Lady Wash/Glebe Mine - Eyam

Ladywash Mine is a place I've heard rumors of since i started caving, all stories seemed to be similar in which it can only be accessed certain times of the year due to water levels and even when it is doable a bit of 'ceiling sucking' is required to get through, informed with this useful information and with the UK experiencing a heatwave i decided the time was right and on one sunny morning in July headed down to lovely Stoney Middleton (also the home of the best fish and chips in Derbyshire) for a trip to this place.

The first trip was really a reccy/explore and I left the camera. Ladywash is part of a massive underground complex that spans for miles connecting with Glebe mine and other interesting bits including the Stoney master cave. We were mainly interested in locating the industrial remains such as the carts on the haulage level,substation ,winch ,engineers workshop ,base of the 700ft shaft and a lovely old telephone.

First trip was mostly a success in which we found most of the things we were looking for but also followed a level for around an hour in which the state of it seemed to deteriorate the further we went only to be met with a dead end, this is just one of many runs which do the same giving a perspective of how large the mining operations here once were.

We had to leave the first time ticking off around half of what we wanted to see due to the call out time growing closer but armed with some sense of direction and some notes I made on my phone a visit a couple weekends later was arranged.

The cameras and spare batteries were in 2 darren drums and i had a bright idea of wrapping two tripods in towels then into one of the caving bags to save them getting bashed around and damaged from the quite tiresome way in, this proved to be a stupid idea as the towels absorbed water that seeped in and made two somewhat lightweight tripods into dragging around Thor's hammer.

After the tiresome journey to the entrance of Ladywash i hung the towels out to dry and began hunting for 'the good stuff', the bottom of the engine shaft was impressive to see and a reminder just how deep this place is, it was one of the darkest places i've used my camera with light being sucked away by the foreground.

After spending most of the day down there retracing steps from the last visit and discovering new things, we headed back out (not before packing the useless towels back in the bag).

I headed back midweek for a walk around the surface features to have a look at the top of the engine shaft and do the obligatory stone throw test and have a peak around the engine house.

History

Working ore veins along to east of Great Hucklow along the Hucklow edge started as early as the 1600's but the large layers of mudstone/toadstone and grits made working the veins rather difficult. A series of mines worked the ore veins from the 1700s up to 1895 by which most had closed as the depths they had reached made it impractical to keep them free of water, Many of the spoil tips were reworked during the early 1900s to extract fluorspar which was now of economic interest and any subsequent mining has predominantly been for fluorspar. The new Milldam mine opened in 1987 and is the sole remaining working Lead mine in Derbyshire Located next to the site of the original Milldam mine from the late 1800s it extends along the Hucklow Edge and Eyam ore veins intersecting some of the older mine workings along the way including Ladywash mine. Ladywash mine was the last of the original mines to close and ceased in March 1979 and in its later years connected with Grebe mine and mainly served as a haulage shaft as mining operations extended westwards along the Hucklow Edge vein.