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The history of the North-East’s heavy industry often overshadows the major rural industries like lead mining and, of course, agriculture, but in all but the last 300 years, farming has been the most important source of employment in the region.

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Rural Industries and Lead Mining: Farming and Rural Industries / Lead Mining

Other Industrial Ages: Coal and Industry 1500AD-1800AD / Locomotive Age (1800AD - 1828AD) /

A Town is Born (1828AD - 1839AD) / Northern Coalfield (1800AD - 1900AD) /

Rural Industries 1100-1900 / The Age of Iron (1840-1896) / Shipbuilding (1790-1899) /

Chemicals and Glass 1800-1900 / Electric Light Years 1878-1899

Other dates: The Georgian North (1714AD - 1838AD) / Victorian Age 1837-1901

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FIRST FARMERS
Transhumance - moving livestock from upland to valley according to season - was practised by ancient Britons and Norwegian Vikings. Circular sheep folds in Weardale dating from the 13th Century show this practice continued in later periods. Anglo-Saxon farmers preferred lowland farms and villages, which they called ‘tons’ and ‘hams’. The Danes called them ‘bys’. Girsby, near Darlington, means ‘pig farm village’ and demonstrates that some farms specialised. In medieval times monasteries dominated the agr iculture, particularly in Yorkshire where Fountains Abbey owned 15,000 sheep.

FARM TOWNS AND VILLAGES
In the medieval lowlands there were usually three large arable fields surrounding a village employing a crop rotation system. Each year one field was left fallow to allow soil recovery while the other two grew rye, wheat, oats or barley. The fields were ploughed by teams of oxen and the area one ox could plough for sowing each season was known as a Bovate or Oxgang. Bonded men cultivated the land as servants to a local lord. Beyond the fields was pasture for cows and sheep or perhaps woodland providing fuel in the form of charcoal.

MEDIEVAL FORESTS
Vast areas of upland were designated forests, set aside for hunting. They belonged to the king. They included huge open fields and commons often inhabited by peasants and subjected to special forest laws. In County Durham, the Prince Bishops owned a hunt ing forest in Weardale between Eastgate and Westgate where they hunted every autumn. Royal forests included the Forest of Galtres near York, the Forest of Pickering and extensive forests in Northumberland. In addition there were around 60 deer parks in N orth Yorkshire from which deer were released into forests before a hunt. Areas of forest reclaimed for farmland were known locally as Riddings.

ENCLOSURE
Apart from Demesnes (special areas of land directly held by the Lord of the Manor), medieval farmland was not fenced in to denote ownership. There were some enclosures - where land was fenced by its owners - after the Black Death in 1348, but it was in T udor times that enclosures began as a result of local agreements. Lowland villages of Yorkshire and east Durham were affected as fields formerly divided into strips were permanently enclosed with neatly cut hedges. From about 1750, Acts of Parliament inc reased enclosure in upland areas to meet the demand from growing towns and the increasing cost of grain. Dry stone walls became a feature of the dales as the uplands were enclosed.

ANIMALS
Breeds of farm animal developed in the region include the Shorthorn cattle, which were a significant development of the Durham Ox (or Ketton Ox) bred by Charles and Robert Colling near Darlington around 1796. Other famous livestock breeders from the Darl ington area were Matthew and George Culley who moved to Northumberland in 1767 to farm at Fenton near Wooler. They developed a strain of sheep called Border Leicester by crossing the region’s Teeswater Sheep with Bakewell Dishleys. Border Leicesters coul d be fattened quickly for the town market. Famous breeds of working dogs developed in the region include the Border Collies, which have herded sheep along both sides of the Scottish border for at least 300 years. Terriers bred for hunting in the region i nclude the Border Terrier, Yorkshire Terrier and the Bedlington Terrier. North Yorkshire is noted for its horse breeding including the famous Cleveland Bays.

HUNTING
Fox hunting gained popularity among the gentry in the 18th Century when increasing enclosure provided more hedges and fences to jump. From 1787, Lord Darlington’s Raby Hunt was at the forefront and covered vast areas of Durham and Yorkshire and reached a s far as Warden Law and Witton Gilbert. In the early 19th Century, smaller hunts developed like the Zetland Hunt, Lambton Hunt and the Braes of Derwent.

LEAD MINING

THE MOST IMPORTANT LEAD FIELD IN THE WORLD
Although the Romans had mined lead in the upland dales, it wasn’t until 1750 that it became vital to the local economy and for the next century the North Penine field, comprising Teesdale, Weardale, South Tynedale and the Derwent valley, was the most important lead producing area in the country. Lead mining was also carried out in Swaledale and Arkengarthdale.

THE LEAD COMPANIES
The Blacketts, a Tyneside coal-owning family, leased land in Weardale from the Bishop of Durham in the late 1680s and developed mines like Burtree Pasture in Weardale, Coalcleugh in the West Allen, and Allenheads Mine. Later, the company owned smelting mills at places like Dirt Pot and Rookhope. The London Lead Company extensively mined in the Derwent Valley, Weardale and Teesdale in the 18th Century and built houses, schools and libraries for its workers. It was the first company to introduce the five day week. From 1880 Middleton in Teesdale was its northern headquarters. The company folded in 1905.

THE LEAD INDUSTRY
Growing towns and the industrial revolution stimulated the demand for lead for use in roofing, piping, casting, building materials, lead shot, paint-bases and glazing. Lead works began to open on Tyneside and Newcastle was the main point of export from t he Durham dales, but Stockton was often used for Swaledale lead.

EXTRACTION METHODS
The earliest methods of extracting lead were the simple bell pits or by Hushing, an open cast technique, which involved damming streams and then releasing the water to remove vast quantities of peat and soil from suspected layers of lead. By the late 18th Century the preferred method was to dig stone-lined shafts called Levels into the hillsides along a vein. The lead was hauled from the mines along wooden rails (later iron) by horses. The lead ore was stripped of its waste products outside the mines, often by boys, and then washed and crushed before transportation to a smelting mill where the lead would be produced in the form of ingots along with any silver.

THE ROOKHOPE CHIMNEY
The mid 19th Century Rookhope Chimney was a smelting mill with a two mile long horizontal tunnel which eventually led to a vertical chimney. The chimney directed fumes away from the workers and also allowed the formation of lead and silver deposits which were scraped off and collected by lead workers.

WATER WHEELS
In the late 18th and early 19th Century hydraulic machinery was extensively used in mines. Weardale’s Killhope Mine (opened 1860) saw the introduction of a 30ft diameter wheel in 1878 by Blackett’s. It hauled tubs of ore to the crushing mill while other wheels worked the crushing machines, jiggers, buddles and separators.

SILVER MINING
Allenheads, between Stanhope and Alston, was once the largest silver mine in the world. It closed in 1896.

THE END OF LEAD MINING 1850-1900
By the 1850s, Britain’s best lead ore had been removed and there was cheap competition from the United States, Germany and Spain. Many Northern miners began to seek work abroad, notably in the United States. Some mines continued until the 1930s; others reopened during World War One but lead mining had virtually died out by the start of the 20th Century.

WASTE PRODUCTS
Products like Witherites, Barytes and Flurospar which were discarded as a waste product of lead mining acquired commercial uses in the 20th Century and waste tips have been quarried for the minerals.