Lepton edge...a wet pit

[inbye]

I married into a family where the father in law was on the development, at Park mill.
He'd gone there from Lepton edge, where he'd been one of the last to leave the pit. On the last shift they were drawing off copper cabling & they had to be fairly sharp about it. As the power was switched off they had to quickly set about the cables, as the water rose fast. (Lepton edge was notable for mining more water than coal)
Eventually, they got the word to leave the cables & just hacksaw the brass pommels off. They had a tub full of these things & got it to the bottom of a drift, where the water proceded to chase them up the drift.

That tub is sat there to this day, a nice bonus for when the scrap prices make it viable to open old pits up to salvage.

As far as I remember, Lepton edge closed in 1964. All that's on the site now is the old winding house, & I believe they still pump from the shaft to keep water problems away from Caphouse museum, further down the dip...

[John]

After Wollaton closed in the early 60's, we had a few of their blokes on our staff, electrical. Two of them were telling us they found out the shaft feeders were to be cut at the top, and just let curl over to the first "buntin". So they approached the Manager and asked if they could salvage them one weekend for themselves. All they'd need is one winding engineman. They were refused, the cables are still in the flooded capped shafts.
Like you say "inbye" there must be thousands of pounds worth of cables left underground, not to mention haulages, locos, shearers, cutters, loaders, conveyor drives etc etc.

[Mick]

Hi john,then they wondered why are coal cost so much,when Wheldale closed i went salvaging
for a small firm just getting cables out of pits that had shut.
We went to one pit and there was 3 doscos left down and 1 of them had not been used.
At Wheldale all the locos are in the pit bottom.

[inbye]

In 1969/70 i went exploring "Howroyd" pit. This had been a small drift mine, in the valley bottom, between Briestfield & Whitley (Grange Moor area) The pit was only acessed by a footpath, the materials and coal being transported up & down a tramway, from the surface screens, some distance away. There were various small surface buildings, muckstack & the drift mouth. The roofless fitting shop, about the size of a double garage, had a partly stripped coal cutter, across two tressles. The lamproom (even smaller) had a flameproof, underground type lighting machine, the nice red & white enamel plate had been a target for air guns.
The drift mouth was gated but you could squeeze around one side, where the brick arch had given. Once thro' the overburden, the brick arch gave way to low squarework. It was about 4'6" high & had two sets of rails (narrowguage). The supports were vertical sleepers, cut in half & stood on end & the roof supports were full sized railway line (not pit rail). I'm sure that roadway will look just as it did, even now.
I had no lamp with me, so was limited to how far I could go. As I said there were two sets of track, there were pipes (4" to 6") & most memorable, copper cables. These were the old spirally wrapped with bitumin tape/cloth type. The first several yards had been "re-cycled" so there was a lot of the armoured shielding laying around. Then I came across the untouched bits, & there was a lot left, solid copper & I think 3 cores.
A glance back up the drift confirmed I was starting to lose daylight, the roadway was curving down slightly, I could see about the top third of the drift mouth............I needed a lamp.
A request for an "old" caplamp at my day job at Park Mill, met with suspicious looks " Wot's tha want wun o' them ferr?? eh??" (I must've asked the Jobsworth lampman) Anyway, an add in Exchange & Mart came to the rescue....."Ex NCB caplamps" in various grades. I could only afford grade "B" (which probably stood for Bo££ockst) A full charge with my motorbike charger confirmed it lasted 2 to 3 hours.
All this had taken 4 or 5 weeks since my last trip to Howroyd. I came to the footpath that led down the valley, from Briestfield. The drystone wall had been taken down & re-built, there were the signs of catterpiller tracks down the field. The landscape at the pit top was unrecognisable, no buildings, stack flattened & the drift mouth gone. That was that, OK I was only going to borrow a bit of cable, honest. Just to show people what was left underground.

The last time I drove thro' Whitley village, the screening plant was still there, the hoppers in use as a private coal merchant's.

Multiply this by the number of defunct mining sites throughout the UK.........must run into £millions.

[John]

I'd have needed a flame safety lamp before I'd have entered the drift "Inbye". I saw blackdamp quite a lot at Angus Place colliery, even in well ventilated roadways.
Myself when I was leading hand on nights at Angus Place had to go and examine some pumps and a pumper had to wait for a Deputy to escort us up a tailgate, which was adjacent to an old longwall, with cutthroughs every ten yards or so. The mercury had dropped outside due to summer thunderstorms, so there was no way the Deputy was allowing us up there alone.
He met us at a meeting station and off we set, he leading with oil lamp low and we to keep him instructed as to how the flame was. EVERY cut through, the flame lowered! The further inbye we went the levels of blackdamp increased until we passed another cut through about half way to our destination, the lamp popped out!
The Deputy attempted to clear his lamp and then relight it, the lamp wouldn't relight, so we beat a hasty retreat outbye.
That was my lesson to never enter old workings without a lamp to keep me informed of how the air quality is.

[inbye]

You're right of course, John. I could only just afford the Oldham cap lamp, let alone a flame lamp. My very first flame lamp cost me a staggering £10 (68/69) from the night overman, at Caphouse. He really saw me coming, had to pay for it at £2 a week. Still have it as a lesson not to be so daft.
Ironic then, that I now posess a collection of rare flame lamps, some of which date to the early part of the nineteenth century.

I'll see if I can post some pics, if anyone's interested...

Although I'm still here to tell the tale, depite being in old workings were a flame lamp wouldn't burn & a thumping headache soon followed..............I definately do not advise entering old coal workings, without suitable warning devices...

[John]

Could have been worse had the oxygen level been as low as 15%. It only hits you when your actually involved with blackdamp during a working session, then you have a healthy respect for your surroundings.

Talking about gas, I worked at Boulby potash mine in North Yorks from just after shaft sinking, for four and a half years. The mine was notorious for gas outbursts, usually co2, but also methane, mixed with pentane, hydrogen and the rest of the hydrocarbon gases.
I was working on the lights of a drill rig, one circuit had gone short, so was trying to "ring" out the other so as he had all four main lights on against front and red rear, until I had some new cable.
I decided to "ring" the circuit with power on, it was only 24 volts anyway and we weren't classed as safety lamp yet!
When they fired several rounds of shots off, I was still touching wires with nice big incendiary sparks! When a district super came running up and thrusting his D6 methanometer in my face! Pegged full scale, I nearly crapped myself! SHUT THE EFFING POWER OFF TO THE DISTRICT NOW!!!! He was shouting! I hit the stop button of the rig first and took off at breakneck speed, a feat leckos aren't used to!

[spartacus]

My last couple of years at Maltby I worked with the Methane Borers mainly. I used to carry a D6, one that went above the normal range up to 100% methane. We also carried a battery operated doo dah as well.

One time we had a bit of a blow back in S17's retreat tailgate IIRC, so much pressure it actually blew the 2" bagging off the drainage pipe ferrule. I went in to try and re-attach the bloody thing with my trusty copper spanner (I might be lying a bit there ) and took a reading before I went in with my methanometer. 34% general body. I was working on the theory that every 5% of gas was a 1% drop in oxygen content, so in theory I was going into an area with just 15% at most oxygen?

Rope around waist. Specific instructions if I didn't respond to tugs to pull me out, and an air bagging "back up" air supply because the same theory told me that at 34% there wasn't enough oxygen to support combustion...Off I waded in. It took me about 3 minutes to refix the 2" to the stub, and I had the worst headache I have ever known for the rest of the shift. The deputy went ballistic when he got to us, his D6 was still showing 3%. He didn't appreciate at all that I was trying to prevent having to evacuate the pit.

On reflection.....By eck, I was young and very stupid once....

[John]

I think we all were, many things thinking back, that I did scare the crap out of me, a lot of what I did when I was young I'd never be caught dead doing, one thing especially, riding the AFC!!
In retrospect, a very dangerous and stupid practice, and yet we all did it.

[erichall]

Remember getting my pad strap trapped under an AFC flight whilst riding when working with surveyors. Frightened me nutsless. However, worse was to come when we had a chap who was walking along the lips of the AFC pans whilst passing a pre-cutter, the bed of which was at pan top level . His foot slipped onto the pan and the flight took him under the pre-cutter. The only way to get him out was by flitting the machine back off him. What a sight!!!! Never rode an AFC again, and immediatey stopped anyone else from riding. With a 'rubber' belt there is slippage, an AFC has NO MERCY.

[shropshirebloke]

That reminds me of my medical back in the 70's. A group of us were taken in a Coal Board minibus over to the medical centre at Littleton in Cannock. After the usual eyesight tests, "cough" etc. we were given a sample glass to fill. Standing in the corridor with our glasses of "warm beer" we became aware of a bit of a commotion near the entrance.

"Gerrout the f**kin way" etc. with four blokes running with a carrying chair with some poor sod with his one foot stuck out, still wearing a pit boot but with the toe cap hanging off and the front half of his foot looking a bit poorly.

Our medicals stopped for a while, we discovered that "he's gorr' is foot trapped in the panzer" (it made sense later...).

Two of the lads in our group of entrants put their samples down on the nearest flat surface and went back to the minibus...