My Urbex: Coniston Copper Mines

This place is so steeped in history its hard to know where to begin, the Copper in this area was mined around the 1590's by the company of mines royal and the mining continued right up until 1642 (the outbreak of the civil war) with little more done in the 17th century. By the 1760's the Macclesfield Copper Company was formed and spent over 37 years working the rich vein Bonsor in Coniston, before this the old German workings (mined around the time of 1559) went to around 150+ feet below the surface also Paddy End and Tiberthwaite mines were mined in this period too,apart from hand drilling gunpowder was used to blast through the volcanic rock and progress would have been very slow and by the 1790's the mines were now around 300+ feet deep with now a wrong decision to close the mines as they were thought to be unproductive.
In 1824 Mr John Taylor a famous mining engineer came to Coniston with many years of mining experience from the mining fields of Derbyshire/Devon and Cornwall, he changes the old disused copper mines in to the most profitable and largest copper mines in the north, he was soon driving new access tunnels into the Bonsor vein and Paddys End mine (well below the German old mine workings and by the mid 1820's he started his most ambitious project the driving of the deep adit level know knows as "The Deep" or the "Horse Level", this ended up been over 1.5 miles in length serving as an excellent tramway for horse drawn wagons from all parts of the mine.

the most prosperous times is in the 1850's at a depth of 540 feet below deep level also around this time another deep level had began this time in Tiberthwaite mine which helped to de-water the old workings this level was to be named Barratt's level after the mine manager, this was over 3000 feet long and took over 10 years to complete. 1856 was the highest production for the Coniston Copper Mines with an output of 3659 Tons of copper oar with a value of £27.861.
The mines were so productive that it was decided in 1858 to construct a branch line from the Furness Railway at Foxfield, thus doing away with the slow, laborious carting and boating of ore via Coniston Water to Ulverston Canal. This means of transport had been in use since the destruction of the Keswick smelters in the mid-seventeenth century. The railway line opened on 18th June 1859,
During the 1860's the output of copper ore began and irreversible decline. In 1860 it was less than 3000 tons of dressed copper, and four years later had dipped below 2000 tons. The workings on the Bonsor Vein were so deep that the cost of maintaining services, hoisting, timberwork and pumping etc was mounting. Up to 16 waterwheels were said to be operating around 1870

All this work was done under tallow candle light. Many of the deep veins were only reached by wooden ladders and stagings with workings now going well below 1500 feet with 500+ feet of this below sea level bringing a sad end to the Coniston Copper Mines.

In 1897 the old engine shaft wheel stopped for the last time after the robbing of the ore pillars below Deep Level had been carried out thus leaving the mine in a dangerous state, in the same year the engine shaft wheel was dismantled and scrapped with now only some ore mining done at the higher end of Paddy End and Red Dell until the turn of the century.
In 1908 a French company was set up with an electrolytic plant to process the extensive spoil heaps, the company lasted out until 1914 (the first world war), the final water wheels were removed and scrapped in the 1930's and only in the 1950's has there been any prospecting work with nothing since, the mines were left to decay showing only a reminder of the prosperous past.

On the way up to the mines.