Assailed by hay fever, flying insects and stinging nettles, Gareth Icke is our guide for a walk in the hills above the Derwent Valley in Derbyshire/
With that setting, disused lead mines, white spoil heaps and unlikely-sounding local folklore, this video ticks a lot of Liberal England boxes.
For more like it, subscribe to The Walk on YouTube.
Ginger Beard Mark and the musician Eric Loveland Heath visit the old lead mine at Snailbeach in Shropshire. In its heyday in the second half of the 19th century, it was the most productive lead mine in the country.
Eric Loveland once wrote a guest post for Liberal England about growing up in Snailbeach and his reaction to it today.
And you can download his digital album Snailbeach Mines Trust.
See? It's not just me who's taken with the place.
East Roman Gravels lead mine was also known as Wood mine and was owned by the Earl of Tankerville. The Hope brook carved out a valley which exposed many galena veins and in the eighteenth century, adits were driven into the hillside to exploit them.
Beside the road is the truncated stone chimney of the ore crusher house. Of the crusher itself, only the foundations remain.
The photograph was taken in 2008. The cottages still stand beside the road, but the mining remains are more overgrown today.
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Like W.H. Auden, I have a thing about abandoned lead mines. So I was intrigued to learn that there is one in Crystal Palace Park.
Subterranea Briannica explains:
It is well known that Crystal Palace Park includes a number of Victorian dinosaur models, arranged in groups around the lower lake. Many of these species were recently discovered although not all the models are nowadays thought to be strictly accurate. Less well known is that alongside these animals there is a replica geological strata.
This was built at the same time as an educational feature and was constructed from the true strata it was based on from Ashover in Derbyshire. Coal measures, limestone and millstone grit are part of the reconstruction. In addition, a 3/4 scale lead mine was constructed behind the face in carboniferous limestone; in the 19th century visitors could tour the mine. Inside they would find stalactites and lead ore veins.
The mine, along with the geological strata, is now grade I listed alongside the dinosaurs. No access is possible at it is allegedly unsafe (although the local authority responsible for the site was initially unaware of its existence when enquiries were made).
The Victorian Web also has an article on this feature, from which I have taken the photograph above.
There is evidence of lead mining in the Minsterley area of the Shropshire Hills since pre-Roman times. The importance of lead mining grew during the medieval period and had become a major part of the economy of Snailbeach and Minsterley by the late 16th and 18th centuries, respectively.
This continued to grow throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, until the 19th century, when the mining activity was at its peak. During the 1870s the Stiperstones area was one of Britain’s main sources of lead.
But the page goes on to say that these long-abandoned mines still present a significant pollution problem:
Minsterley Brook is polluted in its headwaters by cadmium, however after the input of a mine water discharge known as Wood Adit at Gravels, the watercourse is polluted along its length for cadmium, lead and zinc down to the confluence with Rea Brook.
Hogstow Brook is polluted along its length by cadmium, lead and zinc from its source at the outflow of the Boat Level mine drainage tunnel. Further metal polluted inputs enter the watercourse from Snailbeach.
After the confluence of Rea Brook and Minsterley Brook, Rea Brook is still polluted at the sampling point at Hook-a-Gate Bridge near Bayston Hill. However, Rea Brook is not polluted, when assessed as an annual average, approximately 8km downstream of Hook-a-Gate Bridge at Coleham in the centre of Shrewsbury.
Rea Brook flows for 25 miles from Marton Pool near the Welsh border to the Severn at Shrewsbury, passing Minsterley, Pontesbury, Hanwood, Hook-a-Gate and Bayston Hill on the way.
It is joined at Minsterley by the Minsterley Brook, which rises on Stapeley Hill and runs through the wooded Hope Valley. The Hogstow Brook is a smaller stream that joins the Minsterley Brook shortly before its confluence with the Rea Brook.
There is another page on the pollution of these rivers on Restoring Europe's Rivers, but it's 10 years old and I don't know its provenance.
But, for what its worth, it says:
The mines were worked for mainly lead ores, but also zinc ore and latterly barites until closure in the 1940s, leaving spoil deposits and drainage adits which discharge to Minsterley Brook at various points. The mines are a significant source of heavy metal pollution in the catchment, and the discharges from them represent one of the longest continuous sources of pollution in the whole Severn River Basin.
Environment Agency routine monitoring found there were high levels of zinc in Minsterley Brook over most of its length, exceeding the Environmental Quality Standards (EQS) for the brook (75ug/l). As a result, the watercourse isn't achieving the 'Good status' for water quality as set out in our Severn River Basin Plan.
The Boat Level adit discharge is the main source of the zinc (around 3000kg per annum) and other heavy metals, such as cadmium and lead, and discharges these pollutants into the Hogstow Brook. Immediately downstream of the Boat Level adit the zinc concentrations are up to 47x the EQS.
At Minsterley, the zinc concentrations are 8x the EQS. Downstream of the mines, concentrations exceed the EQS for over 15km, until the Rea Brook reaches Hanwood and dilution from other rivers lowers the concentration to below the EQS.
Ecological surveys of the brooks have found aquatic insects were suffering as a result of these heavy metals, which can settle in river sediments. There is also a lower than expected population of small fish species.
To end on a happier note, the pretty little bridge in the photograph above crosses the Minsterley Brook in the churchyard of Holy Trinity, Hope.
The work will include scrub management and coppicing to expose rocky habitats that support species like slow worms, grayling butterflies and bird's-foot-trefoil.
It will be carried out by Shropshire Council's outdoor partnership team and the Shropshire Hills National Landscape team, with help from volunteers.
Heather Kidd, the Liberal Democrat leader of Shropshire Council, told BBC News she is delighted by the project:
"Bringing these historic sites back to life for both nature and people is a fantastic example of partnership working in the Shropshire Hills.
"It's especially welcome that this important work is being funded by Defra, supporting our shared commitment to nature recovery without placing additional pressure on local council budgets."
This short programme in the BBC's Secret Shropshire series tells you about the Devil's Chair, the Seven Whistlers and Wild Edric.
Help us acquire five acres of botanically rich meadow at the foot of Corndon Hill, where plants such as Heath Spotted Orchid, Dyers Greenweed and Devil’s Bit Scabious abound.
The area we wish to buy consists of 4 small fields totalling 5 acres, bounded by tall, thick hedgerows, with some small stands of Alder and Goat Willow trees.
The site is situated at the foot of Corndon Hill just inside Wales at an altitude of 1000 feet (300 metres) in the hamlet of White Grit.
White Grit is a small, quiet, scattered village directly on the border with Shropshire. The nearby village of Priest Weston, despite being in England, actually lies to the west of White Grit. To the east is the A488 road, and the nearest town is Bishop’s Castle.
The mining community which thrived here in the 19th century gave rise to this area of smallholdings and a series of species-rich meadows, some of which remain today.
Read more on the Middle Marches Community Land Trust site, where this photo comes from.
Ludlow? Schmudlow. I knew where to turn first:
Snailbeach is less lunar than it was before the great glistening white hills of mine waste were cleared away in 1994 but it is still an odd place. It has no obvious centre, no coherent street pattern and little in the way of public amenities.
The double-glazing and conservatory industries cannot disguise the origins of virtually every dwelling in a C19 worker's cottage of the most cramped and basic sort. The houses cling to ledges of extraordinarily steep N- and NW-facing hillsides or hide in the lush vegetation of a narrow valley and are reached along a maze of tracks which, more often than not, allow no through passage. This heartless development is the product of the Snailbeach lead mine, locally claimed to have been the richest in Europe.
Now do you see why I'm obsessed with the place?
And then there is the mine itself:
The remains comprise the country's most complete and atmospheric record of a nationally important industry. Between 1845 and 1913, British mines produced a total of 241,000 tonnes of lead of which more than half came from a Snailbeach.
You can see the great glistening white hills of mine waste, which were still there when I first visited Snailbeach, in the photo below.
As the blurb on YouTube explains, there are four coalfields in Shropshire:
It was reported in the 15 March issue of the Shrewsbury Chronicle:
SNAILBEACH TO LEAVE ITS SHELL
Plan For New Village In Green Meadows
If the plans now being prepared by the Clun Rural District Council come to maturity the village of Snailbeach will leave its shell among the scars of old industry on the flank of the Stiperstones, and move down to a new site among pleasant green meadows a mile or so nearer to Minsterley.
The site selected is near to the old Smelthouse, the derelict building which stands at the side of the field path from Minsterley to Snailbeach. Over a cup of tea at the Stiperstones Inn Mr. William Humphrey, a member of-the Clun Council, explained to our reporter that it is hoped to build a first instalment of 16 houses out of a total of 40 to 50 within the next year. Provision has been made for a children's playground, and eventually a church and school will appear.
Temporary houses are out of the question, as at present there is no gas or electricity, but every effort will be made to provide modern amenities for both the old and new villages. Lord Bridgeman was interested himself in a project for bringing a light industry to the village, but it is yet too early to say what developments are likely.
Nothing came of the plan, but villages do get moved. Arkwright in Derbyshire was moved to a new site 30 years ago because of the danger of methane gas from a disused coal mine.
I suspect this scheme for Snaibeach is confirmation of what John Wood wrote in his 1944 book Quietest Under the Sun:
Sad to say, this became in the between-wars period one of the most utterly derelict areas in Britain proportionate to its size.
Well, it would. The headline was:
Naked boys as pit-ponies!
Unusually for the British Newspaper Archive, the scan of the story below is difficult to read in places, so let's go over to the House of Commons on 29 June 1926, where Ellen Wilkinson, the Labour MP for Middlesbrough East, has raised the same story:
My purpose in rising, although I realise that there are many on these benches much more qualified than I am to speak about the conditions of the miners' work, is to crave the indulgence of the Chair in order to reply to an attack made by the hon. Member for Frome (Mr. G. Peto) upon an article which I wrote in a Labour paper known as "Lansbury's Labour Weekly." ...
I wrote in that article of men working in Somersetshire mines dragging tubs of coal along narrow roads, which were too narrow for horses or pit ponies to work in, and that these tubs were attached to the men by means of ropes passed round their waists and fastened through their legs by means of a chain which is hitched on to the tub.
I also wrote that these men were naked. The point I was insisting upon was not the actual nakedness of the men, or otherwise, but the fact that in many cases, I do not say in all, the rope was rubbing the naked flesh of the men.
Since that article appeared, I have received a very large number of letters, both from men who are working under these conditions and from men who deny that these conditions exist. For the information of the House, I have brought with me one of these ropes. I am sorry to intrude into the polite environs of this House a thing of this kind. [The hon. Member produced a rope with chain and attachment.]
This is what is worn by the men. This is the rope that goes round the man's waist; this is the chain that passes between his legs, and this is the crook that is hitched on to the tub. This was worn, not 60 years ago, as stated by certain coal-owners, but on 30th April of this year by a miner.
And later she says:
A hundred years ago women were working like that and people said that should not he, and it was prohibited by law. The degradation of the human body is the same whether it is a man or a woman. It appeals to peoples' hearts more if it is a woman than if it is a man, but the mothers who have to wash the bodies of their boys when they come home from the pits are as hot and indignant about it as if it was their daughters.
When you consider that people are working under these conditions surely, in God's name, seven hours is enough. You are adding on another hour in order that more profits may be made, because it will not mean more wages. We know only too well that whatever the wages are, the rates are cut and cut until the minimum only is paid, and I feel that if these conditions are to go on in the name of profit, at least seven hours is enough.
Ellen Wilkinson's final comment reminds us that the bill she was speaking on aimed to increase the hours miners worked while reducing their pay. The General Strike had been called earlier in the year on just this issue.
The miners held out until November of 1926, but were eventually forced back to work on these inferior terms by hunger and poverty.
This just in from The Midsomer Norton, Radstock & District Journal with the Chew Valley & Wrington Vale Gazette:
Ms Dyke triumphed in the Somerton and Frome by-election almost a year ago, ending up with a larger parliamentary majority than her party leader.
The two made a light-hearted bet during the visit, with whoever ends up with the larger majority buying the other “a good pint of Somerset cider” once the dust has settled.
Mr Davey retained his seat at the 2019 general election with a majority of 10,489 – while Ms Dyke achieved a 29 per cent in the by-election to win David Warburton’s former seat by 11,008 votes.
When asked whether she could end up with a larger majority than Mr Davey this time around, Ms Dyke responded jovially: “I’m going to him give him a good run for his money.”
Mr Davey replied: “That’s a great competition – shall we shake on that? Whoever wins buys the other a good pint of Somerset cider.”
I'm not sure that the newspaper's headline, which I have sort of borrowed, has understood their wager correctly, but I'm not going to type out that title again.
Midsomer Norton and Radstock, it seems strange to report now, where once centres of coal mining.
And even living in an idyllic village in Somerset in the 1950s, my mother would see a bus draw up in the late afternoon and men with coal-blackened faces emerge, coming home from a shift down the mine. Coal mining went on in the county until 1973.
