Situate adjacent to the mountain road from Llanidloes to Machynlleth, the mine was worked from 1850 to 1863, and drained by a deep adit driven in from the north. An underground shaft was sunk pumped by a horizontal engine outside deep adit.
The shaft was divided into two separate compartments by a timber brattice, one side used for pumping and manway, the other side for winding. The pumping was by a power train of flat rods running through the deep adit crosscut which is as straight as an arrow to the engine shaft sunk on the south lode. A worked out chamber in a stope on the north lode beyond was made into a horse gin chamber for winding which was done by a wire rope passing over a pulley mounted in the roof of the chamber and along a cross cut to the shaft. This system of pumping underground shafts by a power train running through the adit, and winding by underground horse gin can be found at other mines such as the Alltycrib Mine at Talybont.
The pumping arrangement is unusual in that the balance bob was installed in a pit in the floor below the head of the rising main. This necessitated the pump rod being in two parts, the one passing down inside the rising main to a bucket pump, while the other connected with the first at the top and with the balance bob at the bottom. This arrangement goes up into a cavity in the roof and has signs of timber cross members which must have fitted originally into guides to stabilise the arrangement. This pump rod arrangement could be considered to be like an inverted “U”