HORSE GIN OF THE HELENA HUBER MINE (JOSEF MINE)
Introduction
It is an irony of history that one of Jáchymov’s most important mining monuments can be seen not in the town but in the courtyard of Hrádek in Kutná Hora, home of the Czech Museum of Silver. The structure is a horse-powered hoisting engine known as a “trejv”, used to lift ore from deep shafts. The machine has survived in its original 16th-century form and has stood in the museum’s outdoor exhibition since 1949.
History
The hoisting engine was built shortly after 1520 above the shaft of the Helena Huber Mine, one of the richest mines in the Jáchymov district. Although the mine was filled in 1901 and remained inactive until the end of the Second World War, the horse gin stayed on site. After the war, with the expansion of uranium mining, the mine was reopened and equipped with a metal headframe transferred from the Svornost Mine.
In 1948 the horse gin was declared a national cultural monument and dismantled. A year later it was reassembled in the courtyard of Hrádek in Kutná Hora, where it remains today.
Description and present state
The structure was built without the use of a single nail and was powered by four pairs of horses. It was capable of hoisting loads of up to about one tonne from depths of roughly 200 to 250 metres. The circular building has a diameter of about 16 metres and a height of around 13 metres with a steep roof set on a roughly one-metre-high masonry base, and it has two entrances.
The mechanism consists of a vertical wooden shaft mounted on pivots in bearings below ground and in a cross-beam above. At the top is a wooden drum about six metres in diameter with two heavy ropes wound in opposite directions. Guided over pulleys through an opening in the roof above the shaft, one rope wound up while the other unwound. Horses were harnessed in alternating directions, allowing ore to be raised while an empty bucket or barrel was lowered at the same time. The construction is still operational and represents an exceptionally well-preserved example of 16th-century mining technology.
Photo gallery: http://mipalfi.rajce.idnes.cz/Trejv_dolu_Josef/
