When I first explored the Jugholes cave system way back in the very early 1950's with my club "Op Mole", Derbyshire Stone had recently finished working the site for the extraction of fluorspar. We had permission from Derbyshire Stone (who leased the mineral rights from the Bagshaw Estate) to explore the cave system and other mines on the Snitterton estate, the land owner of whom was Col. Bagshaw of Snitterton Hall who also gave us permission to walk on his land. We used the defunk workman's hut sited in the boundary hedge on the eastern side of the Jugholes Comb as our club's hut. Reports and surveys of our explorations were typed up and copies sent to Derbyshire Stone, and it was through this that we met Nellie Kirkham. The ore shute used by Derbyshire Stone to fill the lorries that took the excavated material from the Jugholes site to Megdale processing plant for processing was still intact on the hillside, just downhill from the large cave entrance. There were very few trees growing on the site then (mainly Jugholes wood), and one had beautiful views looking north up the Derwent Valley from the plateau outside the large cave entrance. I enjoyed sitting there in summer, about half a hour before dusk, when Jugholes bats come out, it's a wonderful sight, they wheel around the cave entrance before flying off for the night.
Access to the Lower series was by way of crawling through collapsed railway sleepers at the entrance into the adit, in fact our water supply for the "hut" was obtained from leaving containers in the 5th Water Cavern (as we then called it) to catch the drips of water. Just before my club started exploration of the system, in the late 1940's a stillborn baby was found dropped down the shaft on the adit, the parents were traced to Wirksworth through the newspaper wrapped around it. Sad.
One of my friends when first exploring Jugholes during the war, when entering the Upper Series told me that the flowstone on the "Beehive slope" was all sparkling and glistening pure white - what spar miners call "sugar spar". Alas no more.
When we started to explore the area there was very little in the way of records that we could consult, but a few years ago we found a plan drawn by John Nuttall a surveyor, in about 1767 of the Calf tail veins and surrounding mines at Snitterton. This plan shews fields, field names and where the lead veins and mines were situated, it shews the Noon Nick vein (Nellie said it was probably got it's name through a man called Noon, who "nicked" the vein according to the rules of the Barmote Court) running north to south up the Jugholes Combe and on it's southern extremity Jugholes cave is shewn. However, from memory, I don't think originally the cave entrance was as big as it is now, I think Derbyshire Stone possibly enlarged the large entrance during their 1940's opencasting work. I know a retired Bonsall spar miner (now in his mid 80's) who told me that Jugholes was worked in the early 1920's (I have notes of our conversation tucked away somewhere), and he could remember he (as a boy) and his father (another spar miner who was also a Barmote Court juryman) regularly visiting the mine workings when it was working. He thought that was when the adit was driven and timbered up, or possibly retimbered. He also said that there was a set of rails from the top of the wood to the gate on Salters Lane, crossing over the top field to the east of Jugholes wood - the one with the Police radio mast in. Towards the end of the war and continuing into the late 1940's Derbyshire Stone then worked Jugholes and surrounding area for fluorspar extraction. The next period of fluorspar working was in the mid 1950's by Bill Marsden of Winster who leased the mineral rights from Derbyshire Stone (Bill Marsden had the washer at Mawstone Mine, Youlgreave - where he tipped all the washings down Mawstone main drawing shaft, which subsequently silted up the part of Hillcarr sough draining Mawstone mine) and it is from that period that the present mine workings date from.
Regarding Hut Shaft, it is a large, beautiful, oval, ginged shaft which had a pair of wooden shuttered doors over it. Op Mole went down it on ladders, but from memory it didn't go anywhere.
As to the legends of passages from Jugholes to Oxclose mine (which incidently is strictly off limit); a scalded body of a miner disappearing from there and coming out of a sough into the River Derwent at Matlock Bath; also the barking dog of Jugholes, these were all the figment of immagination of a Sheffield newspaper photographer by name of Frank Brindley who spun the most fantastic tales. Incidently if anyone is interested, included in my records that I deposited at the Derbyshire Record Office is the article by Frank Brindley of the lead miner "boiled alive" and the barking dog. The latter is explained away by a syphon down in the Upper Series at the end of the stream passage at the bottom of the Beehive slope, this is what causes the noise of the dog! There was also another legend of the "faceless lady of Jugholes" supposedly a "boggart" who haunts the cave, she was thrown down a shaft to her death by her husband who caught her having an affair with another miner.
After reading this topic on the Forum, I phoned an old friend who was the photographer for Op Mole to ask him to send me copies of his early black and white photos of the cave so that I can post them to the forum.