Crossfield Mine

Overview

Crossfield was a group of haematite pits on the western edge of the West Cumberland iron orefield, between the mining villages of Cleator Moor and Moor Row. Five numbered pits are recorded, together with a working simply called Crossfield, the earliest of them raising ore under John Stirling in the mid-1860s. By 1888 the workings were in the hands of the Crossfield Iron Ore Company, of Moor Row. The pits belong to the boom that the Bessemer steel process set off in West Cumberland, whose low-phosphorus haematite briefly dominated the market. It is a separate working from Dalzell's Moor Row Mine about a kilometre to the west.

History

Iron mining in West Cumberland is very old — the earliest documented mine in the district was working in 1134 — but until about 1850 the quantities raised were very small, because there was little local demand and charcoal smelting struggled to reach the temperatures haematite needed. The Bessemer steel process of the 1850s changed that: it required ores of very low phosphorus content, which Cumbrian haematite happened to be, and a boom followed between 1860 and 1880. Cleator Moor, Moor Row and Frizington sprang up as mining villages on the back of it, and Moor Row's Penzance Street still records the Cornish miners who came north for the work. Crossfield belongs to this phase. Ore was being raised under John Stirling in 1864-1866, and by 1888 the pits were listed under the Crossfield Iron Ore Company of Moor Row. The Bigrigg and Moor Row district was always marginal by comparison with Cleator Moor itself and never saw the same scale of immigration, though it is believed 1,000 to 1,200 men were employed in its mines in the later nineteenth century. A long, slow decline set in after 1890 as newer steelmaking processes took cheaper, lower-grade ores that could be quarried far more cheaply than ore from West Cumberland's 200-300 m deep haematite mines.

Geology

The pits worked haematite in the Carboniferous limestones of the west Cumbrian orefield, a narrow belt running between Lamplugh and Calder Bridge. The limestones here dip gently west or south-west and are largely hidden beneath till and glacifluvial outwash; the local sequence is only about 200 m thick, much thinner than in south or east Cumbria, because West Cumbria then lay on the shallow Ramsey-Whitehaven Ridge. The orebodies are not veins but large irregular or flat-lying replacements of the limestone, usually beside faults, and commonly preserve the host rock's bedding planes and fossils within the ore itself.

Geological setting: Iron Replacement Deposits (well documented example)

Workings

A group of separate pits rather than one shaft: Crossfield No. 1 to No. 5, and a working recorded simply as Crossfield. No. 1 lies at NY 0137 1419 at about 62 m above sea level and the Crossfield working at NY 0156 1494 at about 84 m. Nothing is recorded of the underground layout. In this district, where all the ore had been removed from the flats, the resulting voids were commonly packed with waste rock or blown sand, leaving only heavily timbered shafts for access to the workings below.

Closure

The closure date is not known. Ore is recorded under John Stirling only for 1864-1866, and the Crossfield Iron Ore Company appears in the 1888 List of Mines, so working was at least intermittent across that period. The district as a whole declined steadily after 1890.

What remains

The site lies on private land. Nothing is recorded of what survives at the surface.

What's uncertain

Points where sources disagree or the record could not be settled; both accounts are kept. All open questions in the archive.

• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a BGS plan titled 'Crossfield;' (catalogue SP2340, undated in the catalogue); the catalogue gives no location and the plan's details do not clearly tie it to this working, so it may belong to another of the same name. (uncertain) ⁴

Recorded claims

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

• Ore was raised at Crossfield under John Stirling between 1864 and 1866. ¹
• Five numbered Crossfield pits are recorded, together with a working listed simply as Crossfield; No. 1 lies at NY 0137 1419 and the latter at NY 0156 1494. ¹
• The Bessemer steel process of the 1850s required ores of very low phosphorus content, which Cumbrian haematite was, producing a West Cumberland boom between 1860 and 1880 during which Cleator Moor, Moor Row and Frizington grew as mining villages. ²
• It is believed 1,000 to 1,200 men were employed in the mines of the Bigrigg and Moor Row district in the latter half of the nineteenth century, a district always marginal by comparison with Cleator Moor. ²
• The Cumbrian haematite orebodies occur as large irregular or flat-lying replacements of Carboniferous limestone, usually associated with or adjacent to faults, rather than as veins. ³
• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a BGS plan titled 'Crossfield;' (catalogue SP2340, undated in the catalogue); the catalogue gives no location and the plan's details do not clearly tie it to this working, so it may belong to another of the same name. (uncertain) ⁴

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Crossfield (a) — Buddlepit Mine Database
2. (primary) Iron Ore Mines near Bigrigg (NY 002 130) and Moor Row (NY 006 145) — Cumberland Geological Society
3. (primary) Haematite deposits of Cumbria — BGS Earthwise
4. (primary) BGS / Mining Remediation Authority mine plans: CROSSFIELD; — British Geological Survey / Mining Remediation Authority

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