A unique technical relic - the Ševčin Shaft has become a well-known dominating feature of the Březové Hory Community in the town of Příbram. At the top of blooming of mining in the Březové Hory Area, in 1813, a new shaft was got driven on the place of the former medieval pit. Its original name was the Emperor Franz I Shaft, later the Emperor Franz Joseph I Shaft, in honour of then Hapsburg rulers. But people soon adopted the name "Francšachta" which meant "the Franz's Shaft". They kept calling it by that same name even after changing its name in 1918 when Czechoslovakia originated and all symbols of the old Monarchy were pulling down. The new name, "Ševčin Shaft", was borrowed from the ore vein of a high account - the Ševčin Ore Vein.
The depth of the bottom, the 32 nd level, of the Ševčin Shaft was 1 092.1 m; the total depth was 1 128.8 m and it was reached in 1909. The closing works in the shaft were finished eleven years after the closing the whole Březové Hory Mining District in 1978. The shaft was backfilled with a plug in the depth of 47 m and the pit bank was covered with a concrete slab.
The unique, main shaft tower has been a limelight of the lay and expert public since 1979. It is 37.5 m high and it was built in 1879 in the industrial architecture of the Malakov style (combination of burnt bricks and stones). It is a listed building which was under consideration to be suggested to the list of UNESCO technical relics of the past. The tower is dominated by a wooden little tower with a walkway which is said to have served for astronomical observations. The interior of the tower is used by the Mining Museum in Příbram for thematic exhibitions.
The accessory engine room was built 1879 - 1880 in the same architectonical style and open to public in 1994 as a part of the museum. Inside it there is another technical relic of the past, a horizontal double-stage piston compressor 500/310 made in the 'Královopolské' Machine-works, Brno, in 1928. It was used in the local mining district, in the Štefánik's Shaft, the former Rudolph's Shaft.
Opposite the shaft tower and the engine room there is a building which originally served as storage and a sorting room, later as an operating department of the shaft. Between the wars it was rebuilt into an assembling house of the Sokol Organization and since 1981 it has been used by museum.
An integral part of the complex of the buildings of the Ševčin Shaft is a registration room dated from 1880 where the visitors can enjoy a permanent exhibition called "History of Mining in the Příbram District".
In the area of the Mining Museum in Příbram, a state organization of the Central Bohemia Region, there is also a storeyed house dated from 1884 - 1885 having provided the apartments for mining officials and technicians. The building was adopted for proposes of the museum and the visitors can see mineralogical and geological collections in it. On the display there are rocks and minerals from the local silver mines, the uranium deposits, the area of the Brdy Mountains and also unique paleontological samples.
In the south part of the area of the Ševčin Shaft there are former mining baths with a lodging house and a charitable dining room. They were built in 1884 as a part of a wider planning project made by the current Mining Head Office.
The light railway, which was in function in the forecourt of the Ševčin Shaft in 1884, was partly re-vamped. Historical and modern mining technology, machines and equipment have been displayed on it. Altogether they show single technique used underground, on the surface and during the haulage. Most of present exhibits were used by former Ore and Uranium Mines, Příbram in the second half of the 20 th century. The light railway was built to transport raw material from the Ševčin Mine to the Vojtěch (Adalbert) Dressing Plant. It used to lead across the bridge over Pod Kovárnami Street, along Pod Struhami Street to the gateway of the Ševčin Convey Corridor and through it to its destination at the dressing plant. A part of the railway-track was renovated in 2005 thanks to the cooperation of the Mining Museum, DIAMO, a state enterprise and the town of Příbram. Today it transports tourists who can enjoy also an original driving wheel, a replica of a lifting winch and a little mining campanile in the forecourt of the Ševčin Shaft. The wheel was used in vertical mining transport from the 16th to the 19th century. The Mining Museum in Příbram became the biggest mining museum in the Czech Republic and one of the biggest in Europe in its area and in the amount of exhibits. The museum was set up by the significant mining historian PhDr. Jiří Majer, CSc. (born in 1922).
