I don't know the whole background here - how is it that the NT come to be involved in part of Levant workings?
which contractors are you referring to?
my overall view would be that a historic graffito should certainly be kept. If this is reasonably thought to be such, and from your later post I take this to be the case, then it should certainly be preserved, if it is an area accessible to the public it should be protected as best can be done.
If it was done recently by a mine explorer like me or thee, that's a different matter. However, if it's in an area not open to the public, the NT should find something a bit more useful to do with their time, I think.
That said, I've been in the heavy engineering disciplines too lon to be sentimental about such things. One of my contemporaries at CSM was asphyxiated in Wheal Jane, while engaged in ( unauthorised ) mineral collecting in an end outwith the ventilation flow. A young graduate and a school leaver were similarly asphyxiated on a tunnel job I was working on in North London in the 80s.
they have no memorial as such, and I think that's right.. but what I do have is the self-rescuer I have on my belt when I go below, and the MSA drills. I didn't used to have those. I was involved in a tunnel evacuation due to gas in Sheffield a few years ago, and that would not have happened 20 years before, it would probably have been a multiple fatality.
I would feel that the real memorial to the many, many miners killed over the years is the men walking around because of the improved practices and equipment that followed because of them.
you might feel that it shouldn't take that kind of thing to get safety, and I wouldn't disagree, but a lot ofthe time I'm afraid it does
''the stopes soared beyond the range of our caplamps' - David Bick...... How times change .... oh, I don't know, I've still got a lamp like that.