By Jean Tyler
One effective Summer season’s day in 1564, a gaggle of males on horseback made their approach westward from Carlisle alongside the tough street to Keswick. One in all their quantity rode with the coated wagon that contained clothes, private chattels and the instruments of their commerce – mining. These males got here from Germany and have been the best miners and smelters on the earth. They have been right here in England on the request of the English Crown and their job was to extract the wealthy, glowing copper from the mineral veins of Lakeland. So begins the story of mining in this country.
The first group of ten men arrived in Keswick in 1564 and were easily accommodated in local lodgings. What a flurry of excitement this must have caused in this little town that consisted of no more than one muddy street with a few squalid yards running off it. At that time, the housing was of timber and wattle daub construction with bracken-thatched roofing.
Behind the houses ran strips of land with middens, pigsties and more very basic housing – buildings that were little more than hovels. The arrival of the Germans created a flutter amongst the local girls who were soon vying with each other for the attention of these small, tough men from overseas. Unhappily, some of the inhabitants were suspicious of the foreign strangers who were set to earn good money doing a proper job and violent confrontation eventually resulted in one of the incomers, Leonard Stoulz, being beaten to death by a gang of yobs.
After a while, it dawned on the local populace that these were becoming prosperous times for this northern backwater with many more jobs being created in the area, and gradually peace descended. Many of the girls married the German miners and their descendants still reside in and around Keswick and in other parts of Cumbria.
The men soon got to work in the Northern Fells and the first recorded mining took place at Ellers, near Grange in the Borrowdale Valley. This was known as the Great Copperplate Mine and is still accessible today. Other veins were soon discovered.
Why did the German miners come to Cumbria? Why, back in the wild days of the mid 16th Century, did they choose to make such an arduous and potentially dangerous journey to a foreign country? The answer is that they came at the request of a queen – Elizabeth I, Queen of England. England desperately needed copper, for her brass making industry, to mix with silver for coinage and to make bronze for canon. Sheet copper was also used in battery works where it was turned into a variety of utensils and later it was used for ship’s hulls as a crude streamlining armour plate and to protect the timber from damage by weavels.
The expertise of the German miners was far in advance of the English both in the underground work of tunneling, pumping and hauling and, perhaps most importantly, in the art of separating and smelting the ore. Indeed, it can be said that in those early days, the German nation led the world in mining technology.
To give the German miners a free hand so that they could prospect without hindrance, Elizabeth I created the charter of the Mines Royal that was augmented in 1564. This gave them, under the leadership of Daniel Hechstetter (who was a mining engineer from Augsberg), the right to prospect and survey for mineral veins anywhere in the country, a privilege that did not go down well with some of the mineral barons of the day.
In 1566 in the Newlands Valley, the miners discovered the huge copper veins of Goldscope and the Longwork and, once these were established at depth, continued prospecting revealed the complex vein systems of the Lake District.
In July of that year, on the Caldbeck Fells, rich veins of lead and silver were also discovered and, indeed, this area would later be proved to be one of the most complicated of all mineralogical regions in the country. Prospecting continued and, turning their efforts further south in 1599, they came to Coniston where they worked for almost 40 years. In these wild and remote places where the miners worked, they lived on the fell in small huts, isolated from the small townships by miles of desolate fell country, while those with families rented houses.
It must be remembered that no explosives were available at this time for mining or quarrying and so all rocks had to be chipped away by hand. The miners drove small tunnels shaped like coffins and these later became known as “coffin levels”. These would be advanced at 12 inches to 18 inches (30cm to 45cm) a week with the average daily progress being about 2 inches (5cm)! Another practice was that of “fire setting”, where the rock was heated by fire and then cold water thrown against it in an effort to split or shatter it.
Once the ore had been removed from the mine, either by wheelbarrow or leather bags, it was usually hand-dressed with hammers at the site and then transported to the smelter at Brigham at Keswick. Here, after a complicated system of roasting the ore, copper was eventually extracted. The smelter was fuelled with wood and later coal from the nearby Caldbeck and Bolton Low Houses coal pits. Transportation was, of course, pitifully slow: the roads were rutted and in a poor state, and achieving a distance of ten miles a day would be considered extremely good going using mule trains and horse-drawn carts. Water transport on the lakes of Windermere, Coniston and Derwentwater was also used wherever possible.
Naturally, as time elapsed, the Germans integrated with the locals. The young men married English girls and, those who settled here, became part of the English community. Names like Hindmarch, Stanger, Pepper and many more still remain in the area. Many of the German miners were of the Lutheran religion and were evidently devout people, several of their workings being named after saints, for example, St. Mark, St. Emanuel and St. Elizabeth. No sign of their habitation is left in Keswick, Grasmere, Caldbeck or Coniston, but there are a few remains of the mine buildings here and there high on the fells. The huge smelting works at Brigham were destroyed with the arrival of Cromwell’s armies in 1648. With the coming of the Civil War, most of the Germans miners were conscripted into the armed forces.
It must be noted that these early pioneers were skilled men at the cutting edge of mining technology, and became important families in Cumbria. Many of the Hechstetters married into eminent families of the area such as the Tullies of Carlisle. Others attained important positions in the country and several of the second and third generations were educated at Cambridge University.
By now, the English had learned many skills from the Germans and were well versed in all aspects of mining and ready to take on the world. As time went by, many English miners left our shores to exploit the mineral resources of Africa, South and North America (including Canada) and Australia.
Today, the mark of the German miners can still be seen, although much of their early working has been destroyed by contemporary work. There are still areas that reveal their incredible mining skills and ingenuity. To discover these in more detail, visit Keswick Mining Museum or join Mines of Lakeland Exploration Society (MOLES).
DO NOT ENTER OLD MINE WORKINGS – THEY ARE VERY DANGEROUS
Further reading
“Goldscope and the Mines of Derwent Fells” by Ian Tyler. Available from Keswick Mining Museum. Mail order available from http://www.keswickminingmuseum.co.uk and coppermaid@aol.com.
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