Owshaw Clough Mine Filtration Ruins

The ruined filter beds and small ‘hut’ are made from concrete and are of an uncertain age. Certainly more recently constructed than the old mines but of a style of construction perhaps used in the 1950s or a bit earlier. The buildings aren’t shown on any maps that I know of.

A narrow aeration cascade leads down the hillside to some small filter beds before a weird little concrete hut with windows. There are old pipes in the stream bed of the Stones Bank Brook just below that perhaps kept the water separated.

There is an old mine shaft on the flat land above around 10 metres vertically. Imagining the water to flow out of the mine at the lowest level, perhaps the old shaft was around this deep.

Water flowing out from mines is generally heavily contaminated with various metals and other minerals - naturally occuring but liberated from the rock in large quantities - that can poison waterways it flows into. In this area the mines where for coal and fireclay but they release a lot of iron from associated rock strata which can be seen as reddish ‘ochre’ where it reaches the surface.

Created: 11  July  2021  Edited: 29  November  2023