The new year began with a new exploration at the Lavrio mines. The team visited Mine 50 at Hilarion on the 4/1/2020. It was a part of the ancient mine, which was exploited and expanded by the French Mining Company to make the most of the rich mining industry in the 1870s and continued in the following years until at least the mid-20th century. The exploitation of this mine first started with the discovery of the ancient Hilarion-Berezekos Well, which company officials made sure to clean from the materials and soil that had covered it.

Initially it was 37 meters deep and 1.30 x 1.30 in size, square in shape, characteristic of the ancient Greeks (i.e. mineral wells that allowed the galleries to vent). The subsoil was mainly composed of slate and marble rocks, from which the ancient Greeks had extracted large quantities of ores, as is inferred from the various galleries discovered in the subsoil of the area. The need to extract new minerals created the conditions for further deepening of the ancient well and subsequently the galleries. So the new section created was called Hilarion. According to Marmani Marilena, Mechanic and Metallurgist at the National Technical University of Athens: “… Specifically, when the Hilarion-Berezekos well was taken over by the French Mining Company, the company’s geologists, who were studying the soil and subsoil of Lavrio, concluded the area had significant deposits of kalamina (carbonate).  To find these deposits, work would have to start on the ancient mines at Hilarion, as the rich metallic specimens of kalamina although known to ancient miners, remained untouched. In the wider area of ​​the Berezekos-Hilarion Well there were other smaller wells, which the French Mining Company gave numbers so they could work better and more accurately. In this way they knew exactly how many wells were in a particular area and organized the research and extraction work accordingly… “.

In one such gallery, mine 50 at Hilarion, the exploration team, led by Vassilis Stergiou, explored yet another flooded area. Here, too, the aquifer covered part of the lower galleries, sealing this section. The descent of the team to reach the water took approximately 45 minutes. The galleries in this mine were large enough to allow easy movement, while in a few places the team needed to pass through narrower passages to explore a further. Although the distance from the mine entrance is great, the team did not experience significant elevation differences with steep slopes when descending to the flooded section. The galleries were relatively well preserved, with iron pillars and stone support walls, staircases and wooden support beams.