Nenthead Mines

Overview

Nenthead, high in the North Pennines, was one of England's most important lead and silver mining centres — and, thanks to its Quaker owners, a genuinely pioneering industrial community. The London Lead Company built the first purpose-built industrial village in England here, complete with a free lending library and compulsory schooling, laying groundwork that would later inform the modern welfare state.

History

Lead mining in the wider Alston Moor area goes back to Roman and medieval times, but Nenthead itself developed from 1737, when George Liddle built the settlement's first smelt mill. The Quaker-owned London Lead Company acquired and expanded the operation, building worker housing, a school, washhouses and other facilities as part of a deliberately paternalistic approach to industrial welfare; by 1861 the village had grown to around 2,000 people, most of them Methodist and employed by the company. By 1882 the smelt mill could process 8,000 bings (64,000 long hundredweight, around 3,300 tonnes) of ore a year. As lead prices fell in the 1870s, the London Lead Company sold its Nenthead mill and leases in 1882 to the Nenthead and Tynedale Lead and Zinc Company, which was able to extract zinc ore from the old lead workings. The Belgian Vieille Montagne Zinc Company acquired the leases in 1895. Mining on Alston Moor never fully recovered from wartime labour shortages during the First World War, and although Vieille Montagne gave up its lease in 1948, some mining activity in the district continued until 1961.

Geology

The mines worked lead- and zinc-bearing veins in the North Pennines orefield, a landscape now protected as part of the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Workings

Workings included the Rampgill engine shaft, sunk to at least 260 ft (79 m). Horse whims were used to raise ore and materials at some of the mine entrances, several of which remain accessible today.

Closure

Sources differ slightly on the precise end date: the Belgian-owned Vieille Montagne Zinc Company gave up its lease in 1948, but some further mining activity in the district is recorded as continuing until 1961 — the more commonly cited final closure date.

What remains

The site now covers around 200 acres of former mining landscape, with a heritage centre offering displays on the mines' history and geology, a network of paths and trackways across the old workings, and Carrs Mine — one of the old lead and zinc workings — opened to visitors on special days. Modern mineral exploration, including boreholes drilled to around 1,640 ft in 2013, has identified potentially substantial untapped zinc deposits roughly 490 ft below the surface, though no new mining has followed from this.

Surviving structures include the assay house and a reconstructed waterwheel, workers' housing built by the London Lead Company, and a Grade II listed Methodist chapel — unused since 2002, and the recipient of £134,500 in Heritage Lottery Fund support.

Redevelopment

Nenthead Mines operates today as a heritage site with a visitor centre, guided underground tours on selected days, and waymarked trails across the former workings.

Abandoned workings can be dangerous — unstable ground, uncapped shafts, flooding and bad air are common even where a site looks safe from the surface. This entry describes history and general location only; it is not an access guide.

Recorded claims

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

• The London Lead Company built Nenthead as the first purpose-built industrial village in England, providing worker housing, a free lending library and compulsory schooling for children. ¹
• The Vieille Montagne Zinc Company gave up its Nenthead lease in 1948, but some further mining in the district is recorded as continuing until 1961. ¹
• Modern mineral exploration, including boreholes drilled to around 1,640 ft in 2013, has identified potentially substantial untapped zinc deposits roughly 490 ft below the surface at Nenthead, though no new mining has resulted. (uncertain) ¹
• A May 2009 report describes pony hoofprints and hobnail bootprints still visible in taped-off ground at Smallcleugh, an 1795 carving in the stonework, and tools left underground at Nenthead “almost as though the miners had left the day before.” (uncertain) ²

Photographs & further reading

This page doesn't try to reproduce everything — these are the best original sources found for this mine.

Images

Sources

1. (secondary) Nenthead — Wikipedia
2. (observational) Nenthead Lead Mines — May 2009 — 28DaysLater
3. (primary) Nenthead Mines — Nenthead Mines Heritage Centre