Description and History of Site:-
Heathfield New Mill was a lead smelting mill built on a site adjacent to an earlier smelt mill, situated on the northern side of Foster Beck one mile north west of Pateley Bridge. It was built by John Yorke of Bewerley Hall in 1855. Ore smelted here came from the Appletreewick Mining Company, Craven Moor, Burhill and Merryfield mines.
The long low building still extant today (2020) contained two roasting hearths and four smelting hearths. A cottage was built onto the east side of the mill. The lead was cast into pigs 112 lbs in weight (50.8kgs) each bearing the name of the mine where the ore originated.
Unlike the usual force-draught bellows arrangement for the hearths an innovation was used at this mill, a double cylinder blowing machine driven by a waterwheel. The fumes from each hearth was ducted away from the mill to a condenser a short distance away and forced through the condenser by two fans sixteen times through water before entering the one and a quarter mile (2km) long flue terminating with a chimney on Heathfield Rigg. The condenser was driven by a 30 foot (9.1m) diameter waterwheel which also drove small pumps for lifting water into the condenser.
Use of the condenser and long flue, provided with access points for retrieving lead from its walls, was justified by the annual clean-out resulting in as many as 900 pigs of lead, worth around £800.
By 1907-8 the mill had developed into having two ore hearths and two reverberatory roasting furnaces.
The mill closed soon after 1909 making it the last of the Yorkshire Dales smelt mills.
The site is now (2020) a caravan site and the site office is situated in the east facing cottage attached to the former mill.

Further Reading and References:-
https://www.nmrs.org.uk/assets/pdf/BM48/BM48-132-151-smelting.pdf
The Lead Smelting Mills of the Yorkshire Dales and Northern Pennines, Robert Taylor Clough, second edition, 1980 pp70-73
https://www.nmrs.org.uk/mines-map/smelt-mills/smelting/heathfield/

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Key Words :- lead smelt mill

Address :- Pateley Bridge, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, HG3 5PY
Grid Ref :- SE 14308 66400
Co-ordinates :- Lat 54.093307 , Long -1.782733
Local Authority :- Harrogate Borough Council
Pre 1974 County :- Yorkshire - West Riding
Site Status :- Site extant - Protected status unknown
Site Condition :- Site refurbished to industrial / commercial use
Site Dates :- 1855 -
Record Date :- 20 November 2020

Copyright :- cc-by-nc-sa 4.0 © Andrew Garford