at Bakewell registering our objections. We were a lone pair up against officialdom as the Peak Park in those days didn't recognise that the mining landscape covered in a profusion of rare, wild flowers was the result of the aftermath of the lead mining era, they just didn't want to know us. One mine surface that we managed to save was the Low Mine at Bonsall; Dresser Minerals were given planning consent for the removal of surface minerals by a dragline but then they couldn't find an exit for lorries to access the site. We fought them over this point of access and it became so drawn out that when China flooded the world market with cheap fluorspar in the early 1980's the bottom fell out of the home market, consequently Dressers gave up the planning consent and departed the area, so we can claim that we saved Low mine.
Margaret Howard
|