More information : Between mid September and late November 2000, English Heritage carried out an analytical field investigation of the surface remains of Greenburn Mine; the survey was requested and partly funded by the landowners, the National Trust (Event record 1335820) (1). The best-preserved building, which comprises an accommodation block, office and workshop (NY 20 SE 9) serves as a parent record for the other components of the complex.
A well preserved early hand-dressing floor for processing ore. The floor was apparently not covered, and can be identified as a mound of small fragments of rock that represent the waste from the dressing process. A footpath or wheelbarrow run gave access to a smaller floor a few metres downslope, which may have been the site of a set of 'grates' for sorting the ore prior to feeding it into a crushing mill, perhaps powered by a nearby water wheel (NY 20 SE 34). Dating evidence is slight but the floor is stratigraphically early, and its location seems to relate to Sump Vein Shaft (NY 20 SE 14) which was probably in use before c.1845. Documentary evidence indicates that there was activity on the site in the late 17th century and it is probable that the dressing floor relates to this phase.
For further information, see the report at Level 3 standard available through the NMR archive, which includes reproductions of 19th-century documents, extracts from the survey at 1:500 scale, photographs and interpretative drawings. (1)
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