Day Out Penprys Pit

[Bishop]

One of the joys of bimbling off the beaten path is you never know quite what you are going to find, lost dog, dropped wallet, preppers cache etc. Sadly more often than not it's empty beer cans and an abandoned tent if you're lucky. Today however was a good day, taking advantage of the lockdown and the absence of dog walkers (and at least two idiots with air rifles ) have been picking my way through dense undergrowth for a few days trying to find a way to this.

Penprys Colliery engine house.
According to official records it was demolished in 1988. So was expecting to find little more than the remains of low walls and pile of bricks. Between trees, dense undergrowth and Ivy got within twenty feet before I realised it was there, still standing!


I know these are horrible cell-phone pictures, going back tomorrow with better camera & tripod.

Finally out of bad bush I christened my new Chinese noodle pot/mug for it's not a bimble till you've had a brew

 

[Riven]

I love coming across industrial archaeology. Its the thought that what is now green and pleasant was once an industrial wasteland. Nature takes back very quickly .

 

[MrEd]

Right up my street this (figuratively) as I enjoy this ‘Mother Nature has reclaimed’ hidden stuff

And you are right, it isn’t a bimble until you have had a brew

 

[Toddy]

That's an interesting bimble and isn't that nice stone and brick work too ?

 

[Mesquite]

Nice to find it still standing, made for a good day out topped off by a good brew

That's an interesting bimble and isn't that nice stone and brick work too ?

You've got to hand it to the Victorians, they didn't believe in plan utilitarian construction.

 

[Tengu]

Its good too.

Bt watch out for holes.

There are loads of shafts in Cornwall; most unrecorded.

I remember a survey on some NT land. they were told `no mines`.

They found fourty shafts in a few acres.

FOURTY.

I have a rule in Cornwall; I never put my feet (or hands) where I cannot see them.

 

[TLM]

Every time I have visited the British Isles I have been looking for the huge hole in the ground where clay for all these bricks has been dug. So far not seen it.

 

[Toddy]

It's often not left a pit, as in a huge great open hole. The clay was formed in layers. Round here we have absolutely beautiful clay, but it's layered between layers of coal and layers of sand. (Primordial jungles, rising and falling sea levels and river estuaries)
To get to the coal they have to dig through the layers of clay and sand, or vice versa. The clay is often in huge swathes and we have 'open cast pits' for coal.

Not saying there aren't any holes in the ground, mine shafts are surprisingly common, but the underground layers that were removed often flood with rainwater and settle that way.

A few years ago a brick works bought a ten acre field here to extract the clay. To get to the clay though they had to clear a 3 foot layer of coal They did all right out of that deal. Now the topsoil's back on the field and it's being used for grazing.....just a bit lower than it was

M

 

[TLM]

That explains a lot, here the ice age left large deposits of clay that can be 20 m thick, when that is taken away there is usually a lake some years after.

 

[The puffin squire]

Brilliant find, tread carefully as you never know when tragedy can strike.

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[Bishop]

Brilliant find, tread carefully as you never know when tragedy can strike.

#Rule 1: Where there is doubt, there is no doubt. Walk away.


Couple of places I found the ground was unusually springy with half buried corrugated tin sheets, difficult to spot given how neglected this patch of the woods is. After a little while though you soon tune in and start walking like you were climbing with only one limb moving at a time. Prod the ground with walking stick, other hand grabs the tree, then and only then you're ready for the next step. Slow going but safe.


Brick lined depressions like this definitely one to avoid.

 

[Tengu]

We had a claypit down the bottom of the village.

I remember going in as a child (because of adult warnings) Lots of rusty old machinery...endlessly faschinating.

But its all landfill now. Even the old fishing ponds gone (though they dug a new)

 

[The puffin squire]

#Rule 1: Where there is doubt, there is no doubt. Walk away.


Couple of places I found the ground was unusually springy with half buried corrugated tin sheets, difficult to spot given how neglected this patch of the woods is. After a little while though you soon tune in and start walking like you were climbing with only one limb moving at a time. Prod the ground with walking stick, other hand grabs the tree, then and only then you're ready for the next step. Slow going but safe.
View attachment 59103

Brick lined depressions like this definitely one to avoid.
View attachment 59102

Wise words and advice for the not do wary

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[Nice65]

A Boys Own adventure. What a thing to find, it’s beautiful.

I love all that, finding remnants of the past being taken back by nature. I’ve told this tale before, but many years ago I was working for a very laid back landscape gardener at a nursing home in Fordingbridge, Hampshire. He seemed to get the best jobs, we did a lot of clearance and ponds, lakes. This place was old and up on a hill, looking down to a very overgrown woodland. A woodland that was supporting many unusual plants, bamboos and other exotics. The job was to clear the woodland and tidy it up, probably about a fortnights work.

3 months later we were still there. The first ‘old tree stump’ clad in Ivy I put my chainsaw into turned out to be the plinth of a statue. There were more of them, at some time this had been an enthusiasts folly. Further probing with digging bars and road pins and we were finding stone slab pathways under the surface. By the time we’d done we had found a triple pond system, a much larger pond, and a sluice system from the nearby river that fed water into concrete channels that in turn fed the ponds and lake with fresh water. Started with a chainsaw, ended up with a JCB. Best job ever.

Edit: think I’ve found the place. It must have been 30 or more years ago, we didn’t have cameras to hand like we do these days to log our transforming of the gardens, but I remember the grand house.

 

[demographic]

It's often not left a pit, as in a huge great open hole. The clay was formed in layers. Round here we have absolutely beautiful clay, but it's layered between layers of coal and layers of sand. (Primordial jungles, rising and falling sea levels and river estuaries)
To get to the coal they have to dig through the layers of clay and sand, or vice versa. The clay is often in huge swathes and we have 'open cast pits' for coal.

Not saying there aren't any holes in the ground, mine shafts are surprisingly common, but the underground layers that were removed often flood with rainwater and settle that way.

A few years ago a brick works bought a ten acre field here to extract the clay. To get to the clay though they had to clear a 3 foot layer of coal They did all right out of that deal. Now the topsoil's back on the field and it's being used for grazing.....just a bit lower than it was

M

As above, plus as soon as they stop digging the hole out for materials they start filling it with rubbish and it ends up being a local council tip.
On a walk by the river with my 8 year old granddaughter last week she found a brick with the name Sandysike on it from the brickworks that made it. Thats now a council tip.

 

[demographic]

Some of the areas round here have a layer of coal with a layer of Carboniferous limestone above it (possibly alternating layers of this but I'm not sure) and theres lots of whats shown on the map as sinkholes, many of these "Sinkholes" are actually old bellmines where they dug through the limestone to get at the layer of coal then dig as far as they could using that same shaft to get in and out of with ease, dumping the spoil all round it in a C
shaped pile with an entry/exit point at the open part of the C shape.
Then they built a limekiln which burned the coal to process the limestone to quicklime for building.
The top of Caldbeck has these dips in the land, along with old limekilns and if you look right over the Eden valley towards the end of the Pennines areas like Castle Carrock up near Alston and Cumrew are the same.

 

[Bishop]

So much for the wide angle lens, I'm thinking chainsaw and water-bombs full of weed killer or wait till winter and try again. Nevertheless a great little micro adventure, doubly so this time around as was accompanied by Jules whose new meds seem to be working wonders.