W. B. Lead Company

The Blackett family's North Pennine lead business, which passed to the Beaumonts by marriage around 1830 and was built up by Wentworth Blackett Beaumont, 1st Baron Allendale (1829-1907), trading as W. B. Lead. It dominated Allendale and Weardale for the best part of two centuries: the Barney Craig Horse Level at Carrshield was opened in the 1770s and stayed in use through the 19th century, the first level into the Cambokeels section of the Slitt Vein was driven between 1868 and 1871, and at Killhope the firm drove and operated the Park Level Mine, the principal working there, from 1853 — one account gives its Killhope working as running from 1818. It commissioned the Blackett Level drainage scheme, engineered by Thomas Sopwith with W. G. Armstrong. Over 31,200 tonnes of lead concentrate came out of Killhope before the firm closed all its Weardale operations in 1883 as lead prices collapsed, the leases passing to the Weardale Lead Mining Co. Ltd; the Durham Mining Museum's record of W. B. Lead Co., Ltd. then runs from 1883 on Allenheads, West Allen and the Allendale mines, and the firm worked on there into the 20th century. A note on how this archive shows the business: it appears here under the single name W. B. Lead Company, the trading name the Lists of Mines and the Durham Mining Museum use, and that one entry covers the whole concern — the Beaumont family's unincorporated lead business of the 18th and 19th centuries and the limited company of 1883 onwards alike. Mines worked under either are listed together below. Records in this archive that describe the workings as the Beaumont company's are describing the same firm. The family itself and the man are kept separate, as the Blackett-Beaumont family and W. B. Beaumont, because a landowning family and an individual proprietor are not the same thing as the business that worked the mines.

Mines operated

Record created: 23 August 2026 · Last researched: 23 August 2026