Mining the Past
January is supposed to be the most difficult month of the year. Limited daylight, limited sunshine, limited garden and allotment time, inhospitable weather. Friends with Covid, friends with ‘the’ cold, the perceived need to detox after Christmas. The BBC reminded me recently that there won’t be another bank holiday for over three months, although Terroir sees this as a mixed blessing, as extra days off just seem to breed bad temper over the health, social, moral and legal implications of a day out.
Today, I am admiring the sunshine picking out the frost on neighbours’ roofs and the skeletal details of a sycamore tree creating its own sculpture garden and converting its backdrop (uninspiring urban architecture) into works of art. Get your kicks where you can. But yesterday, I spent the day in a sunny Northumberland, courtesy of the Terroir photo library and last summer’s lighter lockdown restrictions. Welcome, I hope, to a little uplift, to a virtual day out.
Hadrian’s wall (above) is a magnificent symbol of Northumberland (and Cumbria of course) and, as we were staying in Greenhead, which is pretty much at the midpoint of the wall, we spent our first few days wallowing in, on and around Roman remains. Here are a few classic tourist pictures.
As time progressed and as we read and visited more widely, mining became a recurrent theme, a sort of ground bass, if you will pardon the pun, to our visit. You will probably know all this, but Terroir was surprised at the variety and longevity of local mining and quarrying. Key commodities were limestone, sandstone, iron, lead, silver, zinc, lime, clay and, of course, coal. Mining has been going on for a long time in this area. A useful Historic England publication (https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/iha-preindustrial-mines-quarries/heag223-pre-industrial-mines-and-quarries/) suggests that Northumbrian communities as far back as the Iron Age had been quarrying stone for round house construction and for quernstones with which to grind flour.
Of course stone quarrying must have expanded significantly with the arrival of the Romans but production must have gone into overdrive after Emperor Hadrian landed in AD122 and ordered construction of a wall from Wallsend on the Tyne in the east to Bowness on Solway in the west.
Below: views of the dolerite Whin Sill cliff (which provided a natural route for much of the wall) and adjacent stone quarries.
Stone quarrying continued after the Romans left, with much plundering of the pre-cut, Roman wall-stone as well as production of newly quarried stone.
Below - some post Roman uses for the local building material
From left to right: Thirlwall Castle 12th century with subsequent alterations, listed Grade I/Scheduled Monument. Featherstone Castle 13th century with subsequent additions and alterations, listed Grade I. Greenhead Parish Church 19th Century, listed Grade II. Greenhead Methodist Church (now youth hostel), 19th century.
Quarrying contiuned into modern times with, unsurprisingly a rather mixed impact on the environment.
Below left - an artist’s impression of Cawfields Milecastle. Below right - an artist’s impression of Cawfields Quarry, located just under the Whin SIll, and where later mining of the Sill’s hard dolomite (great for road surfacing) destroyed the Roman structures above.
But where did the iron, lead, silver, zinc, lime, clay and coal fit in? Two aspects got us interested in these commodities. One was a day spent exploring Haltwhistle and the other was the Newcastle/Carlisle railway line which passed within yards of our accommodation, although Greenhead Station itself had been subject to Dr Beeching’s cuts in the 1960s. We’ll use these two settlements as examples of how pervasive mining used to be.
The railway is a particularly early route which opened in phases between March 1835 and July 1836. Such was the value of local products, and the need to get them to ports and markets, that transport improvements around Carlisle and Newcastle were being planned from the second half of the 18th century. A Carlisle/Newcastle canal was seriously considered. But once railways became a realistic option, and despite significant opposition to this noisy, smoky new-fangled transport, there was really no contest. Railway infrastructure was a fraction of the cost of canal building.
Coal had been mined at Haltwhistle since the 1600s and around Greenhead since at least the 1700s. But, thanks to the Haltwhistle Burn, the town also had significant woollen and corn mills, lime kilns and brickworks. The coming of the railway revolutionised all these local activities. But Haltwhistle was also located relatively close to the north Pennine lead ore area with production centred on Alston and Nenthead. Exporting both lead and the associated silver by road was slow and costly but the promise of a rail head at Haltwhistle changed the eonomics - and the industry - dramatically. Apparently lead was being stockpiled at Haltwhistle before the railway even opened.
Below, left to right: history of Haltwhistle and historic view of the Station; Haltwhistle Station today; ‘The rise of industry’ information plaque.
In today’s post industrial era, things are much quieter. Despite the loss of Greenhead’s station, the railway still functions as a strategic, coast to coast link, carrying mainly passengers and the occasional nuclear flask en route to Sellafield's reprocessing plant.
Above: the flask train passes through another classic Carlisle and Newcastle Railway station; this one is Wylam, to the west of Newcastle.
But the railway faces competition now for the honour of transporting walkers and visitors to the beauties of the wall. It may only run in summer but route AD 122 (geddit?) is an excellent way of travelling between Hexham and Haltwhistle via Greenhead and the must-see highlights of Hadrian’s massive construction project.
Yukon Breakup
Expecting a ‘Yehaa!’ or a ‘Howdy’? No, ‘sut mae’ would be more appropriate. This isn’t north western Canada but it is north west Wales, the land of Welsh speakers and slate mines. Except that Klondike Mill is a lead processing plant.
We have been walking in the woods above Betws-y-Coed in an area which I later discover is called the Gwydir Forest Park. This appears to be a Natural Resources Wales (NRW) non statuatory designation, big on access – the walking, riding and cycling variety – and light touch tourism. The NRW website says that the Park covers an area of 72 sq km, and that ‘Since Victorian times, generations of visitors have walked the woodland paths’. https://naturalresources.wales/days-out/places-to-visit/north-west-wales/sawbench/?lang=en
Indeed, the forest area is riddled with tracks, the sort the Ordnance Survey (OS) describes ominously as ‘Other road, drive or track’, so lowly that they have not been attributed with any colour coding at all, and which my father, a petrol head in love with our first car (an early and second hand Austen A40), would absolutely refuse to drive down. The threat of reaching our destination by a ‘white road’ became a standard family joke.
Although much of Gwydir forest appears to be coniferous (the map is speckled with those iconic, but totally unrealistic, miniature Christmas tree pictograms) our way is through deciduous woodland, twisted, gnarled and dripping with moss. Sessile oak, silver birch, the occasional rowan, and teasing glimpses of other worlds below or beyond us. So far so wonderful.
But on breaking through the tree line to admire a view we come across an example of the other great feature of the Gwydir forests. The NRW website continues, ‘Today, waymarked walking trails allow visitors to explore this landscape of lakes, forests and mountains and learn about its mining history’ … ‘Between 1850 and 1919, lead and zinc mining dominated the area. The legacy of old engine-houses, waste tips and reservoirs are characteristic features of the forest landscape today.’ Forget the ‘generations of visitors’, welcome to the tracks and paths of the miners and mineral workers. Welcome to Klondike Mill! Klondike? Really? Read on.
The Mill was built in 1899 and contributed to an already semi industrialised landscape. A fascinating and detailed Wikipedia article tells its story, one of technological ambition, the economic frailty of mineral extraction and processing, and of subsequent financial and business intrigue. I would add that it is also a story of landscape and environmental impact.
In 1899, it seems that a company called the Welsh Crown Spelter Company (supported by an English company of similar name), purchased and worked a number of lead mines in the area. With expansion in mind, a new and large ‘dressing mill’ was planned for the valley below us. Ore was to be transported to the enormous mill building from the nearby Pandora mine (another great name) by a 2 mile tramway and delivered to the upper storey of the mill by an aerial runway. I can feel the bills mounting as I write.
Power was to be provided by state of the art electricity thanks to Llyn Geirionydd, a nearby lake which had already been conscripted to serve the local mining industry by providing a water supply and power for a generator. A pipeline was now constructed from Llyn Geirionydd to bring water to a tank above the mill, the flow from which powered the mill’s turbine room. The company built a new road, installed the necessary equipment, built enormous shallow holding tanks for effluent and even opened a new mine, next to the mill. Between 100 and 150 staff were employed.
The company’s consulting engineer assured shareholders that ‘the future was bright’, but no ore was processed until the latter part of 1902. Inevitably, debts were enormous, the price of ore was dropping and the mine never returned a profit. The Company went into voluntary liquidation in 1905, although the mill staggered on until 1911.
My thanks to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondyke_mill for so much detail on this fascinating industrial landscape. What the website isn’t able to tell is the tale of the people who worked there, the conditions of the industry, nor the hardship which must have occurred as a result of this story.
But there is more: it appears that the name ‘Klondike Mill’ only came about due to a gold rush style scam operated in the 1920s. An article published in the Mining Journal in May 1920 implied that the local silver-lead mines had struck a rich lode, and one Joseph Aspinall spent much time and money enticing would be investors. The perpetrator is thought to have been rumbled, however, by another local mine owner, and was imprisoned. But the name of Klondike stuck.
How long does it take for an abandoned industrial site to become a piece of archaeology, a piece of heritage and a tourist asset, rather than a blemish or an intrusion? The mill building is now a Scheduled Monument in the care of Cadw. The ruins are stunning, eerie and well worth a visit. The site is rich in industrial archaeology and a wonderland for landscape detectives, but sadly, still a silent witness to its social history. Over 100 years later, the waste heaps below the mill remain bare and sterile, presumably due to lead contamination. A quick search of the internet still hints at water pollution in the local streams and rivers from the zinc and lead mines; I would be grateful for any further information on this.