Many soughs were dug throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.
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One sough would often drain more than one mine, since these were often very close, working the same vein of lead. This also helped spread the cost of digging the sough. Some soughs include branches to facilitate further drainage. Many soughs were dug throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.
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By digging soughs, miners found they could lower the water table and allow mines to be worked deeper.
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It is only when the northeaster soughs in the eaves and brings him leisure that he drops into narrative.
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The coal mining industry depended on using soughs until the mines became too deep to be drained by this means.
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Soughs were typically dug from their open end near a stream or river back into the hillside beneath the mine to be drained.
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Other soughs were dug, including one in 1729 to drain the Worsley mines and another from Standish Colliery to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Crooke.
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The term is closely associated with the lead mining areas of Derbyshire (see Derbyshire lead mining history). Early Derbyshire lead mines were fairly shallow, since methods to remove water were inefficient and miners had to stop when they reached the water table. By digging soughs, miners found they could lower the water table and allow mines to be worked deeper. Soughs were typically dug from their open end near a stream or river back into the hillside beneath the mine to be drained.
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Until the 17th century mining had usually been abandoned when the work reached the water table. Efforts at draining lead mines by horse-powered pumps, or "engines", had little success. In the later years of the industry mines were successfully drained by hydraulic, steam, internal combustion and electric power, but the first successes were achieved by soughs, drainage tunnels driven into flooded veins to allow the water to run off.Rieuwerts 1987 Dr Rieuwerts has provided a comprehensive gazetteer of the Derbyshire lead mining soughs.
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Those in the area just to the north of Wirksworth called the Gulf were drained by the Raventor and Lees Soughs. The Bates and Cromford Soughs drained mines on Cromford Moor – Bates Sough had reached the Dovegang by 1684. Hannage Sough drained the area to the east of Yokecliffe Rake, on the south of Wirksworth. Drainage of the mines in the whole of the Wirksworth area was eventually accomplished by the Meerbrook Sough, begun at the level of the river Derwent in 1772, at a time when lead- mining ventures had become only intermittently profitable.
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The falling price of lead brought the decline of the Derbyshire lead mining industry towards the end of the 19th century. Some soughs were very extensive. Meerbrook sough is over four miles in length. Digging such long tunnels took a long time.
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South of the village, the Watergrove mine was active from the 18th century until 1853. Water was a problem over this period; both soughs and pumping engines were used. In 1837 a Fairbrother beam engine was installed. Its 80 ft (24 m) chimney stood until 1960.
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Vermuyden sough, named after the Dutch engineer, Cornelius Vermuyden, who planned it, took 20 years to dig. The Cromford sough, which Sir Richard Arkwright subsequently used to power his mill at Cromford, took 30 years to dig. It was still being extended a century after construction began. Some soughs are still in use.
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Cannel coal was found in Aspull. There were several large collieries dating back to the 18th century, also malt kilns and a cotton mill. In 1896 the Crawford, Kirkless, Moor and Woodshaw Pits in the township belonging the Wigan Coal and Iron Company employed over 1,000 workers. Aspull's long history of mining left a legacy of old mineshafts, water drainage tunnels (soughs) and abandoned mine workings.
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Bateman's House in Lathkill Dale The dale has a long history of lead mining. Lathkill Dale and Mandale mines and soughs are a rare and well-preserved example of mining activity dating from the 13th century onwards. They include ruins of engine houses and an aqueduct and are a Scheduled Monument. In 1797 miners started to dig the Mandale Sough into the north side of the valley.
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The shaft at Park Pit was to the sough and met the King Coal seam at . In the 18th century the sough was extended and other levels were driven to connect new pits as they became operational. Some pits had their own soughs. The sough was extended to Fothershaw Pit in about 1856 and, by the Wigan Coal and Iron Company, to Aspull Pumping Pit after 1866 extending its length to .
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Limestone aquifers meant that mines were prone to flooding and so expensive drains (soughs) and pump engines were needed when extracting lead ore from deeper mines. The rock bearing the galena ore was crushed and smelted in cupola furnaces to extract the lead. Mined rock veins contained 10% or less galena, so mining sites are characterised by many spoil heaps of waste. Copper has been mined in the Peak District since the Bronze Age.
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The most important were the Cromford Sough, which was over thirty years in driving, between 1662 and 1696, and was continued in the 18th century, and Hannage Sough, begun in 1693 and also continued into the next century. The Cromford Sough provided the power for Richard Arkwright's mills at Cromford, the first of which was built in 1771. Also among the important 17th century soughs were the Raventor, begun in 1655, Bates (1657–84), Lees (1664), and Baileycroft (1667–73). The Baileycroft Sough drained mines in Wirksworth.
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Daniel Defoe, (c. 1724) A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain, divided into circuits or journies: Letter 8, Part 2: The Peak District, Reprinted: London: J. M. Dent and Co, 1927 At this time, the London Lead Company was formed to provide finance for deeper mines with drainage channels, called soughs, and introduce Newcomen steam-engine pumps. The former Town Hall Many institutions in the area have connections with the Gell family of nearby Hopton Hall. One member, Sir John Gell, 1st Baronet, fought on Parliament's side in the Civil War.
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In 1600 the collieries were drifts where coal outcropped, and shallow bell or ladder pits where roof falls were common and poor drainage led to them being abandoned. As a solution to water in his coal pits, Roger Bradshaw dug the Great Haigh Sough between 1653 and 1670. It was a long tunnel under his Haigh Hall estate which drained the pits into a nearby stream and was still in use until 1929. Other soughs were dug, including one in 1729 to drain the Worsley mines and another from Standish Colliery to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Crooke.
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By lowering the water table and opening up large new deposits of lead ore, they transformed the industry. The first sough, designed by Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, knighted for his work in draining the East Anglian fens, was driven over a twenty-year period from a point on Cromford Hill, between Cromford and Wirksworth, into an area called the Dovegang. When it was completed in 1652 there was an immediate jump in ore production in the area. Vermuyden's was followed by a succession of soughs which by the end of the century had drained enough of the mines in the Wirksworth Wapentake to cause a dramatic rise in production in the whole area.
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White 1994: 431). > Should he then Imitate gong and drum, or mime clay vessels and gourds; here > is a mass of sound like many instruments playing – Like reed pipe and flute > of bamboo [xiao 簫] – Bumping boulders trembling, An horrendous crashing, > smashing, breaking. Or should he Sound the tone chih, then severe winter > becomes steaming hot; Give free play to yü, then a sharp frost makes summer > fade; Move into shang, then a long autumn rain appears to fall in > springtime; Strike up the tone chiao, then a vernal breeze soughs in the > bare branches. (tr. White 1994: 433) Chenggong Sui obviously understood the technical aspects of the pentatonic scale and the relationship of musical notes and pitch standards (Goodman 2010: 139).
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This coal debris was left in heaps and "crowded moist slack heat naturally, and kindle in the middle of these great heaps, often sets the coal works on fire" and that "Also from these sulphurous heaps, mixed with ironstone (for out of many of the same pits is gotten much ironstone or mine), the fires heating vast quantities of water, passing through these soughs or adits becometh as hot as the bath at Bath".Scrivenor quoting Dudley, Dudley describes two rival attempts to smelt iron with coal instigated by supporters of Parliament during the Civil War and the Interregnum. Dudley visited both sites and having examined their furnaces and production methods, when asked his opinion, informed the proprietors that they would fail. The first attempt was by Captain Buck, with the backing of many parliamentary officers including Oliver Cromwell, with technical help from Edward Dagney, an Italian.
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Travel between the Sichuan Basin and the rest of what were then the other more populated areas of China was most frequently done by boat trips during which the poets or other passengers experienced the difficulties of navigating dangerous waterways, above which soared the dramatically scenic heights of Wushan, while their ears were impressed by the loud sounds of the indigenous population of gibbons and/or other simians. Wushan is sometimes translated as "Witch Mountain": wu literally means "shaman", and the manifest spirit of its Goddess was commonly believed to persist there, although perhaps not exactly being the Mountain Spirit of the poem. Typical attributes of mountain goddesses include her transportation by riding a chariot pulled by large members of the cat family, as does the Mountain Spirit of the poem—simian accompaniment being one of the more particularly distinctive features of this specific spirit or deity. The poet invokes the sound and image of simians while singing to his muse, in the poem's concluding lines (Hawkes translation, 116): :The thunder rumbles; rain darkens the sky: :The monkeys chatter; apes scream in the night: :The wind soughs sadly and the trees rustle.
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