Church Burn Mine

Overview

Church Burn Mine is a series of long-abandoned lead workings on Agarshill Fell, in the parish of Whitfield about 6 km south-east of Haltwhistle, centred on old dressing floors at NY 7532 5869. Levels were driven on two mineralised faults — the Church Burn West and East veins — and on a third, the South Vein, known only from the mine plans. It was a small and unsuccessful venture: the only recorded output is 16.25 tonnes of lead ore in 1854 and 35.56 tonnes in 1884, and the mine appears to have lain idle between those years. Despite being comparatively conspicuous in the local landscape it escaped published description altogether until 2020, when a survey of the site also identified plumbojarosite here — the first reliable record of that mineral from anywhere in the Pennines.

History

Almost nothing of this mine's history survives beyond its own plans. Three of them are held by the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, dating from 1854 and 1884. The earlier is entitled 'Plan of Church Burn Lead Mines in the Parish of Whitfield belonging to William Ord Esq., surveyed by John Nevin in September 1854'; the later, complete where the first is damaged, is 'Church Burn Lead Mine. Whitfield, County of Northumberland', attributed to the Church Burn Mining Co. Ltd and dated July 1884 — the same company listed against the mine in the 1888 List of Mines. Beyond the plans and a single record of output for each of those two years, no other reference to working here has been traced. The 1884 plan shows only the first 140 m of the East Vein level, which suggests the workings beyond were impassable by then and not thought worth reopening, and it seems probable the mine lay unworked between 1854 and 1884. What that later plan does show at the surface is ambitious: a twelve-bay set of bouse teams, an adjoining sorting area with knock stone, a bingstead, and a dressing house with waterwheel, settling pits and buddles. Against a recorded output of 35.56 tonnes of ore for the year, it reads as an optimism the ground never repaid.

Geology

The workings lie on the northern flank of the Alston Block, close to the Stublick Fault — part of the Maryport–Gilcrux–Stublick–Ninety Fathom Fault System, which divides the Alston Block from the Northumberland–Solway Basin and was active during Carboniferous times, allowing far thicker sediments to accumulate in the basin than on the block. Church Burn sits in the footwall of that fault zone. The country rock is the Stainmore Formation: a limestone tentatively correlated with the Lower Felltop Limestone crops out on both sides of the burn, with sandstones forming prominent ridges above and below it, interbedded with siltstones; the sandstone immediately beneath that limestone is named the 'High Slate Sill' on the mine plan. Three roughly north–south to NNE–SSW faults cut these rocks, of which the two western ones carry lead. Ore minerals are dominated by coarse crystalline galena, with rare chalcopyrite, and supergene cerussite, linarite and malachite; gangue minerals are extremely rare, only thin coatings of baryte and quartz having been noted. Church Burn belongs with the scatter of deposits in the main Tyne Valley sometimes called the Haydon Bridge Orefield, long regarded as an outlying part of the Northern Pennine Orefield but separated from its nearest mineralisation by some 15 km of barren ground — which is why it is argued that this belt is structurally and genetically tied to the fault line rather than to the orefield proper.

Geological setting: Faults and Fractures (well documented example)

Workings

All the workings are inaccessible and none of the veins is exposed at surface, so what is known comes from the plans and from material on the spoil heaps. On the West Vein a level was driven south from the southern bank of the burn at NY 7525 5863, reaching 267 m to its intersection with the South Vein by 1884; a small rise 60 m from the portal may mark exploration above the level, and a small area of stoping is recorded between 84 and 108 m inbye. On the East Vein a level at NY 7552 5869 ran 362 m south to the same South Vein, turned to follow it for about 20 m — implying the East Vein is displaced westwards by that much — then continued about 100 m further, crossing the Sun No. 1 and No. 2 veins. No stopes are shown on it. The South Vein carried drivages up to 168 m north-west and 108 m south-east from the head of the West Vein level, with internal shafts and sumps, and a sub-level about 4 m below the main level reached by a sump sunk 6 m in the vein. Stopes up to 111 m long and 3 m high are recorded there, above both the main level and the sub-level, and it is likely that most of the mine's modest output came from them. Numerous small shafts stand along the outcrops of both worked veins.

Closure

No closure date has been located. The last recorded output is for 1884 and the mine was still listed under the Church Burn Mining Company in 1888. With a total traced production of about 52 tonnes of lead ore across the two recorded years, it is fairly described as a short-lived and unsuccessful venture.

What remains

Long abandoned. The level entrances are collapsed and the underground workings are inaccessible. The dumps beside the burn remain un-vegetated and carry galena, while the shaft dumps along the East Vein are completely overgrown. A small area of subsidence shown on the 1884 plan above the South Vein stopes is not obvious on the ground today.

The site of the dressing floors survives at NY 7532 5869, with the collapsed entrance to the West Vein level beside the burn and dumps on both banks. Small spoil heaps mark a line of shafts along both worked veins, mostly overgrown; a cluster centred on NY 7542 5832, where the East and South veins intersect, has what appears to be an old sorting area with abundant galena in the spoil. Blocks of crinoidal limestone built into a wall around one shaft there are the only convincing evidence that the Lower Felltop Limestone was reached anywhere in the mine.

Nearby mines

• Water House Mine — 8.3 km NE
• Blagill Mine — 11.6 km S, Cumbria
• Nent Force Level — 12.6 km S, Cumbria
• Settlingstones Mine — 12.6 km NE
• Sipton Mine — 12.8 km SE

Straight-line distance, within 15 km. Show on the map.

Recorded claims

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

• Church Burn Mine comprises long-abandoned workings on mineralised faults in Stainmore Formation rocks on Agarshill Fell, about 6 km south-east of Haltwhistle, centred on old dressing floors at NY 7532 5869. ¹
• The only traced records of production are 16.25 tonnes of lead ore for 1854 and 35.56 tonnes for 1884; on that output the mine must be seen as a short-lived and unsuccessful venture. ¹
• Three mine plans of 1854 and 1884 survive at the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers: the 1854 plan names William Ord as owner and John Nevin as surveyor, and the July 1884 plan is attributed to the Church Burn Mining Co. Ltd. ¹
• The 1884 plan depicts only the first 140 m of the East Vein level, suggesting it was impassable beyond that point by then, and it seems probable the mine lay unworked between 1854 and 1884, though the extent or date of any exploration in those years is unknown. (uncertain) ¹
• The workings escaped published description until 2020, despite Church Burn being comparatively conspicuous in the local landscape. The sole earlier reference to lead mineralisation here is a single NNE-SSW trending vein depicted on the 1:50,000 BGS sheet 19 (Hexham) of 1975. ¹
• Yellowish buff earthy coatings on galena from the West Vein dump were identified by powder X-ray diffraction and energy dispersive X-ray analysis as plumbojarosite. The authors regard this as the first reliable record of the mineral from a Pennine location, the only prior claim — Kingsbury's from Grassington Moor — being one whose provenance is seriously doubted. ¹
• Apart from thin coatings of baryte up to about 3 mm on sandstone and rarer thin quartz coatings, none of it associated with sulphides, no gangue minerals were noted: gangue appears to be extremely rare in these veins. ¹
• The Church Burn and Wolf Hills deposits lie about 15 km from the nearest mineralisation of the Northern Pennine Orefield, across ground in which mineralisation is conspicuously absent, and sit in the footwall of the Stublick-Ninety Fathom Fault System. Their existence is argued to support the hypothesis that this belt is structurally and genetically related to that major Carboniferous fault line. ¹
• In the outer zone of the Northern Pennine Orefield fluorite is typically absent, its place taken by barium minerals — baryte and witherite, the latter remarkably abundant in several veins of the Haydon Bridge area. Veins are widest and most productive in hard rocks such as limestone, hard sandstone or the Whin Sill dolerite, and narrow and commonly barren in mudstones and soft sandstones. ²

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Young, B., Clarke, S., Hopkirk, A., Forbes, I. & Smith, F. (2020). Lead mineralisation within the Stublick Fault system at Church Burn and Wolf Hills, Haltwhistle, Northumberland. Journal of the Russell Society 23(2-4), 75-85 — The Russell Society
2. (primary) Mineral veins and minerals, Northumberland (from Lawrence, D. J. et al. 2007, Northumberland National Park Geodiversity Audit and Action Plan, BGS Commissioned Report CR/07/037N) — British Geological Survey, via the Scottish Geology Trust GeoGuide

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