From: Margaret Howard
Subject: Re: [DBY] Lead Miners clothes and food
Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2006 17:03:49 -0000
Hello John,
I thought that you might like the following snippet concerning the type
of clothes that lead miners wore and the type of food they ate. It is
extracted from page 24 of "Derbyshire Lead Mining" by Nellie Kirkham
published in 1968 by D. Bradford Barton Ltd.
"Few records remain of the type of working clothes worn by miners, but
often they dressed in leather, such as calfskin, with a leather cap on
which they stuck a blob of clay to hold a candle. In the nineteenth
century canvas trousers with flannel clothes and caps, which became
stiffened with clay, are mentioned. Boots, probably dating from last
century, have been found in some mines, having an iron band round the
welt with a nailed sole. In one case a brimless leather cap was found,
as described by Daniel Defoe in 1724. This writer describes a miner
climbing up a narrow shaft carrying tools in a little basket which
contained three-quarters of a hundred weight of ore, having worked
three hundred and sixty to four hundred and fifty feet below ground,
earning 5d. a day. His wife was paid 3d. a day for washing ore. A felt
hat called a Bradder hat was worn - the prototype of the tin helmets
of World War 1. The miners smoked a good deal; clay pipes of all sizes,
types, and dates from Elizabeth 1, turn up endlessly on the hillocks
as well as underground.
General evidence from various sources seems to indicated that in his
food the miner fared like the Derbyshire countryman, eating oat bread,
with cheese and bacon and milk of his own produce, but that a year of
bad harvest, or the loss of a cow or a pig, was a major disaster. The
miner always had at least a small piece of ground, a cow or two, and
a field of oats. A number of references state that he drank a good deal
of ale, one visitor to a Wirksworth mine in the 1680's being 'well
treated with good ale, besides good beef and bread' by the miners. At
this period there was 'transcendant Derby Ale,' while in Wirksworth
in 1695 there were three innkeepers and thirty-seven ale-houses."
Nellie Kirkham died in May, 1979 before the days of the internet. She
was only too pleased to pass on her knowledge of Derbyshire's lead miners
and it's mines to people interested in the subject, so I'm sure she would
have been pleased for me to pass this information on to you.
Best wishes,
Margaret Howard
