BB JOURNAL OF THE BRISTOL EXPLORATION CLUB Vol. 8 No.84
August 1954
Further Exploration of the Magpie Mine, Derbyshire. by R.M. Wallis. In September 1950 I had occasion to report on a visit to the Magpie Mine near Bakewell. A second visit which I made recently has served to confirm some of the observations which were made before and to make others. On this occasion I was accompanied by John Pitts. Les Thompson was to have come up, but discretion apparently proved &c. Anyway, he didn’t turn up. Forewarned is fore-armed, they say, so this time we wore as little as possible for the first (wet) part of the trip and carried dry trousers etc. to put on after the worst was over. We observed in 1950 that the water was cold. I can confirm this. I know what it must be like walking about without any feet. Those who still have the relative B.B. will be able to discover that one enters the mine via the back door (or, maybe, main drain) passing a number of Danger notices &c. The Danger notice is still there, but the iron-work of rails and so on has now been removed so one steps straight into the water without any preamble. The ‘Sough’ (drainage tunnel) is artificial all the way and is roughly square section about 8ft. each way, though it varies a bit. It is also roughly straight though it wobbles about from side to side. The depth of water varies but at most it is just about waist deep, but it is also clear and the surface so smooth (despite a considerable current) that there was not the slightest difficulty in seeing every detail on the bottom. We saw a number of fish up to about ¼ mile from the entrance -- possibly trout, and up to about ½lb. in weight. They seemed to be quite normal, but very tame. They were mostly swimming head to stream and just maintaining their position and only swam a yard or two when disturbed by our legs. Most of the water comes in via cross joints, though these are small and few in number. They are all phreatic joints, the water gushing out on both side of the passage, sometimes under quite a pressure. Our dining room of four years ago seemed rather changed, so we pressed on a bit further and came upon some apparently quite recently laid drain-pipes, half covered with ‘deads’. There was only a short length of these and then we went on beside the water on a raised path, where we tried some voice carrying trials. The walls are fairly smooth, but the limit of intelligibility seemed to be about 75 yards. The sound was still quite loud at 100 yards but it was so muffled as to be useless. After going some way along here we came to a wall built up right across the passage but with a small door in it. We got through, climbed up a couple of short ladders in quite good condition and were immediately in the main mine gallery which extended in both directions. We explored to the end in one direction (about ¼ mile) and had our lunch and then went off in the other direction when we very soon reached the bottom of the shaft. The iron ladders seemed to be quite good, though not very firmly fixed, so we didn’t try them. We could see daylight at the top (Though apparently the top of the shaft was closed, as it was very faint) but it certainly was not 600 feet deep as I reported last time. The workings extended a further very good ¼ mile before coming to a blank wall and none of the side passages went for any distances.