302 Roman Mining Operations on the Borders of Wales. 



that the lead ore found in this country has always an alloy of 

 silver, varying in quantity, and particularly rich in the latter 

 metal as we go westward into Montgomeryshire. At present 

 the alloy of silver is considered rather as a defect than other- 

 wise, as it is not worth the trouble of extracting; but the 

 Romans, who set greater value on silver, extracted it with care, 

 of which, many of the Roman pigs of lead foxind in England bear 

 testimony by the words in the inscription — ex. aeg., or lvt. 

 ex.aeg., or met. lvt. ex.aeg., the latter of which has been inter- 

 preted as meaning metallum lutum ex argento, metal washed 

 from silver, in accordance with Pliny's account of the process 

 of extracting the more precious metal from the other ; but lvt. 

 has also been interpreted, perhaps rightly, as referring to a min- 

 ing town or district in Derbyshire, named by the Romans Lu- 

 tudee. I believe that among the miners on the borders of Wales, 

 the lead ore is still sometimes called silver. Most of the Roman 

 mines in Montgomeryshire, as far as they have yet been observed, 

 are formed by shafts sunk from the surface, or from caves made 

 in the bank. In the park at Newtown, they thus sunk shafts for 

 copper, and appear to have been very successful, to judge by 

 the report of the resumption of these excavations in 1856.* 

 About six miles westward from Newtown, on an elevation on 

 the banks of the Severn, are the remains of a rather important 

 Roman station, called by the Welsh Caer Sws, probably a 

 mining town, in the neighbourhood of which I believe that 

 remains of Roman mines are also found, and by which runs a 

 Roman road, called in Welsh Sam Swsan, which is said to run 

 by way of Rhaiadyr through this mining district towards Chester. 

 At the western extremity of the county of Montgomery, in the 

 park of Machynlleth, a Roman mine was also re-opened in 1856, 

 which produced copper and ' ' silver lead." Like most of these 

 ancient excavations, it had become an object of superstition, 



* An account of the re-opening of tills mine was communicated to Eddowes's 

 Shreiosbury Journal, in October, 1856, by a mining captain at Llanidloes, Mr. 

 William Yivian, who says — " The interest excited in Newtown by the opening of 

 the old mine at the Park, near that place, has caused me to direct my attention to 

 that interesting spot. I have this day inspected the ancient work, and find that, 

 in clearkig out the level, an old shaft has been discovered, sunk, it is supposed, 

 upwards of a thousand years ago. The men are now employed night and day in 

 clearing the shaft, and they have already arrived to the depth of ten fatboms, but 

 have not as yet reached the bottom. Amongst the stuff now being brought up 

 are some ancient pieces of oak timber, and, strange to say, also large quantities of 

 bones, supposed to be those of the deer, which, owing to their having been lodged 

 in mineral water, are in perfect preservation and freshness. The lode at this part 

 of the shaft is about four feet wide, composed of barytes, intermixed nicely through- 

 out with copper ore, just diverging into silver lead; at which point the lode and 

 branches (which are about ten feet wide) fall altogether into the main vein, show- 

 ing perhaps one of the finest lodes at the same depth in this or any other country; 

 indeed, had such a lode been discovered in the mining districts of Cornwall or 

 Devon, it would have been considered of immense importance." 



