down the mine

down the mine

The Lathkill Dale is a beautiful valley near Bakewell now owned and managed by English Nature. Its appearance belies the fact that 200 years ago It was an industrial landscape with extensive lead mining operations in the valley itself and a smelter at the adjacent village of Alport.

Lead mining in the fissured limestone of the White Peak had always been bedevilled by water ingress and Lathkill Dale was no exception. However the driving of underground drainage tunnels, known in Derbyshire as "soughs", from the mines in the hills to rivers in the valleys below had been a major improvement. And when the mine levels got below the sough level the introduction of reciprocating hydraulic pumps in the late 18th century meant that these could be drained. The pumps were installed down a shaft and driven by water from a stream piped down from surface level and discharged into the sough.

However the new owners of the Lathkill Dale Mining Company had a problem. There was a sough running down the valley close to the River Lathkill but not many feet below it. The would be insufficient head to drive a hydraulic pump nor would there be headroom enough between the river and the sough levels to install the pressure cylinder. Equally a waterwheel would be impracticable. A steam engine would have been a possibility but the economics simply would not justify it. So they turned to the Dakeynes and their disc engine. It's relatively compact design was the answer.

Work on the engine started in 1831 with the casting of the upper half of the engine casing at the Adelphi ironworks in Duckmanton. It weighed seven tons, Stephen Glover whose 1833 Derbyshire gazetteer is by far the best contemporary account of the Dakeynes and their engine, recorded that the machine was now being erected. It had a 10 foot diameter casing and a 6 foot globe or sphere. At a head of 66 feet it would deliver 144 horse power.

In Lathkill Dale today there are the ruins of a house which was occupied by a later agent of the mining company, Bateman and his family. Beneath the house are two shallow shafts of unusually large diameter. Quite why anyone would build a house in such a dangerous position has been a matter of speculation over the years. Furthermore, whilst it has been generally accepted that this is the most probable site of the Dakeyne engine, Was It ever Installed? There is little documentary evidence to support its ever having been there. And why on earth would there be two shafts? Despite the sceptics, there is ample evidence to demonstrate that the engine was installed and did work.

In these days of modern hydraulic cranes, it is easy to forget that lifting and moving loads weighing several tons was something of a problem in the early 19th century. It was common practice to install the huge steam engines of the day in a massive engine house. The main reason for this was that the walls and roof beams of the engine house were used to carry lifting blocks which, often in combination with a hand windlass, were used to assemble the engine. In Ladygrove the Dakeynes had followed this practice and in Lathkill Dale simply repeated what they had done previously. The photograph shows a massive lintel in one wall of the engine house, far bigger than would ever be found in a domestic building, and wide enough to admit the 10ft engine casing. Clearly the use of the building as a house came later.

It would be totally impracticable to put the pumps in the same shaft below the engine. There would be the question of how the drive could be transmitted to the pumps underneath and moreover how the drive and the pumps could be maintained. The practicability of suspending the huge weight of the engine part way down a shaft is highly doubtful. Clearly the solution was to have a second shaft.

But was the engine ever installed? Glover said the engine was "being erected". Given that the engine was now a proven design, it seems unlikely that such a massive machine would be built at Two Dales for trial purposes. Without doubt it would be assembled on site.

In 1833 a writer to the "Mechanics' Magazine" claimed that he had seen the disc engine in operation. This was perfectly possible given that he lived only a short distance away at Wirksworth. He also enclosed a drawing of the Dakeyne engine.This shows that it had a bevel drive to a horizontal shaft. Transmission of the drive to the pumps in a second shaft would require a configuration similar to that shown and supports the view that the second shaft was used for pumping. But more importantly the drawing provides definite proof that he saw the engine - no other drawing of the Dakeyne engine featured bevel gear transmission.

The Dakeynes replicated the Ladygrove installation, constructing, in this case, a shallow dam across the Lathkill to divert water into a ½ mile long goit - a high level dam in the upper valley would have flooded a large area of land.

In the two years 1834 - 5 about 140 tons of lead ore were extracted. But clearly this was insufficient to make the mine viable. In 1836 a massive waterwheel 52 feet in diameter and 9 feet across the breast was installed higher upstream. The disc engine goit, now widened and deepened, was diverted into a launder across the river to the position of the wheel. The wheel pit was sunk into the ground and the water discharged into the sough. In the next year production was more than doubled.

At the same time the new wheel was installed, the engine house was converted for James Bateman and his family.

So the disc engine failed. Designed to deliver nearly five times the power of the original engine but at only two thirds of the working pressure perhaps it was a step too far. That the goit had to be enlarged for the subsequent waterwheel might indicate that the flow to the disc engine was simply inadequate to deliver the necessary power.

In 1842 following massive flooding the mine was closed. By 1861 Bateman's House had been vacated.

a schematic section through Lathkill Dale mine

In 2004 English Nature completed restoration of the site which is now open to the public. A short tunnel under the remains of the house leads to the beautifully constructed Engine Shaft with the sough running just below it. The tunnel connected with the Pumping Shaft just outside the house and originally housed the horizontal drive shaft. The Pumping Shaft itself has only been partly excavated

the remains of the house today

winter rains pouring down the engine shaft into the sough below

The Romping Lion

The story of the Dakeyne Disc Engine