Attempting a balanced viewpoint.......

Minerals are the reason the mine is there in the first place. But nowadays its, "Those are my sweats"

and just to complicate things a bit further somewhere in the background is someone who actually legally owns them.

The blocked off Red Vein suggests either H and S or a preemptive strike against a possible digging project.

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H&S - and fears about liability - are the likely reasons, I'd guess. Same with Crown mines and the gianormous fencing stockades around them all. The M&Q rules - "an adequate barrier" - do not help because "adequate" is such an open-ended term.

Does dumping rubble and soil constitute fly tipping?, Did they check no one was inside at the time of welding ? Lots of questions bet we get no answers?

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Highly valid questions there!

I'm sure the intrepid mine explorer is not going to trawl through the archives to find out who owns the ground on which this or that ancient mine is located Roy. Or even the Mineral Lord who may be someone completely different. They are probably in some church yard now pushing up daisies in any case. Better for them to be preserved by an ardent collector than :guns:smashed to bits by some k*******d or degraded by weathering conditions. :guns:

I'm sure the intrepid mine explorer is not going to trawl through the archives to find out who owns the ground on which this or that ancient mine is located Roy.

try bashing away in some mines and they soon find out

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Time we had a touch of reality in this discussion. Mines have owners who have legal responsibilities. If those owners decide to fulfil those responsibilities, we have no comeback.

As has been said before in this forum - no publicity is the best approach, and don't be seen wearing a lamp and helmet.

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Having peered in those now landscaped levels you really have to ask yourself what hazards they posed??? There is a balance to be struck here... simply attempting to obliterate a mine entrance does not necessarily obviate the danger, it's still there underneath the rubble, but any potential future issue by its presence there suddenly is masked by this cosmetic attempt at painting over the landscape..
I don't believe this is the way to go and to me it doesn't stand rational scrutiny

Having peered in those now landscaped levels you really have to ask yourself what hazards they posed??? There is a balance to be struck here... simply attempting to obliterate a mine entrance does not necessarily obviate the danger, it's still there underneath the rubble, but any potential future issue by its presence there suddenly is masked by this cosmetic attempt at painting over the landscape..
I don't believe this is the way to go and to me it doesn't stand rational scrutiny

Spot on!

A bit like 'filling' shafts in by people who don't really understand mines.

So how about filling a shaft in and then building a house over it. I am not saying anymore on this. Rather adds a whole new meaning to the expression "digging a hole for oneself"
:lol:

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I think the high profile some places have on facebook and even on here is to blame.

The internet has been fantastic in some ways, enabling like minded people to share information and providing a resource of information about places that is hard to equal any other way.

Aditnow has become the go-to place for info about mines but this comes with a downside when the info spreads beyond it's intended audience. This is especially the problem with facebook, once anything is posted there its a free for all, information and misinformation mingle and circulate far and wide.

I used to post alot of pictures, I stopped doing that some time ago and I notice quite a few others seem to have dried up too. It's honestly not worth the hassle it causes IMO.

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It's quite simple really - if kids (or anyone else) can get into it, then the landowner can be held liable if something happens to them.
Technically, the landowner can fence it off and put up warning signs, and then if kids get through and die the landowner (probably) isn't liable, or is less liable.
But fences require maintenance, undergrowth cutting back regularly, and are an ongoing cost.
Bulldozing an adit, on the other hand, is pretty final.

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I'd rather end up in court over kids cutting bars and coming unstuck than getting utterly scuttled by the EA for blocking up a bat roost.

Kid gets into your abandoned mine, injured or dead, you're sued to hell, potentially bankrupt.

Max penalty for destroying a bat roost, £5k fine, potentially 6 months inside. Which means out in 3 months, IF the courts decided to go that far - which is highly unlikely, so a fine of £5k max.

If that's 'utterly scuttled' by the EA then they don't do much scuttling !

If you want to set up a company to limit out liability (a la Roy) then that company still has to do various things to maintain itself, and ensure that it has procedures in place to monitor the safety of non-properly-equipped people or the general (surface wandering) public. All of which costs money and time on an ongoing basis. You have to keep records to show those inspections have been made, you have to pay Companies House to maintain the register.

As opposed to bulldozing or backfilling an adit, which costs a few hundred quid, once. With the possible, maybe, just-might-happed, of the EA coming along and having a hissy fit.

I'll put it this way. If you weren't a mine explorer, and had minimal interest in the hole on your ground, what you you realistically do ?
1. Potentially risk everything in a lawsuit
2. Do a load of paperwork and get it all registered with Companies House (and then have regular paperwork and monitoring/maintenance forever).
3. Fire up the JCB

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You never answered my question of which of the 3 options you'd choose.
Yes, some 'access groups' like the power, some people like saying 'geroff moy laarnd'.
But this is a genuine concern for lots of others.
As someone said earlier on in this thread, mine owners have legal responsibilities regarding safety of the general public. They can't be blamed if they choose what they see as the least difficult and costly path to fulfilling those liabilities.

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I'd rather end up in court over kids cutting bars and coming unstuck than getting utterly scuttled by the EA for blocking up a bat roost.

Kid gets into your abandoned mine, injured or dead, you're sued to hell, potentially bankrupt.

Max penalty for destroying a bat roost, £5k fine, potentially 6 months inside. Which means out in 3 months, IF the courts decided to go that far - which is highly unlikely, so a fine of £5k max.

If that's 'utterly scuttled' by the EA then they don't do much scuttling !

If you want to set up a company to limit out liability (a la Roy) then that company still has to do various things to maintain itself, and ensure that it has procedures in place to monitor the safety of non-properly-equipped people or the general (surface wandering) public. All of which costs money and time on an ongoing basis. You have to keep records to show those inspections have been made, you have to pay Companies House to maintain the register.

As opposed to bulldozing or backfilling an adit, which costs a few hundred quid, once. With the possible, maybe, just-might-happed, of the EA coming along and having a hissy fit.

I'll put it this way. If you weren't a mine explorer, and had minimal interest in the hole on your ground, what you you realistically do ?
1. Potentially risk everything in a lawsuit
2. Do a load of paperwork and get it all registered with Companies House (and then have regular paperwork and monitoring/maintenance forever).
3. Fire up the JCB

Does firing up the JCB and simply collapsing an entrance automatically absolve you of all liability for the mine underneath?? As I always said, hiding a danger consmetically does not remove the risk and should your actions cause albeit inadvertently an unforeseen future problem then your actions are in many ways more likely to expose you to civil or criminal proceedings as they are demonstrably deliberate...
Landowens I suppose are damned either way, but reasonable steps to mitigate, contain and monitor risk will serve as a good insurance against most problems ;D

I think of the trouble Si Hughes and I had to go to in order to remove the shale dam at Cwmrheidol No. 9 and the disaster that would have ensued if it had blown on its own. Adits are there for drainage. Blocking them up is not smart.

That's just the sort of problem I envisage John... blocked adits still want to drain water, shafts of indeterminate depth cannot be readily filled with a set quantity of rubble, things shift, slide, subside, gunge up, a mine is a complex beast and being able to keep as much an eye on it as possible is a very wise policy 😉

I'd rather end up in court over kids cutting bars and coming unstuck than getting utterly scuttled by the EA for blocking up a bat roost.

The holiest of holy very common bats. You would think there were only 8 of them left.

The whole "filling shafts" is a proper engineered thing. The NCB book (on here) has a whole section on it (and why it fails)

Can anyone tell me where abouts the NCB shaft filling book referred to is on here please ? Maybe Specsavers is due a visit ?

Thanks

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should be there:

http://www.aditnow.co.uk/documents/Personal-Album-1711/NCB-Shafts.pdf 

Many thanks. That's this afternoon sorted !:thumbup:

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I think the high profile some places have on facebook and even on here is to blame.

The internet has been fantastic in some ways, enabling like minded people to share information and providing a resource of information about places that is hard to equal any other way.

Aditnow has become the go-to place for info about mines but this comes with a downside when the info spreads beyond it's intended audience. This is especially the problem with facebook, once anything is posted there its a free for all, information and misinformation mingle and circulate far and wide.

I used to post alot of pictures, I stopped doing that some time ago and I notice quite a few others seem to have dried up too. It's honestly not worth the hassle it causes IMO.

Spot on assesment Sparty, the hundreds of pics of WP recently posted publically on certain Faceache pages can't have helped much either!!:(

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