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Michael Shaw's question, asking "what type of beast" water engines were, is obviously open ended. For example, there are pictures of waterwheels driving bobs and pump rods, wheels driving 'rag & chain' pumps or even water-balance engines (flop jacks), like the one at Wanlockhead, but I can add a little more about the two that I mentioned. In 1701 "Mr Inman near Pateley Bridge has an old Engine which he might sell us cheap". This had probably been used on the Greenhow mines, where there are a very limited number of places that waterpower could have been used. It might, therefore, have been some type of horse engine, probably a whim/gin like the one used at Coalgrovebeck Mine, at Grassington, in 1756. By 1704 an engine (probably not Inman's) was being used at the surface to pump from the colliery shaft (later fitted with a steam engine) and soon afterwards a lead vein was found which was followed downwards and eventually needed its own, underground engine. By 1710 they were "close at work about making everything ready for placing the Engine Wheel", but soon after "the weight of the vein stuff or dyke that goeth up to the surface of ye earth proved to heavie for our timber and suddenly broke it down into our wheelcase". The following items appear in the accounts - "New chane for Rag Wheel" and "New chane for Engine". We still need to do an archaeological survey around the shaft top (when the bracken has died back) which may reveal traces of the 1704 engine, but the foregoing suggests that the underground engine was a waterwheel driving a 'rag & chain' pump(s). I have a note of another water engine working at Taylor Syke Grove near Nenthead c1723, but that is not within my study area and I've never been to the site. Perhaps one of our North Pennine enthusiasts can help with that one. Regards, Mike Gill