Dictionary Definition
sough
Verb
2 indicate pain, discomfort, or displeasure; "The
students groaned when the professor got out the exam booklets";
"The ancient door soughed when opened" [syn: groan, moan]
3 introduce into an environment; "sow suspicion
or beliefs" [syn: sow]
User Contributed Dictionary
Pronunciation
/saʊ/, /sʌf/See also
Extensive Definition
A Sough is an underground channel for draining
water out of a mine. Its ability to drain a mine depends on the
bottom of the mine being higher than a neighbouring valley. If the
mine sump is lower, water must be pumped up to the sough.
Derbyshire Lead Mining
The term is closely associated with the lead mining areas of Derbyshire (see Derbyshire lead mining history).Early Derbyshire lead mines were fairly shallow,
since methods to remove water were inefficient and miners had to
stop when they reached the water table. The digging of soughs was
found to be an effective way of lowering the water table and
allowing mines to be worked deeper.
Soughs were typically dug from their open end
near a stream or river back into the hillside beneath the mine to
be drained. One sough would often drain more than one mine, since
these were often very close, working the same vein of lead. This
also helped spread the cost of digging the sough. Some soughs
include branches to facilitate further drainage.
Many soughs were dug throughout the 17th and 18th
centuries, until the falling price of lead brought the decline of
the Derbyshire lead mining industry towards the end of the 19th
century.
Some soughs were very extensive. Meerbrook
sough is over four miles in length. Digging such long tunnels
took a long time. Vermuyden
sough, named after the Dutch engineer Sir
Cornelius Vermuyden who planned it, took twenty years to dig.
The Cromford sough that Sir
Richard Arkwright subsequently used to power his mill at
Cromford
took thirty years to dig, and was still being extended a century
after it was begun.
Some soughs are still in use. According to the
British
Geological Survey, the Meerbrook sough, started in 1772, still
provides 3.75 million litres a day for the public water
supply.
Elsewhere
Soughs were also extensively used in the coalmining industry until the mines became too deep to be drained by this means. With the advent of the steam engine, soughs became less necessary for unwatering mines than they had previously.External links
Other uses
- Rosamunde Pilcher in Flowers in the Rain uses the descriptive term the "sough of the wind".
References
Further reading
- Rieuwerts, J. H. History and gazetteer of the lead mine soughs of Derbyshire. Author, 1987