An Account of the Mining Districts of Alston Moor, Weardale and Teesdale in Cumberland and Durham (Paperback)

An Account of the Mining Districts of Alston Moor, Weardale and Teesdale in Cumberland and Durham Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1833. Excerpt: ... CHAP. XL LEAD MINES. Progress of Mining.--Old Method of working Mines Nentforce Level.--Ventilation of Mines Discovery of Hudgill Burn Mine.--Present Mode of working Mines.--Mine Shops Visit to a Lead Mine. The "sweet influence of the stars" is no longer studied as a subterranean guide, and the miner has ceased from wandering in search of hidden treasures with a hazel or apple-tree stick in his hand. Utterly absurd as this doctrine of the Virgula Divina appears to be, it is not perhaps generally known that so late as the year 1778 its efficiency in discovering veins was believed and asserted by an able and experienced writer on the Cornish mines. Pryce, in a large folio volume, including a vast fund of information on practical mining, devotes eleven pages and a plate to illustrate the various properties of the "magical rod," which, however, has long been disused, nor indeed are there any records of its having ever been used in the district of which we now treat. Few and simple are the annals of mining, and centuries have left only meagre traces of the history of the secluded districts in which it has chiefly flourished. A few memorials of successive charters evince the importance of the mines upwards of six hundred years ago. From thence a period of four hundred years passed over, when the almost boundless treasures of this extensive mining field were supposed to be exhausted. (See p. 24.) Another century and a half is almost, if not entirely, barren of any interesting information on the mines, --the "memory of man" from time to time has been the only historical record of the mining operations of Alston Moor. Separated from the rest of the world so much as these districts have until lately been, it is probable that the early processes of mining were rude a...

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