A Hammer

Image by Ana Alli Garcia, 16 years old

By Barry Smith

Parc and Trefriw, Conwy, North Wales, circa 1973
You Are Now Exposed To Imminent Personal Danger From Experiments In This Chamber Which You Have Already Affected.

Please Return To The Mine Entrance Without Delay  

Chief Engineer

“First they block the way with a locked gate” – Dave is still holding the hammer with which he dispensed with this obstruction – “and then they put up signs, signs in a place like this of all things. And there’s something else ... wait for it ... listen”.

Under ground we are insulated from the constant babble of noises so familiar above ground. This leaves space for small sounds to be exaggerated, like breathing in and breathing out. What I heard was water dripping rhythmically from the roof, interrupted only as we sloshed about in our boots and made small movements in heavy plastic outer clothing.       

Then an alarm went off. A real siren blast would have sent me scurrying back to the mine entrance; but this started feebly and ended with a whimper.

“There you are” said Dave rather proudly. “That’s the best the University of Liverpool can do. Budget cuts perhaps. Maybe they’re not here often enough now to change the batteries”.  

Later in life I would learn that academic research so often flatters to deceive, but for the moment I was impressed by even their remote presence in this dank mine. Dave dropped his hammer into a small rucksack, and we splashed on down the tunnel, our head torches penetrating the darkness in just a narrow beam.

My enthusiasm for apparently grim places like this is a mystery even to me, but it was the reason I pushed ahead of my companion. Then I felt the persuasive tug of a hand on the back of my rucksack reminding me that Dave was familiar with the complex mysteries of Parc Mine. 

“Hard to believe, I know”, said Dave a little breathlessly, “but right there is a shaft dropping to the next level”.

“Just where”?  The way forward looked all the same to me.

“There, just in front of you”.

Right enough, clinging to the roof and walls were the remnants of a structure so corroded that rust was building mysterious scrolled layers on what once must have been shiny steel. And illuminated by our lights in the remarkably clear water of the shaft was a corroded world of lifting and pumping gear, rotten steel ropes, pipes and ladders, and all the tangled paraphernalia of mine working, dropping down and down to a level no torch beam could penetrate

“All flooded now, this and all else below” Dave observed laconically as I tried to shake off a nasty image of what may have happened had I taken a few more innocent steps. But now my concentration was fully focused on avoiding a plunge down a flooded mine shaft and so, following my guide more closely, we tip-toed with great care around the shaft and shuffled our way further along the level where the floor looked a bit drier.

That was my first experience of exploring Parc Mine, and no matter how well I got to know its labyrinthine ways, entering its dank recesses always inspired equal measures of eager anticipation and dread. No cavernous heart for this mine, but its bones stretching out in levels, its arteries formed into adits, shafts and sumps, and its veins – most fragile of all – branching into stopes following the most precious veins of minerals.  Angled up steeply above and below the levels, there were wooden props used to secure the rock walls and to support platforms upon which miners would labour. Press into the fallen remnants of these props festooned with the tentacles of wet rot, and one’s finger would sink easily into its rotten core.

Wooden ladders were bolted to the stope walls, looking more precarious with each visit; but their imminent collapse only served to spur us on to make progress into the next level, pulling tentatively at each step, and moving most gently between missing rungs. Following a heavier person and not setting off until they reached the top was a shameless way of calming one’s nerves.

Disconcertingly, I discovered that being a competent navigator in mountains was no guarantee that I could find my way underground where, in theory, one needed only to have a secure memory for the sequence of junctions encountered along the way. But my memory was swept clean as I pondered the price of getting lost and the horror of retreat being cut off by a rock fall. 

Pausing at regular intervals to tap away at seams of pyrites in the hope that it might indicate something much more valuable, Dave’s hammer would never make us wealthy. But it would continue to open doors for other subterranean adventures.

Like so many of the chalybeates and spas in Wales, the wells at Trefriw have a long and distinguished history. First discovered by the Romans in about 200 AD, people bathed in rock-hewn basins in a natural cavern until the first bath house was opened in 1863. Its early success attracted the attention of guide book writers not all of whom were unambiguously enthusiastic about health benefits. Mountford John Byrd Baddely in 1895, for example, could only describe the waters as “inconceivably nasty and corresponding efficacious”.        

The bath house was closed in 1952.

A well founded building of substance and style like this will prevail against the worst intentions of time even when it is neglected and unused, as long as its roof is secure. When the roof fails, the forces of disintegration invade every cranny below. Rot and rust - wooden floors tumble down, doors and windows fall in, and even the shell of its former self is doomed as there is nothing to support the walls except the chimneys making a last stand.

But, for now all was not lost here, even if the fact that this had been a centre dedicated to restorative health seemed most unlikely. The roof was leaking but only just, and so there was still pride in its slate stone blocks, stepped gables, mullioned windows and clusters of fine chimneys. So this oddly stylised building, enclosing the remarkable interior architecture typical of spas across the country, had a fading glory that could not be denied even as the Victorian Bath House filled with scummy water and the Pump Room accumulated the detritus of a collapsing ceiling.

The building had not been subject to vandalism and only a handful of explorers would have made entry. So it was easy to imagine the scattering of correspondence covering a dry section of the floor was undisturbed, perhaps dispersed accidentally by the owners fleeing the approach of creditors.   

Most of the letters were only lightly marked by damp, and threw light on the main business of mail ordering tiny bottles of spa water for home treatment, and a cursory scan soon revealed two broad issues. There were sad, sometimes even desperate enquiries to the chalybeat seeking advice on the suitability of the waters for treating particular, often nasty, ailments. The response would normally involve sympathy for the infirm, and wholehearted confirmation that Water No.1, No.2 or No.3 would indeed be remarkably efficacious in treating the particular maladies. Evidence to support this was usually provided by an apparently worthy medical expert. This preceded a strong recommendation that a large consignment of the curative would be in order subject to the caveat that, as the enquirer may well have discovered, their medical condition was strongly resistant to intervention. In consequence, repeat orders should be anticipated to ensure a complete cure.

The second issue that featured regularly in the letters involved a person who had already received a consignment of the water, only for their high expectations to founder on rocks of disappointment when – woe upon woe – taking the cure had led to their condition worsening, sometimes considerably.

Again the response was sympathetic, reminding the patient that their particular symptoms were very resistant to even the most potent natural curatives. The advice that the initial consignment of water would likely need to be repeated was reiterated, and seldom did the reply finish without a firm recommendation to work through this difficult period by doubling the dose. “Doubling the dose” would achieve the desired result, and this advice rang out repeatedly in the correspondence, often accompanied by a thoughtful, commercially cute, note indicating a re-supply of the water was already on the way together with an invoice.

Trefriw Chalybeate Wells had clearly perfected “spa treatment by post”. Stacks of boxes contained nice little coloured bottles with the water number embossed in the glass. Now they would never be filled, but it remained for us to discover the magical source of the contents.

We squeezed our way out of the bath house, taking care to jam the door shut; then we stumbled around in the melancholy vestiges of a garden. Our expectations were not high, and it was not long before our determination began to wane. As in a children’s adventure story, we were turning for home when we came across a gravel path edged with neatly cut rock that no amount of rank weed could obscure. It seemed to beckon us, and it soon led us to a door set in a hillside, a substantial arched door well constructed with heavy studded timbers. My imagination stalled at a heavy padlock designed to deter the most persistent intruder/adventurers like us. 

Dave dropped his rucksack on the ground and rummaged within. I expected we would share our disappointment and console ourselves by eating the apple he usually carried. It was a situation reminiscent of the thwarted escapades of childhood.

But no. Dave pulled no apple from the sack, but a hammer instead. Then he took a careful look at the lock, touching gently that part where the hook is secured. He laid the hammer head there then made a short brisk swing. The padlock fell open as the clasp snapped.

In the short but all-consuming time that we had been exploring the chalybeate, our initial anxiety about being caught out – apparently responsible people wantonly trespassing – had slipped away. But now, with the lock broken, I was gripped by the kind of fear I had not experienced since adolescence when being “caught in the act”. Nothing could stop me from having a good look over my shoulder.

“Best put that right when we get out of here” said Dave. He is a skilled craftsman of renown, but despite this I still could not imagine the broken bits of lock now resting on the path being reassembled. But for the moment this did not seem to matter.

We both pushed on the door which gave surprisingly little resistance, and entered a cavern hewn from the native rock. As our eyes adjusted to the intense dark we were assaulted by a most malodorous stench – something like a malfunctioning urinal – and quite enough to send the weak-hearted fleeing from whence they came. But, made of sterner stuff and keeping our rebellious stomachs in check, we moved forward valiantly. What was emerging in the pallid light was a large mineral-stained trough, its heavy scum surface broken only by globular clusters of nasty looking vegetation, its tentacles dangling down into the deep. I stumbled on slimy flagstones, breathing heavily for this was surely not a place to fall.

So here was the source of magic water discovered first by Romans, a place perhaps at some stage in its history even considered a holy well. But sulphur was once known as brimstone, and what we saw now was the sort of miasma that one could too easily imagine seeping from Earth’s nether region.

Age had evidently not looked kindly on this place which bore no resemblance to the fine architecture resisting decay in the Bath House. Our head torches swept the walls of luminous mineral accretions picking out every crack and crevice where grew only a primitive vegetation, surviving a marginal existence in the damp dark cold.

We searched diligently for a low passage that could have led off to a more salubrious source, but nothing could be found. All that remained was to dip a finger in the water just in case we were missing out on something. We needed neither a cure for the plague nor, as far as we were aware, did we suffer the symptoms of ‘gravelly complaints’ and ‘brain fog’ which supposedly respond well to sulphur. And we were certainly not at all well placed to test the water as a radical purgative for a quick washout of the digestive system. So in our lack of enthusiasm our fingers fished up only a gelatinous soup reeking so much of sulphur that our unpractised noses could distinguish neither its celebrated iron content nor anything else.

I suddenly felt cold. We shuffled a retreat to the door where daylight flooded us so that we felt exposed in our trespass. Dave made good his intent to piece together the padlock sufficient to conceal its brokenness. Somehow I felt less of a vandal, but it did little to dispel a rising feeling that the time was right to leave quickly.

And so, turning to face the so welcome light of day and the rediscovery that we were really quite healthy - even with the smell of sulphur and what else clinging to our nostrils - we went home.

A few years after our explorations in the early 1970s, Trefriw Chalybeate Well re-opened, offering bed and breakfast to visitors who could also visit the nearby “ancient cave”.  Presumably this was the grim cavern we had explored now sufficiently reengineered to make a “leisure experience”. This would culminate in tourists being given the opportunity to purchase bottles of the water.

In 2003 the site was purchased by a natural health company, and eight years later they closed it to the public in order to concentrate on the production of a liquid iron supplement. This is successfully marketed worldwide.

Barry Smith is a recovering academic, a woodturner and forestry worker, who has kayaked around Cape Horn and made solo first ascents in the Himalayas.  His current preoccupation is with exploring landscapes of abandonment.  His books include The Island in Imagination and Experience - "the defining work of island literature that's long been needed ... rooted in authentic adventures, yet infused with a brave spirit of physical curiosity and scholarly enquiry" JIM PERRIN, published by Saraband, 2017; and Where Sea and Mountain Meet: A Traveller's Tales, published through Independent Publishing Network, 2024.

Both books are available through barryjnsmith@gmail.com