Report - Capelcleugh Mine, Nenthead September 2014

[Amity]

Capelcleugh is part of the maze of interconnected mineworkings at the head of the Nent valley in Cumbria. Worked throughout the 19th century by the London Lead Company for lead and in the early part of the 20th century by the Veille Montagne Zinc Co for zinc.
Parts of the mine lie underneath the workings of Smallcleugh Mine and the two are connected by internal shafts.
There are many interesting remains in different parts of the workings but much of the horse level is in deep water, backed up behind shale falls which explains why the mine is less popular with visitors than some of the others in this area.

The entrance to an underground magazine in the horse level

Remains of a signal board at the bottom of the incline. This was linked to another at the top by a wire and was used so that only one set of wagons could use the incline at once.

Junction with iron pipes for carrying compressed air around the mine.

Ore hopper in the horse level. the shaft above was divided in two, one side for ore and the other side laddered for the miners to gain access to the stopes above.

Air pipes for the rockdrills in the stopes

Top of one of the ladderways

 

[caiman]

A good set of pics there, nice and clear. The last but one pic is particularly interesting from a mining point of view - those air pipes are actually too small and must have done horrible things to the effective air pressure at the drills. But I don't think the science of friction losses was well understood a century ago. There's some damn fine timbering there also.

 

[Amity]

Cheers guys,
Yes you're right caiman, all that small diameter pipe can't have been helpful, but I'm sure they understood the trade off between lower air pressure giving less efficient drilling against the increased cost of putting bigger pipes in.

 

[caiman]

Cheers guys,
Yes you're right caiman, all that small diameter pipe can't have been helpful, but I'm sure they understood the trade off between lower air pressure giving less efficient drilling against the increased cost of putting bigger pipes in.

I doubt it. Pipe was massively cheaper than labour, even then. This was about ore not mined because the holes were not drilled in time. I used to do this for real in South Africa. Even there the pipes were mostly too small.

 

[Amity]

When they were working these stopes they had only about 25 rock drills for the whole Nenthead complex. The rock drills were used only where the rock was particularly hard and in the foreheads of levels, everywhere else they were still on hand drilling. They had an assortment of different types of machines of different makes including rockdrills supported on a leg and also pneumatic hammers (handheld). I guess they would be looking for around 70-80 psi, what they actually got I have no idea, must have varied quite a bit and I expect the levels did better than the stopes. They also used compressed air for pumping water but the make of water was not that large so they only ran the pumps when the drills were not in use.