1. The History
Holme Bank mine is located in Derbyshire in the 300-million-year-old carboniferous limestone beds to be found around Bakewell, more specifically in the highest reaches of the Monsal Dale limestone formation. Along with the nearby Pretoria mine, Holme Bank was the last of two operational chert mines in Derbyshire, although initial operations date back to 1778 when it began list as a quarry.
Chert is a fine-grained, flinty siliceous rock usually found in veins in the uppermost beds of a limestone strata. It was worked into tools in prehistoric times, due to the ease with which it could be shaped by chipping off flakes to produce sharp edges in a similar manner to flint. Latterly, and more recently chert was the ground into calcined flint and used as a whitening agent in earthenware manufacture. Here at Holme Bank, 90% of the limestone has been replaced by a laminated form of chert. The chert in the mine is in two beds, up to 2.4m thick: the main mottled throstlebreast bed and above it the more flinty roof chert. These were overlayed by roof limestone and underlayed by holing bed limestone. The latter was removed to undercut the chert.
The popularity of chert grew and it becoming an in-demand stone in the mid-1700s was down to Thomas Benson who patented a new 'wet' process of grinding flint for the usage in the pottery making process. Previous grinding of flint had utilised grain-grinding millstones, but this produced copious dust, resulting in workers dying from silicosis. Benson's first attempt at a 'wet' process was in 1726 using iron balls. This had the unwanted consequence of leaving deposits of iron in the pottery, hence he then replaced this with the coloured granite stones and then chert which gave superior results still. The use of chert to grind flint was adopted wholesale by the renowned pottery maker Josiah Wedgwood at his Etruria works in Stoke-on-Trent. In 1772, Wedgwood cited Derbyshire chert as a successor to granite millstones due to it leaving black specks in the pure white flint. This led to increased extraction of chert from Holme Bank and at other locations in the Bakewell area for use as 'runners' and 'pavors' of the circular flint mills.
Initially, chert was quarried but this destroyed land and when these supplies ran out in the mid 1800 chert extraction shifted to mining. Mining was made viable by the rising price of chert and declining transport costs. Access to the mine was from adits in a quarry at Bank Top and the steep workings extended beneath the road to connect with the earlier Greenfield shaft. The chert bed lies on a 1-in-3.7 gradient and the mine was subject to flooding in severe winters. Illumination was by mains electricity in addition to carbide lamps carried by the miners. The chert bed was on average 9 ft (2.7 m) thick, though up to 18 ft (5.5 m) in places. Due to the hardness of chert, it could not be drilled so blasting to extract it was not practical. Hence extraction was done using the 'undercut method. Three foot of limestone was removed from under the chert using explosives. The chert was then supported on pillars made of small limestone stones (or sprags). When a suitable vertical joint was reached the pillars were blown out causing the chert block to fall, under its own weight, to the mine floor. The blocks could weigh up to 200 tons. They were then cut up in situ into up to 3 tons. A hoist powered by compressed air loaded the blocks onto flat wagons, drawn to the surface by compressed air winches, along a 1-foot 6-inches gauge railway. The ‘waste’ limestone was built up into substantial roof supports.
The introduction of compression Air drilling revolutionised extraction and was in use from about 1880 in Holme Bank. The Smith family of Burton-upon-Trent worked the mine for much of the latter part of the 19th century when the site was known as Bakewell Chert Mine (and also referred to as Smith's Mine, after the owner). Chert production from the mine in the late 1870s and early 1880s averaged around 3,500 tons as the workings developed into an extensive system of passages with eight entrances. The sustainability of the mine was also inextricably linked to the prosperity of the Staffordshire pottery industry. For a while, the eastern extremities of the complex were operated as a separate entity know as Holme Hall mine, despite 6 shared entry points.
While mining chert was not as high risk as some occupations, it was not without its dangers. In 1899, a year after the lease on the mine passed for a period of 11 years to Sir Shirley Harris Salt on, 19th June, 53-year-old Matthew Hollis of Bakewell was killed after returning to a charge that didn’t go off. While he and two other men were setting a second charge, the initial charge went off. A second fatality followed in 1919. On 17th April, the 62-year-old John Bond was killed, returning to fire his 11th charge of the shift, when it went off prematurely.
Between the two World Wars, mining broke out on the surface, enabling the chert to be quarried alongside limestone. In 1921 the lease passed to Sir Shirley’s son, Robert Shirley Macdonald Salt of Buxton. A third fatal accident occurred in May 1924 when a piece of stone fell from the roof fractured the skull of 37-year old Walter Doxey. In 1925, 41 men were employed in the mine and Derbyshire chert production peaked at 6,369 tons in 1928 with the lion’s share coming from Holme Bank. Robert Salt extended the lease for a further 21 years in 1932. By 1945 only 21 were at work with only 12 working underground. In its later years, Holme Bank diversified operations to meet the considerable demand for poultry grit. However, the mine closed between 1959 and 1961 and although a block-making plant, trading as Smith’s Runners, remained in operation, using existing supplies of chert, the mine sold its last runners in 1964. It was estimated 450,00 tons of stone were extracted from the mine; 150,000 tons were sold as chert and the remaining 300,000 tons were repacked to support the roof.
In recent years, the few underground visitors to Holme Bank Mine have included cave divers, using the clear subterranean waters for training purposes. Almost 10 years ago the Peak Park Planning Board granted permission for the mine to be opened up to visitors, but this plan has so far not been implemented. In June 2017, vandals went into Holme Bank chert mine at Bakewell, and sprayed graffiti right through the workings. A joint working party of Peak District Mines Historical Society and Masson Caving Group cleaned it all off.
A 1973-74 map of the mine:
2. The Explore
This is a really fantastic place to explore. The mine is in relatively good nick and there are a number of interesting old artifacts still left in the mine. The roof is pretty stable, and the mine is all on one level unlike some of the other more sketchy mines in the area. The biggest challenge is finding your way round its maze of 5 miles worth of passages. On our first visit it was a bit of a learning curve just getting a feel for the mine’s labyrinth-like lay out. Ultimately though the mine drive of the several adits is north-south and there is the so-called M1 passage that skirts round the end points of the adits to the north. Several passages have suffered collapses and some passages are flooded and sought out by the cave divers. Couldn't a single image in terms of old/archive pictures but as you can see above, there is A LOT of historical info and numerous records about the mine.
On both occasions explored the mine as a pair with two of my non-forum member mates. You could, quite literally, spend hours in here, such is the amount to see and the photogenic nature of the mine. One thing you wouldn’t want to do, however, is run out of torch power!
3. The Pictures
A few pictures of what remains at the surface first (quite a bit).
The main entrance at the bottom end of the mine (to the Holme Hall part):
And some serious girderage:
The Crane from the former blockworks still in-situ:
And over to the former quarry site at the top north-west extremities of the mine:
Wonder if these are mining-related iron tubs:
One of the mine’s four quarry entrances, now blocked up:
And we’re in:
Down the most westerly drive:
Much stacked up deads:
Then a dead end. Time to turn around:
And head up to the next drive:
Anyone for a game of Jenga stones? Thought not.
A very rusty ceiling ring:
The parallel drive goes all of the way to entrance no.4. Just inside the door is a pump:
An old miner’s boot and rusty tin:
Back up to the M1 Passage. Rock stemples:
The roof looks “interesting” here:
Possibly the most “rugged” part of the mine:
The down another drive:
Holme Bank mine is located in Derbyshire in the 300-million-year-old carboniferous limestone beds to be found around Bakewell, more specifically in the highest reaches of the Monsal Dale limestone formation. Along with the nearby Pretoria mine, Holme Bank was the last of two operational chert mines in Derbyshire, although initial operations date back to 1778 when it began list as a quarry.
Chert is a fine-grained, flinty siliceous rock usually found in veins in the uppermost beds of a limestone strata. It was worked into tools in prehistoric times, due to the ease with which it could be shaped by chipping off flakes to produce sharp edges in a similar manner to flint. Latterly, and more recently chert was the ground into calcined flint and used as a whitening agent in earthenware manufacture. Here at Holme Bank, 90% of the limestone has been replaced by a laminated form of chert. The chert in the mine is in two beds, up to 2.4m thick: the main mottled throstlebreast bed and above it the more flinty roof chert. These were overlayed by roof limestone and underlayed by holing bed limestone. The latter was removed to undercut the chert.
The popularity of chert grew and it becoming an in-demand stone in the mid-1700s was down to Thomas Benson who patented a new 'wet' process of grinding flint for the usage in the pottery making process. Previous grinding of flint had utilised grain-grinding millstones, but this produced copious dust, resulting in workers dying from silicosis. Benson's first attempt at a 'wet' process was in 1726 using iron balls. This had the unwanted consequence of leaving deposits of iron in the pottery, hence he then replaced this with the coloured granite stones and then chert which gave superior results still. The use of chert to grind flint was adopted wholesale by the renowned pottery maker Josiah Wedgwood at his Etruria works in Stoke-on-Trent. In 1772, Wedgwood cited Derbyshire chert as a successor to granite millstones due to it leaving black specks in the pure white flint. This led to increased extraction of chert from Holme Bank and at other locations in the Bakewell area for use as 'runners' and 'pavors' of the circular flint mills.
Initially, chert was quarried but this destroyed land and when these supplies ran out in the mid 1800 chert extraction shifted to mining. Mining was made viable by the rising price of chert and declining transport costs. Access to the mine was from adits in a quarry at Bank Top and the steep workings extended beneath the road to connect with the earlier Greenfield shaft. The chert bed lies on a 1-in-3.7 gradient and the mine was subject to flooding in severe winters. Illumination was by mains electricity in addition to carbide lamps carried by the miners. The chert bed was on average 9 ft (2.7 m) thick, though up to 18 ft (5.5 m) in places. Due to the hardness of chert, it could not be drilled so blasting to extract it was not practical. Hence extraction was done using the 'undercut method. Three foot of limestone was removed from under the chert using explosives. The chert was then supported on pillars made of small limestone stones (or sprags). When a suitable vertical joint was reached the pillars were blown out causing the chert block to fall, under its own weight, to the mine floor. The blocks could weigh up to 200 tons. They were then cut up in situ into up to 3 tons. A hoist powered by compressed air loaded the blocks onto flat wagons, drawn to the surface by compressed air winches, along a 1-foot 6-inches gauge railway. The ‘waste’ limestone was built up into substantial roof supports.
The introduction of compression Air drilling revolutionised extraction and was in use from about 1880 in Holme Bank. The Smith family of Burton-upon-Trent worked the mine for much of the latter part of the 19th century when the site was known as Bakewell Chert Mine (and also referred to as Smith's Mine, after the owner). Chert production from the mine in the late 1870s and early 1880s averaged around 3,500 tons as the workings developed into an extensive system of passages with eight entrances. The sustainability of the mine was also inextricably linked to the prosperity of the Staffordshire pottery industry. For a while, the eastern extremities of the complex were operated as a separate entity know as Holme Hall mine, despite 6 shared entry points.
While mining chert was not as high risk as some occupations, it was not without its dangers. In 1899, a year after the lease on the mine passed for a period of 11 years to Sir Shirley Harris Salt on, 19th June, 53-year-old Matthew Hollis of Bakewell was killed after returning to a charge that didn’t go off. While he and two other men were setting a second charge, the initial charge went off. A second fatality followed in 1919. On 17th April, the 62-year-old John Bond was killed, returning to fire his 11th charge of the shift, when it went off prematurely.
Between the two World Wars, mining broke out on the surface, enabling the chert to be quarried alongside limestone. In 1921 the lease passed to Sir Shirley’s son, Robert Shirley Macdonald Salt of Buxton. A third fatal accident occurred in May 1924 when a piece of stone fell from the roof fractured the skull of 37-year old Walter Doxey. In 1925, 41 men were employed in the mine and Derbyshire chert production peaked at 6,369 tons in 1928 with the lion’s share coming from Holme Bank. Robert Salt extended the lease for a further 21 years in 1932. By 1945 only 21 were at work with only 12 working underground. In its later years, Holme Bank diversified operations to meet the considerable demand for poultry grit. However, the mine closed between 1959 and 1961 and although a block-making plant, trading as Smith’s Runners, remained in operation, using existing supplies of chert, the mine sold its last runners in 1964. It was estimated 450,00 tons of stone were extracted from the mine; 150,000 tons were sold as chert and the remaining 300,000 tons were repacked to support the roof.
In recent years, the few underground visitors to Holme Bank Mine have included cave divers, using the clear subterranean waters for training purposes. Almost 10 years ago the Peak Park Planning Board granted permission for the mine to be opened up to visitors, but this plan has so far not been implemented. In June 2017, vandals went into Holme Bank chert mine at Bakewell, and sprayed graffiti right through the workings. A joint working party of Peak District Mines Historical Society and Masson Caving Group cleaned it all off.
A 1973-74 map of the mine:
2. The Explore
This is a really fantastic place to explore. The mine is in relatively good nick and there are a number of interesting old artifacts still left in the mine. The roof is pretty stable, and the mine is all on one level unlike some of the other more sketchy mines in the area. The biggest challenge is finding your way round its maze of 5 miles worth of passages. On our first visit it was a bit of a learning curve just getting a feel for the mine’s labyrinth-like lay out. Ultimately though the mine drive of the several adits is north-south and there is the so-called M1 passage that skirts round the end points of the adits to the north. Several passages have suffered collapses and some passages are flooded and sought out by the cave divers. Couldn't a single image in terms of old/archive pictures but as you can see above, there is A LOT of historical info and numerous records about the mine.
On both occasions explored the mine as a pair with two of my non-forum member mates. You could, quite literally, spend hours in here, such is the amount to see and the photogenic nature of the mine. One thing you wouldn’t want to do, however, is run out of torch power!
3. The Pictures
A few pictures of what remains at the surface first (quite a bit).
The main entrance at the bottom end of the mine (to the Holme Hall part):
And some serious girderage:
The Crane from the former blockworks still in-situ:
And over to the former quarry site at the top north-west extremities of the mine:
Wonder if these are mining-related iron tubs:
One of the mine’s four quarry entrances, now blocked up:
And we’re in:
Down the most westerly drive:
Much stacked up deads:
Then a dead end. Time to turn around:
And head up to the next drive:
Anyone for a game of Jenga stones? Thought not.
A very rusty ceiling ring:
The parallel drive goes all of the way to entrance no.4. Just inside the door is a pump:
An old miner’s boot and rusty tin:
Back up to the M1 Passage. Rock stemples:
The roof looks “interesting” here:
Possibly the most “rugged” part of the mine:
The down another drive:
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