History
The Great Oolite stone, used for building purposes, formed over 146 million years ago when the area was underneath a deep tropical sea on which the shells of ooliths were deposited. The ooliths bonded together to form the distinctive rock known as oolitic limestone or locally as ‘Bath stone’. The Romans found that it was easily worked and used it for important fortifications. During the 17th Century, small quarries were opened, with major quarries being developed in the 18th Century to produce the Bath stone used for many of the buildings in Bath and elsewhere in the UK, including Buckingham Palace. Stone was extracted by the "room and pillar" method, by which chambers were mined, leaving pillars of stone to support the roof. These mines were once owned by Postmaster General Ralph Allen (1694-1764).
The mines contain a range of features including well preserved tramways, cart-roads and crane bases. The walls and pillars are studded with pick and tool marks and show evidence of the use of huge stone saws, all of which bear testimony to the variety of techniques used to extract the stone over the mine's three hundred year history.
No mine abandonment plans — either of the tunnels or the caverns, known as voids — were made prior to the 1872 Mining Act.
During 1989 a utilities contractor unexpectedly broke through into part of the mine complex whilst excavating a trench, which resulted in Bath City Council commissioning studies to survey the condition of the mines. It was clear that the mines were in very unstable and some experts considered them to be the largest, shallowest and most unstable of their kind in Europe.
Read more about this topic: Combe Down And Bathampton Down Mines
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