While searching for information about Taylor’s well and pumphouse, we came across a true account of an encounter at the well between the engineman, Tom Bailey, and a young man called William Simmonds.  Further investigation revealed that Simmonds was a deeply troubled man. This is his story of desertion, petty crime, homelessness and a tragic…

July’s Progress So Far It has been some time since we reported any progress here, but we have not been idle. There have been seven visits to site since 27th June – two of these to complete the recovery of window glass from the two remaining sides of the building, and the remaining sessions have…

Can We Find The Windows? A Story of Neglect, Abandonment and Demolition While we wait for a convenient day to bring a digger onto site to clear out the central pit of the pumphouse, we are looking at some other features of the remains which may reveal a little about what happened to the building…

Back After a Frustrating Break! In our Day 14 update, we explained how it was important to identify the edge of a pit cut below the pumphouse so we know where to use a mechanical digger to quickly gain some depth. As you will no doubt have noticed, we have had some rather wet weather…

Preparing for the Big Dig Before we arrange to bring heavy machinery onto site to dig out the filled-in pumphouse pit, it is important to identify exactly where the edges of the pit are. Today’s aim was to find the other end of the pit wall we are currently exposing. This was all discovered in…

Full Flight Our latest evening dig session, as planned, involved clearing rubble and other infill material from the emerging flight of steps. But first we had to do a quick check of something discovered back on Day 9 – a curious length of iron pipe leading away from the western corner of the building. We…

The Next Step Revealed A few days of changeable weather meant that the ground had become a little damp. Although the area we wanted to investigate wasn’t too bad, the slope up which the barrows have to be pushed to stack the spoil was a little greasy and we were careful to not overfill the…

A Brief Respite from the Rain The dry spring we have enjoyed so far is now behind us and it was touch and go whether we would go ahead or cancel Sunday’s session. Throughout the week the predicted weather for Sunday looked poor, but by Friday things started to look brighter both metaphorically and literally….

As the sun went down, so did we! With the lighter evenings and the continuing dry weather, the team has opted to do some excavations during the week after work. As cavers we are quite used to working in the dark and once the sun goes down we just get out some portable lights and…