Lead Miners' Heyday: the Great Days of Mining in Wirksworth
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Lead miners’ heyday: the great days of mining in Wirksworth and the Low Peak of Derbyshire by Ron Slack © Ronald Slack 2000 ISBN By the same author Brassington forebears: 1700-1900. 1984 Paupers Venture/Childrens Fortune: The lead mines and miners of Brassington, Derbyshire. 1986 Near to this place…Brassington church memorials 1674-. 1988 Lands and lead miners: a history of Brassington, in Derbyshire. 1991 Man at war: John Gell in his troubled time. 1997 1 Contents Foreword and acknowledgements Chapter 1 “The custome of the mine” Chapter 2 The industry, pre-war and pre-sough Chapter 3 Trouble and strife Chapter 4 Civil War and the lead trade Chapter 5 Mine soughs Chapter 6 After the soughs – ownership, production and trade Chapter 7 Rights and wrongs Chapter 8 Development and decline 2 Foreword For almost two thousand years, from the Roman occupation until the nineteenth century, there was an important lead industry in Wirksworth and its neighbourhood. The industry’s greatest period came in the late sixteenth century, after technical improvements and an expansion of the trade, and lasted until the late eighteenth century. This is an examination of the working of the industry and of developments during these two centuries. From the sixteenth century onwards there is a large body of written material arising from the way in which the industry was organised. This book is largely based on such documentary evidence preserved in the Derbyshire Record Office and the Derbyshire County Library, in particular the archive accumulated over several centuries by the Gell family of Hopton, now in the DRO, and the microfilm copy of the Wolley manuscripts in the Local Studies Library at Matlock. There is little to be seen of the mines at Wirksworth itself, apart from the covered shaft openings and the grassy hillocks of discarded waste minerals. The mine buildings are now heaps of limestones. Further away from the town, but still in the Wirksworth mining area, there is more to be seen on Carsington Pasture, between Carsington and Brassington. Here there is a coe with a chimney and fireplace, the remains of washing sites, a winch, a powder magazine and other survivals. For miners’ tools, winding gear and other mining paraphernalia the best source is the Peak District Mining Museum at Matlock Bath. Acknowledgements The 1632 plan of the Dovegang is derived from the original in the Public Record Office (DL44/1121). The 1725 sketch map of the Griffe Grange mines is reproduced by permission of the County and Diocesan Archivist from the original in the Gell papers in Derbyshire Record Office; reference D258/17/24/3. The map of the Wirksworth Wapentake is derived from one published in Lead Mining in the Peak District (4th ed., Landmark, 2000) and the map of the soughs, mines and mills in the Wirksworth area is based on maps in ‘History and Gazetteer of the lead mine soughs of Derbyshire’, by Dr. Rieuwerts (1987). The map of the lead trade routes is based on one in ‘The Derbyshire lead industry in the sixteenth century’, by Dr Kiernan (1989). The portrait of Sir John Gell is from the illustrated copy of Lyson’s “Magna Britannia” in the Derby Local Studies Library and is included by courtesy of Derby City Library. Photographs Nos. 13 and 14 are reproduced by permission of Doreen Buxton and Harry Parker respectively. I acknowledge the help I have received from the staffs of the Derbyshire Record Office, the Derbyshire County Library and Derby City Library. I am grateful to John Jones for map references to mines and for information of underground finds, and to Doug Nash, Jim Rieuwerts, Tony Holmes, Lynn Willies and Chris Newall for information and copies of material in their possession. 3 4 Chapter 1: “The custome of the mine” A long history On one of the walls in Wirksworth church is a crude stone carving, found nearby at Bonsall and placed in the church in the 1870s. Probably executed in Anglo-Saxon times, it shows a man carrying a “kibble” or basket in one hand and a pick in the other. He is a lead miner. By contrast, the north choir aisle of the church is dominated by a far more ostentatious monument, a large ornate alabaster chest tomb, a memorial to Ralph Gell of Hopton, who died in 1563. The simple figure of the miner bears witness to the fact that for centuries the people of Wirksworth and their neighbours relied on lead mining. Ralph Gell’s imposing tomb is evidence that a few people became rich and powerful from the trade. 1. Ralph Gell’s tomb in Wirksworth church. Ralph married twice and on the lid of the tomb he is flanked by his two wives, while figures on the sides represent the children of each marriage. The Gells grew rich and powerful on the proceeds of the lead industry – next to Ralph’s tomb is the even more grandiose memorial to his son Anthony, rich lawyer, JP and founder of the Anthony Gell school. 5 While Derbyshire lead made Gell and others rich, for poor families it was both a living and an adventure, with the possibility of a better life from a lucky find. The industry was organised in a way which gave a measure of independence to many of them. Mining was hard and dangerous work - death, illness and injury came from poisonous lead dust, underground floods, falling rock, methane gas in shale workings and lack of oxygen in badly-ventilated galleries. From the later years of the seventeenth century gun powder introduced a further hazard. Nonetheless the thousands of shafts, hillocks and ruined buildings in the limestone landscape of the old lead mining areas, and the miles of galleries underground, make it plain that the veins of lead were intensively exploited. Without lead, to quote the governing Derby Committee during the Civil War of 1642-1646, “manie thousands will be undone … that great multitude, their wives, children and families, that live meerely by getting of lead oare and trading in that commodity”. By the 1600s lead had become second in importance in the national economy only to wool. It was essential for the roofs of public buildings and the new houses being built in every part of the country by the nobility and gentry. All houses, including farmhouses and cottages by then, had glazed windows, with lead glazing bars. It was the only material for water storage and piping. Every army used it as ammunition. There was a thriving export trade as well as the home market and the Wirksworth area was the main source of the ore. The miners knew that the industry, as well as being vital to them, was important in the national economy and petitioned Charles I to recognise the fact by giving them two representatives in Parliament. They claimed “that the saide Towne is both a markett Towne, and very ancient, and hath for many hundred yeares beene famous for the leade Mynes neere adjoyning thereunto: That many thousands of your Majesties Myners live in and neere unto the saide Towne, and that your Majestie is Lord, both of the saide Towne, and also of that whole hundred. That the Barmoote Corts are kept, and the mynerall controversies heard and determined in your Majesties hall in that Towne, and by your Majesties officer called a Barmaster”. They went on to describe the great quantities of lead mined in the town and its neighbourhood, and the rich trade at home and abroad. Lead, they said, was a staple commodity, important enough to justify two MPs of their own to speak for them in Parliament. The petition was unsuccessful, and the miners had to continue to rely on the two Derbyshire MPs, the “knights of the shire”, to make their case, but their claims for the Wirksworth lead industry were accurate. By the middle of the seventeenth century Wirksworth was the most productive lead mining area in England. There were indeed thousands of men, women and children, involved in one way or another in the industry, and many tradesmen relied on the miners for their livelihood – blacksmiths, builders, carpenters, charcoal burners, ironmongers, woodcutters, chandlers, rope makers, carriers. Wirksworth was the administrative centre of one of the “hundreds”, local government units, of Derbyshire. Uniquely, the Wirksworth Hundred was still known by the archaic term “Wapentake”. Lead ore was Crown property in most places and the mining area of Derbyshire under royal control was known as the King’s Field, with two separately administered divisions, the High and Low Peaks, each further divided into “liberties”, based on parishes. Wirksworth Wapentake was the Low Peak area of the King’s Field. At different times there were liberties based on Wirksworth, Middleton-by-Wirksworth, Cromford, Brassington, Matlock, Elton, Middleton-by-Youlgreave, Bonsall, Hopton and Carsington, and from 1638 until 1654 there was a separate liberty for the Dovegang, 200 6 acres on Cromford Moor which had became extremely productive after being drained by the first of the Derbyshire drainage schemes, or “soughs”. There had “always” been lead mining in Wirksworth. This is limestone country and the fissures characteristic of limestone contained rich deposits of minerals, and especially of galena – lead ore. The Romans mined there and left inscribed “pigs”, or ingots, of smelted lead as evidence. In the 800s AD Repton Abbey owned mines at Wirksworth and when the abbey was destroyed by Danish troops in 874 they were taken by the Danish king Ceolwulf. They remained in royal hands after the Norman conquest of England and paid royalties to the Crown for centuries afterwards.