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Lead mining was one of the first industries in Derbyshire. THe ore of this important metal is found in veins very close to the surface in many parts of the Derbyshire Peak District.

The industry was at its height in the mid 1700s. This was largely owing to advances in technology. The mine owners could more easily pump water out of lower levels, and their tunnelling and drainage skills allowed them to channel water away.

Lead has been worked in Derbyshire for almost 2,000 years. Roman mining is attested by the discovery over the years of a number of inscribed lead pigs or ingots, many of which bear the name 'Lutudarum'. Lutudarum was the administrative centre of the 'Socii Lutudares', a civilian merchant group which worked the mining field under Imperial contract. The exact location of Lutudarum is not known but it is believed to have been in the Carsington - Wirksworth area. Later mining has destroyed all traces of Roman activity but it is probable that they exploited the rich surface exposures of the lead veins by opencasting and sinking shallow pits in the same manner as their Medieval followers.

Mining continued during the Saxon-Danish period when the Wirksworth mines were attached to Repton Abbey, and the Domesday survey of 1086 records seven 'lead works' in the country. In 1288, after a petition by the miners to Edward I, the rights were formally set down; these laws were administrated through a miners' court, the Barmoot, and allowed an individual to search for and extract lead ore on any ground. Duty or tithe was payable to the owner of the mineral rights, but in most ways the miner was his own master and the laws gave him an independence unique among other working groups. For this reason the typical Derbyshire mine was the small private venture run on a family basis.

But the 18th century many of the mines had reached too great a depth to be worked profitably with the limited capital and equipment available to the independent miner. The richer mines were taken over by companies with the necessary money to invest in high cost pumping and winding equipment. The heyday of the industry was in the period 1750-1820 but after 1870 a rapid decline set in following the discovery of massive cheap reserves of lead in Spain and Australia. Unnaturally rich deposits allowed the Millclose Mine at Darley Dale to continue production into the present century, but its closure in 1939 marked the death of the industry. Since then a number of unsuccessful attempts have been made to reopen some of the abandoned mines and today all of Derbyshire's lead is a by-product of fluorspar and barite mining, minerals which, ironically, the old miner regarded as useless.

Derbyshire Lead, a most valuable mineral