Hillocks mine Oct 09
I had never heard of Hillocks mine until Mick organised this trip, and I was on two minds whether to go or not, then Ian sent me a text saying he was picking me up Sunday morning, so I thought what the hell.
Hillocks mine is in the village of Monyash in Derbyshire, close to the border with Staffordshire.
If you asked me how to find the place again, on my own, I wouldn’t have a jar of glue.
Mick and Glen led the way, in Mick’s van, Ian and I, and Marc and Adam followed down the narrow lanes and farm tracks, we finally arrived at our destination and parked up, on some scrubland.
The entrance to Hillocks mine is in a hollow, about a hundred yards from where we parked, the hollow is about three or four metres deep and more or less boat shaped.
The entrance itself is a horizontal concrete pipe at one end, just big enough to wriggle through, which opens up into some nice, wide passage.
Hillocks mine is a really beautiful and interesting mine but the road to paradise is guarded by the devil, and the privilege of seeing such a place comes with a price.
The price became apparent about ten or fifteen minutes in, when Mick, who was leading the way, climbed down into a pit, at the bottom of which was our way on.
The small entrance to the passage that led out of the pit was about a foot high, with six inches of water in it, although the wet part of the passage is quite short, its design could not be improved upon if the aim were to thoroughly wet, every part of a caver and fill his wellies and bag.
This led us into the coffin level, perfectly rectangular in section and a joy to behold, we had time to study it while Mick was rigging the pitch at the end.
When Mick finally abseiled down the pitch, we crawled along the coffin level in single file until, each in our turn, we were able swing into the superb, rectangular shaft.
This internal shaft was like nothing I have seen before, perfectly rectangular, about three feet by four feet, carved out of the solid rock, maybe thirty feet or so deep with, at the bottom, a hole, just big enough to squeeze through in one corner of the floor.
I could not imagine what use this shaft would have been to the miners who took so much trouble over constructing it, It was too small to be any kind of thoroughfare,
Especially with so small a hole at the bottom, it must have been for ventilation I suppose.
We each dropped through the hole into a short passage which led us to a protracted traverse and on to our next pitch which was a bit squeezy but quite short.
We now found ourselves in an extensive lead mine which we explored for a couple of hours after we had chosen a nice cavern to eat our lunch in.
This mine sports a lot of natural passages, many of which have been backfilled with deads by the miners, indeed it looked to me as though much of the mineralization had occurred in an ancient cave system, which the miners had picked out almost back to natural passages.
As we moved back through the system, retracing our steps, I, was specially chosen to de rig, as nobody else wanted to do it.
It was not long before we were back in the coffin level and the dreaded semi sump, but soon after that we were out in the fresh air and sunlight.
Oddly enough we happened upon a public house on the way home, and all seemed well.
Subject: Hillocks mine Oct 09 
Tue 03 Nov 2009, 12:58 pm
