Visited with Edus1 and his two mates

Part of the Ffrith fireclay works which was a small works situated in a steeply wooded valley near Brymbo. It grew out of a small colliery concern sometime around 1890 but appears to have closed before 1914. A later company of the same name did exist to mine the site's fireclay.

Nicknamed Hanabys level as the mine owner was an ET Hanaby.

In Deeper as the coal authority are aware of it, we arrived to find the arched brick drift unsealed by previous explorers knocking a hole through the top left area where it had been previously bricked and the CA had been along and (very poorly) tried to prevent access by sticking a bit of wire fence over it.

This is one of the reasons i dont really like the CA, theyre not prepared to initially seal it despite being aware of it but you can bet your bottom dollar that if they saw these pics it would be concreted over in a week.


The drift as we found it (well almost, we may have peeled the fence back slightly ) in its little cutting


Perfect circle of brick built drift (i may have gotten slightly overexcited about this)


Which led to unhewn rock


on a very steep incline, at a guess we probably went down at least a hundred feet and along about 400, the air getting thinner and thinner, about halfway along was a level which was collapsed after 40 yards or so

(ed exploring said level with main tunnel heading downwards, hopefully he has a better pic)


There were some nice formations on the wall as we headed further on down:


But unfortunately not long after this we came to the end of the road, water (i unfortunately have no pic and i dont think ed has either as it was at this point we both turned to each other and admitted we were struggling to breathe so a swift exit was made with a pic or two on the way out)

Looking back towards daylight


Ed shoots where the brick ends and the rock begins


Theres a fair bit of above ground stuff knocking around too, obvious tramways, loading bays and other associated buildings and even another drift which i failed to find.

Finally on the way home we popped into Bersham for another (for me anyway) look at the superb headstocks and engine house and as a massive bonus(for ed anyway) security let him up the headstocks (hence the pics being in here, he's a nice guy and we dont want him to lose his job)







Security also happened to mention that air products last shift is 18 dec, so put that in your calendars.

[Edus1]

No he bravely opted to take pictures of me from the ground

Thanks for that si i know how you desperatly wanted to go up and how hard it was for you to stay on the ground