Holyfield Mine

Overview

Holyfield appears in the 1888 List of Mines at Alston under the Holyfield Mining Company with the single word 'Exploring' where the other entries record a mineral. The ground was not new: the Holyfield Sun Vein at Nattrass had been surveyed, sectioned and engraved as a mine plan by Dickinson and Sopwith in 1828, sixty years before that return.

History

The 1888 List of Mines under the Metalliferous Mines Act enters Holyfield at Alston, owned by the Holyfield Mining Co. of Alston, with the remark 'Exploring'. That is the whole of what the return says: a company, a place, and the state of not yet having found anything worth returning.

What makes the entry worth keeping is the ground it refers to. The Holyfield Sun Vein at Nattrass, on the Cumberland side of Alston Moor, had been mapped in detail long before: a mine plan and section of the vein, drawn at about 37 inches to the mile, was engraved by J. Dickinson and Thomas Sopwith in 1828 and survives in Carlisle Library. Sopwith was the North Pennines' great mine surveyor, and a vein he had drawn was not unknown ground. A company was still exploring it sixty years later, which says something about how thoroughly Alston Moor had been picked over by the 1880s and how little was left to find.

The 1888 entry was also not the first. Holyfield is listed in the Lists of Mines for 1859-61 and 1863-74 as well as 1883-88, and in the Mineral Statistics for 1848-67 and 1871-73; a Holyfield company appears in the Return of Joint-Stock Companies covering 1869 to 1870, has a file at the National Archives, and is followed through the Mining Journal of 1871. So the name comes and goes through the statutory record for thirty years before the 'Exploring' return, and the Mining Remediation Authority catalogue holds a plan of 'Holyfield lead mines' in the plural, with a section of the strata, alongside a composite plan that sets the workings among their neighbours at Nattrass, Farneberry, Flow Edge and Bayle Hill.

Two levels were still standing when Jackson surveyed the Alston Moor levels in 1969. Holyfield Level, at 1,372 feet, lay open with a small collapse at its entrance holding back about four feet of water; Holyfield Low Level, ninety feet lower, had been walled up and built into a field boundary so that it read as part of the wall. Whatever the 1888 company did or failed to do, driving had gone on here.

Geology

Alston Moor is the northern block of the North Pennine orefield, where lead occurs in near-vertical veins cutting the Carboniferous limestones, sandstones and shales, richest where a vein crosses a competent bed. The Holyfield veins at Nattrass are part of that system: the gazetteer records the Holyfield Sun Vein by name from the 1828 survey. The workings lie on Middle Fell, the high ground between the South Tyne and the Nent south-east of Alston, where the strata run from the Four Fathom Limestone up to the Fell Top Limestone and the veins trend north-westerly. The oxidation zone reaches deeper into the veins there than is normal for the orefield, so secondary cerussite and smithsonite occur with the primary galena and sphalerite, the main gangue minerals being quartz and limonite. Nothing on record establishes which of the veins the 1888 company was following or what it found.

Geological setting: Veins and Lodes (historical documentary reference)

Workings

Two levels are on record. Jackson's 1969 survey of Alston Moor lists Holyfield Level at NY 7342 4505, 1,372 feet above sea level, and Holyfield Low Level at NY 7325 4480, 1,285 feet, the lower of the two walled up at its mouth; Farnberry Level stands close beside it. Beyond the two entrances nothing on record describes the underground workings, and what survives from the earlier working is Dickinson and Sopwith's 1828 plan and section of the Sun Vein rather than an account of the ground. A venture returned as exploring in 1888 had by definition not reached production.

Closure

The year the workings were abandoned is not known. The name's last appearance in the national returns is the Lists of Mines for 1883-88, and both levels were still standing in 1969, the lower one walled up.

What remains

Jackson's 1969 survey of the Alston Moor levels found Holyfield Level open, with a small collapse at the entrance holding back about four feet of water, and Holyfield Low Level securely walled up at the mouth and disguised as part of a field boundary wall.

The mouth of Holyfield Low Level was walled up and built into a field boundary above Nattrass, where it still read as part of the wall in 1969; the entrance to Holyfield Level lay open at the same date.

Related mines

• Morallee Fell Mine — Two ventures returned in the same 1888 statutory lists as exploring rather than producing — Holyfield on Alston Moor, Morallee Fell across the Tyne at Haydon Bridge — and kept here for the same reason: the archive holds many mines that succeeded and few of the ventures that never got that far.

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 Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Holyfield' (catalogue OM15115, Lead Ore, dated 1872); 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) ³

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 records Holyfield at Alston, owned by the Holyfield Mining Co. of Alston, with the remark 'Exploring'. ¹
• The Old Cumbria Gazetteer records the Holyfield Sun Vein Lead Mine at Nattrass, Alston Moor (NY 734 447), citing a hand-coloured engraved mine plan and section at about 37 inches to the mile by J. Dickinson and T. Sopwith, 1828, held at Carlisle Library. ²
• The BGS mine-plans catalogue holds a Mining Remediation Authority abandonment plan titled 'Holyfield' (catalogue OM15115, Lead Ore, dated 1872); 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) ³
• Jackson's 1969 inventory of the Alston Moor levels records two at Holyfield: Holyfield Level at NY 7342 4505, 1,372 feet above sea level, open but with a small collapse at the entrance holding back about four feet of water; and Holyfield Low Level at NY 7325 4480, 1,285 feet, securely walled up at the mouth and disguised as part of a field boundary wall. Farnberry Level, close by at NY 732 448, was also walled up. ⁴
• The mine's record trail includes the Return of Joint-Stock Companies for 1 June 1869 to 31 May 1870 and a company file at the National Archives (BT31/1516/4748), with a run of Mining Journal references through 1871, so a Holyfield company was on the register nearly twenty years before the 1888 return. ⁵
• Holyfield is entered in the Lists of Mines for 1859-61, 1863-74 and 1883-88, and in the Mineral Statistics for 1848-67 and 1871-73. ⁵
• The workings are described in Dunham's Geology of the Northern Pennine Orefield (1948, pages 149-150; second edition 1990, page 124) and in Fairbairn's monograph The Mines of Alston Moor (British Mining No.47, 1993, pages 24, 29-30, 98 and 100-106). ⁵
• The Mining Remediation Authority catalogue holds a plan of Holyfield lead mines in the manor of Alston Moor with a section of the strata, and names Holyfield on a composite plan covering the Alston Moor, Bayle Hill, Farneberry, Nattrass, Far Hill, Flow Edge, Dowpott, Craggs Green and Hudgill Burn workings. The catalogue's plural title indicates more than one working under the name. ⁶
• Middle Fell, the high ground between the South Tyne and the Nent south-east of Alston, carries strata from the Four Fathom Limestone up to the Fell Top Limestone, cut by veins running north-westerly. The oxidation zone reaches deeper there than is normal for the orefield, so secondary cerussite and smithsonite occur alongside the primary galena and sphalerite, with quartz and limonite as the main gangue minerals; three of the fell's veins, Nattrass Redgroves, Greengill and Dowgang, were worked by major hushes. ⁷

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (primary) 1888 List of Mines under the Metalliferous Mines Act: Lead Mines (Durham District) — Mines Department, via the Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) Holyfield Sun Vein Lead Mine, Alston Moor (Old Cumbria Gazetteer) — Lakes Guides / Old Cumbria Gazetteer
3. (primary) BGS / Mining Remediation Authority mine plans: HOLYFIELD — British Geological Survey / Mining Remediation Authority
4. (secondary) Preliminary report on the mines of the northern Pennines (NMRS Memoirs 1969) — Northern Mine Research Society
5. (secondary) Holyfield Mine — record trail and bibliography — Northern Mine Research Society
6. (primary) Plan of Holyfield lead mines in the manor of Alston Moor, with a section of the strata — BGS / Mining Remediation Authority mine plans
7. (secondary) British Mining No. 45: the Alston and Weardale orefields — Northern Mine Research Society

Record created: 4 September 2026 · Last researched: 28 September 2026