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

The industrial revolution
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during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. Copper, tin and lead had
been worked on a small scale for
centuries, but new demands were
created by, for example, ship
building, tin plating or the metal
trades of Birmingham or the need
for engines.
In the Derbyshire Pennines, for
example, lead occurs as veins in the
limestone, and early mining can be
traced where it follows the ore in long
rakes that criss-cross the landscape;
at Charterhouse in Somerset,
continuity in mining is suggested
from the Roman period until the
nineteenth century. In order to
process lead ore, it has first to be
crushed and then washed, and
associated with such rakes are often
found remains of stamp mills and
Figure 16.4 Landscape at Parys Mountain, Anglesey, showing the legacy of
copper working.
Source: Kate Clark
buddles, used to wash the ore, such as the complex excavated at Killhope, Co. Durham (Cranstone
1989).
Copper mining on a large scale began in 1568, and continued until largely superseded by
imported ores at the end of the nineteenth century. Copper occurred in workable quantities in
Cornwall, Devon, Anglesey and the Lake District, and perhaps one of the best surviving landscapes
is at Red Dell Beck in the Lake District, where crushing and stamping works, adits, shafts and waste
heaps survive. The spectacular landscape of Parys Mountain, Anglesey, is all that remains of what
was once the largest copper working in Europe, where working continued until 1815, with a few
subsequent revivals (Figure 16.4). The nearby harbour at Amlwch developed in the eighteenth
century as a port for shipping the copper ore out to smelters sited closer to sources of coal.
Such sites also demonstrate the general principle that the final smelting of minerals such as
iron, lead or copper rarely took place in areas where they were mined. Field evidence suggests
that fuel, or easy access to fuel via a good transport network, was a more important determinant
of location. Relatively little copper smelting took place in Cornwall; most of it occurred in areas
such as Swansea in south Wales, where there were plentiful supplies of cheap coal.
At Gawton in West Devon, archaeological survey of a quay, copper mine, lime kilns and
arsenic works show how copper mining operated together with a variety of other activities at a
site that had the advantages of both raw materials and transport. Another complex associated
with copper mining is Aberdulais Falls in West Glamorgan, where ironworking and tinplate
manufacturing were also found. Such sites are very common and illustrate how difficult it is
archaeologically to isolate the evidence for single industries from their contexts.
Power systems
The processing of minerals in any quantity depended upon a ready supply of power, as indeed
did the functioning of many other industries. The move from water power to steam power is
one of the factors commonly cited as being responsible for the large increases in output in
British manufacturing in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Archaeological evidence,