A Walk in Swaledale, 1965

My thanks to James Alderson and Farming Lass on Instagram for identifying yesterday’s lime lorry incident from summer 1965 as being on the Hurst road at the Reeth end of Swaledale. I’m guessing that the cottages and lead smelting chimney are at Hurst or nearby.

I’ve gone with the daguerreotype vibe for this gallery of colourised photographs from our walk, which include my friend Stef making friends with a Dales pony.

In addition to the scratches and blobs my inept film development has also resulted in some solarisation. The shot of our party negotiating an area of mining spoil (possibly above Langthwaite?) would have made a good cover for an Alan Garner novel.

Lead Smelting in Swaledale

lead smelting

No, this isn’t a maze for Swaledale sheep, it’s a cut-away view of the smelting flues used by lead mines in Swaledale: hearth for the smashed up ore on the right, outlet chimney centre and the maze of corridors in between where various minerals settled out from the vapours as they precipitated out.

details of smelting flues

I suspect that this drawing was a rough for my book Yorkshire Rock, a Journey through Time published by the British Geological Survey in 1996 but still in print today (see link below).

Yorkshire Rock page

If it was intended for the book, it didn’t make it into the final cut, which instead featured the less technical but more dramatic process of hushing.

Link

Yorkshire Rock

Yorkshire Rock, a journey through time at the BGS shop, £6.50.