Stocks House Shaft. Priddy, Mendip.

When:  29 Mar 2014  14.30 – 16.30 pm.
Where:  Stocks House Shaft. Priddy, Mendip.
Who:    Darren T, Rich T.

Stocks House Shaft is in Stock Hill Forest and about 50 metres from the Cornish Shaft entrance to Five BuddIes Sink.  It is thought possible that it could have been one of Thomas Bushell's twenty shafts, sunk around 1657 in the search for a natural cave or "swallow" from which drain unwanted water from the flooded lead mines. A number of mining relics were recovered when it was excavated by the BEC between 1999 and 2001.
The entrance is a concrete tube lined shaft some 15m deep. This intercepts a small stream way which leads through some gnarly crawl areas, a 6m high boulder filled rift and into a natural passage which ends in a heavily silted too tight passage some100m later.  The part called Silt level is a flat out crawl through the stream way and under a low passage.
A very interesting mine especially when its the first entrance pitch you rig yourselves for SRT.

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