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.

A Few More Solstice Pictures

Charlie sent me a bunch of pictures from the little Solstice party we had. Some of them are reproduced here. They speak for themselves, if in a slightly slurred manner….

Say no more…..

Gelt Talkin

The objectives for today were to try out the knipemobile’s new steering, charge up the battery and scrub off the rusty brake discs by breaking hard on steep hills and locate some 1900 year old graffiti, supposedly carved into some rather nice red sandstone quite near to Hadrian’s Wall.
All went well, except finding the graffiti. We did find graffiti and some of it was from 1988. Other graffiti was a bit more vague…

So, after a “brisk” drive up Weardale I picked up Brian and we went off to Gelt Wood – a red squirrel sanctuary, deciduous wood and riverside walk just a bit left of Brampton.
This, as it happens, is a quite fabulous place, for, apart from the red squirrels (of whom we saw nothing) – there are some big old oak trees and a very beautiful river which has lots of trout and goes into small falls and pools and narrow channels and its all really just so good.

Gelt Wood also contains some very large and ancient sandstone quarries of exactly the type of stone that quite a lot of Carlisle is built from. Some of these quarries, allegedly contain some graffiti , carved into the rock by Roman quarrymen (who later went on to change the face of Roman pop music, renamed as The Rottles but split up after one of them went a bit mad and married a Japanese lass)

But anyway, there was graffiti, but nothing obviously Roman.
What there was, was the pick marks of many pick strokes at all levels on the crag. I should add that the main part of the crag is probably eighty feet high, so to make pick marks eighty feet up, plus the distinctive marks of wedges in lines for riving out blocks of stone, is remarkable.

Bruno spent the afternoon chasing sticks, destroying sticks, fighting for sticks and running about with sticks. And paddling.

After a brief cuppa at a pal of Brian’s in Brampton, there was a brief visit to Talkin Tarn, mainly to check out whether or not you can hire rowing boats there. You can. And there’s a tea room for a cuppa afterwards. so that’s good too.
Possibly more of that at some point later.

We only covered 3 miles altogether – but what fab three miles there were. We orta have done another mile, then they could have been the fab Four miles  (quarrymen….  koff….. ahem…)
Anyway, I enjoyed it and so did the dawg.

Adopt-a-path around Crook

I do this walk twice a year as part of my Rangering stuff wot I do for Durham County Council. The idea is to report any footpath problems to the Rights of Way team at County Hall and they prioritise them. Stuff gets done eventually. Some of the issues are fairly minor, though, if just a bit irritating. There’ll be a couple of those along shortly.

I took superdawg. I always take superdawg. The other dog wanted to come too, but its too far for her…..
So we surveyed bridleway 37 (somebody had shot up the waymarks), 38 (roadside sign pointing in the wrong direction, footpath 25 (wobbly stiles and illegally diverted about 20 years ago…), 18, a bit of barbed wire on the stiles, 20 (nervous sheep), bridleway 33 (fly-tipped gas bottle and asbestos roofing) and footpath 30 (I couldn’t find anything wrong with FP30)

I’ll make the reports on-line in the morning. In the meantime I have van appointment with a bottle of vino collapso.

The walk is five miles and has 650 feet of climbing and, really, its mainly quite pleasant. Nice views of the Pennines.
This is the same walk in January this year. Brrrrrr….  Soon be Christmas…..

Feck

No good reason for posting this really.

Its quite funny, though