If anyone wants to see this historic engine house they had best visit very soon. For many years there has been a slow and remorseless flow of material from the cliffs above onto the site. Forty years ago the remains of the two pumping engine houses at the north end of the site were still visible and the landslip was some distance from the shaft. The engine houses were lost about 20 years ago and since then the shaft has been under threat.

The remedial work carried out in the past 3/4 years took no account of the geological causes (the Ravenhill fault) but assumed that tipping from Haig was the problem even though it is clear that sandstone rather than colliery waste is what is flowing onto the site. That work, which involved dozing some large "dangerous" blocks of sandstone towards the site, has actually accelerated rather than slowed the flow and the shaft and much of the gin case has now been covered. The winding engine house (which held a "Crowther" engine, not a beam engine as in the link) is now barely 10 ft from the edge of the flow.

Thats sad news.... I missed your original post and it would be very bad if that happened as there is little left in the area engine house wise. Are there any plans to further address the problem or do you think they'll let it slide. I must say the ground there was incredibly loose when I visited.

Regs ICLOK

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The solution some 20 years ago, when the local council acquired the area following Haig's closure, would have been to create a relief gully north of the moving mass and allow the sea to clear material as it moved down there.

Instead they "landscaped" the whole area, placing a great heap of pit waste on the weakest area of cliffs (400m north of Saltom) and wondered why it collapsed. At Saltom they decreed that the sea was eroding the cliff base, allowing "the tipped spoil from Haig Pit" to encroach onto the site. The weight of pit waste from Haig was also blamed for the whole collapse of the cliffs along here but they were eroding long before any tipping took place.

They also stated that the sea wall at Saltom was being "eroded by the action of the sea" but this is utter ****. The wall, north of the shaft, was pushed outwards by the mass of flowing sandstone from above - initially a few blocks rode over the wall onto the beach in the 70s before the increasing mass caused the collapse. Gabions were emplaced by the NCB at this place at that time to prevent the sea flushing the backfill around the shaft (then still open and connected to Haig).

The landslippage seems to be associated with the Ravenhill Fault which runs east-west, downthrow north, through here. The fault brings coal measures on the upthrow side against Whitehaven Sandstone to the north. The softer mudstones to the south had long since eroded leaving a number of large sandstone blocks (some 2-300 tons) perched on the slope above. Within the Whitehaven Sandstone are shale beds which erode more quickly and are also more impervious than the sandstone. With a seaward dip this produces a conveyor belt effect of blocks moving forward on the sandstone/shale interface and then toppling. As it is happening at some 100 ft or more above high water mark and in places above where no cliff base erosion occurs (protected by outcrops on beach) it seems that the sea is an unlikely cause.

So, to answer the question - yes, they'll just let it slide. And perhaps if some fissures open up in the top they will doze some more material from above down to fill them up and destroy the engine house a bit faster.

on my last visit, I was greeted by the same sign that is round at West Strand car park, something about no access beyond this point, no access to the beach, and danger unstable cliffs. :surrender:

Those signs mainly refer to the cliffs between Wellington and Haig. The public footpath from Red Flag along the mid-height terrace has now been closed. The cliffs there are unstable (as in par. 2 of my last post) - the cause given by consultants being, in addition to the tipped waste being "subsidence caused by mine workings below by NCB and predecessors" and "flooding caused by cessation of mining allowing water table to rise". That's the coal industry stitched up then.

Following the death of a woman on the beach at Wellington a while back when some of the levelled site debris collapsed on her (referred to as cliffs) the council closed beach access from their land at this point. It is of course quite possible to access the beach nearby (West Pier) and the council do not own any land below HWM so a traverse along the beach is quite feasible (but do keep an eye on the cliffs and try to go at low water).

There is still permitted access from Ravenhill (near Haig) down the cart road to Saltom but the "'elf n' safety" lot will be watching to see if they can spoil that too. :guns:

Almost two years on, can anybody advise me as to the current situation at Saltom. Is there public access still to the area near the engine house? Is the old drainage drift from Haig still visible? I ask because I'm hoping to pay a visit to Cumbria in the New Year and perhaps spend an afternoon visiting a few old mining haunts. Have not been up there since Haig closed, let alone the closure of the Marchon complex so expect a few changes. I'm hoping to get to the Haig museum. Just dont want to waste my time wandering along the coast or down from the top near Haig if its all been closed off.

The engine house is still standing, but you can't get up close to it (unless you duck under the fence and ignore the warning signs). I have never seen a photo of the Haig drainage drift - would be interested to see that on aditnow if you get one.

The Haig pit head and engine house are as atmospheric as ever!

Also, was there a drift mine on the Marchon site?

I haven't been down there for almost a year but the "beach drift" was till visible then - it's walled up but a couple of arches were still in place at the entrance. This entrance is not the original which has long been buried below cliff debris 40 yds to the south - sometimes a rail end or a prop gets exposed by the tide.

[Can remember the time we were doing a la'al job in there. There was a channel (2-3 ft) worn down the middle of the road from 50 years of pumping. I was up near the shaft and "forgot" to warn the 2 lads with me, first timers, that the strange noise was 750gpm coming out of the shaft main :devil: . I was sat on the ledge as it passed and 100 yards outbye they were stood in the channel :curse: ]

Squirrel,

sorry but forgot to mention the Marchon Drift. Oficially the Solway Anhydrite Mine it was in the SW corner of the site midway between Hutbank quarry and sandwith village. The workings lay over those of Ladysmith Pit (whose shafts - Croft/Ladysmith - were within the boundary of the later Marchon works) and extended almost to St. Bees lighthouse. Closed due only to changes in the works process it almost had a new life as access to the coal south and west of Ladysmith (with eventual connection to Haig).

Thanks for the update. Is the headgear at Florence still standing these days? It's been closed for a while now and many mining sites (collieries) further south seem to get cleared away with great haste these days. A real shame it had to close.

Yes it's still there - site now used as some sort of arts centre so is accessible.

Thanks for the updates chaps. This does not look too good though



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-20739851 

😞

That photo sums up CBC's approach to the problem.

Having firstly tried to blame the sea for washing the cliffs away (very high tides it would seem because the falls were occurring about 100ft above MSL 😉 they then blamed the NCB for depositing "an excessive weight" of pit waste above the site.

The pic shows a hole caused by a slump in the path laid by CBC, using pit waste when they made access for the "restoration" work on the engine house. The hole is at exactly the place where Ravenhill Fault crosses the path - the soft shales on the upthrow side have been eroding for years allowing the sandstones on the up-dip side to move. We monitored and maintained the whole cliff area for years when the pit (Haig) was working but the "landscaping" (including the dozing of "Fairy Rock" towards the Saltom remains) done since has accelerated the rate of destruction.

But considering how the Wellington and Duke sites have been sanitised it's nothing fresh.