Scrin

A narrow mineralised joint or fault fracture in limestone, worked as a deep, thin opencut -- typically under a metre wide but many metres deep -- distinct from and generally smaller than the wider vertical fissure known as a rake.

Historical usage

Rainslow Scrins, on a hilltop south of Elton, preserves around ten roughly parallel scrins, 10 to 13 metres deep and only 0.6 to 1 metre wide, extending up to 350 metres in places -- one of only two sites of this kind recorded in Derbyshire, and, per the Derbyshire Historic Environment Record, the only place in the country where the condition occurs in this concentration. Scrins are also recorded among the workings on Carsington Pasture, where they appear as lines of grassed hillocks generally under two feet wide, and at Arbourseats in Tansley Dale, where an unnamed scrin is clearly visible as an earthwork running obliquely down the side of Cressbrook Dale.

How it worked

Where a lead vein occupied a joint or fracture too narrow to work as an ordinary rake, miners followed it as a deep, narrow open trench -- a scrin -- cut directly down onto the mineralised seam rather than driven as a wider excavation; at Rainslow, the earthworks show shaft mounds later sunk directly into these earlier scrin workings, exploiting the same veins by vertical shaft once the easily reached surface ore in the scrin itself was exhausted.

Why it was used

A scrin let miners follow a genuinely narrow vein without the extra effort of removing barren rock on either side, as digging a wider rake-style working would have required -- a low-mechanisation, labour-matched-to-vein-width approach typical of Derbyshire lead mining generally.

Risks & limitations

A scrin's narrowness that made it cheap to dig also made it hard to work safely or effectively once it deepened -- there was little room to manoeuvre, remove spoil or install any winding or drainage machinery, which is likely why the Rainslow Scrins workings show no earthwork evidence of horse-powered or other mechanised winding or drainage at all, unusual even for Derbyshire's typically low-mechanisation mines.

Regional variation

A scrin is specifically a Derbyshire term for this narrow-joint working; the underlying geological condition -- mineralisation concentrated in closely-spaced limestone joints rather than a single wider fissure -- is itself described as occurring at only two sites in the county and nowhere else in the country at Rainslow's concentration.

Mines associated with this term

5 examples chosen from 8 linked records — the term page is not an index.

• Snake Mine — Derbyshire (well documented example)
  Named 3 times in this record, first in the summary: “…lead mine near Hopton, worked on a number of east-north-trending scrins, well documented in production records from 1857 and finally worked…”
• Arbourseats Veins and Nay Green Mine — Derbyshire (well documented example)
  Named in this record’s history: “…Nay Green Mine -- which included Weather Slack Vein, Bramwell Scrin and two unnamed veins -- is first documented in 1732, in a dispute…”
• Merlin Mine — Derbyshire (well documented example)
  Named 4 times in this record, first in the history: “…Its main entrance level crosses two small veins, known locally as 'scrins' -- Stubbs and Sycamore -- with workings continuing for some…”
• New Rake Lead Mines — Derbyshire (well documented example)
  Named in this record’s history: “…preserves a further pair of narrow mineral veins and an east-west scrin that widens further west.”
• Nickergrove Mine — Derbyshire (well documented example)
  Named twice in this record, first in the history: “…via cross-cuts, small stopes and internal shafts along several scrins and pipe veins, with three entrances in total; a shaft in the floor…”

Sources

1. (primary) Carsington Pasture, Nickalum, Perserverance, West Head, Break Hollow and other small mines and medieval field boundaries, Carsington, Derbyshire — AncientMonuments.uk (mirroring the Historic England scheduling record)
2. (primary) Derbyshire HER: Rainslow Scrins, 470m south-west of Leadmines Farm, Elton (MDR6892) — Derbyshire Historic Environment Record

Record created: 16 September 2026 · Last researched: 16 September 2026