Brownley Hill, Compressor House and the Link to Nentsberry Hagg's Mine, (21/11/05)

In spring this year I had spoken to a friend who told me about the compressor house in Brownley Hill, not having explored this mine in too much detail I had never come across it. I mentioned it to Karli and Mark and they had been to it a few times, we have been meaning to visit it for the last 6 months, but never got round to it until now.

The compressor house is along the Nentsberry Hagg's link from Brownley Hill so we ended up killing two birds with one stone. We made a bee line along the Wellgill Cross Vein heading north west, just past the right turn and scramble up into the Brownley Hill North Middle Vein, we climbed up an limestone outcrop on the left and slid down a muddy shoot and then proceeded to climb the rise that greeted us. Karli climbed up first and dropped a lifeline for us to follow. The compressor house is very impressive. The arched roof and walls are in excellent condition, there are fittings hung on the wall and many artifacts. The timbers that the compressor sat on are reasonably intact and there are air pipes leading to where the compressor would have been. At the back of the house there are two passages that lead into a large shale chamber. There are some wooden supports on the floor which indicate that there may have been a shaft here. In one of the corners there is a rise.

After coming down from the compressor house we (yet again) had lunch followed by the obligatory photograph, documenting this important fact. Afterwards Karli and Mark led the the way to the shaft that links to the Nentsberry Hagg's Level and Mine. We passed a square hole in the ground, which had an air pipe going down it, further on we dropped a metre or so and doubled back on ourselves. We came to the air pipe that could be seen before. Here a steel ladder had been installed which led to a platform, and then further down to another platform and into the watery passage that leads to Hagg's. We finished the trip by retracing our route in.

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