Drygill
Caldbeck Fells, Cumberland
History
Plum-Bog-ummite...
Drygill was one of the first mineral localities I really ever went to.
I'd seen some bright orange crystals from Caldbeck - a place called Drygill. I wanted some. Badly. Dick Barstow intervened. He'd started a dig and had some contacts. Grant lived at the farm at the foot of the fell, and we soon struck up a friendship that resulted in me almost living on the farm. Our first visit to Drygill was on the old Massey Ferguson tractor - the collecting gear stacked in the sheep carrier on the back. It soon became apparent that this was a major locality. More digs were organised, and I became Campylite King - boxes of the stuff piled up at home - almost every week I'd be up there digging away - sometimes on my own for days at a time. My mum came up to one dig - it was a fine summer's day and she sat in the opencut picking away at rocks. She came over with a little piece of quartz with a lovely blue mamillary coating on it. Grant grabbed it and his face split into a laugh - 'Hey - Guys... look.... it really DOES come from here - Plum Bog Ummite ...' My mum was a hero...
This was the first plumbogummite specimen found in recent times, and it confirmed that the mine really had produced good material. I still have it, in pride of place, sandwiched between trays full of specimens we mined in later years, together with the lovely material that Ralph Sutcliffe found lower down in the bottom stope. Have a look further down these pages to see some of my specimens...
Grant and I went up there one day to dig - we left the old tractor at the top of the shaft and climbed down to find the main stope full of half wrapped specimens and tools everywhere. We looked all over the place and couldnt find anyone - so assumed whoever it was had gone. We pulled the tool and specimens up to surface and put them in the tractor. After a day of collecting we headed down to the farm - and showed Harry Waller - Grants dad. He pounced on the tools "Bloody people - never asked my permission to be up there - I'll have them hammers and crowbars..! " He stowed them in one of the barns. Next day we went back up, and were surprised to find Lindsay Greenbanks and Ralph Sutcliffe stomping around on the top of the opencut - and promptly started shouting at us... It turned out that they were digging a tunnel at the bottom of the beck, trying to access the workings at the lower end, and had left their kit in the stope the day before. We decided it was a case of finders keepers, and left them to argue their case with Harry at the farm.. Suffice to say that Lindsay and Ralph were sent packing by Harry, and I suspect that's probably why Lindsay would never speak to either of us after that !
In those days most of the best campylite was in the floor of the main stope by one of the pillars. A lot of collectors just blindly went down and hammered the walls, resulting in much of the best campylite being buried in the floor of the stope, where no doubt it still remains. There was a bit piller forming part of the shaft, and many of my best bits came from this. Dick Barstow worked an area further down, where an internal shaft dropped down to the bottom level that Ralph was digging. It was a bit of a death trap and I dont know anyone that actually went down that shaft. Dick dropped his estwing hammer down it one day and cursed loudly and roundly. It was many years later that I found it again, digging in the rubble from the shaft, in the lower level. Just at the top of that shaft is a short level that exits to the surface. Dick and I pushed an iron rail out to daylight, and if you know where to dig, you can still find the end of that rail. It marks one of at least 5 entrances to the Drygill workings that I personally know of. A recent Mineralogical Record article on the mine was written unfortunately by folk with much less knowledge of the place, and its a pity that it fell short when it came to recent history of collecting.
Drygill is a sad place these days - opencuts overgrown, entrances and stopes collapsed and almost obliterated - what a sad end for such a glorious locality that is so world famous. Another few years and you'll never know there was a mine there - probably just what the national parks people want.
Plumbo photo by Jeff Scovil.. This is the bit my mum found all those years ago.
Clearing snow from the steel lid which used to cover the main shaft - Dick and Ralph put this in place in about 1976-77 in conjunction with Lindsay Greenbanks who originally found it.
A tale of Dick Barstow!
Dick was getting worried. I was finding as much as he was - if not more. The monthly lists were carrying campylite, pyromorphite, sphalerite, fluorite, barite - all dug during the many visits I was making up north. He started to accompany me on some of these trips - especially Drygill.
One day, we'd gone down the shaft and Dick was burrowing in a hole on the south side of the shaft. There was a little wooden platform there, and he was perched on the end of a plank of wood which crossed the shaft. I was digging into the pillar which held the stope open, and with a huge rumble, a pile of stacked deads and vein material fell out of the pillar and crashed down onto Dicks' staging. He disappeared in a thick cloud of choking black psilomelane dust...
I picked myself up from the rubble pile at the bottom of the shaft where I'd fallen, and started to look for him. After a while, I heard a plaintive squeak from above my head, and looked up to see a pair of white eyes peering from a sooty black face - at the TOP of the shaft above where I'd been working. He was safe. The rock had hit the end of the plank, and catapulted him upwards to land in a small recess cut into the side of the stope! Many of the campylites shown on the minerals page of this site were found during those trips with Dick.
The Range Rover at the shaft entrance in later years... Farm in the background at the bottom of the valley. Its interesting to note that after all the accusations of rape and destruction of the fells by the LDNPA (for the overseas readers - this is a bunch of do-gooder authoritarians who think they own the countryside!!) with regard to mineral localities, this photo says it all. We'd been up there for years, and all you could see was a little hole in the ground. No damage, no rubbish, nothing. And at the end of our efforts, we'd photographed the workings, recorded the cavities, and made a large volume of material available for the world at large. I'd say a good proportion of the campylite on the market today came from our efforts, and I'm sure the world is a better place for it!!!
The silly thing is that more recently, notices went up in the beck, accusing people of collecting from the dumps, and threatening the police. The idiots that put them there were referring to the old manganese dump below the main workings, which certainly looked like it had been dug. It had. By winter floods which are rapidly ripping away the dumps, and eroding all of the outcrops at a far faster rate than any collector ever could. The small minded civil servants putting these signs up have no idea just how powerful are the forces of nature up there - they've probably never even been there.
The Vug
This was the biggest vug ever found in Drygill. Measuring nearly 2 foot long, it contained numerous world class specimens, and took over a week to extract, despite operations being interrupted by a rescue that took 2 days! One of the pieces from this vug, found and extracted by Pete Ward, is on page 112 of 'Cooper and Stanley - Minerals of the English Lake District'. Peter exchanged it shortly after discovery with Dick Barstow, for a collection of West Cumberland Barites.
Photos of the specimens below which were taken from The Vug, are courtesy of Jeff Scovil.
More specimens..
These are just a few of the amazing bits in the Pete Ward collection. Most photos here by Jeff Scovil.
Ex Philadelphia Academy collection. Via Wayne Leicht.
The Flame. Collected 1977. Pete Ward collection
Collected 1977 - Pete Ward collection
Very old piece, with plumbogummite. I'm certain this is one from a pocket that was obtained by Bryce Wright, most of which ended up in the NHM. I suspect this was traded out, and ended up in Ralph Sutcliffes hands at one point.
Collected 1978 - Pete Ward collection
One of the best barite specimens, over campylite. Collected 1978 - Pete Ward collection