Shaft

There are a number of these old coal shafts along the route of one of my regular dog walks. These are probably early 18th century or possibly very late 17th century workings exploiting the Five Foot seam which is less than 100ft below the surface at this point. Drainage of these workings was always a great problem for the miners and they were driving a sough in the 1720s and in 1707 a waterwheel was operating pumps at a shaft nearby. It never ceases to amaze me how successfully the coal was extracted all those years ago and when someone set about opening a small mine here in the 1920s they soon found that the old men had long since taken nearly all of the shallow reserves.