Video
Transcript – So Much To See So Much To Do
(Opening Credits, Montage of various views of Killhope set to Music)
(Cut to narrator, wearing red jacket and white safety helmet)
(cut to panning shot of washing floor)
In 1874 they hit a really productive lead vein here at Killhope, which meant that there was so much ore coming out of the mine that the young boys working on the washing floor processing the ore by hand couldn’t cope with the volume of material, so they had to invest in state of the art technology, the big wheel here at Killhope.
(Cut back to narrator)
(Cut to children standing in front of ore)
(Cut to children digging)
This wheel was crushing the ore, it was running the crushing rollers and also inside the jigger house there were machines that were able to mechanically do the work that the washer boys had been doing here by hand.
(Cut back to narrator)
Once the lead ore had been crudely graded by going through the grating so that you had little bits of rubbish and also little bits of galena.
(Cut to montage of children at the hotching tubs)
(Cut back to narrator)
These little particles were transferred to the hotching tubs and the boys had to hotch these tubs up and down for about 5 minutes which is actually quite a long time, which meant that the small particals of galena which are much heavier that the small particles of rubbish would sink to the bottom and the lighter rubbish would come to the top and this was how they separated out the galena from the rubbish.
(Cut back to children seperating galena from rubbish)
When the boys came across a piece of galena that still had some rubbish attached to it they had to use the buckers, which were flat hammers, to get rid of the rubbish from the lump of galena. Now you might think that this is a real bash and smash job but it is actually delicate work.
(Cut back to narrator)
The galena is extremely soft, and they didn’t want the galena smashed to a powder – so the boys had to be very careful that they didn’t destroy the galena in this process.
(Montage of children visiting Killhope set to music)
(Cut to close up of water wheel, and the wooden platform)
The power source for this water wheel is our reservoir high up in the woods, and the water flows down the hill side and then along this wooden platform to the top of the wheel, which is an over shot water wheel. The water then fills the buckets, which turns the wheel providing the power for all the machinery that was processing the lead here at Killhope.
(Cut to tubs on ramp, crushing rollers and distance shot of the valley)
The water wheel at Killhope was also used to provide the power to haul the tubs up this ramp full of galena and then they were then tipped into crushing rollers, again powered by this huge water wheel. Once the water had been used to process the galena it was sent via channels the full length of Weardale to the mines further down the valley and used in the processing of the ore from these mines as well.
(Cut to montage of visitors getting ready to visit the mine)
(Cut to entrance to Park Level Mine, intercut with visitors, and the narrator)
As you can see this is the entrance to Park Level Mine and they started digging this tunnel in 1853. But not only is it the entrance to the mine, the entrance that the miners would of gone in, its also a drainage level, that’s why we’ve got these wonderful Wellingtons on. So you might think that you are actually going down into a mine but we are actually going slightly up hill, so that the water can drain out of the mine.
(Montage of mine visit)
(Montage of local area)
(Montage of wildlife)
(Montage of rocks in display cases)
(Montage of spar boxes)
Despite the dark and miserable working lives that the miners had, they did find beauty in a lot of the minerals, the other minerals that were coming out of the mine, such as the beautiful green fluorspar that is only found her in Weardale, and with these other minerals they constructed these beautiful spar boxes lovingly making the cabinet so house the minerals.
(Montage of spar boxes)
(Closing credits)