Killhope Lead Mining Centre is the most complete lead-mining site in Britain. It is situated in the heart of the North Pennines, an area designated as of outstanding natural beauty.

On the third day we visited the Killhope Mine museum and we were able to collect in depth information for the project. The Killhope mining centre is a museum displaying what conditions the miners had to work and live in. It also displays the fully working wheel and givers people the opportunity to do some mining and go underground.

Many miners and washing floor workers who did not live close to the mine were accommodated in cramped residential huts, which they shared with fellow miners. Miners awoke very early for long and hard working days arriving home as late as eight o'clock.

The manager of the mine lived in comparative luxury with his own sitting room and bathroom. He was also on reasonable wage compared to the other workers. He also had an office where inspectors kept records plans and all the accounts of the mines in the district.

In the Smithy the blacksmith and his striker repaired the tubs used in the mine. They also provided running repairs to the machinery and shod horses. The main job was sharpening the miners jumpers, the hand held chisels that were used to drill holes for explosives.

Not an unfamiliar site to us was the giant working wheel that was similar to our own wheel called the Lady Isabelle. The Killhope wheel is made out of wood and is much smaller. The purpose of the wheel was to haul stones in tubs up to the crusher. There was also a smaller wheel that was accessible by going underground, it was a waterwheel turning in a small cavern. At Killhope the underground level was called Parks level and 19th century mining was usually done from horse levels. Horses pulled Ore from these levels and brought the Ore out on to the washing floors for sorting.

The Killhope wheel is 10.3 metres in diameter and has a circumference of 16.2 meters. There were larger wheels in the area like the one at Nenthead, which was 18 meters in diameter.

The wheel powered the jiggers, which were capable of sorting different sizes of rocks into categories. The rocks then went to the classifier, and the buddle house, which separated the rocks into waste and galena; the waste was then thrown into slime pits.

The Laxey wheel pumped water out of the mines, as the river was liable to flood the mine. At Killop this was not the case, and so the wheel is much smaller because it only had to power the jiggers.

The Killhope mining centre is not a large area but it does include a forest walk, an underground tour and a visitor's shop with café. You could also see the 'Lead loving plants' which were growing behind the wheel in the slagheaps.

There were also many miners' houses and cottages scattered around the surrounding countryside. The water that powered the wheel continued down river in the Killhope burn providing miners families with waster to drink and wash in. Until recently the whole landscape was covered in slag heaps and there were no roads for the miners horses as many did not have any sort of transport because horses were expensive to look after. Before the complex machinery was available the galena was extracted and washed on the washing floors by small children and occasionally women. The rocks were brought in by small mine wagons along the railway.

During our visit we decided to simulate the work that would have been done by children of our own age. We had to take a pile of crushed rock, wash it and then sort it out. Once the rock were sorted the Lead and other useful minerals were brought inside, it was then sent off to the companies that used it.

After we had taken a small supply of lead we loaded the waste into a mine wagon and pushed it up the hill to where it was deposited onto the slagheap. Pit horses were normally used to pull these wagons.

LEAD LOVING PLANTS

Heavy metals such as Lead and Zinc are no longer mined in the North Pennine Orefields. Even so, the environmental legacy from that time can still be seen on many of the long disused mining sites. Here on bare ground where nothing else will grow, a distinctive lead tolerant vegetation has now become established. To botanists, this is known as the metallif erous flora. A small group of plants is found in these areas which indicate the presence of lead mining pollution. These are known as the metallophytes, and comprise four herbs, which are normally associated with alpine environments, along with one tiny fern.

Additionally there is a group of lead tolerant plants, also tolerant of other pollutants. These have been called the submetallophytes. Of this group only Thrift can be found on more than a couple of sites.

Ground disturbance increases the development of a metalliferous flora, A similar vegetation can be found where winter frosts have broken up rocks in upland areas to create slopes. The metallophytes are normally associated with limestone, so where the bedrock is sandstone, the metallophytes are poorly developed. Altitude is also important because the metallophytes are mostly alpine plants. A walk across a disused lead mine is often most rewarding, especially in late spring and early summer when some or all of these delicate and beautiful plants can be found in flower.

MINE SHOPS

The Killhope Mine Shop was built in 1858. It is typical of mine shops in the North Pennines in the nineteenth century, with smithy and stables on the ground floor and sleeping quarters above. Mine owners built these shops and provided a minimum of furniture, fuel and equipment. Each mine had a shop for the blacksmith, to store clothes, and for men to change in; as not all of them had sleeping quarters.

These mine shops could be terribly dirty and cramped. Draughts, dominoes and quoits were popular pastimes. The miners were not hard drinking gamblers: a mine shop would have had a well-used bible and those who were Methodist lay-preachers would have prepared their sermons during the week. The men who played in bands would have practised to perfect a piece by the weekend. Serious debates took up a great deal of time as well. Wages were poor, so they earned a few extra shillings a week by doing fretwork, making wooden furniture and spar boxes (for Victorian sitting rooms), and knitting stockings, shawls, jumpers and baby clothes.

ABOVE GROUND – PARK LEVEL

UNDERGROUND

Early mining was carried out at or near the surface. Shallow pits were dug to a maximum depth of ten metres with tunnels in both directions along the vein. The tunnels were short because of problems in holding up the roof and foul air. When one pit was abandoned, another would be dug further along the vein.

In the eighteenth century, hand-wound windlasses for raising ore were replaced by horse whims, so that miners could penetrate deeper. Up to four horses provided the power by walking in circles.

Sometimes veins were worked by 'hushing'. An earth dam was built on a hillside above where a vein was suspected and, when sufficient water had collected, the dam would be breached so the torrent swept away soil and rock. This was repeated to form a deep gorge. Within half a mile of Killhope, there are seven of these 'hushes’, the largest is 1,000 metres long and 30 metres deep.

In 1853 W.B. Lead began a horse level at Killhope, the one you now see. For 20 years, about 25 to 35 miners worked here, mostly opening up new areas rather than winning ore. It was slow work; the first 500 metres took five years and little workable ore was found in the first four veins that were reached. Prosperity came after 20 years of struggle, but there were setbacks. From 1878 there was a bitter dispute with strikes and lockouts, which only ended in 1883 when W.B. Lead surrendered their Weardale leases to the newly formed Weardale Lead Company.

The decline of mining at Killhope and throughout the North Pennines was slow and painful. In the 1890s, Park Level was closed and ore from the mine was again raised at Killhopehead. After 1903, only small quantities were mined; in 1910 the mine closed; in 1916 an attempt to reopen Park Level amounted to nothing.