In the small market town of Bakewell, Derbyshire, lie many a mystery underneath its surface. Unknown to the average visitor or resident, a vast series of mined tunnels lie beneath the houses, shops and fields that make up the urban town centre.
I have written a few blogs sharing my mining adventures so far (links can be found at the bottom of this blog) and I still have have many more to write up and many more to visit. This particular report is the first ever mine I visited, and this is the mine responsible for kick starting my hobby and getting me to the level of experience I have today.
It was just over a year ago, one Thursday on day release for university. There were no tutorials for the day so I worked from home rather than waste my fuel driving up to Sheffield for nothing. It got to around 2pm and I had done as much work as I could without sending it to my tutor for an email critique.
I decided to call it a day and went to visit a friend called Josh, better known as 'Moff'. He was on his computer in the front room when I arrived. He had a UK urbex website open which I was aware of but hadn't had much input on, known as 28 Days Later.
We began to search through the most recent posts, we had both always had an interest in exploring the unknown, but mainly abandoned buildings and places situated above ground. "Let's see what categories they have things separated into" I suggested to Moff. "Yeah man, click on forums and search by category!"
I was instantly drawn to the underground category. The underground world first grabbed my attention when I was working on the regeneration of Alfreton Hall as an architectural junior nearly a decade ago! We were to design and produce working drawings for the listed building, for an external lift shaft to bring the hall up to modern day fire and disabled access standards. Upon breaking ground a huge underwater reservoir was discovered, hundreds of years old, brick arches formed an incredibly large lake underneath the hall and grounds! My underground curiosity was silently sparked.
We clicked onto the websites map feature and filtered it by underground locations and were shocked to find so many places underground within an hours car journey. We researched a few of the closest and found out which could be accessed by simply walking right on in. These sort of entrances are known in the mining and caving world as 'adits' rather than a 'shaft', these tend to be horizontal on a slight gradient declining into the hillsides which were mined for a variety of mineral and metal ores.
This leads us to the small market town of Bakewell, countless visits with the parents as a child to look at the river trout on the 'lovelock' bridge and to grab some of the finest fish and chips known to the human race! But this time we returned, no parents, no river visits, straight to Holme Bank road.
We parked up and headed towards the rough coordinates given on the urbex website. Our destination was 'Holme Bank' Chert mine. Situated under Holme Bank Hall over the river from Bakewell town centre. Armed with some shit £7 head torches from Tesco, we ventured off the residential street and onto a gravel path leading up a steep hill to the mine workings yard space.
A caravan was present and we had no idea if somebody was inside guarding the mine entrances from unauthorised access. We quietly tip-toed around the yard to the rear of the site where we knew there was a metal swing gate unlocked about 1m up the rock face. We climbed up a makeshift ladder, swung the big black metal sheet open on its hinges and entered into the unknown...
Adrenaline quickly rushed in and we slowly and carefully etched forwards, deeper into the hillside. The tunnel about 2 x 2m in height and width ran for about 40m before opening up into a superb open chamber. The roof all one large slab on a gradient, supported by ridiculously fragile looking stacked stone columns.
Being our first ever experience of something so dangerous and unknown, our nerves were truly being put to the test! It would not be for another 2 or 3 visits before we completed every passage still accessible. We had no idea what to look for, what dangers lay ahead or which way lead us safely onward.
We decided to exit the mine after the first chamber. The route forked off and we had no idea or confidence to continue, the cheap head torches providing barely enough light to see our feet in what was our first encounter of absolute complete darkness.
Back at the car we wasted no time getting onto social media and ringing around our mates to see if any better lighting was available to re-enter and explore further. We struck a winner and another group of friends were also eager to come back in with us. We decided to wait at the car, eating our packed lunch whilst the others drove over to meet us, armed with many torches and batteries. Whilst in the car I decided to do some research into the mine and discoved a brilliant forum which I am still very active on to this day, Aditnow.
Aditnow opened up a whole new world to me and i instantly signed up to unlock hidden content available to members only. I searched for Holme Bank and an instant hit popped up bringing me all the information and more that I could of ever wished for! An extensive map of the flooded and none flooded parts. This mine is rather small it seems but a rabbit hole of passages which lead deeper and deeper on one graded level. Divers had then surveyed the remaining flooded parts, something which doesn't really interest me enough for the increase in risk to life...
I downloaded the map to my smartphone and soon after the others arrived. Excitement buzzed around the group as we all geared up and locked our cars ready for the walk back up the steep slope to the yard. We read the map and noticed that there were in fact two entrances in the this yard, as well as numerous other entrances dotted around the same area. "We'll have to find them from the inside, all I know is that this entrance is adit no.4 on the map".
We returned to the first chamber and decided to take the left hand route, a wide tunnel with very sketchy looking rotting timber supports, the stone stacked dead walls bulging inwards as if ready to swallow us from existence at any moment. "I'm not a fan of this mate, look at those walls!" One of the group muttered as I lead us deeper. "Not much further 'til we get to the main M1 tunnel which connects all the routes up, stay with me it'll be all good." I replied, trying to reassure the group nothing bad would happen, even though I shared the same thoughts secretly.
We seemed to be on this same route for an age, 15 minutes slowly passed us by when we reached a T-junction at the end, "Left or right folks?" I asked. "No idea, you're the leader, let's rest here and have a look at that map" Moff replied, the rest of the group nodding in agreement and finding a nice place to perch for a few minutes. We studied the map noting where the collapsed dead walls were marked so as not to take ourselves to a blockage. "Shall we go look for the bottom entrance and the flooded parts down the bottom half and come back up this way at the end?" I asked, "We need to come back this way or find the other way out into that yard, so let's head right and keep going, third right hander we need!"
We came to an area with red tape marking an area off with a sign warning visitors not to disturb the stone supports as we examined a rather precarious looking overhanging series of rocks. Stacked piles of rocks, starting large at the bottom and gradually getting as small as a pebble supported the whole slab above our heads! A twitchy and nervous moment as we passed through into a larger tunnel heading back towards the cliff face but 3 tunnels further down from our entrance point.
We came to a mine cart and turning wheel which were well preserved and still ran on the rails. We grabbed a few photos then proceeded towards to the fresh cool breeze from another adit. It was gated and locked, we peered at the outside world locked in from the other side and noticed we had walked straight past this and were at the bottom of the steep hill we started at.
We turned around back into the tunnel and took the first right leading down to the flooded levels. Nothing prepared us for the next encounter. No longer than 2 hours after reading about people actually diving within flooded mines, we came face to face with three of them! Scuba suits and gas tanks piled against a large pump as a flooded chamber stopped us from proceeding any further. The water was a crystal clear blue, with various guide ropes set for the divers to follow into the depths.
"You must be mad diving down there" Moff blurted to one of the divers, he turned around, shocked at seeing 7 lads with 2 torches each and no helmets on. "You must be mad coming down here with no helmets or decent lights!" he replied, with a tone of warning in his voice. "Dangerous mines these chert systems, very old and very miscalculated, I'm happy you're taking an interest but please do it correctly and safely!"
It turned out he was a very well known caver within the online forum community and I soon had him added as a contact on Aditnow. Since then he has gave me much advice and also let me have a few secrets kept away from the internet (maybe one day, i'll indirectly share the story of that place but no names or locations will be mentioned!)
Satisfied with our explore and first adventure we set about making our way back to the entrance, there was a quicker route out which lead us back to the yard. We easily found the correct tunnel and exit route by a convenient blue pipe leading from the diving chamber, I guess to assist them in finding the direct route. 10 minutes later and we emerged into daylight, buzzing with what we had just achieved. "We have to find more of these" I said to everyone. "Definitely, count us lot in, let us know when you find somewhere."
We got back to the cars and packed up, the bug had been caught and we were now obsessed with finding the lost worlds beneath our feet... Welcome aboard the ludicrous adventures of Praada!
Stay tuned for more from me and the team. If you enjoyed this explore then please feel free to visit my other blogs linked below.
Exploring what lies beneath our feet
A trip into North Wales, Snowdonia National Park
A Horseshoe Bat in Hibernation
1 year anniversary of our first ever Welsh Slate mine explore
Exploring The Dale, Stoney Middleton
Rock Climbing and Abseiling at Masson Leas Quarry