You may think, slightly eccentric chaps in boiler suits and helmets with powerful miners’ lamps and webbing harnesses, carrying ropes and squeezing themselves through seemingly impossibly small cracks and muddy spaces…. underground.
You are probably right, except that all the cavers I have met are extremely friendly, if not a little passionate about their hobby.
Having visited tourist caves abroad, some even with elaborate light shows choreographed to music, these trips are a million miles different from what a ‘Caving Club Member’ in our area may get up to.
When we bought our property we knew it included the entrance to a mine in the grounds. We knew where it was and we duly fenced it off to keep the horses from falling down it. Then in April 1990 due to the Clun earthquake another entrance opened up. However, it wasn’t until the Spring of 2007 when members of the Shropshire Caving and Mining Club (SCMC) turned up locally to look at a collapsed shaft in the area, that we ventured in our mine for the first time. It turned out that the ‘second’ entrance was in fact more of a main entrance which had been filled in, being a short, low tunnel which led to one large space opening up above and with short runs appearing to go off it in different directions and heights.
A mine survey I found describes the mine as:
There is a run-in level at [grid ref] which is collapsing at the surface. To the west is a shaft with stoping and a connecting narrow level from the north. There are traces of earthwork tramway beds. There are traces of low stone walls relating to former buildings whose function is not known. There is a small reservoir which may have been used in a washing process.
Apparently this description is from a survey done during 1992/93. There are a few noteworthy points here:
- No-one approached us to survey the mine or to give them access to the site and from the description they must have been inside.
- The collapsing ‘run-in’ level is in fact the (what a lay-person would call) tunnel which has opened up in recent years. It is not collapsing but the reverse, opening up to reveal itself. This entrance was obviously closed off / filled in, maybe when the mine was abandoned.
- The evidence of low walls relating to buildings is quite far-fetched. There is a walled field boundary but other than that I have never spotted any remains which may have been a building and believe me, I have looked around the site a lot.
- Finally, the reservoir they are referring to…? It was dug by a JCB about 20 years a go.
More than one record I have found states that the mine was worked between 1914 and 1918. The one thing that is definitely not in question is that the mineral they were mining is called Barytes, a heavy white rock used in (amongst other things) the paper industry, as a filler in paint or in drilling mud.
Since our 2007 initial look around with the help of the SCMC, we have been in the mine one other time. As we are now into rock climbing, we have rope, helmets and kit to safely have a nosey around. Squirt even had an abseil to the lower level. I find it a fascinating place.
Last week (July 2014) a party of SCMC members came to have a look at the mine and this visit and a subsequent invitation to have a look around underground in Clive Copper Mine (more to follow on this fantastic experience), re-kindled my interest in the place and what it may have been like when it was in operation. Who worked in it? What was it like? Did they live in our cottage? I think I may do a bit more digging… of old documents to see what I can find! (More to follow)
The SCMC cavers who came on a short field-trip below, check out their club, they are always welcoming new members.
walkingbuddies 