A tourist exploring one of Cheshire's famous salt mines becomes separated from the rest of his party and loses himself in the maze of dark tunnels...
Narrated/performed by Simon Stanhope, aka Bitesized Audio. If you enjoy this content and would like to help me keep creating, there are a few ways you can support me:
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00:00:00 Introduction and background notes, written and read by Simon Stanhope
00:02:12 The Story begins
00:47:15 Credits and thanks
The setting for this story is a salt mine in Cheshire, north west England. Cheshire was then, and still is today, a leading centre for rock salt mining in Britain. In the 19th century, the working mines were also a notable tourist attraction. One of the largest mines at the time, the Adelaide Mine near Northwich, covered an excavated area of 15 acres. At the foot of the shaft was a huge open cavern hewn out of rock salt, the roof held up by vast pillars of salt. It was known locally as the Crystal Ballroom as dances and public entertainments were held there, and the lights reflecting from the walls of rock salt was said to be spectacular. The Adelaide Mine closed in 1928, after a flood caused the salt pillars to dissolve, leading the ground above to collapse. The largest working salt mine in Cheshire today is at Winsford, but sadly they no longer offer tours to members of the public. Since the early 2000s the older parts of the mine have been used for document storage, and millions of assets and documents are now stored there, including some of the UK's national archives.
There are very few verifiable biographical details available about John Berwick Harwood (c.1828-c.1899), which is the more surprising given that he was a relatively prolific author in the mid Victorian era. Between 1850 and 1890 he published about 20 novels, with titles such as 'The Serf-Sisters', 'Plain John Orpington', and 'Miss Jane, the Bishop's Daughter', as well as several short stories, generally with a theme of sensation, mystery or suspense. Part of the uncertainty about the exact number of works credited to him stems from the fact that many of his stories were published anonymously in magazines, as was very common at the time. 'The Underground Ghost' first appeared anonymously in the Christmas 1864 edition of Chambers Journal, and subsequently in the 1866 volume 'Major Peter', a collection of Harwood's stories published under his own name.
Recording © Bitesized Audio 2022.
9 июл 2024
