Merrybent Copper Mine

Overview

The Victorian and Edwardian revival of copper mining on the Middleton Tyas orefield: the Merrybent and Middleton Tyas Mining and Smelting Company's workings of about 1856, with an engine shaft sunk in 1866, reopened in 1910 and worked for lead and copper by a handful of men until 1925 and abandoned in 1930. Records of production are poor; the ground gave under three thousand tons of copper ore between 1863 and 1913.

History

The copper of Middleton Tyas, some of the richest ore in Europe though there was never much of it, had been worked on and off since the fifteenth century and most intensely in the mid-eighteenth. The Victorian attempt came from the Merrybent and Middleton Tyas Mining and Smelting Company, which by Mindat's account began development about 1856 on a series of veins in the Underset Limestone and Nattrass Gill Hazle, the Merrybent Main, Black, Robert Raw's, Smithson's, Lowe's, Kneeton, Fairly's and North-West Cross veins, and sank the Engine Shaft in 1866. The company's name is on the Merrybent and Darlington Railway Act of 1866, a branch built in 1870 from the Darlington and Barnard Castle line to carry limestone from Barton Quarry on the Low Merrybent estate near Scotch Corner; the company was wound up by Act in 1878. The Northern Mine Research Society's Yorkshire monograph has copper worked at Merrybent in the 1860s and early 1870s, and gives the total output of the district's mines between 1863 and 1913 as 2,588 tons of copper ore at depressed prices. The mine reopened in 1910: the Durham Mining Museum returns the Merrybent Mining Co. raising lead ore that year and copper ore from 1915, with three men below ground and two or three above, then Robert Wilson in the 1920s with three to five people to 1925, not worked after that, operations suspended in 1928 and abandoned in 1930. Mindat records the 1913–15 attempt as producing less than two tons of copper ore. No deaths are named.

Geology

Copper veins with lead in the Carboniferous Underset Limestone and Nattrass Gill Hazle of the Richmond mineral belt: chalcopyrite, bornite, chalcocite, covellite and digenite with malachite and azurite, and galena.

Geological setting: Veins and Lodes (well documented example)

Workings

An engine shaft of 1866 on the Merrybent Main vein with workings on seven other named veins; three men below ground in the 1910s and 1920s.

Closure

Not worked after 1925, suspended in 1928 and abandoned in 1930 under Robert Wilson; Mindat's account of the 1913–15 reopening yielding under two tons explains why.

What remains

Not established from the sources read; the Merrybent estate ground lies near the A1 at Scotch Corner. No photograph was found.

Not established from the sources read.

Related mines

• Middleton Tyas Copper Mine — The same Middleton Tyas orefield: Merrybent was the nineteenth- and twentieth-century company working of the veins whose eighteenth-century heyday the Middleton Tyas record describes, and its company carried both names.

Recorded claims

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

• The Merrybent and Middleton Tyas Mining and Smelting Company began development about 1856 and sank the Engine Shaft in 1866, working veins in the Underset Limestone; records of production are poor. ¹
• Copper was worked at Merrybent in the 1860s and early 1870s; the district's mines produced 2,588 tons of copper ore between 1863 and 1913; the 1913–15 attempt gave under two tons. ^1,2
• Reopened in 1910 by the Merrybent Mining Co. for lead and then copper ore with five or six people; Robert Wilson in the 1920s; not worked after 1925, suspended 1928, abandoned 1930. ^3,2
• The Merrybent and Darlington Railway, authorised in 1866 and built in 1870 for Barton Quarry limestone, was wound up in 1878 and its trackbed is now the A1. ⁴

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (secondary) Merrybent Mine, Richmond Mineral Belt — Mindat — Mindat
2. (secondary) British Mining No. 72: Yorkshire Dales mineral statistics (NMRS monograph, look inside) — Northern Mine Research Society
3. (secondary) Merrybent (Copper Ore) — Durham Mining Museum — Durham Mining Museum
4. (secondary) Merrybent — Wikipedia — Wikipedia

Record created: 12 September 2026 · Last researched: 12 September 2026