Booze Mine

Overview

A lead mine above the tiny Arkengarthdale hamlet of Booze, overlooking Slei Gill, whose Booze Vein was formally cut in 1872 but which carries an older, unverified legend of a catastrophic underground flood.

History

Booze Wood mine worked lead in Slei Gill, the tributary valley overlooked by the hamlet of Booze itself. The Booze Vein was cut in March 1872 and ore production began that September; dressing floors were built at Booze Wood in 1873, with second-hand mine plant brought over from the Bolton Park lead mine in Wensleydale and erected at a cost of £276 2s 2d. Like the rest of the Yorkshire lead field, the mine declined with the industry's wider collapse at the end of the 19th century, but the Booze Wood Level found a second life as a slate mine, continuing to be worked for slate until the start of the First World War. Local legend holds that, at some point in the 18th century, miners working the vein broke into an underground lake near Boldershaw and unleashed a flood that killed twenty-four miners and two pit ponies -- eighteen of the dead said to have come from Booze itself -- giving the flooded working the name Water Blast Vein. Researchers have been unable to find any record of this event in the parish registers, though it has been suggested that a genuine, much smaller accident, in which three miners died, may be the true origin of the story.

Workings

Lead extraction through the Booze Vein and associated levels in Slei Gill, with dressing floors built at Booze Wood in 1873; later, separately, the Booze Wood Level was reworked for slate.

Closure

Lead working ended with the wider collapse of Yorkshire lead mining at the close of the 19th century; the Booze Wood Level continued as a slate mine until 1914.

What remains

Surviving remains at Booze Wood include the dressing floor, mine tunnels and bouse teams (ore storage bins).

The dressing floor, tunnel entrances and bouse teams (ore storage bins) at Booze Wood mine.

Abandoned workings can be dangerous — unstable ground, uncapped shafts, flooding and bad air are common even where a site looks safe from the surface. This entry describes history and general location only; it is not an access guide.

Recorded claims

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

• The Booze Vein was cut in March 1872 and ore production began that September; dressing floors were built at Booze Wood in 1873 using second-hand plant brought from Bolton Park lead mine in Wensleydale, erected at a cost of £276 2s 2d. ¹
• The Booze Wood Level continued to be worked as a slate mine after the collapse of lead mining, until the beginning of the First World War. ²
• A local legend describes a flood that killed 24 miners and 2 pit ponies after miners broke into an underground lake near Boldershaw, but researchers have found no record of this in parish registers; a smaller, unconfirmed accident killing three miners has been suggested as the story's possible real origin. (disputed) ²

Photographs & further reading

This page doesn't try to reproduce everything — these are the best original sources found for this mine.

Images

Sources

1. (secondary) Booze, Arkengarthdale: the history behind the Yorkshire Dales hamlet — Yorkshire Post
2. (secondary) Booze, North Yorkshire — Wikipedia
3. (observational) Remains at Booze Wood mine — Geograph Britain and Ireland (Gordon Hatton)

Record created: 30 August 2026 · Last researched: 30 August 2026