I've recently taken to coming up to Nenthead on a Thursday evening
and doing a day of walking on the Friday. Sometimes just to look at the land
and sometimes to take in mining features. This Friday I decided to a walk up
the Nent Valley to Smallcleugh and then head across Flinty Fell towards the
Brown Gill plantation as the number of shafts shown on the OS map has always
made me want to have a look. I've looked at the adit in that plantation before,
but never followed it up, see:
Browngill
Top Level
After attempting to follow the path on the OS map, I gave
up and just followed my nose navigating around the many peat hags and water
courses on the fell. Finally, after much deviation the mine workings around
Longholehead Whimsey Shaft came into view and past these the plantation.
Entering the plantation, I soon starting to find the shafts marked on the OS.
Most of them were tall mounds with a crater and choked. However, three of them
very close together seemed to be depressions where the ground had collapsed
rather than actual shafts. One of these was open and seemed to look as if it
went into a working. I noticed around the trees traces of bailer's twine - a
very weak attempt as fencing off. From here I headed to the Browngill Top level
and came across another shaft en route. This one was on a small mound with
ginging right up to the surface. Again, completely open and unprotected. You
wouldn't want to go running and skipping in this part of the woods. The shaft
did have the remains of some barbed wire embedded in the surrounding trees, but
that must have been from decades ago. Shining a torch down, it looked like
there was a level at the bottom and what looked like running water. This needed
investigating.
I spoke with Karli about my findings and on the Sunday,
we took some scaffy poles to the plantation to have a look. We rigged up the
ginged shaft and Karli abseiled down. He reached down to what I thought was a
level, but it turned out to be a little dogleg and the shaft went further down,
however he could not go further as we only had 20m of rope. He prusseked back
up and I abseiled down to have a look as well. Two things here, I had hoped
that the shaft intersected the Browngill Top level via a crosscut, but it is
obviously too deep for that level, so it must be going down to other workings.
Looking at plans, the whole of Browngill Vein is peppered with various levels
and it could be any one of the them. There is Browngill High, Colonels, and
Whitesyke Level. Though the latter would be really deep. Questions,
questions.
After derigging we went and looked at the surface collapse /
possible shaft. From the top it looked like this hole could go somewhere, but
then again, the shadows can play with wishful thinking. We used a couple of
trees as belays and Karli went into the hole. Straight away he saw a level
towards the shear side of the depression, it has some boards in it, but had
fallen in, this was only a few metres below the surface. Descending further
down, there looked to be a start of a steep decline and he noted an old anchor
plate in the crumbling rock. Carrying on down the incline, a level intersected
it. Inside there was some yellow tape marking out clog prints. Not the first
ones down here then. Karli came up and then I went down to have a look as well.
On the way I up I noticed a section of cast iron piping in the debris on the
south side of the hole. Had this been a shaft that had collapse but ended up
being still open? We need to come back with more rope and go further
down.
Ending the morning exploring we went over to the cut and cover
Browngill Top level and did some water management to get the level down as it
has always been quite deep due to rocks and silt. As always, water management
is very satisfying. |
