Most definately in Derbyshire pronounced "suff". The earliest one at Cromford being driven from 1631 and 1651 by Sir Cornelius Vermuyden to the Gang mines, and the last large one, Magpie sough being driven from 1873-1881, lock gates were installed and a boat was used in it, it discharges into the river Wye upstream from Ashford-in-the-Water. The tail became blocked by a fall in spring 1963 and a back up of water built up which resulted in 1966 with the "tail" blowing out which caused a landslip and almost blocked the river Wye. Peak District Mines Historical Society in 1973 reopened the sough by constructing a new sough tail. The longest one was Hillcarr sough, approximately four and a half miles long, driven from 1766 it took twenty one years in construction and cost around £32,000. The sough tail (a beautiful gritstone arch) on is on the west bank of the river Derwent at Darley Dale and the sough was driven westwards beneath Stanton Moor to Guy Vein at Alport, the furthest mine it dewaters is the Mawstone Mine at Youlgreave. There are now problems in the area caused by blockages in the sough.
Briefly, most people must be aware that soughs are drainage levels or adits driven from the lowest point of a valley, horizontal into a hillside to dewater mines often discharging into a stream or river, sometimes they were used as pumpways. The driving of soughs greatly changed the water table in the Peak District. Nellie Kirkham in her book "Derbyshire Lead Mining Through the Centuries" (1968) worked out that the gradient of the "sole" ie. the floor, of the sough was about ten feet in a mile. The partners of the Company that paid for the cost of the work were mainly composed of the lead merchants and smelters of the lead field who were in turn called "Adventurers", the men who drove the soughs were called "soughers". Much money could be made or lost during the construction of a sough and monies were paid to the company driving the sough by all the mines which received water easement from it (see "Lead and Lead Mining in Derbyshire by Arthur H. Stokes), therefore, if no mines were encountered whilst driving a sough no monies were paid and a loss was incurred. In my youth living back in Derby if people gambled their money away it was said that "they'd thrown their money down a sough!", it was a very common expression. At grammar school we had an English teacher (from the south) who said that all Derbyshire people were born with a "plum" in their mouths, i.e. spoke with a broad "u", and it was her mission in life to iron this broad (i.e. northern) sound from our speech. I think she succeeded with some of us.
Margaret Howard
|