By 1834, the mine employed over 1,200 men, women and children.  The mine comprised two main lodes, ‘Middleton’s Lode’ and ‘East Lode’, which had been cut through what was, by the very nature of its ores, soft rock and this meant that the tunnels required significant amounts of shoring up with timber struts.  At its most extensive, it contained twenty shafts and the deepest gallery was almost 1000 feet below the surface.

On this day in 1846, the morning was bright and sunny but in early afternoon a very heavy thunderstorm cause serious flooding of the surface and of the mine itself. 
Of the two hundred underground at the time, thirty-nine drowned.