Many thanks, Vanoord, worked! 🙂
Never seen these details before, I have seen other plans which include this area of the quarry, but they omitted much of this including some of the chambers.
I obviously need to explain a bit here.
In the first instance of course Oakeley worked in general in all three veins, from South to North: New, Old and Back. In some areas there were additional workings in the Little Vein (between Old and Back), in the North Vein and in the so-called GlanyPwll Vein. In some places there are thus three lots of workings "on top of one another" from a mapping perspective. In addition, many of the chambers etc. were intersected by "whinstone dykes" which cut through the vein at a steep angle and effectively divided up the chamber into separate parts. In some cases the dyke was worked away, in other cases a level was driven through the dyke and the chamber re-opened underneath it, and in other cases the dyke was left in place and a new openeing level driven east west underneath it with no connection to the original opening level under the main hard which formed the original roof.
In a nutshell this means that it is not usually possible (except for early dates) to show all the workings in a given area on one diagram. From the 1880s onwards plans were first of all drawn up separately for the Old Vein and the Back Vein - New Vein workings were initially added to the Old Vein plans and North Vein to the Back Vein plans. Eventually, especially in the Lower Quarry (Ex-Welsh SLate Co), the extent of the New Vein workings became such that separate plans were prepared for Old and New Veins.
Thus my drawings of the New Vein workings in chambers 11 to 20 from floor DE up to floor 5 do not show the Old Vein or Back Vein workings which lay above them. These New Vein chambers were cut into two or even three sections by the whinstone dykes and a fulll diagram is difficult to unscramble.
Here's a cross section of chamber 18 produced in 1895. Note the workings in Back and Old Veins - not shown here is the current extnet of chamber 18 New Vein - which had just been opened at this time. However, now it extends from at least Floor F to above floor 3 - with the top possibly as high as floor 5. (Actually the part from F up to DE was latterly back filled, but that doesn't change my point.)
🔗Personal-Album-54-Image-72720[linkphoto]Personal-Album-54-Image-72720[/linkphoto][/link]
Hope this makes sense, I'll post another diagram or two if I get a chance.
Cheers
Grahami
The map is the territory - especially in chain scale.