BYGONE INDUSTRIES OF THE PEAK: GOLD & SILVER MINING
This is one of a series of articles published in
The Peak Advertiser, the Peak District's local free newspaper, on 13th January 1997 (p9), and
reproduced by kind permission of its author, Julie Bunting.
The series is now available as a fully-illustrated paperback, published in 2006
by
Wildtrack Publishing of Sheffield (ISBN 1-904098-01-0) See also this
Review by Alan Jacques.
BYGONE INDUSTRIES OF THE PEAK: GOLD & SILVER MINING
The mining of gold and silver has barely qualified as an industry in the
Peak but nevertheless has taken place on a limited scale.
The existence of silver was known in early times and small amounts have
been found in Roman pigs of lead which originated in the Peak. The
Domesday Survey of 1086 refers to the payment of £40 of pure silver by
the manors of Darley, Matlock, Wirksworth, Ashbourne and Parwich.
Records of the 16th century mention silver in the Nester lead mine on
Masson Hill and in 1656 troops were sent to Youlgreave when lead miners
threatened violence to outsiders who intended searching their workings
for silver.
Glover, writing in The History and Gazetteer of the County of
Derby around 1829 noted that several vessels had been made from Ball
Eye silver. Extraction from the Ball Eye lead mine, near Bonsall, was
well organised and worthwhile. Claims were made of up to twenty ounces
of silver per ton of lead, and Glover referred to a tankard, a salver
and two small tumbler cups, all at one time in the possession of Mr.
Milnes of Ashover.
The process of separating silver had been abandoned at Ball Eye by the
early 19th century. Generally, recovery of silver from a lead mine was
so wasteful to lead that it was not cost effective. Other lead mines
which revealed silver included Millclose at Darley, Odin Mine at
Castleton and Mill Dam at Hucklow, while minute particles accompanied
the find of gold at Ible in the 1940s.
PEAKLAND GOLD
Claims of the discovery of gold have been made at Wirksworth, Millers
Dale and Bakewell but the best known 'gold strike' in the Peak took
place at Over Haddon, where low levels are found in an outcrop of basalt
lava. In 1854 the Cow Close Mine on the left bank of Lathkill Dale
revealed the presence of gold in iron pyrites, known as fools' gold.
find of gold at Ible in the 1940s.
Samples were sent to London for analysis and on 24 June 1854 the
Illustrated London News reported: 'The Derbyshire gold-diggings,
of which the Crown is the owner, promise to be worth looking after. The
stuff analysed contains twenty-five ounces of silver per ton, and an
ounce and a half of gold'.
Mining companies took an immediate interest and one venture proposed the
siting of a crushing mill in the Dale. Permission was refused, however,
and the machinery was set up in an old mill at Brough instead.
Investors in the mine watched their £1 shares leap to £25, then £30, and
those who sold out then were the only ones to make a profit out of
Peakland gold. Quantities were so sparse as to make the venture
unrealistic. All the speculators pulled out and the crushing mill at
Brough was sold for £30, at a loss of almost £700. Many years later one
old man used to tell how he had once found a nugget as big as half a
pea, and within living memory the mine was still known as the gold mine.
Just over sixty years ago a young geologist named John Wells, FRGS,
surveyed for gold in the Peak and was quoted in the Manchester City
News of 17 June 1933 as saying: 'There is gold in the Derbyshire
Peak District - at a spot very well known to thousands of Manchester
hikers. It is going to be our business to find it'.
There the story seems to have fizzled out but eleven years later a
scanty vein was found in a basalt quarry in the Via Gellia below Ible.
In A Lifetime of Adventure (Peak Advertiser 9 September 1996)
reader Cyril Goodall told how in the 1940s he had been commissioned to
prospect for gold near Grangemill. The Barmaster supervised the
application of ancient mining laws and Cyril was allowed to sink a 200'
lined shaft. The search was not quite in vain but only sparse traces of
gold were found.
In 1992, local gold made the headlines again after analysts at Sheffield
University confirmed that volcanic lava from Matlock Bath contained gold
at 37 grammes per tonne, quite a respectable quality ore. The samples
came from the Temple Mine, a former fluorspar mine kept open to the
public by the Peak District Mines Historical Society. The opportunity to
pan for gold has proved very popular with visitors.
At the time of the discovery Dr. Lynn Willies, project leader of the
Peak District Mining Museum predicted: 'For the area as a whole it might
be a key for some of the future mining', though he warned that the law
was 'horribly complicated' as far as gold mining was concerned.
At the end of the day it seems that the mineral wealth of the Peak is
more down to earth than what we regard as precious metals.
© Julie Bunting
From "The Peak Advertiser", 13th January 1997.
© Copyright Julie Bunting, GENUKI and Contributors 1995-2008, &c.
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[Created 19 Jun 2003. Last updated 24 Oct 2008 - 11:23 by Rosemary Lockie]
