Wheal Maid Decline - REDISCOVERED Lost Mine. Historic Tunnel FOUND. First eyes to see after 40 years

Описание: Hello and welcome to our latest underground adventure- The search and eventual rediscovery of the Wheal Maid Decline !

Ever since we began exploring mines more than 20 years ago we have wanted to be able to visit the workings of the Maid decline, but sadly for all this time the site has been unacessable... Until Now !

An internet and YouTube first, come and join us on this amazing adventure from the safety of your own home as we risk everything being the first team to access and document these old workings, which took several underground visits and many hours of hard work to finally reach and record for you the public to enjoy.

If you are unaware of the history of the Maid Decline, we will Recap below. All of this information is available in the video.

In the early 1980s, Carnon Consolidated Tin Mines Ltd started to explore the area of the old Consols and United mine workings in the Parish of Gwennap near St Day.

A decline shaft was driven in the base of the valley, cutting 3 mineralised Veins and reaching a distance of 655 meters.
At a depth of around 100m some levels of an older set of mine workings were intercepted, and one of the shafts there was fitted out to be used an an emergency access route.

The project was abandoned in 1985 following the collapse in the price of tin and shortly afterwards was sealed up for good.
For a short time after there was an access hole and the workings were explored not long after closure, which was when some photographs were taken showing the inside of the tunnel going down, these are the only known record of the Wheal Maid decline underground.

During landscape works to make the site safe for the public, the entire enterance to the decline was backfilled, burying the whole area with many meters of material originally removed during its construction.

This video, the mission to relocate and record the Maid Decline actually started a few years ago, exploring some of the many open shafts that still litter the area.

After studying the abandoned mine plans, we realised that there still might be a way into the workings by accessing some of the older mine workings in the area of the decline.
The plans clearly showed that during construction, the decline holed 'Noels Shaft' which was an older set of workings on the virgin lode.

After multiple trips underground, we found some stoping going up, which had an internal shaft within in which had been capped on the surface.
There was strong evidence to show that this was most likely 'Bustons' Shaft, which was connected to Noels shaft a short distance away via a shallow adit.

The problem we had was this shaft went up over 40m above us, and no easy to be able to climb to the top, this certainly wasn't going to be easy, but then if it was, someone would have done it by now.

One of the hardest challenges we had was getting the equipment to the bottom of the workings we needed to climb, no easy task dragging gear through narrow muddy tunnels only 5 feet high in places and at times waist deep in water.
It would then take us two complete days to rig the stoping with ladders and brackets and safely bolt and rig the shaft so that we could get to the top.

One more short tunnel and we found ourselves at Noels shaft, and at the bottom of that there was the emergency access point into the decline itself, just as the mine plans showed.

Hopefully you enjoyed this video and can appreciate the amount of work and hours that went into making it, if you havent already please subscribe to the channel, give us a like or maybe leave a comment telling us what you thought.

As with all my videos please do not try and recreate this journey. We are highly trained and experienced in completing this kind of mission safely.

Special thanks to Eric on this one for the hard work involved, we did question why we were doing this for fun a few times but hopefully the end result was worth the effort. I think the excitement of discovering the decline itself came across quite well on camera and makes the whole project worthwhile.

Thanks for watching and we will catch you again soon for more mine exploring videos.