The Mine
A ghost story by L.T.C. Rolt based on
Snailbeach Mine
There
was a high west wind over the Shropshire Marches – a boisterous, buffeting wind
that swept down the slopes of the Long
Mynd and over the Vale of Severn to send November leaves whirling through the
darkness from the mane of Wenlock Edge.
It cried about the walls of the Miners’ Arms at Chidden, hurling scuds
of rain to rattle like flung gravel against the window-panes. It was a night to
make men glad of the warmth and cheer of the fireside.
“Why
is it called Hell’s Mouth? Ah, now that’s a long story that is”. With a natural sense of drama, the old man
paused to allow the interest of his audience to quicken. He took a deep and noisy draught form mug
which was mulling on the hob, filled a yellowing clay pipe with fine black shag
from a battered tin and lit it with an untidy spill of newspaper, which he
thrust between the bars of the grate.
Then at last, settling himself more comfortably in the chimney corner,
he began his tale.
“If
you got here afore dark, maybe you noticed the old mines on the hill
yonder. Well, they were lead mines and
were working up to – let me see – fifteen years ago; all but the one right on
top of the hill, that is, and that’s been closed these fifty years. Now this be the mine you’ve been on about,
though in the old days it were called Long Barrow Mine because there’s a great
mound up there which they do say was
some old burial place when Adam was a boy-chap.
I never heard tell of anyone who could say rightly who were buried
there, although folks who know about such things have set to a-digging there
many a time but never got much forrarder.
Not that any of them stayed at it very long. It seems to get on their nerves like, for it
be a queer lonely place up there even in day-time and, though rabbits do swarm
on these hills, you’ll never see a one there, nor any other natural creature
neither. Knowing what I know, I don’t
blame them for packing up.
Now,
in the old days when my father was a young man, there was a horse-tram road –
Ginny rails we call ’em – between the mines and
It
was about this time – one Michaelmas – that the trouble started at Long Barrow
Mine. I can remember it as plain as if
it were yesterday. We had our shed up
there then and we’d just come up with our last load of empties, unhooked, and
were running the engine into the shed, when the chaps came off shift. Now, the path from the mine down the hill led
past the door of our shed, and I had dropped my fire and was having a last look
round just to see everything was right for the night as they come walking
by. Usually they would be a-chattering,
joking and calling to each other, for they were a merry lot, but this night
they were quiet like or talking hushed to each other, and this was the first
thing that struck me as being a bit queer..
So when one of them, that was a cousin of mine – Joe Beecher his name
was – come walking by , I called out to him to know what they was all acting
glum about. He turned back into the shed
and told me what the trouble was. It was
fast falling dark by this time, but I can see his face now in the light of my
fire, which was still a-glowing between the rails by the door.
They
had struck a new vein just about that time and it seems that Joe and his mates
had been working on this new level. Mind
you, it wasn’t like the mines you know today, for there was only about fifteen
men at the most below ground. Well, at
midday they knocked off for a bite of ‘Tommy’, and started walking back down
the level to join their mates. When they
got half way, he said, his mate Bill remembered he’d left his tea-can behind
and set off back to fetch it while Joe went on and joined the others. They had a laugh about Bill when he was so
long finding his can, but when snapping time was nearly up and still no signs
of him, Joe said he got a bit worried , and set off down the level to see what
had happened to him. He got to the end, and then he said he came over horrid
queer because Bill wasn’t there at all, so that he felt scared of the dark and
the hush there, and hollered out for the others to come down. So they came and looked too, and sure enough
there was nothing to be seen of Joe’s mate.
There’d been no fall to bury him, and of course there were no other way
out of the level. They just stood there
for a moment very quiet like, and then set off back down the level as fast as
they could. Joe said something seemed to
be telling him that the sooner he cleared out the better for him, and he reckoned
the others must have felt that way too.
He finished up by saying something that sounded a bit crazed to me at
the time, about the darkness being angry.
Anyway, none of them durst set foot in that level for a long while after
that.”
The
old man paused, drained his beer mug and, sucking the drooping fringe of his
moustache, seemed to ruminate sadly over its emptiness. His mug replenished and his reeking pipe
re-lit, he settled himself once more and resumed his tale. “Nothing else happened for a twelve-month or
more, except that they had to give up the new level because no one would work
there. But there come a time when they’d
worked out the veins on the old levels, and it was a matter of opening up the
new level again, seeing as it was very rich, or shutting down altogether. Things had quieted down a bit by this, mind,
but for all that they had to give the chaps more pay afore they agreed to go
back.
It
must have been a fortnight or more after they’d started on the new level again,
that we were up there waiting for a return load of trams, and had gone into the
winding-house to have a word with Harry Brymer, who was the engine-man there in
them days. Died ten year ago up at his
daughter’s at Coppice Holt, he did. It
was an old beam winder as was there then, gone for scrap a long time back,
though you can still see the engine-house plain as can be on top of the hill,
while the old chimney be a landmark tem mile away on a clear day. Well Harry was telling us how they’d had
nothing but trouble ever since they’d started on the new level – noting much,
mind, but just enough to make the men nervy and talk of an ill luck on the
place, although Harry said he reckoned nothing to it for his part.
It
was while we were talking to Harry, leaning over the guard rails round the drum
and having a smoke, that the bell wire started to play the monkey. There was no such new-fangled notion as
electricity in those days, of course, and the signal for winding was a bell as
was hung on the wall and rung from the shaft bottom by a wire cable working
through pulleys and guides. Well it was
this cable that started a-jangling to and fro in the guides just enough to set
the bell moving, but not enough to ring it proper. The three of us stopped out clacking and
stood dumbstruck watching this bell moving and the cable jerking. And somehow it felt queer standing there in
the half-light watching it and waiting for it to make up its mind, like,
whether to ring or not.
Then
all of a sudden it starts ringing like mad, and kept on, too; so Harry started winding while we went to the
doorway to look for the cage, for by that time we had a notion as summat was
up. When her came there was only one man
on her and that was Joe Beecher; I just caught sight of his face as he come up
and I’ll never forget the way he looked.
He never said nor shouted nothing, nor even saw us, but almost afore the
cage stopped he was off and away across the yard, and we could see him running
for dear life over the waste mound and along the hillside. And as he ran he kept looking hack over his shoulder
and then running the harder, for all the world as though Old Nick himself were
after him,. Then he got to Dyke Wood and
we lost sight of him because it was that dark under the trees.
Now
this gave Harry and me a pretty turn, I can tell you, but that was nothing to
my mate. When we were watching Joe
a-running he lets out a yell like a screech owl and then cries out loud, ‘Run,
run for Christ’s sake!’ When we couldn’t
see Joe no more we turned to look at him and he’d gone down all of a heap on
the floor. We reckoned then he must have
seen summat as we missed, but it was some hours afore he came round, and a week
or more afore he could talk plain. Even
then it very near set him off again in the telling. I can tell you that if I’d known then what it
was he saw, I’d never have gone down that mine as I did with several others as
had been working above ground. Even as
it was, it was a bit strange, to say the
least, going down in that cage and wondering what we were going to see when we
got to the bottom.
I
know that none of us expected what we did find when we had stepped out of the
cage and walked off down the new level – just the quiet and the dark – not a
sign of a mortal soul. I understood then
what poor Joe had meant about the darkness being angry. I’m not an educated man, if I were maybe I
could find a better word for the feeling there was down in that mine. It just
told me pretty plain that we weren’t wanted down there, and the sooner we
cleared out the better for us. I reckon
the others must have felt the same thing, for we soon set off back to the cage,
walking pretty smart for a start and finishing at a run, so that we fell
a-jostling back into the cage like so many sheep into a pen, and mighty glad we
were to see daylight, I can tell you.”
The
old man paused, rubbing his hands nervously, one over the other, and drawing
his chair nearer to the fire as though suddenly chilled. “We found Joe Beecher in Dyke Wood”., he went
on, “at the bottom of the old quarry as there is there. We covered up his face quick with a
coat. I didn’t fear God nor man in them
days, but it were too much for me, and it didn’t seem right that a mortal face
should take that shape. Meanwhile, of
course, my mate was took pretty bad.
He’d just lie on his bed come day go day and not a word to anyone, but
in the night he’d start shaking all over and crying out something terrible,
same as he’d done the first time in the engine-house. He nearly drove his old woman crazy too, but
after a time he quieted down until one day he was man enough to tell us what it
was he saw.
Then
he said that when the cage came up there was something crouched a-top of it,
holding onto the cables. He couldn’t see
it very plain, he said, not half as clear as he could see Joe even in the
half-light, but it had a human shape, he thought, even if it did seem terrible
tall and thin, and it seemed to be a kind of dirty white all over, like summat
that’s grown up in the dark and never had no light. When the cage stopped it come down and made
after Joe as quick and quiet as a cat after a sparrow. He could hear Joe’s running plain enough
across the yard, he said, but this thing made never a sound, though it went
fast enough and was catching up on him , so that when he got to the edge of the
wood it looked as if it was reaching out for him with its arms.
Well I can’t tell you no more. No one ever went down that mine again, and we
cut the cage ropes and the guides and covered over the mouth of the shaft wt
girt old timbers all bolted fast. A bit
foolish, maybe you think, but when we heard my mate’s tale we fancied, like,
that something might come a-crawling up.
Any road, that’s how it come to be named Hell’s Mouth instead of Long
Barrow. For myself I reckon hell be too
good a name for it. Bible says hell be
fire and brimstone, but at any rate fire is something I can understand and I
could abide it better than the dark and the quiet down there.”
Chidden = Pontesbury
Coppice Holt = Lordshill
Dyke Wood = Snailbeach Coppice
Half-way Mine = Tankerville Mine
Long Barrow Mine = Snailbeach Mine
Shroppie Cut =