Greenburn Mine, Greenburn Valley, Coniston, South Lakeland, Cumbria, England, UKi

Regional Level Types
Greenburn Mine	Mine
Greenburn Valley	Valley
Coniston	Civil Parish
South Lakeland	District
Cumbria	County
England	Constituent Country
UK	Country

Greenburn Mine in Cumbria occupies a remote location 3km west-south-west of the hamlet of Little Langdale, in the parish of Coniston in the South Lakeland district. Until 1930, when the land was bought and bequeathed to the National Trust by Beatrix Heelis (née Potter), it formed part of the estates of the Pennington family; it now lies within the Lake District National Park. Although now within Cumbria, prior to the redefinition of county boundaries in 1974, the area lay just inside the northern border of the county of Lancashire. The mine is regarded as an outlier of the Coniston Copper Mines and was known for parts of the 19th century as New Coniston Mine and Great Coniston Mine. The site was first mined for copper in the later 17th century; it was worked intensively from c.1845 until around 1861 and then less successfully by a succession of companies until c.1885. Further extraction was carried out between 1906 and 1917 and there was an intermittent presence on the site between c.1924 and 1942, although a minimal amount of work was done. Most of the buildings were constructed before 1861 in the period of the mine’s most intensive use and some are fairly well preserved. The remains of a number of pieces of equipment for processing the ore also survive in situ and the complex as a whole is widely regarded as one of the best preserved copper mines in the Lake District.

The main processing area of the mine lies next to the Greenburn Beck, at an altitude of 260m above sea level, mid-way along the Greenburn Valley, which marks the northern edge of the Tilberthwaite Fells. The valley, which is of glacial origin, extends from west-south-west to east-north-east; it is fairly broad but with steep sides, particularly on the south, where the summit of Wetherlam reaches an altitude of 763m above sea level. The Greenburn Beck is a fast-flowing stream fed by several small tributary streams around the western end of the Greenburn Valley; it discharges into the River Brathay to the east. Part of its course was diverted by the creation of Greenburn Reservoir. Five named mineral veins (also termed ‘lodes’ in the 19th century) follow more or less the same alignment as the Greenburn Valley: from north to south these are the Low Gill Vein, the Sump Vein, the Gossan Vein, the Pave York Vein and the Long Crag Vein. The lines of the northernmost three veins can be mapped quite precisely by the outcrops and trial extractions along them and can be seen to run nearly parallel to each other, with a number of shifts caused by faulting. All five veins contain copper ore and were mined at different dates to varying degrees, the workings lying both east and west of the main processing area. The ore in Low Gill Vein, Sump Vein, Gossan Vein and Long Crag Vein is in the form of Chalcopyrite, or copper pyrites, while that in the Pave York Vein is in the form of Cuprite, or oxide of copper. Different processing techniques were applied to these different forms of ore at different dates.

Between late September and mid-November 2000, English Heritage undertook an archaeological field investigation intended to identify, interpret and record the surface remains associated with Greenburn Mine in Cumbria. The analytical survey was requested and partly funded by the National Trust, which owns the property, and was intended to inform the conservation and long-term management of the site. The detailed fieldwork carried out by English Heritage was limited to an area of 6 hectares (15 acres) around the main processing area and a more rapid field investigation was undertaken of the rest of the complex, which extends across an area of approximately 26 hectares (64 acres). Due to safety considerations, English Heritage did not carry out any survey of the workings below ground: unauthorised entry into the mines themselves is illegal and potentially dangerous. Certain structures around the processing area are also unstable and are particularly risky in wet weather, while other remains are situated in boggy or precipitous locations that are not easy to reach on foot. Therefore, although the mine lies within the Lake District National Park and public access to the site is not restricted, visitors are advised to approach with caution. At the time of the field investigation, the remains were not protected as a Scheduled Ancient Monument. In April 2003, the Greenburn Copper Mine site was scheduled as an Ancient Monument by English Heritage.

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