Holme Bank Chert Mine, August 2013

[Danny Sutton]

Visited with Andy.

A bit of history â€" Chert has been extracted from the site in small quantities since early in the 19th century, but by the late 19th century chert was been extracted on a commercial scale, at the time the mine was known as Bakewell chert mine, but over the years it has also been known as smiths mine, holme hall and holme bank.

In it’s hey-day in the 1920?s over 40 people were employed at the mine, but by the end of WW2, the lack of demand for chert and the improved methods of extraction meant there was only work for 20. The mine closed in around 1960, but a block cutting operation remained on the site using the already extracted chert and limestone up until only a few years ago.

Our day started with a drive over to Derbyshire to have a look at something else, this turned out to be a none starter, so we headed over to Bakewell, I had visited this mine a couple of years ago, we knew it was quite a pedestrian trip and this is what we were after. We parked the car up and went to find Mr Oldfield who owns the land where the mine is located to see if a visit into the mine today would be possible, which it was.

we returned back to the car, got kitted up, and with the key entered through the gated main adit. There is passage after passage after passage in this place, but as we had both been here before, we managed to bee line from one point of interest to another without too much aimless wondering about, cutting out a lot of walking by using some of the man-ways between the main haulage passages.

We eventually did the through trip, exiting out of the now locked pipe exit into the quarry, which can be opened from the inside. We got a couple of snaps in the quarry before going back in and doing the trip in reverse, taking in a couple of other areas on the way back. We nipped down to the water where they dive just to check out the water level, to sadly find someone has stolen the old hobnail boots that used to be here, we got another couple of pictures and headed back out.

Total trip time was about 4 hours underground and was quite uneventful, it was nice to see the place again and it was good to see Andy out and about again.

More Pictures can be found here - http://www.dspexplores.com/?p=778