002.74.Idrija

Municipality of Idrija, Mestni trg 1, SI-5280 Idrija

Public

Municipality of Idrija, Mestni trg 1, SI-5280 Idrija

EŠD 3134

Mine, Transport - shafts , Built heritage - industrial

Joseph's shaft consist of the export station building with a headframe, the call room and the engine room, the loading station and the forge. In the call room, there is also the so-called lamp house (the charging station for the mining cave lamps). The engine room contains the electric export machine (including the exporting rope) with safety devices, drive machine and control panel. The export area of the engine room contains the export container – cage and the signalling device. The loading station is a multi-storey facility, located under the existing support wall and is located in the immediate vicinity of the export pit. In the upper part of the loading station there is the warehouse - the charging bunker for the excavated ore. The bunker is divided into four compartments (capacity of 300 tons), each of them has charging openings on the upper level. These are closed with metal net. The headframe pierces the facility of the export shaft and is designed as a 23 m high steel construction. It is covered with a symmetrical two-eave roof with a mining symbol – hammer and chisel at the top. The mine export shaft, which connected the pit with the surface, was closed with concrete since 2007.

2357 Idrija – town, lot no. 2231/2 – area 1,160 m2 (building no. 1060 - area 550 m2, height 13 m); lot no. 2235 –area 406 m2; lot no. 2236 –area 931 m2 (building no. 1058 – area 240 m2, height 16.3 m). The shaft connected fifteen level to a depth of 381.5 m (altitude of –33 m).

Steel, stone, brick, concrete.

1786

Idrija Mercury Mine

Joseph's shaft was the main export shaft, since it was the only shaft that connected all fifteen levels of the mine. It served for transporting mining material, miners and excavated ore. In the engine room of the shaft, there was a export machine with safety devices, drive machine and steering-control station. After 1890, the Babcock-Wilcox battery steam boiler (drive machine) was powered by the Compound export steam machine (Breitfeld, Danĕk & Co., Prague, power 75 KM). After modernisation in 1953, the engine room had two operating export machines, Nordberg parallel and the opposite-operating electric export machine (Nordberg Manufacturing Company, USA, capacity 350 tons in 8 hours) and the General Electric (USA) drive machine. Due to the replacement of both machines, the mechanical part of the export machine also needed to be updated, including the headframe (new elevators, rearrangement of the signalling device) and rope pulleys (Gulleaume, Vienna, 520 m long). In 1957, they built the new warehouses for excavated ore with a loading station, which served for loading the ore. To transport the ore from the Joseph's shaft to the smelting plant, the transporting cableway was installed in 1957 (before that they used locomotives). The shaft complex contained the administrative building, the forge, changing rooms and bathrooms, the boiler room, transformation station, three warehouses, the lean-to roof for storing the shattered material and the gatehouse.

Today, the mining shaft is backfilled and impassable. The drive devices, the export machine and the forge facility are no longer in use. The loading station of the transporting cableway is no longer in use since the termination of the ore excavation in 1993. In the loading station of the cableway, four locomotives and five wagons, for transporting mercury ore from the mine to the sorting plant and from there to the smelting plant, are displayed. Due to its connections with the development of water, electric and steam pumps and the ore transporting, it is a unique witness of the development of technology and mining through time.

2357 Idrija - town, lot no. 2231/1 (including the building no. 1052, 1061, 1062, 1063, 1066, 1069, 1070), 2231/2, 2233 (including the building no. 1065), 2234 (including the building no. 1071), 2235, 2236 (including the building no. 1058), 2238, 2239, 2240 (part), 2241.

2357 Idrija – town, lot no. 2231/2 (including the building no. 1060), 2235, 2236 (including the building no. 1058).

A conservation plan was made. In 2012, the Municipality of Idrija bought the entire protected area from the State. Major monumentally protective interventions or other interventions for preserving the heritage of this area have not yet been executed.

good

The implementation of intervention measures for preserving the heritage and the decision on the method of usage or presentation of the area are necessary. That should be followed by performing regular maintenance services in accordance with the guidelines of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia, including the status control and preservation, security and presentation of the heritage.

- The Cultural Heritage Register of the Republic of Slovenia;
- Ordinance on the proclamation of the technical heritage in the Idrija and its surroundings for cultural monuments of national importance. Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia no. 66/01, 55/02, 16/08;
- Conservation plan Idrija - Joseph's shaft: EŠD – 3134. DEDO Conservation architecture (Nataša Jurgec Gurnick, Nastja Nylaander, Zoran Trop), 2013/2014.

Mestni muzej Idrija

Miha Kosmač

2. 3. 2018

Never