Regarding: BBC2 Thursday 8 Jan 8:00pm
:Fred Dibnah digs a 100 foot mine shaft in his back garden complete with
:pithead and steam engine.
My friend John Wiggins bought himself a small farmstead a few years ago and having made the place habitable after years of neglect looked around for another project. He happened to meet an out of work archaelogical student and the two of them set to work to recreate an area of underground workings in the garden adjoining the farmhouse. Ironstone was the local mineral extracted so that became the chosen "output" of this "mine."
I took early retirement in 2000 just as the student found work so I became associated with this "mining venture" and instigated the erection of a headgear over one of the two shafts, each circular, brick-lined and 7 feet deep. Today, 6 January 2004, the single pulley wheel was put in place on top of the downcast shaft wooden headgear, bringing its total height to a fraction under 4 metres. Any higher and it would have needed planning permission!
This newest headgear in the country can be seen at NZ 654181 Manless Green Farm near Skelton Green in the former Cleveland County. And they say mining historians don't know how to have fun!!
Yes, it is abit of fun for the two of us, although manhandling a pulley wheel up a height of 12 feet has the potential for being totally the opposite. And yet on our site we have so far recreated one full size 4 wheel pit tub which was noticed in the local community and we were seriously asked if we would like to donate it for installation in the middle of a local road traffic island to be filled with flowers as a memento of past mining activity. Perhaps we should have done; the replica subsequently installed looks appalling.
Regards, Simon.
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