More information : (NY 362 178) Old Level (Lead) (NAT) (1)
Full history and description including plans, sections and
photographs (2a-c).
In the mid-1830s Low Horse Level at NY 3622 1786 was commenced about
400m from the vein; this took a number of years to complete. At
about the same time, the building of a smelter, the first at
Greenside, was started at the foot of the hill at NY365 174, and a
chimney was built up the mountainside terminating in a stack on The
Stang about 1.6kms away at NY 3520 1754. According to Tyler (2c),
when the Low Horse finally connected with the earlier upper workings,
the Upper Swart Beck dressing floor above the Low Horse became
virtually redundant, and all ore was removed by the Low Horse, now
furnished with offices, bouse teams, and eventually a water wheel for
primary crushing and two huge ore bins. From the adit, the mine
tramway crossed the Swart Beck ravine by a bridge to the bouse
teams,from which a further tramway re-crossed the ravine to the waste
tips on the opposite side. The partly dressed ore held in the ore
bins was ultimately (after 1855) carried by a self-acting tramway to
the foot of the hill where, Shaw (2b) states, there was a dressing
plant just above the smelter.
The Low Horse adit can still be entered, but both bridges have been
washed away. The offices on the highest of a series of terraces are
unroofed and the walls are collapsing; the bouse teams and the
primary crusher are in reasonable condition, but the remaider of the
structures, occupying lower terraces on a steep incline above the
ravine, are in a dangerous state of decay, suffering severe erosion,
and being overwhelmed by unstable scree and material from the
structures above. The water supply appears to have been mainly
overground from Swart Beck which had been dammed upstream; the
chimney survives in reasonable condition, but the self-acting tramway
has been partly destroyed by erosion of the rocky hill-slope. One of
the smelter buildings at the foot of the hill has survived and is in
use as a private hostel.
The area around Low Horse Level was surveyed by RCHME Newcastle at
1:500 scale and a full descriptive account produced; both are held in
the NMR (2).
Scheduled. (3)
Listed. (4) |