Cragg End Flag Stone Mine

Overview

Cragg End was a flagstone working in upper Arkengarthdale, a dale far better known for its lead. It appears in the 1888 List of Mines under the Metalliferous Mines Act as a flag stone mine at Arkindale, owned and managed by John Brown of Arkengarthdale, with Parkin Simpson of Copley as its agent. This record is deliberately a short one: beyond that statutory entry and a database record of its position, almost nothing about the working has been established, and the account below says so rather than padding it.

History

The 1888 List of Mines under the Metalliferous Mines Act — the return every non-coal mine was required to make — records Cragg End among the flag stone mines. Its entry gives the mine as situated at Arkindale, the manager or agent as J. Brown, and the owner as John Brown of Arkingarthdale, Richmond, in Yorkshire. The dale's name is spelt three different ways within that single line. A second name attached to the working is Parkin Simpson, of Copley, Cockfield, near Darlington. That is the extent of what has been established here. The List of Mines is a snapshot of one year and says nothing about when the mine began, how long it ran, how many men it employed or when it stopped. What can be said comes from the pattern of the trade around it. The Swaledale and Arkengarthdale Archaeology Group records that former lead mines in the two dales were also used to quarry flagstone for paving and roof slates, and that in the first half of the twentieth century the larger commercial quarries there often took their stone from underground mines, sometimes old lead workings, rather than from the open hillside quarries that served local needs. The archaeological record of the dale distinguishes a Cragg End Level from a Cragg End Quarry a little above it, which fits that pattern exactly: a surface working with a driven level beneath. It should be said plainly that SWAAG's own account does not name Cragg End. The two flagstone workings it has studied in detail are Booze Wood Level and Cogden Hall, and its chert quarries — a different stone, worked from about 1904 to 1954 and sold to the Staffordshire potteries — are Fremington Edge, Old Moulds Level and the Hungry Chert Quarries at Mouldside. Cragg End is not among them. Its database of mining-related records — 266 pages covering the two dales — has since been searched as well, and holds no record of this working either. What that database does show is how flagstone was actually got here. At Booze Wood Level, three miles down the dale, a nineteenth-century lead mine was turned over to quarrying building stone underground, mainly flagstone, and the houses on Bridge Terrace in Reeth are said to have been roofed with flag from it. At Cogden Hall in Grinton, a line of at least thirteen shallow shafts marked as old lead workings on the 1857 Ordnance Survey turned out on inspection to be nothing of the kind: the spoil is broken sandstone flag, there is no limestone and no mineralisation, and a level opened there was clearly worked for flagstone, with the waste built into its own pack-walls. That method — winning good flag through shallow shafts rather than from the open hillside — is known as gallery working, and was relatively common around Wakefield. None of that is evidence about Cragg End itself. It is the working practice of the dale it sat in, and it is recorded here because the pairing of a level with a quarry just above it, which is all the topographic record gives, is only meaningful against that background. Establishing when this mine worked and when it stopped now rests on L. O. Tyson's The Arkengarthdale Mines, British Mining No. 53.

Geology

Flagstone in the northern Pennine dales comes from the sandstone beds within the Carboniferous Yoredale sequence — cyclic alternations of limestone, shale and sandstone — where a bed splits cleanly enough along its bedding planes to give paving and roofing slabs. The Buddlepit database classes both Cragg End sites as sandstone workings. The archive's other Yorkshire Dales flagstone record, at Burtersett above Hawes, shows how loosely the trade named its product: the statutory returns there call the same rock flag stone, then slate, then sandstone as the market changed. Chert, a hard siliceous stone, occurs in the same dales and was quarried there commercially from about 1904 to 1954 for the Staffordshire potteries, but it is a different rock with a different market and nothing connects Cragg End to that trade.

Geological setting: Sedimentary Beds and Seams (historical documentary reference)

Workings

The Buddlepit database records two sites at Cragg End rather than one: a level at 54.4238 N, 2.0058 W and a quarry a little to the north at 54.4243 N, the same longitude — an underground drive and a surface working within about sixty metres of one another, which is the arrangement flagstone getting in these dales commonly took. No plan, section or account of the workings themselves has been located, and nothing is known here about their extent. For what such a pairing usually meant in these dales, see the history above: flagstone here was commonly won underground, through levels driven into the bank or through shallow shafts sunk to a good bed, rather than from the open quarry face.

Closure

No closure date has been established. The mine was returning in 1888; whether it worked for years before or after that year is not recorded in anything this pass could read. Unlike Burtersett, which the Durham Mining Museum tracks across the returns from 1882 to 1929, Cragg End has no per-site page there, and the museum's Flag Stone Mines list exists for 1888 alone.

What remains

Not established. No dated site report, photograph or survey of the workings has been found.

Not established. The Buddlepit database records a quarry and a level at the site, but nothing consulted here describes what survives of either on the ground.

Nearby mines

• Moulds Side Mine — 0.8 km E, Yorkshire
• Arkendale Mine — 0.9 km SE
• CB Mine — 1.0 km SE
• Punchard Gill Mine — 1.1 km NE, Yorkshire
• Whaw Mine — 1.5 km S, Yorkshire

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.

• The 1888 List of Mines under the Metalliferous Mines Act records Cragg End among the flag stone mines, situated at Arkindale, with J. Brown as manager or agent and John Brown of Arkingarthdale, Richmond (Yorks) as owner. ¹
• Parkin Simpson, of Copley, Cockfield, via Darlington, is recorded against the Cragg End entry in the 1888 List of Mines. ¹
• The Buddlepit mine database records two sandstone workings at Cragg End in Arkengarthdale: Cragg End Level at 54.4238 N, 2.0058 W and Cragg End Quarry a little to the north at 54.4243 N. ²
• Former lead mines in Swaledale and Arkengarthdale were used to quarry flagstone for use in paving and roof slates. ³
• In the first half of the 20th century the larger commercial quarries in Swaledale and Arkengarthdale often extracted stone from underground mines, sometimes old lead workings — in contrast to the abandoned open quarry sites on hillsides throughout the northern Yorkshire Dales, many at small outcrops worked only to serve local communities' needs for stone. ³
• Winning good-quality flag stone through shallow shafts rather than from surface quarries is known as 'gallery' working and was relatively common around Wakefield in West Yorkshire; a level of this kind at Cogden Hall in Grinton was found to have been worked for flagstone, with the spoil built into its pack-walls. ⁴
• Booze Wood Level in Arkengarthdale, a 19th-century lead mine, was later used as an underground quarry for building stone, mainly flagstone; the houses on Bridge Terrace, Reeth are said to have been roofed with flag from that source. ⁴

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (primary) 1888 List of Mines under the Metalliferous Mines Act: Flag Stone Mines — Mines Department, via the Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) Arkengarthdale mines and quarries — Buddlepit Mine Database
3. (secondary) Chert and Flagstone Quarries — Swaledale and Arkengarthdale Archaeology Group (SWAAG)
4. (secondary) SWAAG database: mining-related records (Mining 1) — Swaledale and Arkengarthdale Archaeology Group (SWAAG)

Record created: 4 September 2026 · Last researched: 5 September 2026