Reading Peter's & Mike's interchanges on the subject, it appears that we
are going round in circles.

The Lakes mining venture was always a marginal operation but it kept many
people in living an some made a comfortable living at that. If silver
brought in 9-15% of the income in the later stages of the venture then
Peter would be correct in saying that silver was an important aspect but
then Mike would be correct in saying that it was not the main line of
business which was copper. Or am I being too simplistic?

The decline of the Goldscope mine was probably because the copper was
worked out in the easily accessed part of the mine. However around
1595-1600, I would need to look up the exact date, the Coniston mines came
on line and became a significant source of copper. It would have been
much more cost effective to go for what were initially rich surface
workings at Coniston. However, I am fairly sure that the mine reports
up to the end of the German venture around 1630 continue to comment on
Goldscope.

The Caldbeck Fells mines went through at least two periods of nil or low
activity: The first around 1566 when the initial discovery was not
pursued but was taken up a few years later as a source of lead to avoid
buying that metal from Alston Moor for silver extraction. The mines at
Caldbeck were located principally in Silver Gill - not Roughtengill as
several authors have assumed. The Hechstetters always refer to these
mines as the major source of silver but their silver assays do not bear
this out completely. Although they reported the odd high assay for
Silvergill, there were others which showed about the same level as other
areas. However, there were very few assays anyway and no reports of metal
production relevant to individual mines. As long as mining continued in
the Caldbeck Fells, Ag, Cu and Pb would have been produced.

Another point is that although lead was produced, I have never seen any
production figures for this.

Mike is correct in that the definitive Hammersley reference is "Daniel
Hechstetter the younger - Memorabilia and Letters 1600-1639 - Copper Works
and Life in Cumbria" Edited by George Hammersley, published by Franz
Steiner, Stuttgart, in 1988.

This is at least primary material verbatim from the Hechstetter diaries and
contains all the material in the Alnwick MSS referred to by Peter. There
are other copies of this made, probably after the English Civil War and
which appear in part as the Lister MSS (Bodleian Lib.) and the Fleming
Diaries (Cumbrian County Record Office, Kendal).

The diaries also show that there appears to have been a change in the
extraction method for silver. The early method was to smelt to copper and
then remove silver by the Saigerofen process. This gives a good silver
recovery but is long and will lead to higher losses of copper. The
second method is to smelt lead ores/litharge and lead metal with copper
ores. Lead comes out in preference to copper which is retained in the
matte phase. This will bring out silver along with the lead but the
extraction is not efficient and I guess that at the levels they were at, up
to half the silver would have been lost in the copper. However, This
would have given a much faster return on all metals. As I pointed out in
the early stages of this correspondence, cash flow is usually more
important in business than profit - this enterprise was a very good
example.

Finally, on the spelling of 'Hechstetter' at least from about 1600, when I
have seen the signatures of the sons on documents in various record offices
- it was always spelled 'Hechstetter' - at least by the family - and they
appear to be very consistent in this. Other writers, including
Crosthwaite Parish Registers, use a variety of spellings some of which are
almost unrecognisable.



Richard Smith
3M UK Bracknell, B2-3N,
Environment, Safety and Security [log in to unmask]
Tel: 01344-858154 (Trim. 8-230-2154)
Fax: 01344-858367 (Trim. 8-230-2367)