Fördergerüst Dellwig III · Rooftop

Down the shaft

Read this venue the way the pit was worked

Scroll and the page descends. The gauge on the left reads the live depth in metres; each level of the old shaft carries one part of what you need to know about the building above it.

Schacht Dellwig III · 48–782 m

1. Headframe deck · Depth +48 m

   Above the wheels, above the weather

   The deck sits just under the two sheave wheels that carried the winding ropes. On a clear evening you can pick out four other headframes on the horizon, which is the whole argument for the room: it explains the region in one look, without a single slide.

2. Pit bank · Depth ±0 m

   Getting 120 people up and down

   The industrial lift takes eight at a time, so a full house takes about thirty-five minutes to seat and the same to clear. That arithmetic, not the floor area, is what caps the deck at 120 guests, and it is why we run a timed arrival rather than a door.

3. First level · Depth 180 m

   The weather call is made at 14:00

   Wind speed at deck height, not at ground level, decides whether the evening happens up there. We take the reading at two in the afternoon, tell you immediately, and move to the compressor hall if it fails. The fallback room is held and priced from the start — never found on the day.

4. Second level · Depth 420 m

   The rope ran past here every ninety seconds

   Below the deck the winding rope dropped into the shaft and came back with eight tonnes of coal or a cage of men, around the clock. The steel you are leaning on was sized for that cycle repeated for eighty years. It is not a viewing platform that was later industrialised; it is machinery we were allowed to stand on.

5. Shaft bottom · Depth 782 m

   Booking a deck evening

   A rooftop cocktail for 120 guests is €7,400 for four hours: deck, lift operation, two deck stewards, bar infrastructure and the reserved wet-weather room. Catering runs through our two partner kitchens because the goods lift schedule has to be shared with the guest lift.