Hi Roy,
Sorry I haven't been doing much on the site recently, the family had 2 bereavements in the last 6 weeks!!! 😞
Charles book is excellent, however maybe not as clear on the events leading up to the loss of the shaft as I would like..
I have heard differing accounts (A couple of rather unpleasant and in my view vindictive ones), so to set the record straight the events are as follows....
The shaft we dug out is located on the edge of what was at the time Gerald Healds land, although the mine workings are actually on land belonging to the neighbouring farm owned by the Pattinson family. Mike Pattinson has always been helpful and friendly to us, and we regard him and his family as friends to this day.
Gerald was difficult to speak to as he was a shy man, well educated and he gave us permission to reopen the old shaft. Everything was fine until suddenly Gerald died.
Gerald's Estate was inherited by his niece Christine. She took a very different view to our presence on what was now her property. Shortly after she acquired the land she contacted my father. He offered to buy the piece of land the shaft was on off her so as to allow her to wash her hands of our operation. She refused this. My dad offered to pay her rent for the use of the land. She refused this. However, we heard little more until 2005 when out of the blue we received a solicitors letter demanding (it a demand nothing less) that we removed ourselves from Christine's land. Now Christine happened to work for the solicitor in question in Stanhope, so the solicitor in question was quite happy to send out letters in profusion with her various demands.
We requested time to remove our equipment from underground. We were offered a month, however the solicitor wanted us to write for permission before we visited. As the weather in October can be variable at very best this meant we could only give a few days notice of a visit. They found this unacceptable. It all came to a head when after sending the solicitor a letter giving notice that we intended to visit the shaft we arrived on site to find someone had made a rather pathetic attempt to 'lock' the shaft top. This we easily moved aside (without damaging the handiwork of the landowner) and we went down the shaft. When we came back out we found the landowner and her husband waiting for us and confrontation followed.
We sought legal advice, our solicitor felt that we had the basis of a case, however, we live in Scotland which as everyone knows has a different judicial system. We would have had to go to England, find an English solicitor and proceed on that basis. We also felt that as Mike Pattinson had been so good to us for so long it would be wrong for us to create problems for him from his neighbour, so on that basis we unfortunately had to let it be.
Anyway, that is the sad story of the shafts demise, anybody who wishes to see the correspondence from the landowner's solicitor is most welcome to PM me.