A Dangerous Trade

Mining was hard and dangerous work. Death, illness and injury came from a number of sources such as poisonous lead dust, underground floods, falling rock, lack of oxygen in badly-ventilated galleries and being caught in the explosion when gunpowder was used to blast through to the lead. Despite the dangers thousands of shafts, hillocks, ruined buildings and miles of underground galleries show that it was extensively mined.

Miners were seen as the poorest lowest class of people. Defoe described the miners as "a rude boorish kind of people" but also as a "bold, daring, and even desperate kind of fellows in their search into the bowels of the earth". Despite this many villagers became prosperous enough to buy or rent pasture fields in the village to keep a few cattle or sheep.

The mines are all on private property and, like lead mines everywhere, are extremely dangerous. Many of them can be seen from signposted public footpaths, but closer exploration should be under the auspices of a recognised mining society, such as the Peak District Mines Historical Society or the Wirksworth Mines Research Group. Information about both of these can be obtained from the Peak Mining Museum, at the Grand Pavilion, Matlock Bath. There is even a record of a shaft being under the kitchen floor of one of the cottages in Carsington.