The Pit Wheel
The wheel wasn’t originally from Chopwell, as everything from our mine had been scrapped. I think it was from somewhere in the Midlands or Derbyshire maybe. It was part of the mechanism to lift and drop the cage to send people down the mine shaft. and it was operated by one man who would respond to a series of bells, lifting and lowering depending on the bells he heard. It was like a code of bells, like how sailors have a whistling code.
