Greenside Mine

Greenside Mine lies on the northeast side of Helvellyn, overlooking Ullswater and the village of Glenridding. The site is now owned by the Lake District National Park Authority and is a scheduled ancient monument.

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Greenside Mine Details

Mining on the Greenside site started around 1690, with the first operations probably being carried out at the higher altitudes on the fell were the vein was exposed at the surface. By the 1800's a large amount of ground had been excavated by hand picking. The ore excavated up to this period would have been hand washed and dressed, and then taken by mule to a smelter near Keswick. It was not until the late 1820's that Greenside was developed further by a group of adventurers, which ultimately formed the Greenside Mining Company in 1822 after initial preparations, indicated that the vein was very rich. A mill was built to process the ore and much new expansion was commissioned between the mid 1830's and 1850. A great deal of the mine's success was due to the high silver content of the lead ore, most of which ended up at the Royal Mint. By the 1850s Greenside became the largest lead mine in the Lake District with over 300 employees. In the 1860s a railway line was built linking Penrith to Keswick. This made the moving of lead and heavy machinery much easier and cut transport costs. In the late 1860's continuing good fortunes brought the introduction of steel rails and rope for use in the mine and the Keppel Cove dam was built to provide water for the new mill and smelter. Between the mid 1870's and the end of the century the dam network was expanded and the water was used to generate electricity for powering winding gear, fans, pumps, lights and eventually electric locos. Greenside became the first mine in Britain to use hydroelectric power. During the years of the First World War, production carried on but was much reduced. By 1919 the mine was in a poor state due to the fall in world markets, not for lack of ore. Eventually in 1920, the Greenside Mining Company went into liquidation. In 1927 the Keppel Cove dam burst due to a freak storm and flooded Glenridding, causing massive damage. This affected the village community greatly as mining operations could not carry on. The company was blamed for the disaster and ended paying out for claims. With the mine without an electricity supply, the burst dam was replaced with a new concrete one. A number of other accidents occurred at the mine and coupled with a declining market, work totally stopped for the first time in over 100 years. In 1936 Glenridding was connected to the national grid making the mine less reliant on its own electricity generation. At the outbreak of the Second World War, production was ramped up for the war effort and as the war progressed prisoners of war and refugees from Europe made up the additional labour force and the mine was expanded to a depth of 365m. At the start of 1950's the mine was getting increasing difficult and expensive to work. The middle of 1952 a terrible fire swept through the workings killing many men and injuring others. Despite investment in new machinery, production started to fall off and geological surveys at the end of the 1950's produced disappointing news. The mine managed to carry on working by a strange turn of events involving the Atomic Weapon Research Establishment. The AWRE wanted to use the lower workings of the mine to conduct a number of large explosions to see how seismic instruments would interpret them, but the experiments were short lived and the work was finished in summer of 1960. After they left the mine resumed normal operations, but it never started up to previous levels, and despite some new exploration work the mine closed during April 1961. Over its working life, Greenside Mine milled 1.2 million tonnes of ore, producing 350,000 tonnes of lead and 35,000 kg of silver, most of which was carried out by the use of manual labour. The core employees were the miners. Other men were employed to dress and smelt the lead ore and refine the silver. There were also carpenters, woodsmen, blacksmiths, masons and washer boys. Many of the men came from Keswick, Penrith and Grasmere and lodged in the village, where relationships with locals were sometimes tense. Over fifty-two miners' houses were built in the 1850s for the men and their families. Whole generations worked in the mines and when it finally closed, it truly was the end of an era. Grid Reference: NY 36513 17444 Address (near): Greenside Rd, Glenridding, Penrith CA11 0QR, UK

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Region

Ullswater