Plan your walk |
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DISTANCE: 3½ miles (5.6km) TIME: 1¾ hours START/END: NY385169 Glenridding car park TERRAIN: Easy MAPS: |
The walk starts at the Glenridding car park. Go out of the pedestrian exit in the top corner of the car park, past the health centre and turn left onto the road up through the village.
Bear right at the end of the village, 220yds (200m) beyond the Travellers Rest pub. Follow this road up and past a row of terraced cottages where it becomes a track. This is then followed up the valley to the old mine buildings.
The small building on the right was the gunpowder store which was always situated well away from the main workings. Few other buildings remain; two are being used as hostels. Note the stabilisation work on the surface of the tailing dams.
Continue on the track through the old mine buildings, up the zigzag and then bear left down to the footbridge over the beck.
Cross the bridge and turn left down the path.
There is a pleasant view to the left. The illusion is given that the walk on this aqueduct is down hill or level. In fact this is not so. Water was collected and taken back to the workings behind.
After 325yds (300m) leave the line of the old aqueduct and drop to the left on the signed footpath. Follow this beside the wall until you come to a stile.
Go left over the stile and continue down the path.
Turn left onto the track and follow this down past the farm.
Just before the bridge over the beck, turn right and follow the riverside path in front of the camp site and on until you reach the main road. Turn left over the bridge and back into the car park.
Greenside sits in a valley east of Helvellyn above the village of Glenridding, and at one time had one of the most profitable lead mines in the north of England. It was in production from the late 18th century to the middle of the 20th century. It was estimated that by 1876 it had produced some 40,000 tons (40,642 tonnes) of smelted lead, and 600,000oz (24,000g) of silver. In 1891 electrical winding gear was introduced. It was the first metal mine in the country to use it. The workings were extremely intensive and went deep into Helvellyn. An electrical locomotive (another first) was also used for drawing material from the productive shafts a mile (1.6km) into the mountain. Originally this work was done by seven horses. Compressed air, for driving the drills, was provided by electricity. By modern standards the generating plant and installations were crude and dangerous, but they were worked with little mishap. Ore was smelted on the site and the furnace flue was carried 1½ miles (2.4km) up the mountain so that lead vapour could condense on the flue sides to be collected for return to the furnace. Water power was provided from the falls of Red Tarn and Kepple Cove Tarn above, the latter was dammed. This dam burst in a great storm in 1927 and a wall of water smashed through the workings and the village causing great damage, but miraculously no loss of life. The remaining sign of this disaster is the promontory east of Glenridding formed from the debris and on which the steamer pier now stands.
Hardly anything remains of the works buildings and all is silent now. The mine was sealed in 1962 after the Atomic Energy Authority conducted seismic tests with conventional explosives deep in the workings. The old ‘tailing dams’ consisting of vast quantities of waste material were partly covered by the mining company with grass and trees and further work has been carried out by the National Park Authority.
