File:Silverbrook Mine by Alan Hunt.jpg

English: The large area of spoil in front of the mine buildings on the right. The area in the left foreground with the larger stones was the sight of the sorting shed, an open wood-roofed structure with a low bench where the women workers would hand sort the ore brought up from the shaft before it was removed from the mine in horse drawn carts.

There is a record in a local paper of an accident in 1854 when a miner by the name of Richard Payne had been killed in an underground rock fall. Deaths of this type were frequent in the mines of the time. On the right in the shady scrub was the workshop/forge and the count house from where the mine manager would run operations. Long after the mine had closed an old lady by the name of Mrs Collins lived in this cottage. Every night she would go to the Carpenters Arms in Ilsington to collect a jug of beer, come rain or shine. One night she failed to turn up, and the next. The publican went to investigate and found her dead in her bed with the last jug of beer beside her, untouched.

In 50 years of visiting this site there have been many occasions I have felt that I wasn't alone, of being watched. The feeling was never hostile but it was unsettling none-the-less. Whether you believe in ghosts or not it is strange how some places have this effect.