Great County Adit Trip... The longest man made drainage tunnel in the World !
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
- In this video we take a look at the amazing Cornish engineering feat which is said to be the longest man made drainage tunnel in the world.
Wheal Fortune is a mine which can be accessed via this drainage system and we have explored this before by dropping in through one of its open shafts.
The video for that is here: • Exploring Wheal Fortun...
The great County Adit was a network of interconnecting drainage tunnels that were made to allow water to pass out of the mines at the lowest possible level, saving the mine pumps from having to take the water from deep below the ground all the way up to the surface.
The adits construction began as early as 1748 and began to reduce pumping costs to the connected mines up in the Poldice valley.
Over the years the adit expanded to many other mine workings, reaching the Gwennap area, Chasewater and even as far as the outskirts of Redruth.
As mines exhausted reserves and went deeper, more water needed to be pumped, and the great county adit proved a great investment and saved huge mounts of money by efficently aiding the removal of water from the mines.
The adit is said to be almost 40 miles long and at its peak drained 13 million gallons a day.
The mines may have shut but the ground water from these abandoned workings still flow down into the Carnon River.
Do not attempt to repeat anything you see in this video, do remember we do now what we are doing and you could easily find yourself in a whole lot of trouble by attempting to do as we have done without the right equipment and experience to pull it off.
Thanks for watching and dont forget to subscribe for future mine exploring videos.
Amazing place, would love to explore it further. Same one I saw in that video about 7 years ago if I ever find it again, nice to see a new video on it with a much better camera and lighting. That video didn't explain the extent of it, so I had no idea. I'd love to do a floating trip lolol
Would love to see you explore the mines and adits around st Austell area. There are lots of shafts and most of the water runs through aqua ducts and shafts to Charlestown which was supposedly use for smugglers and are now underwater
Love the lazy river bit. Fascinating engineering all done old school.
Found this amazing. As an ex coal miner I appreciate what these old miners/tunnelers did. I can imagine how hard this work, especially compared to the type of working methods I worked in the deep mines of Derbyshie . Anyway now subbed. Looking forwards to more.
Cheers Greg. A few more on the way when I get a chance !
This is great, I started exploring mines in NJ in the US, and have done exactly this kind of exploration. I’m glad you can relate to these experiences, opening up these mines that nobody has been to in sometimes almost 100 years and going in, they are sacred places.
It still find it amazing that they managed to dig this and get the levels correct to link into all the other mines. My brain hurts just thinking how they knew even which direction to go in!
Ha ha smart people back then ! Yes it’s a wonder they were able to link it all up so well. And it all flows nicely at a steady rate without the water getting progressively deeper or having many deep spots etc !
@@BenoCam I wonder if it was similar to railway Tunnels. Sink the vent shafts and link between them to a known depth. Do you see many shafts above these small adits?
Further on where the walls come in and the ceiling is low are the walls deposits of mud/minerals rather than the original granite walls?
That’s the original ground, just looks disguised by years of mud and mineral deposits building up by the dripping water I think
Get on boy ....makes my heart race everytime i see your adventures. Thanks for sharing, lovely to see our history.😊 cheers.
Really love your videos mate. Edge of your seat stuff! Beats a weekend sat in front of the box that’s for sure! Stay safe down there!
Greerings from nottinghamshire 😁 Exerlant vid, 👍
Just fantastic to see 😀 I've been fascinated by the County Adit ever since I read about it a few years ago whilst off work due to a ridiculously stupid injury I inflicted on myself. All the stuff I read said it was impossibly dangerous to go into but perhaps that was to discourage the average casual idiot. Anyway amazing stuff, don't know what I was expecting but I guess I expected something a lot straighter and kind of surprised how small it is, wonder if it opens out in parts further up?
Cheers. From what we have experienced so far it just gets smaller and smaller the further up you go. Next time we will drop in at wheal fortune and continue on from there...
@@BenoCam 👍
Brilliant,👍
Can you explore any of the sandbagged side adits?
The first couple seem well sealed up and look like collapsed the other side. The next trip to do will be to start at wheal fortune where we have before and then continue to push north from there... going to be quite a trip though!
Great to see inside the County Adit after all these years. I have been in the Mount Wellington Adit many times but never had the balls to go into the County adit, the flow always looked too much and the height of the water was too deep.
Thanks for sharing this
Keep up the exploring and stay safe. 👍😁
Sadly the wellington adit is now concreted up ,,, there’s a few more in the valley I wouldn’t mind looking at though ! Every time I looked at the county adit in the past it has been too wet . I think we finally just got lucky !
Awesome Ben, not very often words fail me im a very chatty Yorkshire lass but this was incredible. ❤😊
Haha thank you. I keep meaning to go back and film a bit more there, maybe next summer 🙂
I have to wonder: what is the bat population like, in this part of Cornwall? Have you noticed a decline in numbers in the mine systems? We're facing some serious dying off in Canada.
Looking a bit orange coming out of there 😂
Was time we finished !
Brilliant ben I love your films have you ever tried going in the great work mine near Ashton, I have been caving myself but wouldn’t be brave enough to do mines although they are fascinating. Stays safe
Cheers Chris. I have looked around the surface there and found a few shafts but have never actually been down any. Always so many others to do ! 👍 more vids on the way when I get a chance
I love watching this one now and again, will you do a visit to the big chamber sometime, I've seen another channel do that years ago but it would be nice to see it with your camera and lighting :)
Oooo which big chamber ? The one with the ballance Bob pit ? We have done that in another vid via going in through a shaft. You need a really dry weather time to be able to get that far up from here. And it’s hard going !
Amazing channel, keep it up 👍👍 it's super sus but with safety ropes
wooow Amazing
In the first section the collapse in the roof is at least 3 years old. Be aware that an unscrupulous person empties their camp site sewerage into it further up!
Ooo nice! I had been warned about it but it was clear and clean smelling the day we filmed. I have often fancied going as far as you can go… but need an early start and a good days weather forecast !!
That's great! Thanks for posting. Do you know what date the first, reinforced section, is?
There’s a photo of it online from 1978 with a lot less undergrowth around it. I would guess at that end section being put on around the late 60s early 70s based on that, maybe slightly earlier.
@@BenoCam ok thanks! relatively recent then!
Really interesting watch. Couldn’t do it myself. Thanks
I wonder if it would be possible to re-map this with modern technology, either sending a water drone up from the entrance or dropping floats in at strategic locations upstream
Very good video very informative
Ha thank you . More on the way when I get a chance !
Ben what are all those blue harness looking things? 7:06
That’s just my backpack I put on one of the ledges. I use it to carry my peli cases which have the cameras /video lights and spare battery’s in 🙂
@@BenoCam ah ok, I did wonder what they could be lol.. I just love your channel. It blows me away, what I get to see all that way below ground that I otherwise would never see! It’s incredible, our ancestors were hardy men and women, it’s incredible! Makes me so proud to be Cornish.
Ps I should also point out love your diving videos too.. @@BenoCam Have to say your channel is one of my favourites. Thank you for sharing your videos.
Brilliant explore. Did you find any creepy clowns down there?
Only the two that went In 🤣
@@BenoCam 🤣 brilliant. Out of interest, do you know if the water from Wheal Jane goes into those adits?
@@matthewsleeman6716 when wheal Jane flooded that time it came out of nangiles , so i think its all going slightly further down the valley to be able to intercept County Adit.....
@@BenoCamah cool, that makes sense. Myself and a couple of colleagues monitor the minerals sites in Cornwall, so it's great to see your videos and learn about the older mines.
Looks like the roofs addit
The point at which you stopped looked to be very narrow.
It doesn’t get any bigger I’m afraid ! They only took out what they had to
can you get to fortune where you popped out in your other video still?
Yep , but only this time of year when it’s dry !!
And after heavy rainfall it stinks of sewage !!
Thanks for this
love ur channel and learning new things about my home kernow
sound
Would not fancy going down there to be honest have you ever experienced anything paranormal down these mines must have been a lot of people died over the years
Ha nah I’m not a believer in that at all. Sorry to dissapoint ! I have visited a large amount of shipwreck sites too, often with large numbers of lives lost and never felt or noticed anything out of the ordinary so far !
@@BenoCam no ghost pirates - or even pirate ghosts? I gather the latter are ghosts that take up pirating after death
Become addicted to your channel this last fortnight. I cannot believe the effin' scale of the mine and adit systems beneath Cornwall. On that note, how was it more cost effective to dig this behemoth out than just pump the water? Surely that would be cheaper in terms of labor and materials? Pumping out mines kick-started the industrial revolution after all....
Ha thanks. The channel started as a bit of fun but we are now slowly bridging the gap between daring adventurers and educational history lesson 🤣 with trying to combine the two.
They estimate that the county adit cost £250,000 to construct , starting in 1748 and being extended many times into what it is now around the mid 1800s.
I read that when fully constructed it was saving the mine industry collectively around £20,000 a year, I’m guessing this is in coal and the labour associated with pumping costs.
The county adit project was also a great example of how many different mine owners and shareholders all agreed to work together to achieve what they did.
In the 1860s there were more than 30 steam engines pumping into this network of adits... these were pretty inefficient and any help in not having to bring that water all the way up to the surface was always going to help.
In places the County Adit was over 100m below the surface ... that’s a lot of height to save pumping water ! Not to mention the extra clack valves, pump rods and engineering bits required.
I went caving a few times as an army recruit in the 90s and it terrifies me. Even this video puts me on edge. Thanks for sharing all the same 😅
🤣👍👍