Along a clean, modern street in Derbyshire, walking through the right door can take you back in time, and down a mine. At the Peak District Lead Mining Museum, visitors can explore models of mines and shafts to see how lead miners did their jobs in this town for generations. Across the street, take a tour of Temple Mine, a real 1920s fluorite mine.
Lead ore, called galena, has been mined in the Peak District since Roman times. Mining supported the families of Derbyshire for generations up until the 20th century, when the industry dried up as new sources of ore weren’t being found, and the low market price of lead and the rising operating costs made the mines unprofitable.
Today, the Peak District Lead Mining Museum is housed in the village of Matlock Bath’s Grand Pavilion building. In addition to interactive mine models, the museum is home to the United Kingdom’s only publicly accessible examples of water pressure engines. While steam engines were a popular method for pumping water out of mines, they required fuel. In Derbyshire, and a few other select places, miners chose to instead use the water pressure from streams hundreds of feet above.
These pumping engines were massive. Since the mines closed in 1954, these engines were mostly left in place. The example in the museum was recovered by the Peak District Mines Historical Society, from a disused mine at Winster.
