Derbyshire lead mining history: Encyclopedia II - Derbyshire lead mining history - Background

Derbyshire lead mining history - Background

On one of the walls in Wirksworth church is a crude stone carving, found nearby at Bonsall and placed in the church in the 1870s. Probably executed in Anglo-Saxon times, it shows a man carrying a kibble or basket in one hand and a pick in the other. He is a lead miner. By contrast, the north choir aisle of the church is dominated by a far more ostentatious monument, a large ornate alabaster chest tomb, a memorial to Ralph Gell of Hopton, who died in 1563. The simple figure of the miner bears witness to the fact that for centuries the people of Wirksworth and their neighbours relied on lead mining. Ralph Gell's imposing tomb is evidence that a few people became rich and powerful from the trade.

While Derbyshire lead made Gell and others rich, for poor families it was both a living and an adventure, with the possibility of a better life from a lucky find. The industry was organised in a way which gave a measure of independence to many of them. Mining was hard and dangerous work - death, illness and injury came from poisonous lead dust, underground floods, falling rock, methane gas in shale workings and lack of oxygen in badly-ventilated galleries. From the later years of the seventeenth century gunpowder introduced a further hazard. Nonetheless the thousands of shafts, hillocks and ruined buildings in the limestone landscape of the old lead mining areas, and the miles of galleries underground, make it plain that the veins of lead were intensively exploited. Without lead, to quote the governing Derby Committee during the Civil War of 1642-1646, manie thousands will be undone ; that great multitude, their wives, children and families, that live meerely by getting of lead oare and trading in that commodity;

By the 1600s lead had become second in importance in the national economy only to wool. It was essential for the roofs of public buildings and the new houses being built in every part of the country by the nobility and gentry. All houses, including farmhouses and cottages by then, had glazed windows, with lead glazing bars. It was the only material for water storage and piping. Every army used it as ammunition. There was a thriving export trade as well as the home market and the Wirksworth area was the main source of the ore.

Wirksworth was the administrative centre of one of the hundreds, local government units, of Derbyshire. Uniquely, the Wirksworth Hundred was still known by the archaic term Wapentake. Lead ore was Crown property in most places and the mining area of Derbyshire under royal control was known as the King's Field, with two separately administered divisions, the High and Low Peaks, each further divided into liberties, based on parishes. Wirksworth Wapentake was the Low Peak area of the King's Field. At different times there were liberties based on Wirksworth, Middleton-by-Wirksworth, Cromford, Brassington, Matlock, Elton, Middleton-by-Youlgreave, Bonsall, Hopton and Carsington, and from 1638 until 1654 there was a separate liberty for the Dovegang, 200 acres (0.8 km²) on Cromford Moor which had became extremely productive after being drained by the first of the Derbyshire drainage schemes, or soughs.

There had always been lead mining in and around Wirksworth. This is limestone country and the fissures characteristic of limestone contained rich deposits of minerals, and especially of galena - lead ore. The Romans mined there and left inscribed pigs, or ingots, of smelted lead as evidence. In the ninth century Repton Abbey owned mines at Wirksworth and when the abbey was destroyed by Danish troops in 874 they were taken by the Danish king Ceolwulf. They remained in royal hands after the Norman conquest of England and paid royalties to the Crown for centuries afterwards. Lead mining and smelting was an established industry in 1086, when the mines at Wirksworth were recorded in the Domesday Book.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Background", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki