Water and vertical territory: the volatile and hidden historical geographies of Derbyshire’s lead mining soughs, 1650s–1830s

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the complex subterranean politics of lead mining in the Derbyshire Peak District. We focus specifically on the implications of lead mining 'soughs'underground channels driven to drain water out of mines to allow for mineral extraction. Built during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, soughs were substantial, capital and labour intensive projects which served a key function in the refashioning of subterranean and surface hydrological landscapes. They were 'driven' at a time when water was both a major hindrance to mining endeavour and the primary energy source for industrial expansion, such that historical disputes surrounding sough drainage were common. Here, we draw on unpublished historical legal records to explore the ways in which vertical conceptualisations of space were central to the legal discourse over soughs and extend the so called 'vertical turn' in geography to include subterranean proto-historical landscapes. Drawing on a high profile conflict between English entrepreneur Richard Arkwright and Conservative politician Francis Hurt, we go some way to addressing recent claims for more ethnographic detail in studies of verticality by considering the people who legally and physically negotiated sough development below as well as above ground. We also illustrate the range of temporalities which framed sough developments and highlight the cross-generational nature of the legal disputes over soughs and the productive landscapes they drained.

Terrain, politics, history

“…Some of this research has been historical (i.e. Anthony, 2018; Endfield and van Lieshout, 2020; Hawkins, 2020; Marston, 2019; Melo Zurita and Munro, 2019), but much has been focused on 20th century or contemporary political issues. These would include Andrew Harris (2015) on ‘vertical urbanism’, Donald McNeill’s (2019) recent work on ‘volumetric urbanism’ in Singapore, Rachael Squire (2016a, 2016b, 2017a, 2017b) in her work on Gibraltar and US undersea bases in the Cold War, Katherine Sammler (2019) on sea-level rise, Klaus Dodds and Mark Nuttall (2016) in work on the materiality of ice and the sea-bed, especially in the Arctic and Antarctic (also, see Bravo, 2019; Dodds, 2018, 2019), Johanne Bruun (2017, 2020) in her study of science and politics in Cold War Greenland, work on vertical structures and surfaces in cities (Mubi Brighenti and Kärrholm, 2018), a special issue of Geopolitics on Subterranean Geographies edited by Rachael Squire and Klaus Dodds (2020), 1 and in a dizzying sequence of papers produced for two online fora collated by Franck Billé for Cultural Anthropology and Society and Space (2018, 2019 ), leading to a significant book-length collection (2020).…”

“… 1. The issue includes Endfield and van Lieshout (2020), Barry and Gambino (2020), Forman (2020), Bruun (2020), Childs (2020), and Hawkins (2020), among others. …”

Introduction to the Special Issue: Subterranean Geopolitics

“…The varied contributions serve as a reminder of these practices and the knowledge to be gained in their application to often unseen spaces. Archives, for example, both formal and informal, have provided rich possibilities for the unearthing, excavating, and reconstructing subterranean geopolitics at multiple scales and across multiple contexts and bodies (see the papers by Peters 2019; Bruun 2018; Endfield and Van Lieshout 2019). We might also consider how geopolitical scholarship can make a more concerted engagement with the people at the forefront of the subterranean (see Perez 2015)including miners, diggers, cavers, archaeologists, indigenous communities, divers, tunnelers, and those delving into the 'deep' via remote technology to name but a few.…”

Filling the hole? On new geographies of the subsurface

“…But so too are the historical and technological mediations of knowledge such as institutional context and the social positioning of different actors adjacent or distant from subsurface spaces and their risks (Hine and Mayes, 2022). To take an historical example from Endfield and Lieshout (2020: 73), the lead miner’s intimate knowledge of subsurface water flows differs from that which eventually is “[m]ade visible through maps, plans and drawings, [which are] the only way to make the underground knowable for those who had not physically experienced it.” This epistemological subtheme running across each of the three areas of thought outlined above is worth unpacking: Where does such knowledge and opacity come from? Who does or can it serve?…”