Margaret Mine

Overview

Margaret Mine, an inclined drift mine in Henning Valley at Lindal-in-Furness, was the last iron ore mine working in the Furness district when it closed in 1960, its soft, unmarketable ore finally outweighing its continued productivity.

History

Lindal-in-Furness sits within the Furness haematite orefield, worked since the Middle Ages by Furness Abbey and developed on an industrial scale from the 1840s onward to supply Barrow's steelworks. The district's ore occurred not in regular veins but in highly irregular masses called 'sops' -- cavities and voids within a succession of Carboniferous limestones, occasionally lined with cavities known as 'loughs' that could contain prized specimens of specular ore. Workings were extracted using a method comparable to board-and-pillar coal mining, except that, unusually, the supporting pillars were themselves removed once an area was worked out, deliberately allowing the roof to collapse and exposing further ore beneath. Margaret Mine was an inclined drift mine at Henning Wood in Henning Valley, Lindal, one of more than a dozen named workings recorded in the immediate area alongside pits such as Henning Wood Pot, Pickshaft Cave and the Berkune Pits. As iron ore mining declined across Furness through the early 20th century -- squeezed by dwindling reserves and cheap imported ore, mainly from Spain -- neighbouring workings closed one by one: the district's last big pit, Woodbine Pit at North Stank, closed in 1946. Margaret Mine outlasted it by well over a decade, continuing to raise ore even as it remained the last drift mine still in production in the district. It finally closed in 1960, not because the ore had run out, but because what remained was too soft to market -- an economic rather than a geological end to over a century of large-scale iron mining in Furness. Local memory also connects the district's mining to a stranger, better-documented event a few miles away: in September 1892 a Furness Railway locomotive vanished into a sudden 30-foot hole that opened beneath it near Lindal station, an incident blamed on subsidence into abandoned workings of the (separate) Parkside and Lindal Moor Mining Company -- a vivid illustration of exactly the cavity-riddled 'sop' geology that made the whole district's ground, Margaret Mine's own included, so unpredictable to work.

Geology

Furness ore occurred as large, highly irregular masses ('sops') within a succession of six Carboniferous limestones, quite unlike the regular mineral veins found elsewhere in the Lake District; occasional cavities ('loughs') within these bodies held specimens of specular haematite.

Workings

Worked as an inclined drift into the hillside at Henning Wood rather than via a vertical shaft, following the district's characteristic method of extracting irregular 'sop' ore bodies within the local limestone, including deliberately removing supporting pillars once ground was worked out.

Closure

Closed in 1960 -- the last iron mine working in the Furness district -- because its remaining ore, though the mine was still productive, had become too soft to market, rather than because reserves were exhausted.

Recorded claims

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

• Margaret Mine was the last drift mine still in production in the Lindal area; despite remaining productive, its ore was soft and unmarketable, and the mine closed unprofitably in 1960. ¹
• Furness ore bodies occurred as large, irregular masses called 'sops' within Carboniferous limestone, quite unlike regular mineral veins elsewhere in the Lake District, and were worked by a method that deliberately removed supporting pillars to expose further ore as the roof collapsed. ²
• The district's last big pit, Woodbine Pit at North Stank, closed in 1946, well over a decade before Margaret Mine -- itself confirmed as the final closure in the Furness iron field in 1960 -- came to the end of its working life. ²

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) History of Lindal & Marton — Lindal-in-Furness local history website
2. (secondary) Iron mining — Industrial History of Cumbria

Record created: 1 September 2026 · Last researched: 1 September 2026