Submechanophobia - from Latin sub 'under'; and from Ancient Greek μηχανή (mechané) 'machine' and φόβος (phóbos) 'fear') is a fear of submerged human-made objects, either partially or entirely underwater.

In the midlands of England sits what is, on the face of it, a vast wasteland of cleared buildings and old roads. However, hidden underneath, through a handful of once backfilled but carefully excavated sloped shafts, is all that remains of a once sprawling colliery. The last operational coal mine in the Midlands, it closed it's doors in 2013 and then very quickly followed the levelling of the entire site. Because the land is a former coal mine, heavily polluted and very unstable, no housing or any other sort of development can take place on the sizeable plot of land, so it will sit there until someone comes along one day and turns it into some sort of green open space, left as a grassy meadow.

There are around half a dozen of these openings scattered across the site, but only a couple of them have been excavated and opened up by enterprising individuals with a lot of time on their hands. The shafts were backfilled with a mixture of leftover coal waste and large chunks of concrete, but not well enough to stop people digging through in spots. The tunnels were home to systems of conveyor belts and hoppers for transporting and storing coal around the site, one of the open ones runs for a very short length before ending in a flooded pit and a 90 degree turn back up and out, but one runs for a not inconsiderable length, and is home to more conveyors, hoppers and the like, as well as an even more deeply flooded depths. Once the colliery shut, the pumps which had once kept the groundwater away from these tunnels were switched off, so now they are permanently flooded.

1. Just inside the entrance are two halves of a winding wheel, the painted one was created as a memorial to all the workers who lost their lives working at the colliery between 1958 and 2007.



2. The main mine shaft, capped with a mixture of waste rubble and concrete, complete with two vent pipes.



3. The larger of the two tunnels is accessed through the taller entrance in the background, this smaller one we think was an emergency exit shaft for that one however it was probably accessed from the totally flooded lower depths.



4. Inside the shorter tunnel.



5. The bowels of the larger tunnel. I didn't actually get a shot of the conveyor from the top, because as we were leaving a couple of other explorers turned up and headed down as we were heading up.



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12. On one edge of the property is a large ruined house, which is almost completely collapsed inside, however it did have this cool old mine cart sat outside it.



Thanks for looking

I think I'd have a panic attack down there. Eeeesh.

This started fine and got terrifying fast. #4 and #11 are nightmare fuel. The way the light fades off into the darkness in these cramped-looking spaces make it seem both small and endless, and the fact that parts of it are submerged just makes it feel more unfriendly.

It would have been spectacular to have seen that whole operation when it was operating! I am forever fascinated by the equipment that makes these mines function. It seems that, more than any other commodity, that coal mines have the most infrastructure to move the product from the 'face' where it's extracted, out of the mine, cleaned, sorted, and inventoried. It's probably because coal is a high volume, low cost product, so keeping efficiency as high as possible would be the difference between profit and bankruptcy. Cool explore with great photos!

Abby Normal

Very cool explore! Imagine these tunnels will be down here for quite a while so interesting to see them while it's still somewhat "fresh".