Great Sleddale Mine

Overview

A small, short-lived 1908 copper trial at Long Scar in Great Sleddale, upper Swaledale, unusual in a dale otherwise worked almost entirely for lead.

History

An old copper mine in Great Sleddale, one of the smaller side-dales that join to form upper Swaledale near Keld, is recorded at Long Scar beside a stream, worked from a shallow shaft and thought to date from a 1908 trial. Man-made earthworks and a waste tip survive from the working, alongside a separate, unnamed lead level elsewhere in the Great Sleddale valley. The site has since yielded mineral specimens including azurite, malachite and fluorite, confirming genuine copper mineralisation in the area, though the trial itself appears to have been short-lived and left no lasting mining industry -- Swaledale's own lead-mining industry, by contrast, reached its peak during the 18th and 19th centuries in the Old Gang and Gunnerside groups of mines to the east, before the last of the dale's mines closed in 1912.

Geology

Copper in upper Swaledale; the vein is not named on the record.

Workings

A shallow shaft trial for copper at Long Scar, beside a stream, with associated earthworks and a waste tip; a separate, unnamed lead level exists elsewhere in the same valley.

Closure

Unknown.

What remains

Earthworks and a waste tip survive at the trial site.

Earthworks and a waste tip at Long Scar.

Recorded claims

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

• An old copper mine in Great Sleddale is recorded at Long Scar beside a stream, worked from a shallow shaft and thought to date from a 1908 trial, with surviving earthworks and a waste tip. ¹
• The site has yielded mineral specimens including azurite, malachite and fluorite, confirming genuine copper mineralisation in the area. ¹
• Swaledale's own lead-mining industry reached its peak during the 18th and 19th centuries in the Old Gang and Gunnerside groups of mines; the last of the dale's mines closed in 1912. ²
• The copper trials of Great Sleddale are the subject of an article by P. J. Briscoe and D. I. Green in the UK Journal of Mines and Minerals in autumn 1989. ³
• Old maps show an unnamed lead level in the Great Sleddale valley behind Lane End Mine, near where Great Sleddale Beck joins Birkdale Beck. ⁴

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Great Sleddale (Great Sled Dale), Muker, Richmondshire, North Yorkshire — Mindat.org
2. (secondary) Lead Mining in Swaledale — Yorkshire Dales National Park
3. (secondary) Bibliography of Lead Mining in Yorkshire & Lancashire (Northern Mine Research Society) — Northern Mine Research Society
4. (observational) Mines 23 - Swaledale Lead Mines 8 - Western End — 28DaysLater Urban Exploring Forums

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