Slit Mine Archaeology and Other Interesting Things

Today, at quite short notice, I assembled by the Post Office in Westgate in Weardale and conjoined with Brian and Charlie and several Westgate residents, the landowners of Slit Wood and various archaeologists, hydrologists and other kinds of ologists for an exposition of an industrial archaeology project which is taking place high up Slit Wood.

Slit Wood is and ancient bit of woodland which is absolutely heaving with wild flowers, including quite a lot of plants which don’t mind a spot of lead pollution.

It also has an ancient mill at it’s foot, which may well have a longer history of being other things, and Slit Mine which is one of the biggest and most important mines in Weardale, with a history of about 250 years of activity.
English Heritage and Natural England (careful Peewiglet…..) are spending about a quarter of a million of yer Queen’s spondoolies making sure the place doesn't disappear into the beck, which occasionally sports some monster floods.

The work is centred around stabilising the buildings – in particular some Bouse teams (stores for lead ore for each team or gang of miners), a 600 foot shaft, a wheel pit and the site of a hydraulic engine and it’s dam, plus dressing floors, a smithy and some culverts.


This rose is carved into a tree next to a memorial bench for a local who died in Spain in 2001. Unfortunately the tree is now dead. This photo may well soon be all that's left of it.
So, lead by Tom Gledhill, we learned a lot about the place and made some unexpected discoveries.

After the walk during which we sent Brian off to pick some litter from the beck, where we discovered this fossilised beach


And then some of us met with 88 year old Charlie Armstrong planting out in his garden by the beck. I should explain that the path up to Slit Wood goes through Charlie’s garden. We got chatting and Charlie asks us in to see inside the mill….. which turns out to be probably originally built as a Bastle house, probably with some building material from the Bishop of Durham’s castle just downstream a bit.
We started almost underground in a byre with a kitchen next to it, but, apparently, no way to get upstairs.
Upstairs were the controls for the mill wheel and hoists and ancient fireplaces and floor levels. And Mr Armstrong is the possessor or the head wheel for Slit Mine a mile upstream, showing damage from the cable which must have been too small. Apparently, this wheel had worked its way downstream over a number of years and was rescued just before it fell into the pool where Brian was picking litter. The pool is quite deep and rescue from there would have been more than tricky.
A short sojourn in the Hare and Hounds was called for and enjoyed.
We have, of course, been to Slit Wood before haven’t we blogreaders?  But now we know more about it.

More Visions of Swaledale. And some new holes

I didn’t nearly went to Swaledale today, I did went to Swaledale. We parked at the city centre car park at Muker (£3.50!!!) and wandered off to find a track which leads up to a little stone hut I’d noticed from a distance whilst walking on Kisdon a few months ago. (Incidentally, for non-dialect speakers, Muker is pronounced Myookah. It translates roughly as the shieling of the dirty cows wot’ll give you a good time anyway for the price of a pint of brandy. But that’s dialect for you.
Anyway, I located the start of the path fairly easily – turned out to be a pleasant grassy rake leading up through scrubby woodland of ash and hawthorn and birch and all of those natural trees of Northern woodland. This must be a fab place in high summer and I must return to it.
Eventually, I reached the little hut, which turned out to be a bit bigger than I expected, though ruinous and with well over a hundred years of sheepshit inside. Its purpose seemed obvious. It was a mine shop. This isn’t a place to buy mines or mine souveneirs, but the place where the miners lived during the week. And to prove it, there in the beck bottom, was a mine level. Some work was being carried out in restoring the arched entrance way.
Two blokes turned up just then and one explained some of the history of the place, most of which I failed to remember. But the gist of it was that it was opened in the mid eighteenth century, then closed in the early nineteenth and reopened for a mere three years in the mid nineteenth. So it had lain festering and falling apart for about 150 years.
We climbed up the gill – and shortly discovered a second entrance. I wondered whether or not the lower one was, in fact the wet level, to drain out the water, and this was the working level. A short distance uphill, behind a couple of boulders, lay the third, highest level. When the word “bugger” was shouted inside, it reverberated with distance. It’s a deep hole. I must go in it. Innit? I’ve emailed my hole-exploring pal about it.
Me and the dawg followed the path along the hillside over West Arn Gill and into Swinner Gill. This is as fab a bit of fellwalking as you could wish for. Its complicated with bits of “in”, and other bits of “out” – of gullies and scree fields, and the views of Swaledale are smashing and unusual.
We traversed the moor over to Gunnerside Gill and , in the spirit of the walk, I explored the steep Western side near Botcher Gill - and discovered a wheel pit and rediscovered scree running down it’s 50 metres of spoil heap. Very steep. Very good fun.
We walked down to Gunnerside then along the riverside paths back to Muker – thence to Richmond Co-op for more supplies for another walk tomorrow…


But then I saw the weather forecast… I may postpone for a day or so. The bananas will be OK I may have to eat the roast pork.

We did ten and a half miles by the way. Boots were fine.

Underground, not up Skiddaw

Today was the first anniversary of Brian's visit to the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle during which he was fitted with a couple of stents in his cardiac tubes.
By way of celebration, and to provide a photo for the consultant who fitted the stens that Brian was still alive and kicking, we arranged to go to the top of Skiddaw. Unfortunately, a warm, wet Atlantic blow brought hill fog down to about 400 metres or so and it was drizzling and windy in a typical pennine windy and drizzly sort of way. A pic of Skiddaw summit would have been hardly woirth the effort.
So, instead, he fed his neighbours, the gooses (see pic) and we kitted up in yellow romper suits and wellies and forced our way into Nenthead's Scaleburn leadmine. the purpose was twofold
1) To see if we couldnt get some nice fossils from a seam of nice fossils - for which we carried a spade and a lump hammer and a chisel.
2) To visit a horse gang, which, until recently had been blocked off by a roof fall which had recently been excavated.
and ...er ... threefold
3) To take some pics for the consultant (see above )
4) To have a laff....
Objective number one was started, but we abandoned the attempt to prize out some fossils pro tem. I was a bit worried when some big rocks suddenly squashed the rucksack with the tools in it. It would seem that roof falls happen suddenly and with no creaking or rumbling at all - the damn things just go bang - or splash, if they land in water. This was a bit scary, but Brian seemed unfazed.
And so we paddled through to the excavation for the horse gin - a short crawl under scaffolding. No creaking....
The horse gin is a circular cast iron ...er... circle whoch was rotated by a horse, who's job it was to simply walk around in circles. The gin pulled a cable and so, things were pulled up a deep shaft - which was just luking dangerously quite nearby. We lunched and took pictures and went back to the fossils.
We got a few nice ones, loaded everything up and left for a coffee at brian's.
A lass with a camera and her partner, who were interested in leadmines and had been mooching around purposefully outside, helped me get my wellies off. Once they get water in, I can't get the buggers off..
All good clean, wet and slightly muddy, fun.
I used the new Petzl and two backup lights, one of which is a wind-up. A real wind-up.

Holes are for looking into

Anybody who read this blog’s post about the footpath stuff I do for County Durham may well have noticed , in one of the pictures, a footbridge with a tunnel next to it. Or maybe not, eh?

I’ve walked over and passed this tunnel many times and wondered where it went. I thought it might be just a culvert.

Today, me and two other peri-geriatrics (Brian and Charlie) put on our wellies, found our torches and went for a look.

It turns out to be a stone-lined and arched tunnel carrying just a small trickle of water which goes towards some lead mine spoil heaps for , maybe just over 100 metres.
Inside, there’s a few little side passages, more like drains, really, and one which appears to have a door at the end, but which was too tight and wet to get very far into. Beyond the door, obviously, is a secret world where everybody wears green clothes and the King sits on a throne of robins, holding the Book of Moons in his right hand and a Bill Bryson book about Australia in the other - and is surrounded by maidens in floaty white frocks singing songs about the elf king’s daughter and wondering where Thomas the Rhymer has got to….. Or it could just be another wet and muddy passage.

After we’d come out, much muddier than when we went in, we paddled up the beck and found an old dam with some reconstruction going on and a leat, a wheel pit, some clinker, another culvert some bits of a Victorian teapot and a stalactite from deep underground.

Then we went for a cup of tea.

Its grand to poke around, looking into holes.


Its at Boltshope Burn near Blanchland – a very productive mine, bits of which were producing fluorspar in to the 1980’s. Which is quite remarkable.

The Motherload

My Mate Brian rang me last night. We've had a couple of explorations of a small valley in the North Pennines recently and the last one provided us with lots of things to do - such as poking around in the leadmines and in the rubble of the extensive flood debris that lines the floor of this little dale. One (actually, two) of the things we found were some very large lumps of iron pyrites - fool's gold.... Any road up, Brian had been having yet another poke around this little gem of a place and had found an enormous lump of the stuff - and I'm talking motherload here, or , rather, these were his words. Its quite exciting to find a lovely great lump of shiny rock. The one I found the other day weighed in at just under 4kg, mainly due, I suspect to the damn great lumps of iron in it.

So, here it is in the blog. I'm not going to say exactly where it is, though, partly because some people in a pub seemed over-interested in our samples and there's also some wildlife stuff there which certain other people could well show an unhealthy interest in, specially as the place is quite secluded. The thing is, though - I'm going to have to go back there myself and have a look. Pics include some flood debris (fascinating, I know....) and the cairn (Marshall's Cairn) near the place and samples of the rock we've found.