Welcome to the seventh Cave Bagger event.
This event will be held at the Devils Pit, which is inside the mine.
We will meet at the entrance waypoint 15 minutes before the event time and make our way to the event location as a group. (Dont go direct to the event coords or you'll be 100ft too high and lonely... cough...Nick Gilbey!!!)
There will be the usual geochat, trackable swapping and possibly cake!.
Entrance into Wapping Mine involves a climb through a hole in a wall. I'll bring a short ladder but you do need to be reasonably agile.
Once inside it is fairly roomy with mainly dry walking passage but it is a cave so come prepared for some crawling, scrambling and water (hopefully not as much as Carlswark Cavern!)
AS A BARE MINIMUM YOU WILL REQUIRE A HELMET, A GOOD TORCH (PLUS BACKUP TORCH AND BATTERIES) AND SUITABLE FOOTWEAR/CLOTHING. (I recommend wellies, fleece base layers and a waterproof outer.)
ANYONE WHO ARRIVES WITHOUT APPRIOPRIATE EQUIPMENT/CLOTHING WILL BE TURNED AWAY BECAUSE IT IS UNSAFE AND LIKELY TO ATTRACT ADVERSE COMMENT/COMPLAINT FROM OTHER NON-GEO CAVERS PUTTING FUTURE EVENTS AT RISK.
Please feel free to message me prior to the event if you have any questions or concerns.
For any late comers I will leave 'Cave Bagger' signs to point you to the event location.
If you do choose to enter it is at your own risk although in the spirit of previous events we will all look after each other and hopefully no one will get left underground!
I have entered this mine once before and I will bring A copy of the Survey or 'cave map'.
A copy of the survey can also be found here.
WAPPING MINE/CUMBERLAND CAVERN
Wapping Mine is an old shaft and adit working on the Moletrap Rake. A George the 2nd shilling that was found when it was being reworked suggests that is was being worked in the 1750's. The first workings where probably only for the extraction of galena, and these seemed to be limited to a few short ore strings from the Moletrap Vein.
From 1924 onwards the mine was reworked for fluorspar and the main areas of working where on the Moletrap Vein and the Maze located at the northwest end of the mine. The Maze is a confusing warren of passages and pockets, which did not actually yield a large amount of fluorspar. After 1936 not much more activity took place until 1953 when it was worked again quite intensively for around 3 years. During this time an opencast section was started at the adit, which advanced westwards along the rake, however a collapse in 1954 brought the front end of the mine down. The Incline Level, located southwest from the main adit was also driven in this period in an attempt to cross the vein from the Main Stope working, but this proved to be unfruitful.
Cumberland Cavern, whose original name is Cumberland Mine, is an old working most likely developed at the same time as Wapping Mine. It is above the Wapping workings by some 12m, and has two connections with it. The Funnel Cave at the end of the Forth Stope in Wapping and the Devils Pit, which leads into the Maze. A lot of the workings in Cumberland Cavern seem to have broken into natural chambers, which is reinforced by the fact that there a very few shot holes. The mine looks to have been worked once and was opened in 1780 as a show cave. Queen Victoria visited the show cave and it then became known as Royal Cumberland Cavern, though it is not usually referred to as this. After the show cave was closed, somewhere in between the late 1960's and early 1970's a gang call the "Troggs" occupied the show cave resulting in large amounts of graffiti in some of its chambers.