Old Men's Mine (Stage), Coffin Level, Minehouse, Borrowdale

Summary

The Old Men's Stage, as its name suggests, is one of the earlier workings; it was driven in 1619 to gain access to the Grand Pipe and to help drain it.

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Description

The Old Men's Stage, as its name suggests, is one of the earlier workings; it was driven in 1619 to gain access to the Grand Pipe and to help drain it. Photographs taken by Ian Tyler (Tyler, I. 1995, 78-79) show that it is a hand-driven, narrow 'coffin level'. In 1769, in order to re-open the level, a mine house was built around the adit with a yard to contain the spoil. Farey's plan shows the site of the mine house and the yard wall which are described as 'now removed' strongly suggesting that the mine house was dismantled in order to re-use the stone. Ian Tyler (Tyler, I. 1995, 121) asserts that the stone was used to build Harrison's mine house in 1791. If this was the case considerable effort must have been expended taking the relatively poor quality, undressed, stone uphill, especially when according to Farey's plan the remains of an old mine house (date unknown) may have existed as little as 20m away. The top of the platform has largely been covered with spoil from the spoilheap above it but a small terrace, 1.5m wide, survives. At the southwestern edge of the platform are the remains of a small rectangular building which measures 4.2m by 2.4m internally. The rear of the structure was formed, or possibly sheltered by, a quarried rock outcrop which has stopped spoil from spreading onto it. At the front of the building is some rough drystone walling that is 0.7m high externally. This may be the remains of the Old Stage peat house for it was still standing in 1821 according to Farey's plan; it may not have been worth the effort to take stone from a crudely built store for use elsewhere. Protruding from the bottom of the spoilheap above the Old Men's platform is a single dressed stone, 0.8m wide and 0.5m deep. Behind it is a slight ridge of spoil suggesting a buried wall; possibly another building survives beneath the rubble. The spoilheap itself is partly turf-covered although where visible the deads are large. It is 38m long and is interrupted approximately two-thirds down its slope by a turf covered terrace. This may be the remains of a track across the spoilheap to join the track above the top of (20118*4) rather than the partially covered remains of an earlier spoilheap (Lax, A. 1995).

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