Alderley Edge West Mine deaths

Two men, George Etchells and Alfred Hadfield, died after going into the disused West Mine and losing their way in its passages; their bodies were not found for three months.

Cause

The two men went exploring in the abandoned West Mine workings and became lost in its maze of passages.

What happened

In May 1929, George Etchells and Alfred Hadfield, two young men from Stockport, went into the disused West Mine at Alderley Edge and did not return. West Mine had been dug into the sandstone from 1857 and abandoned with the rest of the Alderley workings by 1919; what they walked into was a labyrinth of passages with nothing to mark a way out. Their torches eventually failed. Search efforts did not find them, and their emaciated bodies were discovered in a side passage three months later, in August 1929.

Public concern at the deaths did little to stop people going in. Between 1934 and 1937 forty-one people were fined by Wilmslow magistrates for trespassing in the mines, and in 1946 a man fell sixty-five feet to his death down Plank Shaft, again in West Mine. The mine was not filled in and fully sealed until 1960.

Legal & regulatory aftermath

The mines stayed open to anyone who walked in for another three decades. Forty-one people were fined for trespass by Wilmslow magistrates between 1934 and 1937; a further death followed in Plank Shaft in 1946; and it was 1960 before West Mine was filled in and sealed. The last fatality at the Alderley workings came in 1974, when a fourteen-year-old girl fell thirty feet into Engine Vein and the open-cast shaft was capped with concrete. The lower levels of West and Wood Mines are reached today only through two shafts dug by the Derbyshire Caving Club in 1975 and kept locked.

This account describes a post-closure incident in abandoned workings. It is not an access guide, and deliberately omits route detail beyond what's needed to understand what happened.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each attached to the source(s) that support it below. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• George Etchells and Alfred Hadfield died exploring the disused West Mine in May 1929; their bodies were not found until August 1929. ¹
• This and other fatalities in West Mine were part of why the West and Wood Mines were blocked in the early 1960s. ¹
• The two men, both from Stockport, became lost in West Mine's passages when their torches failed; their emaciated bodies were found in a side passageway three months later. ²
• Public concern at the deaths did not deter trespassers: forty-one people were fined by Wilmslow magistrates for trespass in the mines between 1934 and 1937, and in 1946 a man fell sixty-five feet to his death in Plank Shaft in West Mine. ²
• West Mine was not filled in and fully sealed until 1960; the last fatality at the Alderley workings was in 1974, when a fourteen-year-old girl fell thirty feet into Engine Vein and the shaft was capped with concrete. ²

Related terminology

Mining terms this disaster is structurally linked to, with the nature of the relationship.

• Level (contextual relationship)
  Named in this record’s aftermath: “…Vein and the open-cast shaft was capped with concrete. The lower levels of West and Wood Mines are reached today only through two shafts dug…”
• Shaft (contextual relationship)
  Named 4 times in this record, first in the narrative: “…and in 1946 a man fell sixty-five feet to his death down Plank Shaft, again in West Mine. The mine was not filled in and fully sealed…”

Sources

1. (secondary) Alderley Edge Mines — Wikipedia
2. (secondary) Alderley Edge — mining, trespass and the mines' later history — Shutlingsloe (footnoted local-history essay)

Record created: 20 August 2026 · Last researched: 5 September 2026