Grassington Lead Mines - part one

At first glance, the moorland above Grassington looks relatively untouched and wild. It's only when you start to notice the numerous trackways criss-crossing the landscape that you realise that, actually, at one time it was a massive industrial site. Just across the lane from the Yarnbury house that I showed yesterday, there is a tunnel entrance with a date-stone of 1828. This is a gently sloping shaft that was apparently used to bring horses up from a mining level, pulling wagons of lead ore. 

It appears that some lead was mined from the area as early as the 1400s but evidently it was a significant industry from the 1600s, initially from short, shallow shafts. By the mid 1700s larger and deeper mines were being worked, though difficulties in managing the water table and consequent engineering works to build drainage tunnels meant that production was limited. In 1818, the 6th Duke of Devonshire (who owned the land) appointed a professional mining engineer, John Taylor, as Mineral Agent and from that point improvements in technology and efficiency meant the extraction and processing of lead ore grew. The peak came around the 1850s and by 1882 the last lead mine was abandoned. 

Even now, there are numerous slag heaps and ruined buildings, with evidence of collapsed shafts, making it possibly quite hazardous to stray far off the path. There has been an attempt to document the ruins with a trail and a series of information boards, though they could now do with renewing. 

This building was the site of the Brake House Wheel built in 1821: a large water wheel powered by a channel known as the Duke's High Water Course, fed by small reservoirs. The wheel drove a system of rods, levers and ropes that provided pumping and winding for several separate mines. They also used horse-whims, capstans with a central axle around which a horse would walk to power a pump or pulley.