Reports

South Tyneside Meeting - November 2003 "Lead Mining" by John Wilson A Report by Margaret Stafford

Our meeting last night was centred on lead-mining in Kilhope and the surrounding dales, our speaker was John Wilson - his first foray into South Shields. John was at pains to point out his talk was about the industry not the family history attached to it. We looked forward to adding to the information we have received in the past about the migration of dales families from the North as the industry declined.

Setting the scene, John advised that the North Pennines are mineral rich. Though there is no evidence that the Romans mined there, the Elizabethans did and we saw a slide of the "hushings" they created as they dug shafts to extract the minerals. The minerals lie in vertical shafts (unlike coal which is laid down horizontally) which were formed as the earth cracked after volcanic activity, the holes filled with many minerals which then crystallized.

The miners could only sell pure lead ore so most of the work was to separate the ore from the waste. A tunnel was dug at right angles to the vein and one tunnel served many veins. In the 16C the veins were close to the surface, shafts were dug, a dam was built on the top of the valley and then breached to send a torrent of water down to wash away the rocks and earth to expose the ore. Some of the hushings were 30 metres deep and a kilometre in length - there are 2 at Kilhope and they look as if created by nature. There are also the remains of an aqueduct as water was vital to the process and its availability determined when a miner could work, and he only got paid when he worked.

Lead mining became organised in the 19C and there were 3 main companies in the North Pennines - WB Lead was established by William Blackett. WB and Sons were "new money", Blackett (after whom Blackett St is named in Newcastle) made his first fortune in coal mining. He bought out the Hexhamshire estates of the Fenwick family when they fell on hard times. The company owned the area around Allendale and leased the Weardale area from the Bishop of Durham (who still apparently retains the right to mine the area).

The Blacketts had no male heirs and the company passed to Blackett Beaumont who died in 1905 as the richest commoner in the kingdom leaving £3.8 but by then the industry was in terminal decline.

The second large mining area in the North Pennines was owned by Greenwich Hospital for sick seamen ! The previous owner, the first Earl of Derwentwater, was a poor gambler and chose to follow the wrong side in the first Jacobite rebellion. He was executed on 24 Feb 1716, a night, we are told, when the northern lights were particularly bright - and who is going to argue with that piece of information ! The King gave the Earl`s estates to the hospital who leased it to the London Lead company, a Quaker based company.

The third main area was developed by the "del boys" of the 19C - one mine companies of the "get rich quick - promise a good return but don`t deliver" variety.

Mines were opening and closing all the time. Kilhope opened in 1853, just as Florence Nightingale set off for the Crimea (no connection, just a useful timeline !). Living and working conditions were deplorable. Everything went in and out of one tunnel and the quality of the air at the end of the tunnel, often more than a mile long, was very poor.

Miners were only paid for the lead they got out, tunnels were often flooded. John showed us a shot of miners at Rookhope in the 1870s, each with a walking stick, wearing clogs, thin, pale men. He told us that the walking sticks were used like white canes are used by blind people. Candles were expensive and had to be purchased from the mine shop so they were used as little as possible. The men would tap their way along the railway lines until they reached their working place. Their co nstitution was not robust, their diet was very poor, typically porridge in the morning with salt or honey, rye bread eaten in the darkness (to save the candle again) for lunch with boiled potatoes in the evening - very little protein. The men wielded a 15lb hammer for between 4 and 8 hours per day.

The real killer however was the dust they breathed in, either as the lead ore was crumbled or resulting from the gunpowder blast. Being on piece work the miners tended to go into the tunnel before the dust had settled. They were only paid every 6 months, bargaining an amount for their labour every 3 months but they needed to capitalise on time. The miners paid little heed to inhaling the black dust, believing that it was the foul air which caused their health difficulties. So they inhaled the dust which within 2 years left them with badly infected lungs, coughing up black phlegm - "black spit". For most of them ,starting down the pit at 17 or 18,their health was ruined by the time they were 20 as they gasped for air.

It was not until the end of the 19C that it was recognised that it was the black dust which infected the lungs and caused premature death.

The clogs they wore left their feet vulnerable to the all-pervading wetness of the tunnel. Spending all day with wet feet led to trench foot - foot rot, only cured by not working which of course meant not receiving pay. The rot led to blood poisoning and gangrene.

They were right to be concerned about the foul air as air supply was restricted. Sometimes they could only work for 2 hours before the oxygen level dropped and the candle spluttered out. By lying the candle on its side and re-lighting it they could gain perhaps half an hour more before they had to leave or be suffocated by the carbon monoxide. With a splitting headache they would reach the tunnel exit, gasp in the fresh air and usually vomit the black phlegm.

Their economic plight was not much better. They could earn £15-30 per year if they were lucky, always hoping their luck would turn and they would strike it rich. Out of that they had to buy - from the mine shop of course - gunpowder, candles, tools, pay the blacksmith to sharpen and repair the tools, pay the horseman to bring the ore out (horses were too expensive for the miners - costing about £30 per year in 1850), pay the boys to dress the ore, the washer boys, pay the mine owner the rent for their cottage and small-holding, buy cloth for clothes, flour and food to supplement the produce grown on the small-holding (at Kilhope for example the altitude and harsh conditions meant potatoes, leeks and rhubarb were the staple foods grown).

Often their earnings did not cover their outgoings so the mine owner lent them money, theoretically to be paid off at the next 6 monthly payment but more often the debt continued to grow and was passed from father to son.

Living conditions were also grim, many lived too far from the mine to be able to return home during the working week so they lived at the mine shop - a basic building often housing 35 men and boys, all afflicted by the black phlegm and foot rot, sleeping on infested straw palliasses, never washing, having to sleep propped up because of their infected lungs. One comment in the Royal commission on mining conditions in the 1870s was that the contributor would rather spend 25 hours down the mine than 15 minutes in a mine shop. No wonder that where they could, the men preferred to lodge with other miners.

Lads at 9 earned 4d for a 13 hour day, sorting out the lead ore, if they behaved they could join a partnership, mutual support and cooperation was the way miners worked and survived. Miners were self employed so had to keep track of the ore they brought out, the tubs were emptied into a dedicated bay, marked out by tokens. When it snowed the boys went to school - usually for 3 months in the winter, until they were 12 years old. The mineowners would only employ them if they could read and write and could prove it by reading the Bible - not out of philanthropy but because they were then encouraged to read the Bible and the tracts set up all about encouraging humility - the owners wanted to control their work force. There was only ever one strike, the mine owners had the upper hand as they could stockpile the ore and sit out any threat including any downturn in the price eg when there was no European war and the demand for lead shot fell.

The men could only work when there was water so when there was a drought alternative work was found, either ploughing or making roads. Timber was expensive so they lined the tunnel with stone, most of the stone masons were from one family - the English family.

When the ore was extracted the rock and ore had to be separated and the boys took it to the "knocking floor" to be chipped away. By 1877 the 14th vein was reached in Kilhope - the last and the richest. Ironically this brought more problems rather than richer rewards. The boys could usually handle about 30 tons a day, the seam was giving out 100 tons so machinery was brought in. Water powered, it took the ore sorted by the washer boys, took the tubbed lead up a ramp to the crusher, replacing the knocking stones, then moving it on to the jigger house - the operation only needed 2 men. Providing the water - 7,000 litres per wheel revolution - was still labour intensive as teams of men were employed in the hills digging ditches, creating aqueducts some as far as 10 miles from the dale, the water then went down the dale from one mine to the next, an excellent example of energy conservation.

The lead ore then went to the nearest smelter,for Kilhope this was usually Allenheads, transported by horse - 1cwt to either side so 2cwts became known as a "horse", as many as 10,000 horse journeys per year from Kilhope. After smelting it was taken - again by horse - to the Tyne.

Working at the smelter was no safer or pleasanter than at the mine. Although flues were built which could be up to a mile long, they emitted noxious fumes. For every 100 tons of lead ore 26 tons of sulphur dioxide were produced. The tunnels also had to be brushed out from time to time. We now know lead poisoning is cumulative, with the symptoms of hair and teeth loss and twitching, the miners did not know the risk they were taking.

There were very few villages or hamlets. Cottages and small holdings of between 7-30 acres were the norm, families were interdependent for survival. The company provided schools, girls went when money permitted (6d per week until they reached the age of 14 or work was obtained), boys until 12. Many men were widowers,losing their wives to child birth, large families being commonplace. The big mines and smelters at Allenheads, Nenthead and Langley Mills saw companies build villages. The mine dominated the lives of all. The grim lives meant that the preaching of John Wesley (who made 13 trips around the Dale) all the more attractive - the idea that the harder you have it now, the better it will be in the hereafter

By the end of the 18C every hamlet had a Methodist chapel, many miners were lay preachers. Miners were very civilised people - no cursing or drinking, literate and numerate, Bible-reading and God-fearing folk who on the whole didn't fight or beat their wives. Women were however not permitted to work alongside the boys or men

By the 1880s however the industry was beginning to decline, lead was produced more cheaply elsewhere. At the turn of the 19C imports from Spain made the industry uneconomic. It is reckoned that 50% of the lead is still there - but there is no profit to be taken and demand is met by the recycling of lead from Victorian buildings. Now lead is only used in lead acid batteries.

So the miners who had often come to the area from all parts had to leave again. Some went to the coal mines, some to the gold mines of South Africa or to the coal and mineral mines of North America. Some turned to their farming skills and went to Australasia - many to the South island of New Zealand - some prospered, some didn't survive the journey and some came back again very quickly.

Our final slide was of the Mary Galbraith a ship on which a family of 5 including a babe in arms could journey to a new life via London to the Antipodes for £39 all found, steerage class.

The wheel has turned full circle and many of the visitors to the dale are now descendants of those miners, coming to seek out their forbears.