The Derbyshire Caving Club have leased the access rights, and they continue to explore and search for areas of mining that have been closed for centuries.

[7] Subsequently, the Alderley Edge Landscape Project was established, and excavation around Engine Vein revealed what are believed to be Bronze Age smelting hearths dating to around 2000 BC.

An archaeological excavation was undertaken by Derbyshire Caving Club members supervised by the Alderley Edge Landscape Project archaeologists and, at the bottom, timbers were revealed which were carbon-dated to the last century BC.

[11][citation needed] From 1693[12] to the mid-19th century, various people are reported to have explored the Edge for copper and work was done at Saddlebole, Stormy Point, Engine Vein and Brinlow.

[14] During this period, copper from Alderley was taken to Macclesfield where it was combined with zinc from calamine ore from Derbyshire mines to make brass.

The best recorded period was between about 1805 and 1812 when a company of local men including a Derbyshire miner, James Ashton, tried to exploit the mines for lead.

[16][17] In fact, the first identification of cobalt locally may have been prior to 1806 at the nearby Mottram St. Andrew mine, which is mentioned in Henry Holland's 1808 General View of the Agriculture of Cheshire.

[18] The cobalt mining rights on Alderley Edge were leased by Sir John Stanley to a Yorkshire company for an annual rent of £1,000 in 1807.

[19][18] By early 1808, Tomlinson and Company of the Ferrybridge Pottery were leasing the mines at an annual rent of £2,000 plus a £400 share for Lord Stanley.

[18] The ore extracted was taken in tubs to Ferrybridge where it was made into cobalt glass, or smalt, a blue pigment used in the pottery industry and for whitening laundry.

[19] Evidence in the field points to the working of a series of mines on a north–south fault running from Saddlebole to Findlow Hill Wood.

[20] Around the same time, the Ferrybridge cobalt works was seized by excise officers for purported illegal glass manufacture.

[28] From the 1860s onwards, there have been many thousands of visitors to the mines, many – including the earliest – with good lighting and experienced leaders.

[32] George Etchells and Alfred Hadfield died exploring West Mine in May 1929, although their bodies were not found until August.

[34] In 1969 the Derbyshire Caving Club obtained permission from the National Trust (the owners) to re-open Wood Mine.

The mine was worked in the early 19th century but does not appear on the abandonment plan of 1876, probably because it contains no copper deposits and was therefore of no interest to the late 19th-century miners.

[1] The so-called Doc Mine extends across Stormy Point to forefield but may connect with a shaft at its western end.

About halfway through the mine it is cut by a major fault that required the miners to drive exploratory levels in order to relocate the mineralised area.

[1] It was open for day trips in the 1920s until two young adults lost their way in the mine in 1929 and their bodies were discovered by chance several months later.