By Rambler ‘Sough’ is the lead miner’s term for the method of draining water from a mine. One of the most attractive roads through the Peak District, the one between Bakewell and the A515 Buxton/Ashbourne road takes some beating.  Around a mile beyond the cut-off for Monyash, to the right two small chimneys indicate the presence of a major relic of local industrial heritage.  The chimneys and ancillary buildings, plus an old stone cottage are all that is left of boom to bust underground activity in the search for lead.  This is the site of Magpie Mine where fortunes were made by intense inter-companies rivalry that even lead to murder. While lead ore mining may have been active in small near-surface activity for hundreds of years, the earliest recorded evidence of miners beginning to explore ever-more deeply came in a report dating from 1740, the start of upwards of a dozen small lead mines that developed as time went by.  Local and even itinerant Cornish miners, searched for the riches available in upwards of eight major veins running roughly east/west ever deeper beneath the site.  It was also quite normal for abandoned mines to be re-opened by other companies, simply by asking permission from the local Barmote Court, the traditional means of controlling lead mining activities in the Peak. Due to the proximity of adjacent veins, two or more mines could be operating within only a few feet of rock between them.  This was the case in 1833 when teams of Magpie miners from Maypit and Great Redsoil mines came into dispute over the right of Maypit miners to open a side passage, inevitably connecting to Redsoil.  Appeals to the local Barmote seemed to be getting nowhere and arguments, sometimes verging on violence, broke out from time to time.  All...