Old Millclose Mine, South Darley, Derbyshire Dales District, Derbyshire, England, UKi

Regional Level Types
Old Millclose Mine	Mine
South Darley	Civil Parish
Derbyshire Dales District	District
Derbyshire	County
England	Constituent Country
UK	Country

DMS coordinates for Old Millclose Mine are: 53°09'10.8"N 1°36'57.3"W
DMS coordinates for New Millclose Mine (Millclose Mine) are: 53°09'30.9"N 1°36'29.3"W

At South Darley in the Derbyshire Dales District, there are two mines, New Millclose (down the hill) is flooded and below river level, and Old Millclose, up the hill in the fields behind the Red Lion in Wensley. There are about six shafts accessible and over ten miles of surveyed passages, including a complete underground blacksmiths shop with bellows, hearth tools etc. in situ. The remains of an old engine house, Watt's shaft and old spoil heaps can still be seen at the locality, but New Millclose mine is mostly flooded.

It is hard to establish how far back mining at Old Millclose mine goes, but it was certainly worked commercially through the 16th and 17th centuries. When it was operational, five soughs (underground channels for draining water out of a mine) were required to drain Old Millclose as the workings went deeper under the shales and these were drilled between 1658 and 1678. Old Millclose also contained two underground water wheels and, in 1782, an engine was installed underground. Yatestoop sough is 4km long and reaches Coast Rake at Elton. The engine house was built in 1859-60 by mine proprietor Edward Wass to house a Cornish engine (a beam-type steam engine) ordered from Thornewill and Warham of Burton-on-Trent. The engine pumped water from the Old Millclose lead mine via the Watts engine shaft adjacent to the building. This was an old shaft which was reopened in 1859. The engine was operated until the early 1870s when it was moved to the New Millclose mine some 450m to the north east. It was this new venture which became renowned as the largest lead mine in Britain. New Millclose reached more than 330m deep and the pumps had to raise more than 5000 gallons of water per minute to de-water the workings. The furthest workings reached nearly to Picory corner (near Haddon Hall). Over half a million tons of lead concentrate and over a 100k tons of zinc concentrate were produced over 75 years of working. The new mine became famous for being one of the most productive lead mines in the U.K. although little is now left as evidence. It closed in 1939 following an accidental flood and is no longer accessible to the general public.  It was located north east of Watt's shaft on the land now owned by H.J. Enthoven & Sons who still run the lead smelter on the original site.  Large spoil heaps from this mine can be seen opposite the factory, but these have been extensively reworked to extract fluorspar.  The whole area is contaminated with lead and is unsuitable for grazing. The current owners have planted trees on large areas of the contaminated land.

The engine house survives as a ruin, with foundations and one standing wall to the east visible. There are old shafts to the south and west of Watt's shaft too with the original Millclose Grove mine (as Old Millclose appeared to have be once called) located to the north of the old Red Lion pub (now closed) in Wensley.

The Millclose mines produced lead (galena) and zinc (sphalerite) with fluorspar, calcite and baryte as the main gangue minerals.  The galena apparently contained virtually no silver and the sphalerite about 1% cadmium.  Other minerals occur in small quantities including the rare cadmium bearing minerals greenockite and hawleyite, along with smithsonite, hydrozincite, cerussite and hemimorphite. Although the spoil heaps are small (and they have been well picked over the years), with some determination it is still possible to find examples of different coloured fluorite, calcite, sphalerite, baryte and occasionally greenockite/hawleyite.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References