Rookhope Arch (NY924429)

© Copyright Peter McDermott and licensed for 

reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

A mile to the west of the remote village of Rookhope, Co.Durham, there lies an eye-catching relic of our industrial heritage in the form of a rugged stone archway. It sits quietly by the roadside and must leave the uninitiated passer-by somewhat nonplussed. It is known as the Rookhope Arch.

It is more accurately the Lintzgarth Arch, really, sited, as it is, a few yards away from the site of the former smelting mill complex of that name, a little above the Rookhope Burn. Lead being once mined hereabouts, smelting mills were scattered across the Northern Pennines to turn the lead ore into a purer form of the metal (bars, or ‘pigs’). One such mill was that at Lintzgarth.

Working with lead was a dangerous process, of course, and the fumes from the blast furnace needed to be funnelled away to a distant hilltop. At Lintzgarth this was done by constructing a six-arch, raised horizontal flue leading from the works and over the nearby Rookhope Burn and road, then a 1½ mile-long underground section to a hilltop chimney. In the picture above you can get an idea of the series of archways, the road/burn and the lower reaches of the underground tunnel.

The method of channelling the poisonous fumes out through a long chimney had the added bonus of allowing tiny fragments of lead (and silver) to stick to the inside of the structure – and these would of course be periodically scraped off for recycling by working boys. Nasty job – but, you know, waste not, want not.

Copley Chimney (NZ087249)

© Copyright Hugh Mortimer and licensed for 

reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Lead mining and smelting was big business in and around the Pennines in days gone by. There are remnants of the industry scattered far and wide across the landscape of the North-East – from the distant hill-tops down to the staithes on the region’s rivers. ‘Lead roads’ snaked between the smelting mills in the towns and villages of the foothills down to the waiting boats on the Tyne and the Wear – a large, if minority, business which has long since passed into history.

Most conspicuous of all these relics is the distinctive smelting chimney: a giant stone tower sitting atop a lofty prominence on a distant horizon. If you’re out and about in lead mining country you will still see plenty of these around, even if they are usually in a ruinous state. Connecting these chimneys to their often very distant smelting mill there would have been a conducting flue which carried the poisonous fumes up into the hills and belching out into the atmosphere.

One splendid, and quite complete, example of this landmark stands tall and proud just outside the little village of Copley, above the River Gaunless in Co.Durham. It was the exhaust pipe of the Gaunless Valley Lead Mill, and is of sandstone construction with ashlar dressing. The mill operated from 1790 to 1880, though the chimney dates from 1832 and now stands in splendid isolation amidst the delightfully named Gibbsneese Plantation. You can’t miss it.