Standedge - Longest, Deepest, Highest

The Standedge canal tunnel, on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, is one of four parallel tunnels - the other three are railway tunnels - that run through the Pennine hills between Marsden, West Yorkshire, and Diggle, Greater Manchester. The Act of Parliament authorising the canal's construction was passed in April 1794. Benjamin Outram, acting as consulting engineer, estimated the total cost, including the tunnel, at £178,478, and the construction period at five years. Nicholas Brown undertook the necessary survey work, which foresaw a tunnel of 5,456 yards.

Outram was appointed site engineer, and Brown surveyor and superintendent. The tunnel was driven from both ends at once and from intermediate shafts. The intermediate workfaces were abandoned in the autumn of 1796. This change, greater water ingress than expected, and difficult geology, slowed progress. The rest of the canal was completed by 1799, and horses used to transship cargo over the Pennines between the completed sections. Tenders for work on the tunnel went unlet, and it was found that the headings had been driven several feet higher from the Diggle end than from the Marsden (above). In 1801 Outram resigned and Brown was dismissed.

In 1806 a new Act of Parliament provided for the raising of further finance. Thomas Telford was consulted, and in 1807 drew up a plan for completion. This corrected for the crooked workings driven from the intermediate headings: the tunnel has noticeable bends. Finally completed in March 1811, and at a cost of £123,803 for the tunnel alone, this was 5,445 yards (3.1 miles) long, 636 feet below ground at its deepest, and 643 feet above sea level. The longest, deepest and highest canal tunnel in the UK.

In 1822 the tunnel was extended 11 yards at the Marsden end, to accommodate reservoir works. In 1893 it was extended again, by 242 yards, this time at the Diggle end, so that the 1894 railway tunnel could be carried over it. These additions supposedly made the tunnel 5,698 yards long, although modern survey techniques make the total length 5,675 yards (3.2 miles).The tunnel has no towpath, which required the canal boats to be legged through. This was tough and dangerous work, not least given that large parts of the tunnel were left unlined, with the native rock jaggedly proud of the ever-changing overall profile. Some sections are lined with rough-dressed stone, and some with brick.

The Huddersfield and Manchester Railway bought the canal in 1846, which enabled the first railway tunnel, completed 1848, to be driven without the need for ventilation or extraction shafts. Drainage adits (above) drain the higher railway tunnels into the canal tunnel, and gantries (below) link the former. When the railway tunnels were driven much strengthening work of the canal tunnel was required in the form of heavy brick arches.

The tunnel officially closed in 1944, when maintenance ceased. Dilapidation prevented all but a couple of later exploratory journeys. A £5m restoration project in the 1990s set about reopening the canal in its entirety. Shotcrete and rock-bolting were used to stabilise some of the unlined sections of the tunnel. This reopened in May 2001, after 57 years of disuse. Boats were tugged through by electric tugs, but since 2009 have been able to transit the tunnel under their own power, with a pilot aboard, and chaperoned by a vehicle driven through the adjoined first railway tunnel (below). The journey takes about two hours.

UK Weapons of Mass Destruction

One of the normally inaccessible features of the Rhydymwyn Valley Works, developed by ICI in 1939 to manufacture and store mustard gas, is the tunnel system. Three tunnels (central one in bottom photo) were driven about 600 feet into the side of the valley, through limestone, and connected by four cross-tunnels, the stores (below). The system was designed to enable the storage of 3,120 tons of mustard gas, both Runcol and Pyro.

The site's production facilities were closed at the end of the war, when most of the UK's chemical weapons stocks were simply dumped at sea. But the country's then 'strategic reserve' of mustard gas remained stored in the Rhydymwyn tunnel facility until its destruction in 1958-60.

The store was ventilated by means of two huge extractor fans, at the top of the chimneys at the ends of each of the north and south tunnels. Air was drawn into the tunnels, deflected into a void above a mild steel ceiling throughout the storage areas, down through vents in this, and drawn out through grille-covered floor ducts, and up the chimneys. The steel ceiling was carried on concrete corbels.

Stockport Air Raid Shelters

Stockport's civilian air raid shelters, although far from being the largest in the land as claimed by the city's museum, did open in good time, in October 1939, the month after war was declared. Construction had commenced in September 1938, a rare instance of local authority foresight.

Cut into the soft red sandstone that underlies the city, the shelters provided accommodation for up to 6,500 people. Seven feet high and with a total length of just under a mile, the shelters were fitted out with benches, bunk beds, warden posts, first aid posts, small canteens, tool stores, male and female toilets, and electric lighting.

This was 'plush' by WWII air raid shelter standards, and led to the section of the shelters that can be visited by the public being nick-named the Chestergate Hotel. The nearby Brinksway and Dodge Hill shelters are not accessible to the uninitiated. The shelter complex was essentially closed by 1943.

The Lady of the North

Northumberlandia, otherwise known, by those familiar with Viz, as the Fat Slag, is an immense land sculpture near Cramlington, north of Newcastle. 1,300 feet long and 112 feet high, the Lady is formed of 1.6 million tons of clay, soil and rock.

All of this came out of the adjoining Shotton open-cast coal mine, the operators of which, the Banks Group, engaged architect and artist Charles Jencks to design something more attractive than the usual levelled slag heaps and water-filled pits.

The Lady is laid out on land owned by the Blagdon Estate, which has been surface mined since 1943. Work began in 2010 and was completed in 2012. Once the slag had been formed it/she was sprayed with seed. There are stone-built viewing platforms upon the forehead and breasts, and at the hip, knee and ankle.

Waste is inherent in mining, and one might as well have a land-form that distantly echoes the tradition of the Long Man of Wilmington and the White Horse of Uffington as another fake hill. At £3 million, it probably also cost the Banks Group and Blagdon Estate less than other forms of landscape restoration.

Isle of Man - Laxey Wheel

Known also as the Lady Isabella (after the wife of the island's then governor), the Laxey Wheel is the largest operational waterwheel in the world. It was designed by Robert Casement and built in 1854 to pump water from part of the Great Laxey Mine.

The overshot wheel, six feet broad, and a stunning 72 feet and six inches in diameter, is still, as designed, driven by water syphoned to the top of the structure in concealed pipework. The wheel turns, in 'reverse', at about three rpm, and drives a crank with a throw of four feet. This is connected to a counterweight and a wooden rod, 600 feet long, which runs on iron wheels seated upon short lengths of flat ironwork affixed to the top of a stone 'viaduct'.

The wheeled rod moves back and forth about eight feet, its movement transferred, via T-rockers, to vertical pump rods that descend 1,500 down the mine shaft. Although the wheel no longer pumps water, it originally moved 250 gallons per minute, and was capable of managing significantly greater volumes. Great Laxey Mine closed in 1929.

Clifton Observatory

A splendid view of the Clifton Suspension Bridge can be had from a balcony cantilevered out from the mouth of Ghyston's, or St Vincent's, Cave, 90 feet below the top, and 250 feet above the foot, of St Vincent's Rocks.

The tunnel to this, excavated by the artist William West, is accessed from the nearby Grade II listed Observatory. This started life in 1766 as a corn mill, was later used to grind snuff, and was abandoned in 1777 when a strong gale over-drove the sails and set light to the mechanism.

West rented the mill from 1828, used it as his studio, and installed a camera obscura. He also determined to link the Observatory to Ghyston's Cave, previously accessible only via the cliff face. The cave has at times served as a chapel, is first mentioned as such in the early fourth century.

The tunnel, through limestone, is 2,000 feet long, took two years to cut, and first opened in 1837. Stone and brick steps make an initial descent, which is continued more gradually by way of concrete steps. A metal stairway drops into the cave, from which there are steps up to the suspended balcony.

Wallerscote Island, Northwich

Between the River Weaver (bottom of above picture) and the Weaver Navigation stands, on Wallerscote Island, the last remaining part of the giant soda ash works that once dominated Northwich. Brunner Mond was founded in 1873, built its chemical works in Winnington, by the navigation, and produced its first soda ash - sodium carbonate, used in glass making, dyeing, detergents and cooking - in 1874.

BM became a limited company in 1881 and grew like Topsy, was one of the five largest soda ash producers in the world. In 1926 it joined with the British Dyestuffs Corporation, Nobel's Explosives Ltd, the United Alkali Company, and many smaller enterprises, to form Imperial Chemical Industries - the once mighty ICI.

The Brunner Mond name reappeared in 1991, when ICI divested itself of its UK and Kenya soda ash businesses. The new BM grew once more, and in 2010 acquired British Salt, a provider of one of the key ingredients of soda ash. BM was itself acquired by Tata Chemicals in 2005, and rebranded as Tata Chemicals Europe.

The main chemical plant was the other side of the Weaver, and from this led conveyor belts, running in a huge gantry over the river, to the storage, packing and loading facility on Wallerscote Island. The main plant closed in the 1980s, and has already been bulldozed - the two last photographs are taken from where it once stood. Tata closed its Northwich operation in 2013, blaming the price of gas, and the Wallerscote Island facility is being run down before demolition.

Brymbo Iron & Steel Works

The Brymbo Estate was bought in 1792 by John 'Iron Mad' Wilkinson, the ironmaster of Bersham, as it boasted supplies of both iron ore and coal. Wilkinson built his ironworks at Brymbo in 1796, and likely, as part of that, a blast furnace known as Old No.1.

Wilkinson added a second furnace in 1804, but when he died four years later the ironworks was mired in legal disputes. The order book dried up following the end of the wars with Napoleon, and the estate was sold in 1829, the works lying idle for over a decade.

It passed in 1841 to the Brymbo Iron Company, and  the famous Scots engineer Henry Robertson was engaged to help make it viable.  Robertson, backed by investors, built a new foundry and machine shops, improved the blast furnaces, and sank a new colliery.

Robertson had determined that key was improved transport. In 1845 the Brymbo Mineral and Railway Company opened a branch line that connected the works to the mainline network. However 1854 saw further disputes, with the directors of the company each seeking to gain outright control.

Robertson won out and in 1884 formed the Brymbo Steel Company. The first steel was made at the site a year later. Production doubled between 1898 and the start of WWI, but post-war the works was closed by first the miners' strike of 1921 and then the General Strike of 1926.

The Great Depression ultimately killed off this incarnation of Brymbo - the works closed once again in 1931. A new company was formed in 1933 and Brymbo once more recommenced production. It produced special steels for aero engines, using electric arc furnaces.

The works saw further modernisation under the aegis of Guest, Keen & Nettlefold (better known as GKN) - a new electric melting shop in 1959 and a new cogging (drawing) mill in 1961. Brymbo became part of the nationalised and monolithic British Steel Corporation in 1967, and remained a specialist steel maker.

A new bar and billet mill was built in 1976. This was perfectly timed to coincide with a further recession. The new owners, United Engineering Steels, invested in continuous casting at its Rotherham plant, which finally killed Brymbo for good.

The last furnace was tapped on 27 September 1990. The bar and billet mill was shipped to China. The whole of the twentieth-century plant has gone, but what remains is the older works, as substantially developed by Robertson, alongside Wilkinson's blast furnace (photo four).

There are also a number of items from the age of steel, including giant ladles, some of which are mounted on railway wagons. The site is dominated by the stacks of two cupola furnaces - the business end of one is shown in photo nine.

In April 2013 weight of snow collapsed the roof of the pattern shop (photo two) and a large part of that of the foundry. The way into the site remains guarded by a real Tonka toy, a truck by Euclid of Ohio (now part of Hitachi).

Bryntail Mine, Powys

At the foot of Clywedog Dam are the remains of Bryntail mine, one of many in the area that started out with the winning of lead ore and, over time, moved onto the extraction of barytes. There were three principal shafts here, Murray, Western, and Gundry.

Most of the extant buildings are associated with Gundry Shaft, and are clearly but unobtrusively labelled, enabling one to easily follow the processes that would have been operated.

There are two waterwheel pits, extensive remains of the leats that would have fed water to these (top), a couple of cottages, stone-built ore bins, and numerous settling tanks, constructed from massive stone slabs bolted together (middle).

Clywedog Trail, Wrexham

Between Minera (YMGW passim) and King's Mill lies the Clywedog Trail, along which are numerous remains of mines, mills, and ironworks. Deep Day Level drained the Minera lead mines into the River Clywedog. Near to the outlet is Nant Mill, originally a fulling, and later a corn, mill.

The stretch from Nant Mill to Bersham runs through Plas Power Woods, largely oak and beech. Big Wood Weir (top) was constructed in the mid-18th century to feed water, via a leat, to a nearby coal mine. Another weir, Caeau, supplied Bersham Ironworks, next stop on the trail.

The works was founded in 1718 by Charles Lloyd, and was the first in Wales to use a coke-fueled blast furnace. Under John 'Iron Mad' Wilkinson it was one of the most important in Europe. In 1774 Wilkinson patented a means to bore cannon from the solid, and this technology was used later to accurately bore cylinders. Many of the cylinders used in James Watt's steam engines were made at Bersham.

Wilkinson's nearby East Works was used for rolling and boring, later as a paper mill, and later still as a school. It now operates as a small museum, outside which are a number of mining and iron-making artefacts, viewed (above) through one of the ventilation holes in a mine's double-decker man rider.

Mining Minerals in Minera II

Just down the road from where Minera's limestone was mined for lead and zinc ore, the same rock was quarried for lime. The Minera Lime Company was formed in 1852, and in 1865 built a Hoffman kiln, one of just three in Britain for burning lime, the others being at Langcliffe, Yorkshire, and at Llanymynech, on the English/Welsh border (YMGW passim). Although the works closed in 1972, quarrying continued until 1993, for roadstone.

Mining Minerals in Minera I

The carboniferous limestone outcrop that starts at Llanymynech passes through Minera, in North Wales. Although it is believed that the latter area was mined by the Romans, the first documentary evidence is from the early 14th-century.



Systematic work in search of galena (lead ore) and sphalerite (zinc ore) commenced in 1720, but Minera always suffered from severe problems with flooding. A Boulton and Watt pumping engine was installed in 1783, and by 1816 seven pumping engines were in operation.



However, cooperation between the various owners militated against effective dewatering, which was not achieved until the Minera Mining Company consolidated all leases in the area in 1849. Over the next two decades Minera became Britain's largest producer of galena and sphalerite.



The mine closed in 1914. At Meadow Shaft (1,200 feet) are preserved the engine house and chimney; and working dressing plant, including separator jigs and circular buddles (used to separate out fine ore particles). Rails, trucks, and lengths of iron pump pipe complete the picture.