Silver Gill Mine

Overview

Silver Gill, cut into the Caldbeck Fells at the northern edge of the Lake District, is one of the archaeologically best-dated medieval mines in Britain — excavation has shown its earliest workings run from 1020 to 1200 — and later became the site of one of Elizabethan England's principal silver mines, worked for the best part of a century by miners brought over from Germany.

History

Archaeological research around 2000 dated Silver Gill's earliest workings to between 1020 and 1200, making it a site of genuine international importance for the study of medieval mining technique. The first documentary reference comes rather later: in 1331 King Edward III appointed one Robert de Barton keeper of a silver mine in 'Minerdale and Silverbek' in Cumberland, and in 1537 a Royal Commission sent to survey the Crown's northern estates reported a working silver mine in the parish. The mine's best-documented period came under Elizabeth I, when German miners — brought to England for their superior technical expertise — worked the lead, copper and silver ores at Silver Gill for close to a century; much of the underground workings still visible today date from this Elizabethan phase. The mine was also, until relatively recently, credited with the earliest known underground wooden waggonway in Europe, described by the National Railway Museum in York as marking 'the birth of the railway'.

Geology

The mine worked lead-, copper- and silver-bearing veins within the Caldbeck Fells mineralised belt at the northern edge of the Lake District, a hydrothermal orefield distinct from both the granite-related lodes of Cornwall and the non-magmatic basinal-brine mineralisation of the northern Pennines.

Geological setting: Hydrothermal Deposits (well documented example), Veins and Lodes (well documented example)

Workings

Underground workings surviving from the Elizabethan period are described as virtually unchanged since German miners worked them in the 16th century; the mine was also the site of an early underground wooden waggonway, among the oldest recorded anywhere in Europe.

Closure

The closure date is not known; working is documented into the Elizabethan period, with the wider Roughton Gill complex worked intermittently into the 19th century.

What remains

Much of the underground working still visible today dates from the Elizabethan phase.

Related mines

• Roughton Gill Mine — The Silvergill Vein, exhausted by about 1700, is one of the Roughton Gill veins.

Recorded claims

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

• Archaeological research around 2000 dated the mine's earliest workings to between 1020 and 1200, and documentary references to a silver mine in the area begin in 1331 with King Edward III's appointment of a keeper for a mine in 'Minerdale and Silverbek'. ^1,2
• German miners worked the mine's lead, copper and silver ores for close to a century during the reign of Elizabeth I, and the underground workings from that period survive largely unchanged. ^1,2
• J.J. & J.R. Tustin worked the mine from 1863 to 1865 — a distinct later 19th-century phase separate from its medieval and Elizabethan periods. ³
• The Silver Gill vein is a quartz vein carrying lead, zinc and copper mineralisation, believed to date from the early Carboniferous. ³

Sources

1. (secondary) Silver Gill, Roughton Gill, Caldbeck, Allerdale, Cumbria, England, UK — Mindat
2. (secondary) The Silver Gill Mine (IA Section) — The Devonshire Association
3. (secondary) Silver Gill Mine — Buddlepit / Mining History Trust

Record created: 22 August 2026 · Last researched: 28 August 2026