History - The Official history

The mine was opened around 1700 by the Beaumont family.  In later years it was run by the Weardale Lead Company. Over 50,000 tonnes of lead were produced between 1800 and 1900.

In the main flats within the Great Limestone, we see constant reminders of the abandonment survey, dated 1866. 

The mine never produced commercial fluorspar. The spar at Greenlaws is very low in silica. We have no explanation as to why it was never assessed for fluorspar – Dunham (John Earp) who produced the official entry in 'The Northern Pennine Orefield' didn’t go underground, and only assessed vein widths based on old records for lead.

We know the mine was worked by tributers long after the official abandonment. Recently, we've accessed the collections of the Natural History Museum, and recorded the dates on which Greelaws pieces are bought or collected. Most appear to have been in the very late 1800's, or early 1900's, and were handled by the prominent West Cumbrian dealer, John Graves. He must have visited Weardale, acquired material, and from there is was distributed to the London dealer; Butler of Brompton. Specimens then made their way to the Couzens collection, which was eventually purchased by the Museum. Arthur Russell also dontated specimens, which were mainly acquired from 'The collection of John Hill, manager of Greenlaws and Stanhope Burn mine' according to the Russell labels. Russell bought this collection from 'A Hill, 1931' on his labels. This turns out to be Alvin Hill - a well known mine manager who worked many of the Escarpment bariet mines ( Closehouse, Lunehead ) in the 1930's and 40's. It turns out that the Hill family lived at Mine House, which was the official mine managers house for Greenlwas mine, located right besides the entrance to Quarry Level - the main drainage adit to the mine. We have now seen photos from the Beamish archives of the Hill family at Quarry level, near the water leats and processing plant there!

Current operations date back to 2009 with the Project group who have a lease. We are a BCA (British Caving Association) Access Controlling Body with appropriate insurance.