Bewerley – SE 120661
This mill is also not shown on Moss’s plan and was, therefore, probably built by John Wood around 1814, when White’s Mill closed. Wood’s lease had passed to John Horner by 1816/17, when the Smelt Mill Shaft was sunk.
The latter shaft housed three waterwheels between the surface and Wonderful Level. The top or ‘smelters’ wheel was 6 metres in diameter and was used to power the bellows and, at a later date, the adjacent dressing mill. The second wheel was 11 metres in diameter, and the third was 9 metres in diameter and had been installed early in the winter of 1842/43. Both were used for pumping.
The mill was still working in 1874, when the right to use it was included in the lease of the Ransgill Mining Company Ltd.78 Likewise, in 1887, the Bewerley United Lead and Barytes Mining Company Ltd was given permission to smelt ore from its Merryfield mine there. That company folded in June 1889 and the mill probably stopped work then.
The furnace arches of the mill were very similar to those at the Cockhill Mill, except that they were on stone, not iron, columns. The double flue, from the two hearths, soon united and led, via a beehive-shaped condenser, to a chimney about 165 metres from the mill. The roasting furnace had its own flue, about 25 metres long, to a separate chimney.
Further information and references can be found in:
- Gill, M.C. Yorkshire Smelting Mills Part 2, Northern Mine Research Society Memoirs 1993, British Mining No 48, pp 132-151
