Marlbeck Lead Mine, Teesdale

What You Are Actually Looking At

Marlbeck is quite easy to underestimate when you first arrive. There is a stone building beside Hudeshope Beck, a low arched opening disappearing into the hillside and rough ground scattered around it. It does not look like the remains of a particularly large mine, but once you start joining the pieces together the site becomes much bigger.

The building was part of the working mine and the level beside it was one of the entrances into the hill. Other levels, shafts, dams, tramways, spoil heaps and old hush workings spread much farther across the slopes, while underground the workings eventually connected with Lodge Syke farther up Hudeshope.

What looks like one small ruin beside the beck is really just the easiest surviving piece of a much bigger landscape. That is one of the things I like about walking here from Middleton. You arrive having already passed the old lime kilns and High Skears, so Marlbeck does not feel like an isolated ruin. It feels like the next part of a mining landscape that has been following you up the valley.

The Old Mine Shop

The stone building beside the level is usually described as the Marlbeck mine shop. Historic England dates it broadly to the early nineteenth century and lists it, together with the level entrance, at Grade II.

It was a practical building rather than anything decorative. Local stone, thick walls, two storeys and large openings gave the mine somewhere to run the everyday side of the workings, and research into Hudeshope identifies space here for the mine manager’s office, a blacksmith’s shop and a stable.

The blacksmith would have been an important part of a working mine, keeping tools and ironwork in use, while horses were still needed for moving materials around the site. The manager also needed somewhere close to the workings from which the mine could be organised.

Enough survives inside to make you curious, including rough stonework, roof timbers and traces of its working past, but there is no need to climb inside. The building actually makes more sense when you stand back and look at it together with the level, spoil and hillside around it.

The Entrance Into the Hill

The level sits only a few metres from the mine shop and is probably the feature that makes Marlbeck feel most like a mine. Its small stone arch leads directly into the hillside, giving a glimpse of the underground world that once continued far beyond what you can see today.

A level was a tunnel driven horizontally into the ground. It gave miners access to the veins without having to descend a deep shaft and could also help water drain naturally out of the workings.

Marlbeck had more than this one entrance. Research into the mine records two levels and an airshaft, reaching veins running roughly east-west and west-north-west beneath the hillside.

The level beside the shop is therefore only one doorway into something much larger. Standing beside it today, with the beck close by and open hillside all around, it is strange to think that the workings continued beneath the ground and eventually connected into neighbouring mines farther up Hudeshope.

The Story Starts Long Before the Building

The surviving mine shop is thought to be early nineteenth century, but Marlbeck’s mining story goes back considerably further.

A record dated 10 November 1753 gives permission for a trial for lead at Marlbeck on Middleton Common. The person given permission was Rev. John Emerson, rector of Middleton-in-Teesdale.

That does not mean a successful mine suddenly opened here in 1753. A trial was exactly that: an attempt to find out whether the ground held something worth pursuing.

But it gives us a wonderfully solid point in the story.

More than 250 years ago somebody was already looking at this same hillside and wondering what was underneath it.

That is much more interesting than simply calling Marlbeck a Victorian mine.

By 1829 It Was Already “Old Marlbeck”

A surviving working plan in the Durham archives gives us another useful clue to just how old the workings were.

The plan covers Hudeshope Head, Old Marlbeck and part of the Lodge Syke workings and dates from sometime after 19 September 1829. By then, somebody was already describing part of the workings as “Old Marlbeck”, which tells us the mine had a history before that plan was drawn.

The plan also carries the name Jo. Millican. We have not yet found enough about Millican to say much more about him, but I like the fact that a real name still survives on a plan nearly two centuries later. Somebody had to measure these levels, work out where they ran and put the underground landscape onto paper.

The Mine Continued Beneath Hudeshope

One of the things that changes how you see Marlbeck is realising that the mine did not stop at the edges of the site you can walk around today.

Marlbeck’s underground workings connected with Lodge Syke farther up Hudeshope. British Geological Survey records describe a rise linking Marlbeck Low Level with Lodge Syke Low Level, while the nearby Manorgill North Vein was also explored from the Marlbeck side.

On the surface these old mines now feel separate. You can walk between High Skears, Marlbeck, Lodge Syke and the other workings with stretches of quiet fell between them. Underground, parts of that landscape were connected by the same veins and workings.

Once you know that, Hudeshope starts to feel less like a valley dotted with unrelated ruins and more like one much larger mining landscape.

The Mine Is Still Written Across the Hillside

The building and level are the obvious remains, but Marlbeck spreads much farther than that. Records for the wider site describe old dams, six shafts, tramways, levels, spoil and the remains of hushing across the hillside.

Hushing was a way of using water to strip away soil and loose material to expose the rock beneath. It could leave deep channels and scars in the landscape, and some of the rough ground around Marlbeck makes much more sense once you know what was happening here.

Not every dip or hollow was made by miners, but this is certainly not untouched ground. Generations of working, digging, washing and tipping changed the hillside, and some of those marks are still visible today while others have softened into grass, rushes and bracken.

That is why Marlbeck is worth taking your time over. The building makes a good photograph, but the landscape around it tells just as much of the story.

When Marlbeck Fell Quiet

By the 1880s Marlbeck was already beginning to feel like an old mining landscape.

In May 1885, a Middleton correspondent writing under the name Johnny Fagg described a walk through the workings and looked across towards Marlbeck. The place was still covered in mining debris, but the sounds of work were disappearing. The washer boys were no longer there, and the clang of the machinery seemed to have gone for good.

That little description is one of the best glimpses we have of Marlbeck changing from a working mine into the quiet landscape you see today.

It is easy to read old mine records as lists of levels, veins and shafts, but this was a place full of noise, movement and people. By 1885, somebody walking through Hudeshope could already feel that world slipping away.

Visiting Marlbeck Today

Marlbeck is not a restored attraction with interpretation boards, barriers around every ruin and a neat path showing you what everything was.

It is still part of the open landscape.

That is part of its appeal, but it also means treating the place sensibly. Old mine levels, shafts, spoil heaps and uneven ground survive around Hudeshope, and not everything dangerous is obvious from the surface.

There is no reason to enter the mine level or climb around inside the old shop. You can see plenty from outside, and the building actually makes more sense when you stand back and look at it beside the level and surrounding ground.

After rain the walk can also become muddy, particularly through the field sections, so decent footwear makes the visit much more enjoyable.

Marlbeck Makes More Sense Once You Walk Here

Walking from Middleton is what really pulls the whole place together for me.

You gradually leave the village behind, follow Hudeshope through the woodland, pass the old lime kilns and High Skears, then continue beside the beck until Marlbeck appears ahead.

By the time you reach the mine shop, you have already passed through so much of the old working valley that the building no longer feels like one lonely ruin sitting in the middle of nowhere.

There is no big visitor centre or restored machinery waiting at Marlbeck. There is an old stone building, a level disappearing into the hillside, spoil and old workings spread around the valley, and one of our favourite quiet stretches beside Hudeshope Beck.

Once you know a little of what happened here, it is difficult to walk through this part of the valley without seeing it differently.