Al I love exploring abandoned mines with my friend Ioan, when I get spare time from my day job! I am also a landscape artist and enjoy metal detecting as well as scuba diving. Some of the places Ioan and I have found underground have been untouched since the departure of the last miners over 100 years ago, which makes them eerie but thrilling to discover and explore. This book shows some of the best places we have found whilst filming our videos for RU-vid. Our hope is to increase interest and appreciation for Wales’ lost metal mining industry.
Ioan I’m a PhD student at Cardiff University, currently studying the social history of the old metal mining communities of central Wales. On my time off from my day job as a guard and fireman on the Vale of Rheidol Railway, I love exploring the abandoned mines with my friend Al, as well as photographing and documenting them for my research and for future generations. My aim is to one day open a Museum of Welsh Metal Mining.
Making and using the candles is good experimental archaeology. My mother's maiden name was Jones. Her great grandparents migrated to Australia in the 1870s in search of mining opportunities my great, great grandfather started in the Illawarra in coal mines and by the time my grandfather was born the family were in Mt Morgan, Queensland mining gold. It must have been a hard life.
When you think of those miners working by tallow candles and then going home to homes lit by candles and maybe a pub lit by candles, they must have had eyes dilated like saucers and been sort of nocturnal.
Salute from a miner from Pakistan! It gives a kick and thrill once you are inside deep, 200-400 feet, one seems outclassed from the world, and that feeling is beyond imagination
Q With such minimal amount of light available using tallow candles, how on earth did they manage to identify and chase a vein? Q Also how did they manage to safely blast drifts? When carbide lamps were introduced early 1900s, that must have been a MASSIVE game changer! 🧨⛏🧨⛏🇬🇧
Thank you for the excellent video. Have you ever thought about making a plaster cast of the footprints so you could actually see what the soles of their boot were actually like🙂
Trip, stumble and fall would describe my daily routine if I was a miner using tallow candles. Did your eyes adjust to the low light conditions enough that would allow you to see? Thank you.
A bunch of us stopped for lunch in Cwmorthin about 20 years ago, lit a few candles, switched off the headtorches, and just chilled out and chatted. Good days - with SimonRL, Lister and a bunch of others
You've often mentioned gold potentially being present in the veins of quartz, is there any anecdotal evidence of miners finding gold and keeping it for themselves?
@@benjaminsmith-haddon7316 I'VE made a comment just to clarify why a really interesting channel has both of its main characters kneeling in front of the camera.Good thing about comment sections is that if you have a question you can comment on it,no pun intended.
Great with the Tallow candles. I wonder if their eyes adapted better than ours do? They certainly lived in a darker world. What did they use Zinc for? Did they galvanize metal to protect it?
How nice to be exploring again, finding remains of the tallow candles and your tallows lighting “the way”, still amazes me just how they managed their way around, let alone extracting the minerals. I still look forward to more videos guys!
Can you help with this question? I am trying to understand how much metal they got out. You said that they were looking for zinc and copper here. If you had a wheelbarrow full of ore, how much metal would you be able to extract and where would it be processed. Would it be processed by the miners or shipped elsewhere.
Hi - the “ore stuff” as it was known was wheeled out of the mine, a mixture of metal ore and waste called gangue. This was taken to the dressing floor outside the entrance, where the stuff was separated and refined. Probably at least 80% of the stuff carried there would be waste, depending on the quality of the lode at the point being mined. Miners were paid by the company for every ton of clean ore they produced. The crushed, refined ore (called concentrate) was then shipped to smelters in Swansea, be that copper, lead or zinc. The full history of this mine and the refining process can be found in my latest book - The Welsh Potosi - it’s available online 👍🏻 I hope this helps! Ioan
My general rule: if it’s hard to get in, I’m not gonna be able to get out on my own. Not strictly true of course, but keeping that in mind keeps me from … well, dying horribly
I'm guessing this kind of working would be done by freelance miners who followed on from larger workings that had shut down? What a way to make a living..
Cemented gravel in the deep Blue 💙 lead thru mother's load is the richest in real nuggets and vain structures quartz,pices the size of you hand.literaly.that mine looks juicy so much goings on in that geology.
They had batteries back then eh! just a different form of them. Cheers from Northern Michigan! Grandpa moved our family to the US from Birmingham UK in the 30's and 40's, have always wanted to go and check out his old stomping grounds
In archaeology you expect the oldest stuff to be at the botton but mining works in reverse because of course the easy pickings were closer to the surface. It sound counter intuitive though..
i feel i seen you couple years ago in peack district after you explored a cave and were washing the mud off your suit in a stream and i asked you what were you dooing and if you are a s researcher 😅
Well done boys, your doing an amazing job documenting these mines. These miners were the unsung hero's of the industrial revolution and should be celebrated.
There used to be a mine were I lived in Peak Forest it was called Oxlow mine we used to mess around it as kid bit risky ,it was very deep and lined with lime stone oval shaped then near the bottom it tapered in. there was a gin at the top it has been cap but there is another way it they missed that. Just wondered if you ever went down it ,there are loads more nearby to.
