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in fact a certain bookseller has one try www.moorebooks.co.uk ----- Original Message ----- From: "C J Williams" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Sunday, June 25, 2006 12:05 PM Subject: Re: Hendre Mine, Rhydymwyn There is a brief description of these buildings and their purpose in my article, 'The lead mines of the Alyn valley', in Flintshire Historical Society Journal, Vol 29 (1979-80), pp 75-6, quoted below. The article was reprinted as a separate publication with additional illustrations in 1987, and can sometimes be found for sale on the internet, for example on _www.abebooks.com_ (http://www.abebooks.com) . --------------- During the First World War the desperate need for minerals led the Ministry of Munitions to subsidize to the extent of £42,000 an emergency scheme to pump water in the mines in the Rhydymwyn area up into the Halkyn Deep Level. In 1917 a generating station was built near Taylor's Shaft, North Hendre (SJ 20436780) to power two pumps in the shaft capable of raising 4.000 gallons of water a minute to the Halkyn Deep. Some two miles of overhead transmission lines ran from the generating station to Davey's Shaft, Bryncelyn, and Conqueror of Wales Shaft at the east end of the Llyn-y-pandy Vein. Both shafts were deepened and 2,000 gallon pumps, powered by the central generating station, installed at each. The total; volume of water pumped from these mines, with existing capacity, would have been 15,000 gallons a minute. Launders were also installed in the Llyn-y-pandy Mine as a precautionary measure to ensure an adequate flow in the Halkyn Deep Level, from which water was supplied by a pipeline to the munitions factory at Queensferry. The whole scheme was nearly completed when the armistice was signed, and work suspended. It proved impossible to get the mining interests to pay the drainage royalties necessary to make the scheme commertcially viable; much of the plant was sold off, and work at all the Halkyn mines was suspended in 1921. ----------------- Many details of the scheme are given in three Ministry of Munitions files in the Public Record Office, Power 16/137-9. C J Williams