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Some pretty good shots! Thanks for sharing! I love seeing photos of UK mines, they all seem to have interesting character. What kind of ore was extracted from this mine?

Interesting to see all of the bottles lined up.. Usually old miners bottles are tossed around and can be found in various parts of old mines.

Miner Greg

heres a few of me in alderley edge in the late 1970s...





both taken in the hough level....a drainage level that dewatered the copper mines

Cool vintage shots. Its always interesting looking at the old shots as well.

Looks like a pretty interesting mine..

Miner Greg

See http://www.derbyscc.org.uk/alderley/ for info and photos of the Alderley Edge copper mines. Very interesting collection of mines. There is a band of copper containing sandstone outcropping in several places down through Cheshire and Shropshire. The SCMC controls access to Clive copper mine which is a substantial mine at the southern end of this chain. see http://shropshiremines.org.uk/misc/clive.htm for history.

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Shropshire Andy

Thanks for sharing the links Andy. I had visited DCC's website once before but now finally it is bookmarked, on here! I have always been impressed with how well the UK seems to cherish and appreciate their mining past compared to here. That was interesting to read that the group developed their interest by actually leasing the mine! Also interesting is their work in rebuilding an adit portal and refurbishing the mines.

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"If you thought old, abandoned mines were only in the west, then you haven't been to IronMiners.com!"

Miner Mike,

That is a good point.. It does appear that the mines over in UK appear to be well respected and are even maintained by the various groups who research the mines. We don't seem to have much of that going on here in the US as abandoned mines are generally frowned upon.

Thanks a lot for providing the links Andy. I've lately been looking at the various sites in the UK and in Europe, a lot of good sites out there.

Miner Greg

Here's a link to a site you may not have seen http://mti-minas-murcia.blogspot.com/ . It covers the area we visited in Spain, is in Spanish, but gives a very good idea of both what there is and how much of it there is. (I can provide several more links if you are interested). In Spain too, old mines are frowned upon and generally just abandoned to vandalism but appreciation of the historic value of this industrial archaeology is just beginning to become established there. However, under General Franco it actually used to be illegal to go underground!

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Shropshire Andy

To illustrate some of the efforts to preserve European mining heritage see http://www.europamines.com/

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Shropshire Andy

Andy, thanks again for sharing. Please feel free to post as many links and/or pictures as you would like. It is especially interesting to see intact headframes, ore cars, and machinery as much of this is removed for scrap or naturally deteriorates in our northeast US climate. Although mining technology was migrated to the US from Europe and particularly Cornwall, England, there seems to be a sense of architecture that is lost in translation. For instance, it is rare to see hoist houses and other mining related structures built purely of stone. Here in the NY, NJ area, structure were built mainly of wood leaving little but scant stonework and usually little else than iron or steel rods left that once supported headframes. A timbered adit is no longer seen and shaft cribbing near the surface can only be witnessed on rare occasion.

Part of our inspiration for going out west and visiting mines in Arizona and Utah is seeing what mines might have looked like under conditions whereby man and nature are less likely to destroy history. We do plan on visiting Europe in the next year or so but with so many leads in the US alone, we enough mines to keep us busy.

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"If you thought old, abandoned mines were only in the west, then you haven't been to IronMiners.com!"

The Spanish climate must be much like Arizona so there are considerable surface remains near La Union, including:
29 wooden headframes
8 metal headframes
19 masonry headframes
10 steam engine chimneys
7 smelter chimneys
1 magazine chimney
13 roasting kilns
4 magazines

Here are some more links to the Sierra Minera:
http://www.fundacionsierraminera.org/portada.php
http://club.telepolis.com/minaloveremos/minerales.htm
http://www.strahlen.org/vp/locses.htm Look for La Union
http://www.mineu.org/uk/index.html

I regret I do not speak Spanish but the internet translation services (eg Google) make enough of an attempt for me to get the gist of it while still leaving much to be desired. I have around 1,000 photos of the area and will try to post just a few for you shortly.

Andy

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Shropshire Andy

I put together 110 Sierra Minera photos to run as a slideshow for last year's club dinner, however at 138 Mb it makes no sense to email this. If you can give me a snail mail address I will send this on a CD and you can then decide just how much you feel it is sensible to put on ironminers. I will send a Word document with a brief description of each slide; if you want more detail, just ask!!

Andy

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Shropshire Andy

Hey Andy, I sent you my address and contact info by Private Message. Thanks again and I look forward to seeing the pictures.

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"If you thought old, abandoned mines were only in the west, then you haven't been to IronMiners.com!"

Thanks a lot Andy! I can't wait to see these, we really appreciate your willingness to share these with our viewers..

Miner Greg