How was lead ore transported?

[Dunalastair]

The most productive years for the UK lead industry were mostly before the railways arrived. Roman ingots are perhaps older than most, but the mines have been yielding lead for roofing, plumbing and munitions for many centuries. I'm not sure that I'd want to try to lift this one - 140 pounds.

 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/2000-year-old-hunk-roman-lead-found-wales-180975187/

 

Nor, indeed, use it to sweeten wine, as the Romans apparently did.

[Reorte]

1 hour ago, Dunalastair said:

Nor, indeed, use it to sweeten wine, as the Romans apparently did.

Probably continued until rather more recently, the sort of stuff unscrupulous traders got up to in the 19th century.

[Artless Bodger]

3 hours ago, Reorte said:

Probably continued until rather more recently, the sort of stuff unscrupulous traders got up to in the 19th century.

Lead acetate I believe, also known as sugar of lead. Lead compounds were also widely used in cosmetics, white face powder and even Grecian Formula mens' hair dye.

 

[Compound2632]

10 hours ago, melmerby said:

I wonder whether the wagon was on hire, bearing the maker's plate with a different number to that in the users fleet?

 

Yes, the rectangular plate reads:

 

Gloucester Wagon Co.

          Limited

  Builders & Owners

           No. 54

 

The dimension board, added for the photo, gives the date as October 1871, which was not long after Gloucester moved into the wagon hire business. That was to become a staple element of the business of many of the rolling stock builders; many, probably the majority, of private owner wagons were on hire to the firm whose name was painted on the side.

[melmerby]

The wagon was supplied in 1871.

According to this, the mine ceased work around 1872:

 

WFMR76005.pdf

 

(That's where I got the location from.)

 

[Reorte]

This may be of interest, had a quick flick through "The British Lead Mining Industry", Roger Burt, and found:

"In Shropshire, for example, the cost of carrying pig lead from the smelting mills at Pontesbury to Burrs lead works in Shrewsbury was reduced from 6s 8d per ton road carriage in 1831 to between 3s 6d and 4s 0d per ton by rail in 1863; representing a charge on the railway of less than sixpence per mile."

[DavidB-AU]

The size didn't change much from Roman to Victorian times. A collection of lead ingots from the clipper ship Loch Ard wrecked off Victoria, Australia in June 1878. All 872 ingots listed on the ship's manifest were recovered from the wreck in 1969 and about 800 are on display in a replica bond store at the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Museum in Warrnambool. They are 2' x 6" x 2" and each weighs 130 lb (59 kg).

 

Edited December 13, 2023 by DavidB-AU

[wagonman]

The lead ore produced at Welsh mines was crushed on site to concentrate the ore content, and then carried to Swansea or wherever for smelting. The ore produced at Nantymwyn mine, north of Llandovery, was carted to Llandovery station – this traffic providing a useful income supplement for local farmers who were paid 5s 10d per ton. At Llandovery it was kept in a secure store in the goods yard before being loaded onto railway wagons for the trip to Swansea. The Van mine, which actually had rail access, shipped out its crushed ores in low-sided (2 plank mostly) wagons that were sheeted for the journey. Presumably the same happened to the traffic from Llandovery, though in this case in LNWR wagons (D2 or even D1).

 

Balcombe's wagons are a bit of a puzzle: there's no trace in my transcript of the Gloucester agendas but carrying a 'builders and owners' plate probably meant it was on redemption hire – and would probably have been repossessed before the hire period was up given the state of Balcombe's finances. Why he decided on a secure fixed roof rather than wagon sheets is unknown though may have been due to the wagon being used as mobile secure storage while awaiting onward transmission. 

 

Unfortunately I can't find my notes so can't give a more detailed response.

Edited December 16, 2023 by wagonman
spelling

[wagonman]

I have found a piece I wrote a few years back for the S7 Newsletter, I think:

 

"A close reading of David Bick’s “The Old Metal Mines of Mid-Wales, Part 3”—I’m old fashioned enough to resort to books rather than the internet, especially when they are already sitting in my book-stack—shows that Balcombe had interests in several mines in the area, not just Blaencaelen, and that he ‘enjoyed’ typically mixed fortunes from his ventures. Between 1852 and 1885 Blaencaelen (Bick calls it Blaen Ceulen) produced a (not very) grand total of 438 tons of lead, 18 tons of copper and a little blende (zinc)—but no silver apparently; his interest in this mine dated only from 1870 and was marked by the usual hyperbolic nonsense about its prospects. Good ore was found in the Engine shaft lode and also in the 10 fathom* level—and indeed 250 tons of ore were sold that year—but it petered out very quickly and by July 1873 another company was running the mine.

 

If the wagons—I am reasonably certain there were at least two of them—had been used they would presumably have been kept in the yard at Aberystwyth until sufficient ore concentrate had been carted down from the mine to form a worthwhile load when it would have been taken to Llanelli or Neath, or wherever, for smelting. It would have acted as a secure store while in the yard; the only reference I can find to a fixed secure ore store at Aberystwyth station is to a Mr Harvey who was given a site for one in the yard for £5 a year rent. But that was in 1874. It is interesting to note that the intended purpose of the store was to enable the mineral to be dispatched by rail rather than by sea, not that there is any sign of such a store at the harbour either, at least not on the 1885 OS map, the earliest available.

 

I doubt there would have been much trouble unloading the wagons: with the hatch open wide and the front ‘door’ out, a man standing in the middle with a long shovel could have reached all parts of the wagon easily enough at least by C19 standards. What happened elsewhere is another matter. Correspondence exists between the mine managers at Van (the only lead mine in Wales actually to be rail connected) and the Cambrian’s goods agent at Caersws asking specifically for empty low sided wagons with sheets for loading with their ore concentrate. Such wagons are visible in the background of a couple of the (few) photographs of the Van railway that exist, so that would seem to be the accepted means of transportation.

 

The same no doubt applied at Nantymwyn where the ore was carted down to Llandovery station. Once in Llandovery it was placed in a special store house (just behind the LNWR engine shed and near the gas works) with its own bit of siding—PSA dated 2/10/1879, ceased 25/12/1901.

 

*Old miners used the fathom as their unit of measurement—for the benefit of those schooled in the last 40 years or so, a fathom is six feet, or 1.83 metres in new money, or just over four cubits in very old money."

 

 

A few additional bits of information, and corrections to what I wrote earlier.

 

Richard

Edited December 16, 2023 by wagonman