Main engine house and associated structures, Skelton Park disused iron mine

Main Engine House and Associated Structures, Skelton Park Disused Iron Mine

This is the main winding and pumping engine house for Bell Brothers' Skelton Park iron mine, built in 1872. It is constructed of good quality rockfaced sandstone ashlar with margined dressings, with fragmentary remains of timber sash windows and other joinery still visible.

The building is built into rising ground, with the main operational floor at first floor level. The winding engine occupies the rear (eastern) half, while the pumping engine is positioned on the northern side of the front half. The southern side of the front half contains a ground floor basement. The operational front of the building, facing the shaft, features a full width opening at first floor level beneath a steel lintel, with a simple 1872 date stone above it. On the ground or basement floor, the engine bed for the pumping engine projects forward on the left side, with a low doorway on the right that served as an entry for mine tubs and still retains its rails. The southern side of the building comprises seven bays, with a wide doorway in the fifth bay at upper floor level and the remainder windowed. The lower floor has a door and three windows. The northern long wall is similarly well lit at first floor level, with a tall round arched opening towards the east on the ground floor for the flywheel of the pumping engine. The roof was formally hipped with slate to the front hip and red tiles on the other three faces, though it has largely collapsed.

The interior is occupied almost entirely by concrete engine beds for two horizontal steam engines. The shape of the beds and the arrangement of holding-down bolts and other features provide evidence of the original arrangement of the engines.

The downcast shaft lies nearly 10 metres in front of the engine house. It remains open but is now surrounded by a high brick wall built around 1938 after the mine closure. The shaft is 14 feet (4.27 metres) in diameter and 384 feet (117 metres) deep. It was designed to accommodate two cages and pumping equipment, and could also be wound from the Secondary Winding Engine House to the south west. Terraced into the hillside to the north are two horse gin circles, which were used for shaft maintenance.

The boiler plant lies on the southern side of the main engine house. Immediately south west of the engine house are low earthwork remains of the boiler house. The plinth of the boiler chimney stands on higher ground immediately to the south east. On the south west side are ruined remains of a brick-built boiler pump house, built in 1906 for a steam powered boiler-feed pump and a separate fire pump. The roof and southern wall with its large cast iron arched windows have collapsed.

The explosives store is located just over 70 metres to the north north east of the engine house. It is a small two-celled building with parallel gabled roofs and a smaller lean-to, all set within a small quarry which formed blast walls partially constructed of firebrick blocks of triangular section, a design normally used to support tubular boilers such as the Lancashire boilers installed at the mine in 1906. The building is brick with a Welsh slate roof.