Hi Roy,
Nice that you have kept this stuff I sent you years ago.This file that Peter has uplifted makes very interesting reading, hence my question on the copying of it!
I did notice copies of plans uploaded by the usual suspects, but back to Dodds.
Thomas Dodds was the area manager, for Nenthead and Alston Moor during its most productive period. He was the guy that laid out the mines and their connections and ramifications that we all love and admire today. He seems to have an extended family, and my guess is that John Dodds was one of them.
Like many men of his time Thomas no doubt was a difficult man to work for, and if you crossed him then hell would be let loose. We also know that he was the man who commenced redriving Smallcleugh Level, not to intersect the flats, but to work the Middlecleugh and Loncleugh veins.
It was in fact his surveyor, Hethrington, who found the flats, much to Dodd’s chagrin. The record state that Thomas Hethrington had figured out that, there might be flats, associated with Handsome Mea Cross Vein, so in his spare time him and his 3 sons drove the Hethrington cross cut from Middlecleugh 1st Sun Vein towards, what we now know as the Smallcleugh flats. Unfortunately his mates, ie. other miners thought he was wasting his time and laughed at his efforts.
Eventually of course as we know he broke through and hit the flats, but then the records tell us Thomas gave the richest bargain in these new workings to his ‘favourite partnership ‘ so Thomas Hethrington did not gain a lot for his work.
And even then fate had not finished with Hethrington since the record tells us that his house was close to the outflow of Dowgang Hush and during one operation there all his Garden was washed away!
Probably enough said about Mr Dodds.