Miners standing inside rediscovered mineworkings at Kelly Mine

This photograph records the beginning of the end of mining in the Lustleigh area. In the early 1950s, Nicols and New, the firm operating Pepperdon Mine at that time, used Kelly Mine machinery to extract ore between Kelly and Slade Cross. As a consequence of blasting during 1951, however, part of the Slade workings collapsed revealing earlier undetected mining activity. Perhaps due to this earlier mining, the company failed to find any new lodes of ore in this area, and with the collapse of the workings, the decision was made to close all operations at Slade, Pepperdon and Kelly mines.