Time Team S20-E06 Lost Mines of Lakeland

Video Description

Tony and the Team head to the Lake District on an expedition that takes them both higher and deeper than they've ever dug before. They're on the trail of a forgotten piece of the nation's industrial heritage - the Lake District used to be a major source of valuable copper. There are nearly two dozen old mines across these mountains. Some tunnels that are still visible 1500 feet up mountainsides are thought to have been established 400 years ago, when the valleys would have been studded with workshops, scaffolding and water-powered machines, and home to a brave band of Tudor miners. But few signs remain of their presence, and nobody really knows what this place looked like back then. Archaeologists hardly know anything about Elizabethan mines. The Team battle the rain, the wind and dangerously unstable trackways. But the combination of sheer effort and some ultra-high-tech kit finally takes them into the heart of the old mine-works.