LEAD AND ZINC ORE MINING

Lead was one of the first metals to be discovered, and has been in use for at least 8000 years. It is a soft metal, which is easy to work and does not corrode. Its main ore, galena, occurs widely, and can be smelted at temperatures which can be reached in an ordinary campfire. It is often associated with zinc and copper, and usually contains a small proportion of silver which can add to its value. The gangue material forms much the greater part of the content on a vein, and used to be regarded as waste. Now materials such as barytes and fluorspar are often the more important products, and the metal ores are regarded as a by-product.
In the Lake District zinc was produced mainly at the mines of Force Crag, Threlkeld and Thornthwaite. Lead was found in many places, but the principal mining fields were in the Helvellyn, Newlands and Caldbeck areas.
There are no records or remains of very early mining in the Lake District, and few records for the centuries after the Romans left, but the Elizabethans operated lead mines in the Derwentwater area - at Stoneycroft, Brandlehow, Barrow and Thornthwaite - and in the Caldbeck Fells at Red Gill and Roughtongill. In 1564 a lead mine was opened in Greenhead Gill at Grasmere, but this venture was not successful and the mine closed in 1573, although the remains that can still be seen today are well worth a visit.
Mining in the Lake District was generally in decline during much of the 17th century, and there is no record of great or continuous activity so far as lead mining was concerned during the 18th century. Lead mining at Greenside, however, may have been started as early as 1650. Top Level was driven in 1790, some 40 fathoms below the summit and stoped out to the surface. Although that mine was then abandoned for several years, it was later to become the richest in the area, being worked more or less continuously for the next 150 years after the formation of the Greenside Mining Company in 1822.
Some 2,400,000 tons of lead ore were produced during the life of the mine, and 2 million ounces of silver. In the early days the dressed ore was taken elsewhere to be smelted, firstly to Stoneycroft Gill - a distance of ten miles up hill and down dale - and then, from 1820, to Alston where the London Lead Company had erected an up-to-date smelter. Only during the 1830s was a smelter built on site at the foot of Lucy Tongue Gill, and a flue arched with stone was cut out of the bedrock, ending a mile away on the Stang, where there was a stack. The course of this flue can easily be traced today, and part of the stack is still standing. The smelter was in operation until the beginning of the 20th century when the decision was made to send the dressed ore by road to Troutbeck and from there by rail to Newcastle upon Tyne for processing.