Thanks Mike.
@RAMPAGE. The shaft you see is I think the pumping shaft, which is over 700 feet deep from this level. Directly behind this shaft is another which is smaller in dimension and is the main Deep Ecton Engine Shaft. It is indeed around 1300 feet deep from the surface. An interesting feature of the gear used to bring up the ore was the use of tapered sisal rope. Apparently the rope would naturally absorb water, so what the miners called 'garlands' or surface channels were hewn into tha shaft to direct any shaft water away from the ropes. Nevertheless the rope did get wet and needed to be occasionally dried out.
If you scan the photo to the right where the shaft scaffolding ends you will see the capstan area. The fine operation of lowering heavy pump pipes was left to man to provide inch by inch movement via a capstan gin, just like an anchor winch. The tapered rectangular roof cut out had the head gear with the winch below. Huge long stales were then turned by men walking in the lower section, now filled with stacked deads. If you continue round to the end of the stacked deads, just where they end is where they dried the ropes out.
Continue further round and you will see a vertical broad rust stain, at the bottom of it is a passage which once supplied water from Apes Tor to operate the water driven balance beam which in turn pumped water from the lower workings. The resultant waters being sent out along the access adit but not before it had floated ore carrying boats to the dressing floor shaft.
As the main shaft went deeper the pump could no longer cope so by enlarging the balance pump cavity it enabled them to fit a waterwheel. As undershot water wheels are not as powerful as overshot water wheels they drove a vertical shaft a little way before the existing Apes Tor passage ended and brought it out above where you see the rust stain. They then walled up the lower entrance using stone blocks which you can see scattered around. This provided a giant sized u bend and sending in water higher up pushed out water onto the wheel. They certainly knew how and what to do, further more the attention to detail is incredible, the stones from the retaining wall have channels on the edges where grout would be poured thus keying each stone for strength.
Peter