I was recently fortunate enough to get into Clayton Mine at Ecton as part of a PDMHS trip. The Ecton Hill mines have been mostly off-limits for some years since the death of former owner Geoff Cox, but I'm glad to say that the trust who now own them are starting to open them up again.
Entrance is via the roadside adit, which has not one but two gates on it, and leads into a long adit level with water to about welly top level. There are some side passages, one of which has a boat made out of half oil drums left by a former custodian of the mines who didn't like getting his feet wet, another of which has a miner's privy still in situ, flushed by the mine outflow!
Eventually you get to the main engine chamber, with the big blue shaft (see the photo in Mines of the Peak District), which is wonderfully clear when you first get in but unfortunately quickly clouds up when you pass it. The big wall at the back of the chamber is a curiosity, it has in the past been described as a chimney base for the steam engines which were sited here during the mine's C19th operations, but close inspection does not bear this out. John Barnatt and Terry Worthington (who were leading) are of the opinion that the wall may actually be part of the engine mounting, like a cornish engine house. There are at least two other engine beds, signs of sealing-off in some of the side passages which have been used as smokeways for the engines, but it isn't clear where the boilers where yet - much more investigation will be needed.
Behind the main chamber is a small area of intact pipe vein, still showing chalcopyrite, malachite, sphalerite, fluorite and barytes, as well as patches of what is quite likely to be aurichalcite. Also beyond the engine chamber is the way into bag level, which runs almost the length of Ecton hill, on a long drivage, passing the linkage to Chadwick mine,going under Bag mine but not linking, and ultimately getting to a now-choked raise to Waterbank mine. The last section of this was driven with air drills andnitroglycerine or dynamite in the 1880s, just before the mine closed. It's also a bloody annoying level to walk down, being about 5 1/2 foot high all the way so you have to stoop for ages - the rails are still in situ so I think I need to bring a cart in next time I'm in there!
The last bit of the mine we looked at was the way up into the upper pipe workings. Passing another bit of intact Chalcopyrite/Fluorite mineralisation, you climb up into the pipe workings - unfortunately, as they were used as a chimeny for the engines, everything is thick with soot and the stal is all black too! You can climb so far up unaided, but around the base of the point where it starts to go really vertical, there are a few serious drops so we didn't go right to the base of the shaft you can see at surface. I'm told that someone did SRT it some years back, but you pass a lot of seriously unstable deads and so no-one has been daft enough to do this since.
An excellent trip all in all, and with any luck the Ecton mines will become more easily accessible in the next few years.
Follow the horses, Johnny my laddie, follow the horses canny lad-oh!