A sough (pronounced /saʊ/ or /sʌf/) is an underground channel for draining water. It can be for draining mines; where the mine sump is lower than the outlet, water must be pumped up to the sough. It can also drain sloping farmland: these are to be found (at least) around the Pennine areas of East Lancashire to carry water from higher up, down through the clay based fields to reduce flooding and soft ground.

Derbyshire lead mining

The term is closely associated with the

lead Lead () is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Pb (from Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a Heavy metal (elements), heavy metal that is density, denser than most common materials. Lead is Mohs scale, soft and Ductility, malleabl ...

mining areas of

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It borders Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire to the north, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south-east, Staffordshire to the south a ...

(see

Derbyshire lead mining history This article details some of the history of lead mining in Derbyshire, England. Background Lutudarum (believed to have been at either Wirksworth or nearby Carsington) was the administrative centre of the Roman lead mining industry in Britain. ...

). Early Derbyshire lead mines were fairly shallow, since methods to remove water were inefficient and miners had to stop when they reached the

water table The water table is the upper surface of the phreatic zone or zone of saturation. The zone of saturation is where the pores and fractures of the ground are saturated with groundwater, which may be fresh, saline, or brackish, depending on the loc ...

. By digging soughs, miners found they could lower the water table and allow mines to be worked deeper. Soughs were typically dug from their open end near a stream or river back into the hillside beneath the mine to be drained. One sough would often drain more than one mine, since these were often very close, working the same vein of lead. This also helped spread the cost of digging the sough. Some soughs include branches to facilitate further drainage. Many soughs were dug throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. The falling price of lead brought the decline of the Derbyshire lead mining industry towards the end of the 19th century. Some soughs were very extensive. Meerbrook sough is over four miles in length. Digging such long tunnels took a long time. Vermuyden sough, named after the Dutch engineer, Cornelius Vermuyden, who planned it, took 20 years to dig. The Cromford sough, which Sir Richard Arkwright subsequently used to power his mill at Cromford, took 30 years to dig. It was still being extended a century after construction began. Some soughs are still in use. According to the

British Geological Survey The British Geological Survey (BGS) is a partly publicly funded body which aims to advance Earth science, geoscientific knowledge of the United Kingdom landmass and its continental shelf by means of systematic surveying, monitoring and research. ...

, the Meerbrook sough, started in 1772, still provides {{convert, 3.75, e6L a day for the public water supply.Water Wars: Meerbrook Sough
British Geological Survey, accessed 30 October 2012

Elsewhere

The

coal mining Coal mining is the process of resource extraction, extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its Energy value of coal, energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to Electricity generation, generate electr ...

industry depended on using soughs until the mines became too deep to be drained by this means. With the advent of the

steam engine A steam engine is a heat engine that performs Work (physics), mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a Cylinder (locomotive), cyl ...

, which could pump out water, soughs became less necessary for de-watering mines.J. Hatcher, ''History of the British Coal Industry: Before 1700: Towards the Age of Coal'' (Oxford 1993)

References

External links

Water Wars: Meerbrook Sough
British Geological Survey

Derbyshire lead mining

Elsewhere

See also

References

External links

Further reading