Exploring Victorian mines and hunting for crystals in England's Last Wilderness! (Part 1)

[Music] you [Music] hello so today we're in the north pennines and we're exploring some old mine workings and looking for some gorgeous quartz crystals and florrick crystals so behind us just here you'll have a bell look later on but there is many many signs of mine working and the mine entrance and mine incisors to down here and then one just out in front of us across the road and it's been mining here since Roman times and they're mostly let mine there are the few coal mines and also they extracted silver in some places all the miners very nice spoil Heat but of the history yeah yeah so let's get to it this is what it used to look like so water wheel shelter some kind of hurt mine wagon washing floor watching Terps yeah that's what this landscape used to look like [Music] [Music] right and what can we see a courts point just here see the iron staining that's on it it's a lovely little terminated two point and mom has just got a little droopy one here I mean if we come down onto the onto the ground this just it's just littered with them from the time of the mine yes I've got an old nail which isn't an artifact from the old mine workings what are you to fall in a way isn't it the way yeah it's corroded yeah I thought it would have been out of a piece of wood just a gas just getting close up to the ground here and you can you can see it sparkling just pretty much everything is it's a real clear bit they're lovely I see clear quartz and there's a little mini cluster there's a little drusy one and this one looks like an icicle look at that that's a big quartz point here it's not huge but it's lovely they're perfect for making jewelry out of oh just next to it here as well look at that and there's only little tiny pieces of the crystals here because all of this was picked and blowin out of the mine mom just brought up a point I think they may have crushed it because they were after a lead mom it's standing right now in the remains of an old mining building or I think I am actually go over here oh I'll have to refer back to the map up there some kind of water cost or a drain here sticking out of this slag heap can you see the slag heaps this one there and one just where mom is and one here and all of this the entire landscape in this valley is just completely scarred by the mining that happened here over 100 years ago now but they say that the Romans were mining here and before that gold prospectors well before the Romans wait little mini cluster isn't it so pretty Wow I think there's just a faint very faint tree root fossil on there do you see it I was it just me I'm not sure looks like a fossil there's more remains of mine buildings here they stretch all the way up this little tiny Valley [Applause] so there's another miner up here I haven't got my torch with me and I think it's pretty wet in this one yeah it is there's a gate actually older a bit of iron here might mean for the rail cars going down some though you can get down and most of them have been gated off but you could probably flip the gate and get under it I mean my friends have done it before though you shouldn't it's very very dangerous I do not encourage anyone going down mines random mines in the middle of nowhere so I'm coming out of here it's really beautiful day actually and to be honest I'd rather be out here then down in there so there's a query board here but these are the gray shiny metallic crystals of Galena which is led oh they were mining in this area here 19th century LED miners at work first in 1882 so but over hundred years now this base is me granted that was mined here we're digging narrow tunnels called atoms into the mineral veins - use picks drizzles drills drills and explosives to remove the oil from the vein this is the wall over here just in front of us it was use of various purposes including the manufacture of pipes yeah because we love drinking out of red water pipes window frames glaze for pottery ammunition of course paint dyes and cosmetics Oh a special fire community that's interesting the presence of some of these species would have been used by prospective miners to determine whether or not there was rich with lead rich minerals veins beneath the soil I can't read it very well through the lens of the camera sorry this place here now would have been so industrial it would have been noisy sweaty miners all over the place and now it's beautiful and peaceful and a sanctuary for nature really [Applause] the atmosphere around here is just so hell pible so tangible you can really feel it the atmosphere is so strong so that is one mine after the hundreds and thousands that there are in this landscape and I just thought I talked a little bit about one of the mines before we go looking for crystals elsewhere and I'll talk a little bit more about the history in the area in general sorry I'm really out breath but I hope you like the little trip to this mine and I'll see you a little bit for that road mom's calling me from down here they actually used to be trees all over this bit but they've gone oh oh yeah well I suppose a miners would have lived around here and they owe us that's quite a little bit a bottle look at the bubble so miners were dumping their rubbish right here oh yes isn't China here tiny bits of it we're in a very rural area so it is actually quite unusual just to see a line here is weird yeah let's be honest the miners had to eat and drink and live here didn't they Lord I mean a lot of them working down in these mines developing a big bottle of some kind oh yeah you know if this rubbish is here could it be down the bank down this bank side I wonder it's like I guess I found this poison bottle oh you just dislodged oh it's broken neck I'd love to find a whole bottle we need to find a bullet bottle need a bottle from the - last b1 here oh this is metal looks like brass look browser harness Wow this loads of things lying around amongst the crystals so cool I do not expect it do not expect to find - stuff I really am tempted to start digging oh the urge it's all broken up as they've they've recently made this track here and to send the tree cutting machines or whatever they are down here to cut down their pine trees oh yeah there's some kind of seam here pretty much everything looks crushed up though big machines being going over yeah you have something on it it's definitely a crown oh it says Victoria this is Victoria I can't see the rest oh that's interesting makes sense since this is a Victorian rubbish see loads of bits a blue and white pottery here look at it it's all over the place oh look this got birds on it Oh stone wearing it with some kind of ink pot or something see that blue glass there Ernest probably poison bottles look at all the pretty blue and white so that's got birdies on it I suspect that perhaps there was - cottages here alongside the road coz the verge of the road is quite is quite deep cottages that have since been knocked down and down this bank side is where they were dumping all their rubbish and that's why all of this Victorian crockery and glass is here I know lots of you have said put gloves on but we were not expecting to find anything oh oh that's big it's some kind of rivet that's it have a tea pot lid not very surprising just on the surface here I can't actually believe we've done it again stumbles upon Victorian time out in the middle of nowhere plastic rubbish thrown out of their cars from the road actually I can see bits something sparkling over there it might be some might be glass yeah I have to go and have a look down here okay he's an exposed section and bring it straight away this F pottery something here oh look at that it's a lovely pink piece of tea cup pot oh okay I see bits and bobs just there on this bit here oh I think that's modern as well crabs bread well there is a road verge up here here so I'm guessing people have also stopped and dump dump there oh okay as a mine here guys see that do you see that Oh hold on I'll put you in oh I can't see anything myself did you ever torch in the car so I'll come back and have a little look in that with my life I'm just having a look down here I think mom's calling me actually I think she's saying she's found a whole one yep it's here still here oh that's not Victorian that's that's a bit of a paste jar must mean a house here much later than I thought Oh orange drink some pretty little fluorite crystals in here it's all those place oh that's all for shoe isn't the front of his shoe yeah we can see where the nails would have would have gone in - clog good that is the unmistakable shape of a marmalade JA yep I see a better bottle up there that could be whole space a bottle nice it a pottery there very steep this Bank it's a very old bit of bottle Oh my marmalade jar it's a momager oh it might be whole look oh it's got a chip out the top but has something on it lung oh luck lung tonic the - the miners would have been taking it because breathing in um coal dust and smoking and whole Okemos got a chip out the top it might be ba right I think it's alright that's really cool oh yes oh that's that's the whole drain pipes on isn't it yeah hold guttering on yeah that's another bit of a shoe something here is the top of a little tiny bottle with its cork still in I can actually see on the side there the seam goes right to the top so that's not very old there's a bit of an old bottle here screwed up not very old so and I can't believe it I'm so shocked that we just we just so happened to stumble upon a bottled up or um a Victorian rubbish daddy Oh Maude mines operated in the 19th century and I think the houses probably disappeared short after short Li after the mines closed in by the end of the 19th century so the rubbish that we're finding just on the ground here so I can't believe that we just stumbled upon another bottle [Music] [Applause] [Music] so I'm in mum study because it's got the light at this time of day and here are all the tiny little crushed crystals that we managed to collect and they're beautiful I absolutely love them even in this tiny small size because they are perfect for making jewelry with and that's why we go to that particular spot to to collect these crystals for jewelry for rings and necklaces and things like that I especially love their the clear ones I see clear ones anyway so there are the little crystals and I'll show you a few close-ups of them as well so I'll put them aside and I just wanted to show you in those hills the other kind of crystals that we found in the past so outside in the garden we've got some huge giant plates that I couldn't be bothered to bring in to show you today but here's some smaller ones that we found and these these crystals on a on a bit of rock like this it's called a plate because it's kind of flat and crystal a crystal plate and look how look how beautiful but I used to collect these as this bigger one here he used to collect pieces as children me and my brothers from the streams up there and there's a huge one mum found big giant point not sure if you can see that very well that we found um close to up in those hills but not quite and I want to show you this piece as well because I was talking about the Galena that the miners were after they led all and on alsoo men on this coastal you can see here that has a bit of Galena quite River worn but you can see it's kind of got a metallic sheen on it I can't see it very well this is the bottle that mum found I didn't get this on camera unfortunately but it's a lovely little bottle I'm sure we did some more digging there we'd find a lots more but there was a horrible sort of trickle no thicker than treacle it was like wood sap and it kind of smelled a bit like sap and I got all over my fingers trying to get it out of this bottle but I did manage to clean it and made sure to wash my hands thoroughly this lung tonic has to be my absolute favourite find of the day just because it's a direct connection with the miners that work down there and worked up in those hills it is long tonic and it was developed by Walter Oxbridge in Hull in 1874 it was supported it was claimed some claim that it had an ingredients such as chloroform honey and wine amongst other ingredients so nothing that I would want to be putting in my body these days in mine in that area actually closed in the end of the 1800s and I think this bottle dates to around 1915 to 1920 something like that so I'm wondering if there were still houses nearby right up to that date and so I hope you enjoyed part one of our mine exploration videos at crystal hunting video and part 2 will be out very soon later this week so make sure you like this video and subscribe to our channel and hit the notification bow see you notified when the next part is out we're also really excited to announce the oh you know of our northern mudlark shop on etsy and you can find the link to that below you can also find a link to our individual Jewelry Show yep yeah in the description below so make sure you check those out anyway bye bye it we'll see you soon bye [Music]

Channel: Northern Mudlarks

Views: 62,519

Rating: 4.9414201 out of 5

Keywords: crystalhunting, abandonedmine, victorianmine, treasurehunting, historyhunting, bottledigging, northpennines

Id: A0DY37H9nhE

Length: 29min 57sec (1797 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 10 2019