Minerals and Alines. 17 



industry bears a very close resemblance to that of tin-mining, 

 not only as regards its antiquity, but also in its laws. Pliny 

 the elder, writing at the commencement of the Christian era, 

 describes the output of lead in Britain as so large as to require 

 legislative restriction ; and though he may be alluding to some 

 other district, there is strong probability that he speaks of 

 Derbyshire, since several pigs of lead are still in existence, found 

 in Derbyshire and bearing Roman inscriptions.^ One at least 

 of these must have been contemporaneous with Pliny, since it 

 carries the inscription of his Imperial master, Tiberius Claudius. 

 Numbers of mountainous districts in this county have the 

 same name, " Bole Hill," and bear witness to the loose stone 

 erections which were built in their western sides for prehistoric 

 smelting requirements. 



Coming to Saxon times, we find plenty of evidence cor- 

 roborative of a large mining industry in this part of central 

 England. In a.d. 714 the dues from the mines at and near 

 Wirksworth were applied for the support of the Repton 

 Nunnery, and the abbess sent a sarcophagus of lead to Croy- 

 land for the interment of St. Cuthlac, a former inmate of the 

 Repton institution.^ In 835 another abbess (Kenewara) gave 

 a grant of the Wirksworth mines to Alderman Humbert, with 

 the proviso that he should pay annually 300 shillings out of its 

 profits to the Archbishop Ceolnoth for the support of Christ 

 Church, Canterbury. From ecclesiastical possession, the 

 lead-mines, probably after the destruction by the Danes of the 

 Derbyshire monasteries, at any rate by the time of the Con- 

 quest, seem to have passed into the Royal control. Domesday 

 Book mentions three mines at "Wirksworth, and one each at 

 Crich, Ashford, Bakewell, and Matlock, as belonging to the 

 king. In fact, all the lead works in Derbyshire mentioned in 

 the Survey seem to have been situated in the Royal demesnes, 

 and to have been in use. From the Elizabethan records we 

 discover that Peveril Castle, at Castleton, known as the Castle 

 of the Peak, and supposed to have been built about the time of 



* Pilkington's Derbyshire, 2nd ed., p. 96. 

 « Id. Ibid., n f»Q 



n. c 



