Grassington Lead Mines - part two

The ruined site here is the coal-fired Cupola smelt mill, built in 1792 to replace an earlier peat-burning mill. The ore was piled into furnaces to extract the lead, which has a low melting point and can be drained as liquid, leaving the impurities behind as waste. In the 20th century, some industry returned when the spoil heaps were further processed to extract baryte from the waste. 

The most obvious feature of the mining trail is the flue chimney, which has been restored and made safe and stands proudly above the site. 

From the Cupola mill, you can clearly see the line of the main flue that extracted the poisonous gasses from the smelting works. In parts it has either been excavated or has collapsed so that you can see the rather beautiful arched stonework of its construction. At intervals there are condensers that enabled further tiny particles of iron, known as fume, to be extracted from the gas - little was wasted! 

I found it fascinating to explore the Grassington site and it made for a good (if breezy!) walk. Lead mining was an important industry all over the Yorkshire Dales in the 18th and 19th centuries. There are even bigger sites to be explored above Swaledale, further north.  Whole families were engaged in the work, with children and women expected to work long hours. There's a whole lost language  too: 'buckering the ore', 'minding the hotching tubs', 'bouse', 'buddles' and 'slime pits'. 

Most of the mining families lived within walking distance of the mines, in the villages of Grassington and neighbouring Hebden, where the population peaked in the late 1800s. 

There's an interesting and readable website HERE with lots of information about Dales lead mining, as well as detailed info about the Grassington mines HERE.