Earthwatcher's photos with the keyword: ochrous discharge

The orange staining on the stream bed is due to iron-rich water emerging from Odin Sough just to the left of centre. The sough drains water from the old Odin lead mine about 1.6 km away to the west. The mine worked lead ore from veins in the Carboniferous Limestone close to the junction with the overlying dark, pyritic Edale Shales, and the sough itself is driven in the latter for most of its length. It is the oxidation and solution of pyrite (iron sulphide) in the shales and its reprecipitation as ferric hydroxide which causes the orange colouring. The main stream on the right of the photo rises near Hollins Cross, and has no contact with mine workings. The circular culvert in the distance merely channels the stream beneath a farm entrance track. A closer view of the sough tail is here: www.ipernity.com/doc/earthwatcher/39023940

This rather insignificant looking structure is the tail of Odin Sough (also known as Trickett Bridge Sough) in Castleton, Derbyshire. The sough drains water from the old Odin lead mine about 1.6 km away to the west. The mine worked lead ore from veins in the Carboniferous Limestone close to the junction with the overlying dark, pyritic Edale Shales, and the sough itself is driven in the latter for most of its length. It is the oxidation and solution of pyrite (iron sulphide) in the shales and its reprecipitation as ferric hydroxide which causes the orange colouring on the stream bed.

Actually it's not tomato soup, but an ochrous minewater discharge from a collapsed, abandoned mineshaft in Ecclesall Woods next to the Limb Brook. The shaft forms part of the long abandoned Dore Colliery and dates from the latter part of the 19th century. The steel plate in the lower right is part of a V-notch weir used to measure the water flow rate. The water temperature here is about 12-13 C all year round due to the geothermal heating effect of the old abandoned coal mine workings that the water has flowed through before emerging from the top of this old shaft. The water is also fairly acid - pH about 5.5.