Читать книгу Walking in the Yorkshire Dales: North and East. Howgills, Mallerstang, Swaledale, Wensleydale, Coverdale and Nidderdale онлайн

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Old Gang mill (Walk 18)

Such enterprise brought with it a dramatic increase in population, attracting miners and ordinary labourers from across the country. Some came on their own, but others brought their families too, expanding the tiny villages. In Muker, for example, the new part of the village by the main lane is quite distinct from the old heart, and in many villages you will find chapels, village halls and reading rooms that all resulted from this boom. Inevitably, as the lead industry declined, the population drifted away, some heading northeast to continue their trade in the coal mines, while others went to try their hand in the textile valleys of Lancashire and west Yorkshire.

To the north and on the high ground, the Yoredale rocks contain thin seams of coal of varying quality. These were intermittently mined from the beginning of the 14th century until the railway age, often from small workings called bell pits. The coal supplied domestic needs as well as being used on a larger scale to fire smelt furnaces and lime kilns. On the bleak top of Fountains Fell, coal was even processed in an oven to produce coke, a trouble worth taking to reduce the weight of the product to be carried down the hill. Another important source of fuel both for the home and the mines was peat, cut from turbaries (places where turf or peat is dug) on the upland bogs.