The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

Landscape and townscape from AD 1500
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Mining for non-ferrous metals affected the
landscape of many upland areas. In the sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries, mining
technology was relatively simple, with veins being
worked by levels or open stopes. Ore was crushed
by hand. Much of this early working has been
obliterated by later developments. In addition, it
can be difficult to distinguish genuinely old
workings from later small-scale trials. Improved
drainage equipment using horse- and water-power
allowed deeper working during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, while these power
sources were also applied to crushing machinery.
A feature of remote mining areas was the
continued reliance on water power because of the
expense of importing coal. Surviving waterwheels
like the one at Killhope in Weardale, the waterbucket
pumping engine at Wanlockhead, Dumfries
and Galloway, and the remains of complicated
systems of sluices at Coniston, Cumbria, are a
testimony to the ingenuity of engineers in
husbanding the limited water power resources of
these high-lying areas. Cornish tin mining began
to be steam powered early in the eighteenth
century because of the ease with which coal could
be brought from South Wales. The chimneys and
engine houses associated with Cornish tin mines
remain a powerful image in the landscape today
(Figure 15.6). Prospecting using the technique of
Figure 15.6 Engine house of tin mine, Helston, Cornwall.
Source: I. Whyte
hushing—constructing artificial reservoirs high up on hillsides and then releasing the water in
a flood to strip off the topsoil and expose potential veins—scarred many hillsides in upland
mining areas, while the fumes from lead and copper smelters blighted the soil and killed the
vegetation. Later smelters were constructed with long flues leading to distant hilltop chimneys,
to take the poisonous fumes as far from settlements as possible. The peak of production in
many upland mining areas was reached in the mid nineteenth-century before a catastrophic fall
in prices due to the opening up of large overseas ore deposits caused rapid contraction.
Coal mining also remained small scale and widely scattered until well into the nineteenth
century, though deeper mining, requiring more sophisticated drainage, ventilation and winding
technology, was being undertaken on some sites from the seventeenth century. Early mining by
levels and shallow bell pits has mostly been obliterated in the main coalfields but is sometimes
exposed in section with modern opencast extraction. Remains of early coal mining survive where
the landscape has been protected, as in estate parks or in remote locations where the seams were
too thin to be worth working in later times.
The lime industry also grew with increasing demand not only for the building trade but for
agricultural use. Simple clamp kilns covered in turf leaving rings of stones or low mounds gave
way to more sophisticated draw kilns where coal and lime could be fed in continuously. Many
small kilns in field corners in areas like the Yorkshire Dales are associated with the enclosure of
waste and the expansion of cultivation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.