Geevor

Tin Mine Museum

2009

Stoping

Extract taken from Burt, R. 1982. A Short History of British Metal Mining Technology
in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. De Archologische Pers Nederland

The process of breaking and extracting the ore from the vein was known as
'stoping'. It could be conducted in two ways. The ore could be cut from the floor of
the gallery, thus proceeding in a downward direction, with the 'deads' or hand-
sorted rubbish being thrown up on to 'stemples', which were wooden or stone
arched platforms erected across the workings above the miners' heads. Alterna-
tively, the ore could be cut from above the roof of the gallery, thus driving in an
upward direction, with the rubbish falling on the floor for sorting and packing into
exhausted spaces or on platforms below the miners' feet. The former downward
method was known as 'underhand stoping' and the latter upward method as
overhand stoping. With both methods the miners behaved rather like moles,
cutting the lodes from above or below them and filling in behind with the hand-
sorted waste material which it was not worth hauling to the surface for dressing.
On occasions, when the lodes were wide and the ground unstable, this packing
was also used to support the walls and roof of the workings. Where the waste
produced by stoping or dead work was insufficient to provide such packing, it
was not unusual for mines to quarry rock at the surface and take it underground
to supplement the normal supply. This was done at the great Van lead mine in
Montgomeryshire during the 1870s, for example, where several men were kept
constantly employed at the quarry adjoining the mine in obtaining slate which
was trammed and tipped down two specially designated rubbish shafts for
distribution underground.

Underhand stoping was probably the oldest method and was the usual practice
in most mining areas until the late eighteenth century. Although it then began to
be gradually replaced by the overhand method -which was fir st introduced into
Britain by German miners during the early eighteenth century-underhand
stoping continued in use in many small mines and parts of larger mines
throughout the nineteenth century. Cornish mining engineers, particularly John
Taylor and Sons, played a major role in diffusing the overhand method through
the mines of Wales and the Pennines during the nineteenth century.

Overhand stoping, offered the advantage of requiring less labour for the
disposal of deads; less timber for the storage of deads, i.e., it required only one
 Geevor
Tin Mine Museum
2009

long stope instead of several successive stages; and greater safety for the
miners, particularly where the walls of the vein were unstable and stemples
could not be securely fixed.

The underhand system appears to have survived only where the lodes were
weak and friable and where there were rich silver ores, since it made it easier for
the miners to pick over the cut ore and extract the rich pieces of galena or
silver. The early predominance of the underhand system probably resulted from
the practice in small, under-capitalised mines of simply pursuing ore lodes
downwards f r o m the surface. It was only with the expansion in the scale of
mining in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and larger initial
investment in sinking shafts and opening gallery systems as a preliminary to
full-scale working, that ore lodes could begin to be approached from below.