Iron Ore Extraction on Exmoor

The Brendon Hills are an outcrop of Exmoor itself, local and self-contained in their own way. There is iron ore here, and, for a brief, frenetic period in the 19th century, the Brendons became an area of intensive mining.

An entrepreneurial Welsh ironmaster acquired the mineral rights in the 1850's, brought over gangs of Welsh miners and set about sinking shafts. The ore was smelted in the great South Wales ironworks and thus had to be taken down to the coast at Watchet, eight miles away and 1,200 feet below. No steam locomotive could cope with the gradient, so an ingenious arrangement the Combeberow Incline was contrived for getting the containers loaded with ore down - and the empty containers up - the escarpment; the weight of the descending cars raised the empty cars by means of a system of pulleys at winding houses on the ridge.

For 20 years the Brendons was an industrial area, and then, in the 1870's, the import of cheap Spanish ore knocked the bottom out of the market, and the whole thing petered out. But mining remains as a fascinating ghostly presence in this intensely rural agricultural landscape. The "Mineral Line," as it is called locally, is still there - the site of the cars and pulleys - a green lane that tunnels its way up the hillside, an excellent place now for riding or walking. There are the shreds of the engine houses and the tumbled remains of some of the miners' cottages. Most significantly of all, several farming families in the area bear Welsh names -- Thomas, Evans - the descendants of the miners who stayed on and turned their hands to something else.

As in all the former mining areas of the West Country, there are few pubs around here - a phenomenon of which you become irritably aware when looking for somewhere to stop for a bite to eat and a drink. The dearth is a legacy of the puritanical Methodism imported by the Welsh miners.

Contributed by: John Giles