Slitt Vein and a new sub-Hewitt

This blog post is entirely about having a walk up  Slitt Wood in Weardale to have a look at the Slitt Vein (nothing suicidal, its a mineral vein wot you can ackcherly see cos all the ground around it has been quarried away ) – and the bagging of Black Fell a 604 metre top designated as a sub-Hewitt in http://www.hillbagging.co.uk/, and which I’ve only just noticed…. pause for breath….and nothing at all to do with the launch of http://www.ukhillwalking.com/, in which there’s a small article about hillbagging from yours truly. In fact I won’t mention http://www.ukhillwalking.com/ ever again.

Appropriate, though, I suppose.

So, being completely unaware of the launch of http://www.ukhillwalking.com/, me and superdawg parked neatly by the phone box in Westgate and wandered up through the ever lovely Slitt Wood, just as far as the mines.

Now these mineworkings have just had a lorra lorra money being excavated and restored, to some extent. For interest, there’s the bargain steads – big containers for each mining team’s production, the excavated smithy with it’s  rock drill holes in the floor – presumably to prove they worked – a deep, deep shaft, fenced off, a wheel pit with a water supply from a dam up the hill and the footings for an Armstrong hydraulic engine, which replaced the wheel in the wheelpit – used for pumping water out of the mine. Plus some interesting and wet culverts.

if you walk up the hill on the newly created permissive path (like wot me and the dog did), you follow the edge of Slitt Vein and, at the top of the hill, there is the vein, stripped bare of it’s surround of ironstone, and with it’s galena mined out from the middle – but big and proud and strong, a damn great lump of quartzy rock. So that’s what a vein looks like…

After this, we wandered up the road (the beck being too lively to cross today) – and lunched in some forest in a warm and bright spell. The forest has lots of old pits and heaps in it – still being on the line of a lead vein, but this stuff is full of purple flourspar. I borrowed a couple of pieces. I’ll put them back if requested… 

And then we wandered over the moor alongside a wall that’s shown on the map as derelict, but which, according to an inscribed stone at Black Hill summit, was restored by the Golden family in 2001/2. They seem to have done a cracking job.

As the sun came out, we retreated to the Dale and followed the river downstream to the start. Bruno had a paddle and a bark in a deep salmon pool. We had no idea about http://www.ukhillwalking.com/, obviously and I’m not going to mention it.

10 miles and 1500 feet and one sub-Hewitt bagged.

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.

Slit Vein Holes Looked Into

Another ad-hoc old-blokes games trip. Brian rang last night, at a loose-end today and dying to tell us all about his trips to the Commons to talk about cybermoor.
We met at Charlie’s house and whilst Charles couldn’t be persuaded to abandon whatever it was he’d planned for the day, he did give us a cuppa and let us change into wet-stuff gear in his office. Wet-stuff gear, on this occasion, being shorts and t-shirt and cheapo boots.
And so, armed with helmets and lights and waterproof boxes for the cameras and car keys and whatever – we marched manfully off up through Slit Wood at Westgate, investigating bits of industrial archaeology and a geocache box on the way.
Eventually, we came to the first of our targets for the day – an old lead level with a removable wooden gate. Brian entered first and came out again shortly afterwards whilst I treated the local midgies to some blood. The I went in, covered the 100 metres or so of wet passageway and came out again. I made a video of both mine and Brian’s exits from the hole.
Then on to hole number two. There was a walker having a break here – and , it turned out that he’d worked with one of Brian’s neighbours. There’s no six degrees of separation in Co Durham – its usually no more that two….
We couldn’t get in the hole as it was barred and padlocked.
So, on to target three – a couple of culverts carrying the main beck, just next to the junction with the slit vein – an obvious spot when you know what to look for as its been deeply excavated. We entered the culvert and climbed down a small waterfall into water too deep to paddle and passed through the tunnel – returning shortly afterwards to investigate an undercutting of the revetments which headed towards a fenced-off shaft. This didn’t go very far and contained lots of loose rubble.
Having got wet, we descended by the wettest route possible – in the beck, climbing or sliding down small waterfalls and generally slipping around dangerously.
At three-ish, we decided that a pint of beer might be more fun, so we abandoned the beck for the footpath and , after changing behind Charlie’s bins, repaired to the Hare and Hounds for a bit of libating. We'll have to finish off walking down the beck later - there's some enormous pools lower down, and, maybe we could get under the main road and into the River Wear...(!)
A few pics and a video show the trip – have patience with the video.
Last of the Summer Wine stuff, this…

Weardale Weeds and Slit Wood

Me and becky (adminfairy) and superdawg had a little Easter Sunday walk in Weardale up the rather lovely Slit Wood at Westgate.
I’m not entirely sure whether or not Slit Wood is named after Slit Vein or Slit Vein is named after Slit Wood. Slit Vein, I should explain is a 22km long mineral vein which runs along Weardale and has been dug and mined and generally messed around and, if you know how and where to look, it is easily identified. (It just needs somebody to point it out)
Any road up, as you’d expect (possibly), Slit Wood is intersected by Slit Vein which runs crossways to it. This means, of course, that Slit Wood holds lots of industrial archaeology…..

So we set off at a sign pointing g to “Weeds”. Is this the other end of the Weeds Wivverpool Canal I hear you ask. Don’t be daft say I, its nothing of the sort.
We enter Slit Wood at the ex-mill at the bottom (still has a wheel pit) and we ramble up the little gill beside a tumbling and occasionally gurgling beck till we reach Slit Vein, where there are the bargain stores, where each mining team stored it’s gains or ore before payment, and some interesting culverts in the beck, which I am honour-bound to explore. So – discarding boots and socks, I enter the frigid waters and splash upstream. But it gets too deep, so instead, I escape and we have a little brew-up in the hot sun. (yes – hot sun….)
In terms of weeds – so far Ive identified some Wood Anemone, Wild strawberry, Cowslip, Daisy. Coltsfoot, Pansy (not sure which type), Ramsoms and Bluebells not yet flowering, though. Oh, and dandelions, a much maligned but rather sophisticated and beautiful plant in my opinion. And lots of little white things, probably some kind of bedstraw… But its nice to see flowers flowering and lambs in the fields, and even an ex-hedgehog squashed on the road. Just like the mentalist bikers roaring up Weardale, and the now green hawthorn hedges they’re all good signs that spring has finally sprung. And willow-warblers in the woods too.
And so, post-brew we continue.
A bit further up, we exit the woods on to the moors and cross the beck where we find four 4wds stuck in the lane, which they have virtually destroyed. The crews of these four cars seem to be families of what my son-in-law would call “Pikeys”. I take pics of their registration numbers for forwarding to the County Council, but I’m not sure of their legal position in this lane. They’d have had to have driven on bridleways to get there, though.
An hour later, as we return on the “down” lane, they’re still where they were before – still revving up, still stuck. The shepherd who appears to be doing something vaguely obscene to a ewe, says that they’ve been there since this morning. He says that they don’t usually get stuck at that point.
I’m not unhappy that they are well stuck.
A bit later, we pass a little quarry which has an enormous boss of rock in it. The boss is the Slit Vein itself. The very man. The ironstone has been dug out from around the sides and the galena has been mined from the middle and what’s left is an enormous lump of quartz. For anybody who doesn’t quite understand the concept of a mineral vein – this is the place to visit.
We end the walk and go home via Boozebusters in Crook (all good walks should have beer at the end)
We’ve done just 6 miles and 800 or so feet of uphill and forty feet of paddling in two-foot deep water at not much above freezing (it felt) . Is that enough statistics?

Messing about in Weardale

I nearly went to Swaledale today. Instead, I responded to a call from Nenthead Brian for a bit of a radge around Harehope and Bollihope in Weardale.

But first, I had to visit the co-op for a radging banana and some chocolate buns for the cheering-up. At the co-op, there was a big, yellow “crumpet-mobile”. This was not, as you might imagine, a sort of mobile dating service, but a caravan full of crumpets and people dressed in yellow outfits with “Flora” written on them. I assumed that they weren’t all called Flora and yes, it was confirmed, as I was collecting my free crumpet that they all had indeed heard each and every crumpet joke in the entire world. So I went to Frosterley and met Brian.

Our first exploration was the little hidden valley of the Bollihope Burn. This contains several interesting industrial archeological thingies including some very extensive limestone quarries and ancient limekilns – for the sweetening of acid pastures into lovely green swards, the trackway of a light railway, with bridges and stuff, and, what appears to be an ironstone and galena mine which follows the line of a very large mineral feature called Slit vein. This provided a few moments of scrambly fun and a brief opportunity to wear hard hats. I managed to crawl into the entrance into an open “lobby” area which had two sequential rocksteps of fairly greasy but sparkly rock. By the liberal use of bad language, blasphemy, profanity and an accidental emanation of wind, I managed to climb up the first step, but couldn’t manage the second. Getting back down was interesting too.

The little valley is a gem of a place, though. Its well wooded and sheltered and has good paths and footbridges. There are several small ponds where, I expect, you would normally see plenty of frogspawn at this time of the year. Not yet, though. I don’t think they’ll be long.

So, after a lunch, we followed the beck downstream for a while and passed by a string of ten limekilns. These were lit constantly and provided agricultural lime for most of the North of England for about 130 years up to 1975. The area is also quite close to the Durham coalfield at Crook, and this limestone, plus the ironstone and the coal is the reason for the local steelworks at Stanhope, Wolsingham, Tow law and Consett. So its historically quite important.

A bit further down is another lead mine with an old mine shop or dormitory, the remains of a miners’ privy and the footings for a waterwheel. Apparently, inside the mine there’s lots of water and lovely brown mud and a pre-fabricated horse gin, never assembled. A trip was planned. But I need a wet suit, apparently.

Further downstream we came to Harehope quarry which is now an outdoor educational centre for teaching carboniferous geology to sproglets who are interested in carboniferous geology. They do a lot of interesting stuff here, including providing a playing area for the local school rock groups (cos its rock, see….?) Its all fab stuff.

A pint of Scruttocks Old Dirigible at the Black Bull ended the expedition. Swaledale tomorrow. Probably.

Incidentally, one of the pics is a bit blurred. This is because I thought I was about to fall off....

Further incidentally, Slit Vein is a vein of various minerals several metres wide and many more metres deep which runs across Weardale for about 20 kilometres. Its been well dug up over the centuries but in some places, they've left the central "plug" of the vein in place and mined the iron and lead and other stuff around the sides. It can be quite impressive in places. In other places, its just a line of bell pits.