Horse Level

An adit or level driven deliberately large enough for a horse to walk through pulling a loaded cart or wagon, rather than sized for miners on foot alone — a specific, purpose-built category of level found throughout the North Pennine lead orefield and beyond, distinct from a narrower man-only adit.

Historical usage

Horse levels began to be driven in the North Pennine orefield from the 1780s and 90s onward, as mines pushed deeper and the volume of ore needing to be hauled out grew beyond what men alone could economically carry. They remained a standard feature of the region's larger lead mines throughout the 19th century, and several — including Coalcleugh's mile-long Barneycraig Horse Level, begun around 1760, and Allenheads' horse track, a spiral incline at 1-in-4 descending nearly 100 metres — represent some of the most substantial single pieces of underground infrastructure their mines ever built.

How it worked

Built to a recognised standard size well beyond that of an ordinary man-height adit, a horse level let a horse, harnessed to a rail-mounted wagon or cart, walk directly into the workings and haul ore straight out to the surface, sometimes for a mile or more. Where a vein lay some way underground, ore could be dropped straight down from workings above into waiting horse wagons at the level itself, cutting out a separate stage of hand-carrying or hoisting altogether.

Why it was used

Hauling ore by horse and cart through a large level was far faster and cheaper per ton than carrying it out by hand, or than a series of smaller shafts and separate hoisting stages — a single well-driven horse level could serve as the main haulage route for a large mine's entire output, justifying the substantial up-front cost of driving a tunnel far bigger than strictly needed for access alone.

Risks & limitations

Driving a level to horse-sized dimensions, rather than the minimum needed for men to pass, meant substantially more rock to remove for the same distance, a real cost that only paid off on a mine large and long-lived enough to make full use of the resulting haulage capacity — smaller or shorter-lived workings had little reason to build on this scale.

Images

Mines associated with this term

Included only where MineArchive's own research gives a reasonable evidential basis — not every mine where this might plausibly apply.

• Allenheads Mines — Northumberland (well documented example)
  The mine's own recorded history explicitly describes Fawside Level as a horse level.
• Coalcleugh — Northumberland (well documented example)
  The mine's own recorded history and workings explicitly describe the mile-long Barneycraig Horse Level.
• Greenside Mine — Cumbria (well documented example)
  The mine's own recorded surface remains explicitly name the Low Horse Level and High Horse Level.
• Rampgill Mine — Cumbria (well documented example)
  The mine's own recorded workings explicitly describe access via a horse level.

Sources

1. (secondary) Adit — Wikipedia
2. (secondary) Lateral Science: A Couple of North Pennines Lead Mine Articles from Mine & Quarry Engineering — Lateral Science

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