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Clwyd Metal Mines Survey


Minera Meadows Shaft

Minera Meadows Shaft lies in the community of Minera in the county of Wrexham. It is located at Ordnance Survey national grid reference SJ2748950944. The mine is recorded in the CPAT Historic Environment Record as number 104275 and this number should be quoted in all correspondence.

Lead/Silver/Zinc (1847-1913)

Geology
Carboniferous Limestone.

Workings
The site worked the Main Vein and Red Vein to the south-eastern extremity of the Minera Mines sett until 1909. The shaft was used for pumping and raising ore. The site forms Area 3 of the Land Reclamation Scheme for Minera and after several years of waste clearance, excavation and consolidation it has now been opened as an open-air museum.

Transport
The mineral railway ran from 1851 linking Meadows Shaft and the New Brighton processing areas with all the main shafts. The private railway was GWR gauge, ensuring that coal, timber etc could be brought into the area directly by interchanging engines only. The line is clearly visible and forms a public footpath. Tramways moved materials about on the site itself.

Power
Meadows Shaft, or City Shaft as it is known at 1220ft is the deepest shaft in Clwyd. Its 44" Cornish Engine House stands to full height, together with its chimney and the foundations of the boiler house, which contained two Cornish boilers 7ft x 30ft long. The stonework survives that housed the balance box, which counterbalanced the weight of the pump rods. The new 44" pumping engine at Meadows Shaft was installed in 1847, when new company was formed. A compressor engine at Meadows Shaft piped compressed air to all the main shafts, forcing foul air up from the workings. It also served the compressed air tools and the pneumatic rock drill invented by G F Wynne, the mine manager. In 1858, a 20" steam engine with horizontal cylinder was installed to power the rope winder and rock crusher. The housing for this and its boiler house stand alongside the crusher house to the north-east of the Meadows Engine House.

Processing
In 1888, the Minera Lead Mining Co built their own lead processing plant at New Brighton, previously the lead was being shipped to smelt works at Swansea. The smelt orks only operated for about three years; too much lead was lost in the waste and its recovery proved uneconomical. The later smelting works on the New Brighton site were an improvement on the old methods. Men worked undercover attending washing tables, which processed slimes. Dressing machinery foundations remain on Area 3b of the reclamation programme, but the smelter chimney base may be outside the area. To the front of the Meadows Shaft, the line of a tramway can be seen that carried the ore to the fine pair of semi-circular ore bins with their picking grates in situ. An inclined tramway carried the ore to the crusher house. To the front of the open-air museum on its north-eastern perimeter, a fine example of a circular buddle has been excavated and consolidated.

Other features
No evidence.

Comments
Scheduled 1997 as a well-preserved group of mining remains of late 19th century date.


This HTML page is reproduced from the Powys and Clwyd Metal Mine Surveys which were undertaken between May 1992 and December 1993 by Mark Walters and Pat Frost of the Clwyd Powys Archaeological Trust with financial support from Powys County Council, Clwyd County Council and Cadw: Welsh Historic Monuments. Further information about this site is available in CPAT's Regional Historic Environment Record.
Page produced by Rachel Stebbings and Chris Martin.

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