Arkendale Mine

Overview

An Arkengarthdale lead mine which employed 248 people in 1883 and four in 1905 — the collapse of the Yorkshire lead trade in a single column of figures. It passed from the Arkendale Mining Company to G. T. Gilpin-Brown, of the family that held the dale's mineral rights, and stopped returning ore after 1905.

History

Arkengarthdale was one of the great Yorkshire lead dales, worked from the seventeenth century, and Arkendale Mine is the working the government returns carry under the dale's own name. Lead ore was returned from the mine every listed year from 1882 to 1905. The Arkendale Mining Co. of Arkengarthdale held it in the 1880s — the 1888 List of Mines gives William Peacock as manager — and G. T. Gilpin-Brown in the 1890s, of the family that had held the Arkengarthdale estate and its minerals since the 1650s.

The employment figures tell the story of the dale. Two hundred and forty-eight people were employed in 1883. By 1894 that was ninety-six, eighty-one of them below ground; seventy-seven in 1896; forty-five in 1900; thirty in 1902; and four in 1905. British lead had been undercut by cheap Spanish and American ore from the 1880s, and the Pennine dales emptied as the mines closed — Arkengarthdale's population fell with the workforce.

One death is recorded at the mine: Henry Walker, a miner of thirty-five, who died on 29 April 1883 of a blow on the head from a pinch bar received five days earlier. Bulmer's directory of 1890 lists William Peacock at C.B. Yard as agent to the Arkendale Mining Co., doubling as librarian of the Miners' and Mechanics' Institute in the same yard, and describes the dale's mines as leased by the C.B. Mining Company and employing about 200 hands under G. T. Gilpin-Brown, the lord of the manor at Scar House.

Geology

The mine worked the lead veins of the Yorkshire Pennine orefield, where mineralising fluids rose along faults and joints through the Carboniferous limestones and shales of the dales, depositing galena with fluorspar, barytes and calcite. The veins of Arkengarthdale and neighbouring Swaledale run in a broadly east-west belt and were followed both underground and, in the earlier centuries, by hushing from the surface.

Geological setting: Hydrothermal Deposits (well documented example), Veins and Lodes (well documented example)

Workings

Nothing of the layout is recorded in the returns beyond the split between underground and surface hands: eighty-one of ninety-six below ground in 1894, sixty-three of seventy-seven in 1896, twenty-six of thirty in 1902. The Durham Mining Museum cites a 1952 map of the lead mines of the northern dales against the record.

Closure

Lead ore was returned to 1905, when four people were employed; the mine does not appear in the returns after that.

What remains

Nothing is recorded of what survives of this particular working. Arkengarthdale as a whole is thick with the remains of its lead industry — levels, hushes, spoil, dressing floors and the ruins of smelt mills — much of it protected.

None identified for this working specifically.

Redevelopment

Unknown.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each attached to the source(s) that support it below. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• Employment fell from 248 in 1883 to 96 in 1894, 77 in 1896, 45 in 1900, 30 in 1902 and four in 1905. ¹
• The 1888 List of Mines gives the Arkendale Mining Co. of Arkengarthdale with William Peacock as manager; the Durham Mining Museum records G. T. Gilpin-Brown as owner in the 1890s. ^1,2
• One death is recorded at the mine: Henry Walker, 35, a miner, who died on 29 April 1883 of a blow on the head from a pinch bar received on 24 April. ¹
• Bulmer's 1890 directory lists William Peacock at C.B. Yard as agent to the Arkendale Mining Co., and as librarian of the Miners' and Mechanics' Institute there. ³
• In 1890 the lead mines of Arkengarthdale were leased by the C.B. Mining Company and employed about 200 hands, G. T. Gilpin-Brown of Scar House being lord of the manor. ⁴

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (primary) Arkendale (Lead Ore) — Durham Mining Museum
2. (primary) 1888 List of Mines under the Metalliferous Mines Act: Lead Mines (Durham District) — Mines Department, via the Durham Mining Museum
3. (primary) Arkengarthdale: directory of trades and professions, Bulmer's 1890 (GENUKI) — GENUKI (transcription of Bulmer's History and Directory of North Yorkshire, 1890)
4. (primary) Arkengarthdale parish, Bulmer's 1890 (GENUKI) — GENUKI (transcription of Bulmer's History and Directory of North Yorkshire, 1890)

Record created: 4 September 2026 · Last researched: 24 September 2026