Lehnschafter mine, Mikulov, Teplice District, Ústí nad Labem Region, Czech Republici

Regional Level Types
Lehnschafter mine	Mine
Mikulov	Municipality
Teplice District	District
Ústí nad Labem Region	Region
Czech Republic	Country

The Lehnschafter mining complex is a set of interconnected closed mining works, in which silver was mined in the past. The only accessible entrance to the gallery is located just outside the Mikulov area, north of the city. The complex consists of four historic galleries called Lehnschafter, Allerheiligen, Liebefrauen and Kreuzstollen. Each had its own entrance. The mine, which was demonstrably worked from the middle of the 16th to the middle of the 19th century, was a source of silver ore and galena. It is divided vertically into 12 floors and its depth exceeds 200 m.

The total length of all known corridors is more than 8 km. According to surviving written sources, mining started in the first half of the 16th century, as evidenced by the date 1568 cut out on the wall of the entrance floor of the Lehnschafter gallery, several hundred meters from the entrance. This ensemble, which is unique in the Ore Mountains, was cut at a time when mining in the gallery was no longer at an economic level for continuous heating with mine water. The oldest forms of mining are evidenced by the preserved sections excavated by the threshing floor as well as extensive soot deposits, which formed as an accompanying trace of the so-called quarrying, mining techniques using heat to break up hard rocks. The oldest drainage gallery of the complex is probably Liebefrauen, which is listed as early as 1530. In the second half of the 16th century, however, its capacity ceased to be sufficient, but the subsequent solution of drainage in the 17th century is not entirely clear. In the 18th century, two more drainage galleries were established, the Allerheiligen adit in the valley and the Kreuzstollen, a hereditary adit excavated from 1770 at the same time for seven years, and later the Liebefrauen and Kreuzstollen galleries were merged into one complex. Extensive mines were subsequently excavated from these galleries, and after their extraction, the part was deepened by 50 m, thus creating the 1st and 2nd Francis Horizons, on which pumping machines were placed. However, due to the high cost of pumping, in the 19th century, workers proceeded to excavate another hereditary gallery, which, however, was never completed, because the mine was closed in 1858. From 1987 until today, the mine has been excavated and made accessible by speleologists from the Agricola association. During the hard work, a few kilometres of rails were laid into the mine and many tons of material taken out. In 2003, the entrance to the Lehnschafter gallery was fitted with a portal transferred from the liquidated Karolina II mine in Ohníč. Since 2009, the work has been gradually made available to the public.

The Lehnschafter mining complex is one of the most important original mining works in the Ore Mountains and, as part of the Mikulov mining district, it forms an inseparable part of the mountainous landscape of the Czech Podkrušnohoří. Authentic large underground mine with preserved parts mined as early as the 16th century, illustrative documents of mining techniques, dates on the walls and mining signs together with the preserved logging of the shafts are unique montane elements, which have been preserved only rarely in similar Ore Mountains mines. Due to this fact, this mining complex serves the professional and lay public as a textbook of changes in mining techniques from the second half of the 16th century to the 1st half of the 19th century. Thanks to the sensitive approach to the restoration of the mine by the speleological association Agricola, which is characterized by a minimum of intervention to historical matter and maximum copying of historical pattern in building temporary structures, the Lehnschafter mining complex achieves a high degree of historical originality and authenticity.

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