Minerals are spread through cracks in the rocks by warm water which is heated by granite and leaches minerals from surrounding rocks. When the water cools the minerals begin to form.

Lead sits in veins that run vertically through split rock. It is found as galena, a composite of different materials including silver and is oxidised in the process of being carried by water to cracks in the rocks. The mineral veins are not just huge bands of galena (if they were the lead miners in the North Pennines) but lots of different minerals such as quartz and floraspar. When miners were extracting galena they had to extract all of these minerals and the rock that embraced the veins.

Lead mining in the North Pennines has a very early history in comparison to the gold industry of the Klondike. Whilst no evidence of Roman extraction has been found it is probable that the Romans were mining in the area as they were prevalent throughout the North in protecting the borders between England and Scotland through camps along Hadrians Wall. First evidence that has been found in the area dates from the 1400s. Initially veins were worked from the surface down. Later when lead was extracted on a bigger scale tunnels and mines were built to access the veins.

Miners would blow bits of rock out to get at the mineral veins by chiseling holes and filling them with dynamite. The person with the jumper (chap on the right) had to hold the chisel whilst somebody else whacked it with a hammer. I reckon you'd have to be good mates with the bloke with the hammer if you were holding the jumper.

Unlike gold mines where a claim could be staked and then mined, lead was extracted on land owned by the monarchy but entrusted to the church, the Prince Bishops of Durham. (King Stephen in the C12th granted mineral rights in Weardale to Bishop Hugh Puiset, his nephew. These rights still belong to the Church Commissioners today, and until the middle of the C19th the Bishops of Durham owned all the mineral rights in the area and leased them out for mining, making a tidy profit in the process.)

Until the middle of the C18th lead mining was undertaken on a small scale. By mid C18th this changed in the North Pennines as William Blackett, a rich Newcastle merchant, obtained the rights to mine large areas of Weardale creating the company WB Lead. Other areas of the North Pennines such as Teesdale and Alston were operated by the London Lead Company. These companies dominated the industry in the dale and produced a quarter of British lead by the mid 1800s.

Washer boys would be employed from the age of 10 upwards. They would have their hands in water pretty much all the time washing rocks to retrieve all the galena plus there was water running all over the place so they must have been soaked most of the time.

These companies employed a whole range of employees to work in the mine, from washer boys, to blacksmiths, stone masons and miners. The miners were paid by the amount of lead ore they extracted and would be paid either every six months or once a year. They negotiated their wage every three months on the basis of whether they were extracting galena from soft stone (such as shale or mud stone) or hard rock (such as lime stone), the former being easier work than the latter therefore more ore could be extracted and a lower price given and vice versa. From that wage they had to cover the cost of sharpening their 'jumpers' (large chisel to bore out holes into rock where dynamite was packed to access the mineral veins), buying candles, gunpowder, tools and preparing the ore ready for the smelt mill (where impurities were extracted from the ore). They would often take advances (40 shillings / £2 per month) which would have to be taken from their wages from the year. As a consquence some men on pay day would leave without anything actually owing the company money.

When you set this against the way the gold was extracted it is no wonder that many families left the dale to emigrate - but I don't understand why they waited for the decline of the lead industry to do that - surely you would just be out of there as soon as you got the opportunity.

Info taken from Lead and Life at Killhope by Ian Forbes.