METHODS OF MINING AT THE EDGE

INTRODUCTION

This page provides a summary of the mining techniques used at Alderley Edge.  A separate age covers the processing of the ore..

Early mining -o- Post mediaeval -o - Mid 19th century -o- 20th century  

Lighting -o- Ventilation -o- Haulage -o- Drainage

EARLY MINING

The earliest miners at Alderley Edge are believed to have used crude stone hammers to batter the mineral out of the rock. Many hundreds of hammers have been found associated with the mines at Engine Vein, Stormy Point and in the Brinlow area. The firm dating of these hammers has so far defied archaeologists but similar sites around the country and evidence at Alderley back the idea that they were used during the Bronze Age. A wooden shovel found with stone hammers in 1874 has been dated to around 1750 BC substantiating the idea of Bronze Age mining.

To make the rock easier to break, it is probable that they used fire-setting where a fire is lit against the rock face softening the rock and encouraging it to crack.  A successful experiment was carried out at Alderley Edge some years ago to see how easy firesetting would be.  

Roman mining appears only to have taken place at Engine Vein where a Roman coin hoard was found in a shaft. This shaft was excavated under archaeological conditions and a piece of wood from the bottom has been dated to around 75 AD. On this basis, it can be said with confidence that the shaft is Roman. It is notable that the Roman shaft and gallery are considerably larger in cross-section than other passages until the late 19th century suggesting that the Romans did not have to pay much for the labour used!  The passages are comparable to those found at Roman mines at Dolaucothi in Wales.

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POST-MEDIAEVAL MINING

Mining in the late 17th and 18th centuries used iron picks which leave very distinctive wall-marks. Another recognisable feature of mines of this period is the small size of the passages where the minimum of material was removed. These tend to be narrow at head and foot and wider at shoulder-height giving rise to the name "coffin-level". It appears that blasting was rarely used at this time although a few small diameter shot-holes have been found such as at the end of the adit in Brinlow.  These holes have clay stemming in place so must have been used with explosives rather than plug and feather wedges.

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MID-19th CENTURY MINING

In the 19th century, blasting was used extensively except when a passage had to be shaped, for example to make room for an air duct. The first step in blasting is to prepare the "face" and drill the shotholes. The holes used were about three to four feet long, circular or triangular in section and drilled by hand. Black powder was put in the bottom two to three feet, possibly in the form of a waterproof paper-wrapped cartridge. On top of the powder, a clay plug was placed and tamped in firmly. A powder-filled fabric fuse was placed through the clay plug. When all the shots had been set, the miner lit the fuses and retired a safe distance. Each shot, if well placed, could bring down a couple of tons of rock. The rock came off the wall in large and small pieces and the largest pieces were broken up again by hammering. After sorting out any waste rock, the miner placed the ore into wooden barrows to wheel it to the nearest underground railway where wooden or iron tubs (trucks) were filled. The tubs could be pushed out of the mine or, as in the case of West Mine or the Hough Level, to the bottom of an incline up which they were hauled by rope by the steam engine.

Most of the mines consist of large chambers linked by man- or tub-sized passages. The chambers are the stopes from which the ore was removed; the largest stope in West Mine is more than 60 metres (200 feet) long by 15 metres (50 feet) wide and high. The connecting passages are usually much smaller, typically 2 metres (6 feet) high by 1.2 metres (4 feet) wide. All parts of the mines at Alderley are generally accessible by walking but in a few places the miners dug shafts from level to level for ventilation or to make tipping ore into trucks easier. When the miners were digging out the chambers, they left the roof flat or arched depending upon its strength. Occasionally, a rock pillar might be left if the span was particularly large. As a result of this policy and the natural strength of the rock, there has been no general subsidence at Alderley. Shafts which went through to surface were often capped with stone slabs if they were closed off during the working life of the mine. However, shafts which were left open for access or ventilation were often lined or capped with timber and in the last 50 years these timber linings have rotted away leading to several cone-shaped hollows in the fields around Windmill Wood where material has flowed into the mine passages below.

Some mining records exist which show that the mining was organised on the Cornish principle of having teams or 'pares' that contracted for particular sections of work.  The work could be sinking or raising shafts, driving levels or stoping out the ore deposits.  From the data, we can, for example, deduce that one pare (4, 5 or 6 men and boys) could drive two fathoms of horizontal level in the sandstone in a week.  Assuming six days work, this means two feet a day which is roughly the distance removed on each round of firing.  It suggests that it took a working day to drill the eight or nine shotholes required, charge and fire them and muck out the debris (the following morning).  As space is restricted at the face, this would mean each shothole taking about an hour to drill.  While two of the team would be drilling, others would be removing and stacking waste, laying track, extending ventilation lines and, in the case of the boys, fetching and carrying, taking messages and operating ventilation fans.

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	The entrance to West Mine. Taken in the late 19th century, this picture shows the entrance to West Mine at the end of a deep cutting in the ground.
	20th century working.  The distinctively square passage in West Mine which dates from the early 1900s.

20th CENTURY WORKING

Mining in the 20th century appears to have taken place at Wood Mine (in Sand Cavern), West Mine (near the entrance) and possibly Doc Mine.  The techniques were similar to the late 19th century mining except that high explosives such as dynamite were used in place of gunpowder and the drills were rotary, either air powered or manual.  We can also see from some pictures from the 1920s that the haulage level at West Mine had some sort of electrical signalling system in place.

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	Lighting.  This candle is one of very few that we find left in the mines.  Although candles do not give out much light, it was enough to work by once the miner got used to the dark.
	Ventilation.  Passages driven into new ground as trials or for moving ore needed ventilation until a through route for air could be engineered.  distinctive features of such passages are brackets and hand-picked cut-outs for air trunking.

LIGHTING

Lighting was provided throughout by candles. The remains of several can still be found in Wood Mine where they were stuck to the walls by the miners. Others would be stuck onto the miner's felt hat and more would be placed on the front of the tub. Nevertheless, light was at a premium and it is not surprising that a great deal of ore was left in the mines. On a very few occasions when there were special visitors to West Mine, Roman candles and magnesium flares were used to light up the Main Chamber with what must have been a very dramatic effect.

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VENTILATION

It appears from records and evidence in the mines that ventilation was quite easily achieved by ensuring that natural draughts flowed through all the workings; for example, in Wood Mine, the signs of a doorway can clearly be seen in the short-cut passage between the adit entrance and the shaft entrances. However, when a passage was being driven into new territory and a natural draught could not be created, air ducting was installed near the roof of the passage. This was probably fed with air from a fan operated by a boy seated at the entrance to the passage.  Research in Wood and West Mines shows that a number of internal shafts and narrow passages were mined purely to encourage circulation of air through the extremities of the mines.

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	Haulage. The incline from West Mine to the treatment works in the 1920s.  This replaced the incline built in the late 1850s which was dismantled in 1858.
	Drainage.  There is little evidence of major drainage problems at Alderley and most water was probably collected in small quantities in the sumps below shafts and bucketed to the surface.

HAULAGE

The other key requirement in any mine is to have a way to get the ore to the surface easily.  Most British metal mines used shafts although more recently, sloping entrances or drifts have been used extensively.  At Alderley Edge, shafts were used by the earlier miners and Bear Pit may represent the main engine shaft for Engine Vein using a Derbyshire model.  This could date the shaft to the 1805-10 period and it may have employed a horse engine or whim to wind buckets.  In the mid-19^th century, the miners developed a system to take out the ore using inclined tunnels so that copper from all the mines was brought to the surface at the crushing plant.  Signs of the railways and rope haulage system can still be found underground and a large number of ore chutes have been identified leading to the main haulage way known as the Hough Level.

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DRAINAGE

Unlike in deep mines in for example Derbyshire, water presented few problems. The Hough Level from Engine Vein to the Edge appears to have been driven in the 18th century as a drainage tunnel but there is no evidence of a special drainage route from Wood Mine or West Mine. It appears that the sandstone is porous enough and the Edge is high enough above surrounding country to provide natural drainage. We do believe though that water may have been pumped from the Hough Level at West Mine to feed the works.  Also, there is a shaft below adit level at Brinlow and this must have required pumping to keep it dry.

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