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Brownley Hill Mine Potter, (18/05/07).


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Having been extremely busy with work over the last 2 months, this was the first trip underground for a while. I was in the mood to take some more up to date photographs of this mine, and coupled with the fact that Karl had never been in Brownley before, it proved the perfect combination as there was no rushing around trying to see everything.

All in all we did not go a great distance in to the mine, but that was never the purpose of the trip. At the main junction by the flooded engine shaft we followed the Wellgill Cross Vein heading in, stopping to look at the the odd feature. When the link to Hagg's was reached we popped down this and I climbed down into Hagg's to have a quick look around. I spotted some tins and other artifacts, along with the collapsed shaft behind the engine room above. I returned back up in to Brownley and we climbed up into the engine room for a look.

From here we took the right turn onto the Brownley Hill Vein, and then after climbing up into a stope working we had lunch. After this, a look was had at the deep blue pool further along. Carrying on along the vein a rise was reached and we both climbed into a stope working which had a small series of calcified steps. Karl looked around for discarded mineral specimens whilst I took more photographs. Rooting around, I managed to find a detonator with a little bit of ragged black match sticking out of it - a very nice find. Finally we dropped back down into the horse level and carried on for a while. The plan that we had did not exactly align with what we saw, and I think we may have headed along a route which was taking us to the Brownley Hill North Vein in the region of Tatter's String, but I could be wrong in this. In the end we turned back and retraced our steps to the Wellgill Cross Vein with a view to exiting.

On passing the Brownley Hill Middle Vein, we got sucked into the fine arching there, and soon we found ourselves climbing up into the flats above. I had been along the passages before, but never in the flats. I realised that this area was a little jackpot find. The flats seemed to have two levels, with lots of rail tracks and points. We came across many ore shoots and even found an ore truck - admittedly badly decomposed, but still nice to see. Due to the later than planned start we had to get going, so we took as many photographs as we could and then headed out.