Monument record 2582/1 - Bickerton Hill Copper Mines

<1> Ashmore, O, 1982, The Industrial Archaeology of North West England, p.29 (Book). SCH3181.

Shafts and workings of copper mines started in 1697, and worked spasmodically in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Last worked by Edmund Spargo and Sons in 1906. Rectangular sandstone chimney for flue from boilers of pumping engine.

<2> English Heritage, 2005, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest, 56843 (Digital Archive). SCH4666.

Mine engine house chimney, early nineteenth century. Red hammer dressed sandstone. Neatly coursed masonry, square on plan. Built in two stages, the lower one vertical, terminating in a projecting weathered string course, and the upper section, tapering and finishing with a slightly projecting narrow band and heavy terminal cresting. The chimney is all that remains of the building which housed the pumping engine to drain the copper mine owned by the Egerton family of Oulton. The mine is said to have already been working in 1697 - Report by Edmund Spargo, "The Cheshire Copper Mines, Bickerton Hill, Cheshire". Spargo and Sons 1906.

<3> Cralon, C.J., 1981, The Gallantry Bank Copper Mine, Bickerton, Cheshire (Monograph). SCH3097.

There is very little of the mine remaining at the surface; only the chimney stack and a shallow depression marking the site of the engine shaft. The shafts are infilled and the underground workings are flooded. There is no known mine plan and the only known diagrams of the underground workings are given in Edwards (1890), Spargo (1906), and Thomas (1908). The mine was in operation by 1690 utilising three shafts (believed to be the more easterly shafts 4 and 5) and c.250 feet of mine passages. After a period of closure, the mine was back in operation by 1697. Two further shafts had been dug by this point, but they were all narrow, the levels were shallow and the ore was being extracted somewhat haphazardly. Between 1697 and 1707 a drainage sough was driven to help alleviate the wet conditions in the mine. It ran in a north-westerly direction towards shafts 4 and 5 and may have drained out near the Bickerton Poacher public House. Behind Hough House is a 150 foot long tunnel believed to be a trial tunnel.

The engine shaft was excavated prior to 1807, when it was deepened to 156 feet. By 1857 the mine was operation over a distance of 1200 feet utilising the engine shaft and shafts 2 and 3. Shaft 1 never seems to have been worked.