The Lost Copper Mines Of The Lake District | Time Team | Timeline

Hi everybody and welcome to this documentary on Timeline. My name's Dan Snow and I want to tell you about History Hit TV. It's like the Netflix for history, hundreds of exclusive documentaries and interviews with the world's best historians. We've got an exclusive offer available to fans of Timeline. If you go to History Hit TV, you can either follow the information below this video or just Google History Hit TV and use the code Timeline. You get a special introductory offer. Go and check it out. In the meantime, enjoy this video. These are the once mighty Coniston copper works, one of the deepest and most extensive copper mines in England. Some of these shafts were started 400 years ago in the time of Queen Elizabeth the first. History tells us that a brave band of Tudor miners lived and died here to extract the earth's precious metal. Nobody really knows what this place looked like back then. In fact, archaeologists hardly know anything about Elizabethan mines at all. So we've come here to look for the origins of Queen Elizabeth's mine and to unearth the story of the men and women whose blood, sweat and tears helped build modern Britain. It's a quest which will take us higher and deeper than we've ever dug before. Battling some of the most extreme conditions we've faced in 20 years of Time Team. Time Team is in the Lake District. Our destination, the mountains of Coniston and their copper mines. We're about to embark on one of the most physically demanding digs we've ever attempted in the wettest summer for a hundred years. Look at that drop down there. Yeah, I'd rather not think about the drop. Gives me the whizz. In charge is site director Francis Pryor and his right-hand man, Phil Harding, a veteran of over 200 Time Team digs. And they're willing to brave the mountain because we're here to investigate a Tudor copper mine, something few have ever dug before. I was thinking, you know, if you were a Tudor miner, you had to get up here even before you started a day's work. Imagine doing this with horses, Phil. This is as rough a road as I've ever been on. I think it is. Yeah. It's unbelievable. Yeah. You haven't been to Wiltshire. Yeah. They think about doing up the A303 lately, you know. Sorry, Phil, there's still a long way to go. We're heading to a rocky outcrop almost one and a half thousand feet above sea level, to a huge open cast mine on the slopes of Coniston Old Man. It sits overlooking a small mountain lake called Lever's Water, which acts as a reservoir for the village below. You ready to go, guys? Yeah. See you later. Oh, it's still raining. But heavy rain overnight has turned the reservoir's gentle weir into a torrential waterfall. We've got to get across there now, then. Yeah. Hold on to the rope. So we've rigged up a wire to help us get the kit and a team of 40 archaeologists, cavers and cameramen across. There's a real kick to this river. You feel as though you could be pushed right over there if you're not careful. And we're not there yet. Almost two hours later and everyone's made it. There are nearly two dozen abandoned mines scattered across these mountains. It's possible that people have been digging for copper here for thousands of years. But the first known commercial operation started during the late 1500s. Later generations of mining were thought to have obliterated most of the early Tudor structures that went with it, such as workshops, scaffolding and water-powered machines. But a few years ago, the Lake District National Park Authority asked for a detailed survey around one mine in particular, and it appeared to reveal a tantalising glimpse into life 400 years ago. So we dig half and we leave half and we come out to there. Beautiful. Yeah. Hey, Francis. Fantastic view, or at least it would be if the cloud lifted. What are these things? I just passed another one on the other side there. Well, these are the sort of key mystery up here. We think they may be miners' huts. They could be for living. They could be for storing tools. We honestly don't know. But what they often have are one of these funny alcoves on the outside, which... This thing here? Yeah, exactly. Now, that seems to be part of the dressing process of the ore, actually preparing it. So I'm hoping that Phil will actually be able to show us that this was Elizabethan. Our two buildings sit on top of a rocky outcrop just a few metres away from a massive copper mine, which we know was being worked in the late 1500s. Our first challenge is to find out when they were built. So we start by opening a trench inside both. Our second task is to work out what the buildings were used for. There are a lot of unusual stones around here, and we think they might have been used in the buildings to process raw copper when the bright green mineral from the mine was broken up into smaller pieces by hand or crushed. It looks like a lump of rock, but it's got this dip in it here. This was used for grinding ore up with, a bit like we use in kitchens today. We have a mortar and pestle for grinding food. In these conditions, we're only going to get a few hours digging and everything has to be done by hand. And as the morning wears on, a thick cloud descends across the mountain. Believe it or not, there's actually a huge lake down there but we've hardly seen a glimmer of it all day. The cloud keeps coming in, starting to disappear, coming in again. It's practically lunchtime. Well, it is lunchtime, actually. Well, Phil's only been able to to clear this much of turf. What do you think you've got, Phil? Well, I'm very, very optimistic about what we can see here because you can actually see that the surface that we're standing on, the inside, if you like, of the building, if that's what it is, is actually higher than the land surface around it. The reason is that the building is full up with this very small dressing debris. Now, that is good from my point of view, because it means that this stuff has been brought in and there is an increased likelihood that objects which will date all this activity have also been brought in. You know what I'm starting to think about? Already half of our people have gone down for lunch. We're going to have to go down pretty soon if we're going to have anything. We've hardly done any archaeology at all. The weather is dreadful. The stones are really hard to shift. Are we going to be able to do the amount of archaeology we need to do? I don't think we'll be able to do as much archaeology as we normally do. In other words, I don't think we'll get as many trenches or big trenches. But I think, nevertheless, we will do good archaeology. I hope you're right. I know I'm right. Yeah, you always know you're right. Copper mining as an industry was virtually non-existent in England until Tudor times. But in 1564, a small enterprising operation was set up in nearby Keswick, followed 30 years later by the one in Coniston. We've set up camp inside the local mountaineering club, where I catch up with historian Susie Lipscomb. Who decided on this notion that there should be a Tudor business in copper extraction up in the Lake District? It was actually Elizabeth I. And we have this charter here from her, with her name in big letters at the top. And she asked over two people to set it up for her. Daniel Hochstetter and Thomas Thurland. Now, Thomas Thurland was an Englishman, but Daniel Hochstetter, as it says here, was a German born. At this time, the Germans were the foremost in the world when it came to mining, whether it's tin or lead or copper. They knew how to dig deep well shafts. They knew how to smelt copper ore. They knew what they were doing. Why was digging up copper in Cumberland important to Queen Elizabeth? Well, copper itself was quite useful. Out of copper, you could make printing plates, clocks, astronomical items or bits of jewellery. But above all, copper plus tin equaled bronze. And bronze was important because you could make cannon out of it. So Henry VIII, that great warship in the Mary Rose that went down, went down with bronze cannons on it. When this document was drawn up, which was 1564, it wasn't really a great time of threat. But by the time they came to dig in Coniston, actually, which is sort of the late part of the 16th century, of course, you've had the Spanish Armada. So Elizabeth needed all the weaponry that she could get. And what she needed above all was not to depend on foreign imports, but to depend on her own lands. So by 1599, 150 miners had arrived here in Coniston, most of them skilled Germans from what is today the Austrian Tyrol. We think that the big mine they started is too dangerous to dig, but we do want to have a look at it. So we've brought in some experts of our own, the local caving society, who, by chance, have come across our first find. It is actually pretty dangerous doing archaeology down a place like this, isn't it? It is, and it certainly wouldn't have been robbed up certainly in Elizabethan times. So what's the dangers nowadays? The dangers at the moment are that we're standing on rubble, which could be on what they call a false floor. So you could just go woof down? We could. So show us this find you've got. What's that? It's a piece of slate. We don't know the date of this, but that suggests that potentially the buildings up above us were actually roofed with slate. Oh, so actually that is quite a useful information, isn't it? How far does this go? About 100 yards. Come on, we'll go and have a look. All right, yeah, let's leave that here for a minute. See, I always think of a mine as a tunnel or something open cast, but this is just a gash in the rock, isn't it? It is, and they've sunk down from surface and then worked it out, but then probably lifted all the material up above. You know, on a day like this, you really can't imagine how awful it must have been for the Elizabethan miners. But in winter it must have been even worse. And all of it would be done by hand? It would. Elizabethans with a hammer and chisel. Every piece in here had to be lifted out by hand. No machinery used at all. And it's incredibly difficult. When these mines were started, the idea of using machines or explosives like today hadn't even been thought of. We started the day by thinking that our buildings were for the next stage in the process, when the rock was broken up or crushed and anything that didn't contain copper was thrown away. But Francis has another idea. Ian, I mean, isn't it... Heck of a lot of sort of burnt stuff in here, don't you think? I mean, I think that's been really heated up. I think that it's got sort of bubbles in the surface, you know. What I'm thinking is that this might be, I don't know, a smelting fireplace, furnace, something like that. Workshop area. Workshop area, but big temperatures. This still looks more or less to me like a great big pile of rock, but you guys have been getting quite excited about it, haven't you? Well, we're getting very excited about it, Tony, because there is actually structure here and there's evidence for more than one period. This is actually a very complicated building. I can see no hint of structure. What have we got? A hint of structure. I've drawn you a picture. So what we have is a building that's either subdivided or two buildings next door to each other, focused and using those boulders as one edge of it. We've definitely got a building. We've got this lovely lintel here. That's my favourite bit. What might that be about? Well, originally we thought, well, that's got to be a fireplace. And we started finding a load of ashy material in it. But as Ian's taken it back, the ashy material is extended right across the floor. And if that was a fireplace, where's the flue? Yes. Right? We just don't know. Big question mark over it. Big question mark. Million dollar question. Is it Elizabethan? Well, there's nothing yet to suggest that it isn't, Tony. So a rare Elizabethan forge, a workshop for breaking up ore, or something else entirely? Tomorrow, Francis takes our hunt for Queen Elizabeth's mines to the other side of the mountain, looking for a lost Tudor mining machine. Cassie tries out life as a 16th century copper miner. And the brave Geophys team descend into the mine itself. Beginning of day two here in the Lake District, where we're hunting for an Elizabethan copper mine. Yesterday, we found two buildings at the top of this mountain, which might be workshops. But Francis, our site director, thinks they're far too small to have been used on an industrial scale. So this morning, he's leading part of the team elsewhere. He's taken the decision to open a second site, stretching our resources to the limit. What's this crazy plan all about, then? It's not so crazy, Tony. I never do anything crazy, right? It's well advised. Yes, of course. We know they've got mines over there. Now, mines aren't producing copper out of the ground, they're producing ore. And the whole process that happens once the material's out of the ground is about smashing up the ore so that you can eventually smelt it. Now, this is the area where we think the mills were that did this crushing. There's a power source in the stream. I think there is every chance of finding what we call a stamp mill down there. Stuart, what is a stamping mill? Well, I could describe it in great detail, but I could also show you a drawing. That's beautiful. This is actually taken from a late 16th century book. It shows the techniques being applied in Central Europe at the time. And we know we've got German mines on this site. So we'd have an expectation of something similar to this. So this is Elizabethan, at least it's the Elizabethan period in England. It is indeed, yeah. What we've got is a chute here, which will bring water to drive a water wheel. The water wheel turns an axle. And as the axle turns, it drives these vertical posts, which have got iron shoes on the bottom of them, and they pound the ore. And what they're trying to do is break the waste rock off and end up with size about big walnut size. So if we find bits of ore about that walnut size, will that be sufficiently diagnostic to tell us that what we've got is an Elizabethan stamping mill? Absolutely, because later on, as the technology improves, they can grind them into smaller and smaller pieces. So we're going to put in a trench just like we would anywhere else? Well, yeah, sort of, Tony. I mean, the big problem is I don't think anyone has ever dug a stamping mill before. Not in this part of the world, not an Elizabethan stamping mill, no. Matt, you're going to excavate a site the like of which no one has ever dug before. Well, it's going to be a first time. So here's the plan for day two. We're going to be looking for a stamp mill, which we know from the records stood at a place called Cobbler's Level. It's quite a gamble because it's more than half a kilometre from site one, where we've barely scratched the surface. Here, we've got two huts, the larger of which might be an open fronted workshop, perhaps a kind of forge. But Francis clearly can't be in two places at once. So he's got to delegate some authority. Hello, Phil, it's Francis, your boss here. Hello, boss. You've done such a good job that I'm actually going to promote you from an archaeologist to a manager. That's with immediate effect. Well, as a manager, I resign with immediate effect. I'm an archaeologist, but I don't want any more backchat from you, so get on with it. Bye-bye. I'm resigning. I'm definitely resigning. They say some have greatness thrust upon them. And as Francis sets off, a newly promoted Phil Harding heads over to trench one to look at a piece of clay pipe, our first find of the day. Is this why you've got a clay pipe stamp? Yeah, it's just come out from where Tom and Rick have been working. That is really, really good. I mean, it is, yeah, clay pipe stamp. What do you think, Danny? Well, we've got the bit of the stem and there would have been the bowl here, but judging by the actual diameter of the hole here in the stem, I think it's probably later. OK, so tobacco was brought in in the Elizabethan period, but you don't think that's an Elizabethan pipe stamp? I think it's probably a bit later than that, a couple of hundred years later than that. The sheer fact that we've got one object, which we can probably put a date to, is really important. It is, isn't it? It conjures up that atmosphere, doesn't it, of sitting up here on top of a cold, wet mountain, poor old miner with his last bit of tobacco to smoke. Well, that's it. I mean, you know, let's be honest, let's be honest. Probably the only comfort you're likely to get up here on a cruel day is a pipe. Yeah, absolutely. So we know our buildings were built at least as far back as the late 1600s, but what were they used for? We've called in Gerry Macdonald, one of the country's leading experts on ancient metalworking, and he's not impressed by our forge idea. He thinks we've mistaken natural black rock for burnt material. But Gerry's much more excited by our mortar stones. Yeah, here they are. One, two, three. This is not what I was expecting, Phil, sorry. What? When you said mortar stones, I was expecting something really, you know, because of the period we're talking about, something really pretty large, because you're processing quite a lot of ore. These are pathetically small. I'm sorry, they're the best we can do. No, but they're good, they're good, because I think one message is small scale, okay? Now, the two interpretations of that are either very early working, i.e. you've got a small-scale local farmer from the Saxon period, or I don't know, Roman period. The only other thing is, yes, they're associated with the later workings, but they're used for assaying. So what you do is you pile a bit of charcoal in there, lit it, and put in some weighed ore, and with a little blowpipe, you can reduce that copper ore to metal. So you'd weigh the copper ore before it went in, weigh the metal that came out, and then you know how good the quality of the ore is. So it could be, yeah, Elizabethan or later. But firstly, you've got to analyse it. Yeah, we'll have a go at analysing them. So we don't have a forge, but perhaps we've got a workshop for assaying. when small bits of copper ore were tested for their quality. Gerry's going to test both the stones and our trench with a sophisticated bit of kit, an X-ray gun which can sniff out any traces of enriched copper. But it seems that large-scale ore crushing was happening elsewhere, and over at Cobbler's Level, Francis is looking for a water-powered machine which did this, called a stamp mill. We certainly know that the German miners built a stamp mill here because it became rather unpopular. It is quite extraordinary, isn't it, that in this beautiful setting, there would have been what must have been a fairly major industrial process. Yeah, and it's an industrial process that produces industrial waste. We've got this court case, perhaps the first recorded court case of environmental pollution. It's against Daniel Hochstetter, who's managing this site, and it involves John Fleming, who's a local gentleman, and the tenant farmers. And what he's saying is that because of the stamp house, the copper ore coming out of it is making the water here so muddy and corrupt that it's overflowing over the land, leaving the ground full of corruption and leaving the crops utterly decayed and wasted. They've lost two-thirds of their previous year's crops. Did the farmers win? They did. Daniel Hochstetter had to pay £145 in compensation to them. Which would have been a heck of a lot of money in those days. It certainly was, and it's really interesting, isn't it, the fact that we've got environmental pollution and industrial processes happening here a long time before the Industrial Revolution. It's really exciting to think that we could be digging the remains of a forgotten Industrial Revolution, but over on Site 1, we've had a bit of a setback. We're starting to find a lot of Victorian rubble, which looks like it's been drilled by a machine. And Gerry can't tell if our building was used for assaying. So your zapper can tell us what's in the rock? Yeah, what it's doing is it's firing a beam of x-rays into the rock, and those x-rays excite the atoms that are present in the rock, and they respond effectively by sending out an x-ray characteristic of that element, and we detect that. But we're only really concentrating on what we call the metals, so that's iron, copper, tin, lead, etc. So really what I was looking for was to see whether we got enhanced copper left over from the ore crushing in here. And the answer is... No, as I feared, because probably of the weathering over the years. So as we reach our halfway point, it's beginning to look like we've seriously underestimated the complexity of the archaeology here. Could this be one dig when three days really isn't long enough? Afternoon, day two here in the Lake District, and although we were working here all day yesterday, this is the first time any of us have seen that lovely little lake, which is called Lever's Water, because the cloud cover was so heavy. What has just come up, though, is this extraordinary find. It's a flying mask or a flying helmet from the first half of the 20th century, and what it's doing here we don't know, except there was some kind of air crash over there in the Second World War, so maybe it's something to do with that, we just don't know. But that kind of epitomises the problem that we've been having. We've got all sorts of interesting bits and bobs, but no evidence that can date these structures to Elizabethan times, which is what we're trying to do. We'll probably never know if the flying hat belonged to the crew of the Halifax bomber which crashed here in 1944. But it's a poignant reminder of the dangers of these mountains. After a morning spent looking for an Elizabethan stamp mill, Francis has arrived back on site. Phil has made an alarming discovery, and he wants the boss to take a look. Phil, this morning I said I'd come and check up on you. Well, that's what I'm doing. Tell me, what have you found? Well, what we've had to do is dig through all this rubble, and what we've been able to find is that that is all probably 18th and 19th century. What's this, Phil? It looks, for all the world, like a charge hole. It is, Francis. It's where somebody has actually drilled a hole in the rock to fill it with dynamite and blow the rock apart to actually get the copper ore. Now, that piece with the drill hole came off of that spoil tip over there. We found similar drill holes in the spoil tips over there, it is consistent with all these spoil tips. One thing which is certain is that that idea, that all these brown spoil tips might be Elizabethan, is a bit of a red herring. So what we still don't actually know yet is when these buildings were put up. So there is a lot to answer in, what, just over a day. Mining at Coniston became much more intensive during the 1800s, when new owners took over. But until now, we thought the Victorians had largely ignored our mine. But it's clear they were drilling holes with machines and detonating large amounts of explosives, using our buildings to safely contain all the rubble this generated. Mining is by its very nature a hugely destructive activity. Could it have obliterated the Tudor archaeology? Tudor miners didn't drill holes or use gunpowder. They preferred old-fashioned methods. Cassie's going to try out some of the tools they used on the local granite. So if you want to choose your weapon... Okay, I think I'm going to go for the sharp one and just whack it. Yeah. See, it flicks up, you can tell immediately, it's just jumping straight back at you. That could get quite painful, couldn't it? Working into the face, so up there, yeah, and really quite a lot closer because you're actually standing quite far back. Having exposed the mineral, we can perhaps get a chisel in to have a go at trying to expand the crack. It's heavy but it's not quite as painful. That lump's coming off now, yeah. So you've got your lump of ore now. Great. So that's kind of what you're at. Yeah. It's actually quite a lot of colour in there. Yeah. Fantastic. So I'll drop that in my basket. Hoist it up. Get home for another 12 hours. It took an Elizabethan pick man a week to drive forward just one foot and they were paid between two and eight shillings a bucket depending on the quality of the ore. It was a dangerous business. Men used brute force in near total darkness and our mine, Simon's Nick, is named after a miner who died working in it. Our biggest fear about digging here has always been that the mine has a rotten wooden floor hidden beneath all this rubble. So we've asked the brave geophysics team to check how safe it is. You both okay down there? Fine. Yeah. There's a short section on this first bit that we could do, maybe sort of five or six metres. If there is a false floor here, the team should pick it up with their ground penetrating radar. But there seems to be a change as we go up to here which may just be a facet of this pile that we've had to stop at. Let's just hope it doesn't end up being renamed Jimmy or Emma's Nick. It's now late afternoon and over at cobbler's level, Matt has just uncovered a curious cobbled floor and has asked landscape investigator Stuart Ainsworth to take a look. Come down to see how things are going. Pretty good actually. You can see that we've taken off the turf here and almost directly underneath is this cobbled surface. And of course the first question is, could that be the floor of the stamp mill? Well, I mean the thing with a stamp mill, you've got this big frame with these stamps going boom, boom, boom. You can't do it on where it's fragile or flaky material. So this sort of surface is the kind of surface you would expect, yeah. I think the next thing I'm going to do here is take off some of these cobbles underneath them. So have we got the stamp mill? We'll only know for sure if Francis's gamble has paid off tomorrow. Still, perhaps our luck is beginning to change. Oh, that's the real thing. That's copper. Gerry, you're standing around there doing nothing. That's encouraging, isn't it? That is, because we've got the green probably of malachite, which is a copper carbonate, but also the other colours might well be chalcopyrite. That's not copper on itself? No, this is the ore. This is the stuff they're searching for. Right. And this is the first piece that has come out of an archaeological context. At last, our first evidence for copper mining. It's a huge relief. And as we head down the mountain for a well-earned drink, we're beginning to understand what's going on here. Francis, up until the time we came here, I think it's fair to say the general assumption was that an awful lot of the workings where we're now exploring were Elizabethan. All we got to do was to put in our trenches and interpret them and Bob's your uncle. But it hasn't quite worked out like that, has it? No, Tony. I mean, to be quite honest, I think that was all in cloud cookie, though. Say what you mean. Yeah, no, it really was, you know. I mean, virtually everything up the top of that hill that we've been looking at turns out to be Victorian. Is that true of the structure that you've been working with? It's true everywhere on the top of that hill, Tony. I mean, the fact is that the whole site is masked by that Victorian mine and debris. What are you going to do to get to grips with all this? Tomorrow, we will get to the bottom of one of those buildings and see if we can get some dating evidence. We do have some secure Elizabethan dating, don't we? This pub, because this is in fact 400 years old. Yeah, and there's a great story attached to this as well. You know, we've been digging up at Simon's Nick. Right. An original chap called Simon apparently was so successful in mining that everybody suspected something and they brought him down here, got him drunk on this stuff to find out the secret. And he said, actually, the secret was, he'd given his soul to the fairies, or to the devil, depending on the account. And the very next day, up at the mine, an explosion went off and he died as a result. So you better be careful. God help us tomorrow. Cheers. The morning of day three and no one feels like talking. Here's a problem we weren't expecting. There's a water pipe that runs all the way down this track from the reservoir to Coniston. And unfortunately, because of the adverse weather conditions and us driving up and down all the time, the big stones are moving on the track and the drivers are starting to get worried that we might smash the pipe. And if we do, then Coniston will run out of water. And with every journey, the track becomes more dangerous. So the decision's taken to send a lot of the team up by foot. It's a punishing start to our final day. We're trying to build up a picture of Coniston's Tudor copper mines. And to be frank, it's not what we expected at all. Almost everything we've discovered at the top of the mountain appears to be Victorian. Here we've got two stone huts, one with perhaps only three sides. We still don't know what they were for or when they were built. But we do know that in the mid-1800s, they were filled with rubble. During this period, Coniston was one of the most productive copper mines in Britain, generating huge amounts of rubble which needed to be contained to stop it cascading down the mountain. Yesterday, Geophys surveyed the mine with radar and they've discovered a similar story. Basically, if I can understand what you're saying, you can see the depth of material that's on top of this floor surface, but you can't actually see a void below. Yeah. If we look at the raw data, I mean, we can see there's real variation in the depth of reflections. And that seems to be showing how much material has been dumped back into the mine after it went out of use. It doesn't mean that the Tudors weren't mining here, but it's clear that the 19th century exploitation of this mine was far more destructive than anyone thought. But further down on site too, we think we might have found an Elizabethan machine called a stamp mill, which would have crushed the raw copper ore coming from our mine. Yesterday, Matt found a cobbled floor. And this morning, he's prized up the stones for a closer look. You've done well. The red dots on the tops mark the top of the cobbles because they're actually a lot deeper than they are wide. Right. So they're really, really strong. And that's what we think might have been the base for the stamp mill. And underneath it, we've got all this stuff, which is the fine-grained waste, which is just the kind of stuff you'd get from the stamp mill. Have you got anything juicy, if you like, out of there by way of finds? Yes, we've had one find. It's not really an artefact as such, but look, can you see the green there? Oh, yeah. Look at that. So that's the malachite, which they'd have been looking for when they were crushing the ore. Obviously missed a bit, and that ended up in the waste. That rather pretty well proves that we've got, we're dealing with stamp mill waste there, aren't we? Yes. That's good enough for me. Yeah. The 17th century stamp mill is a major discovery. This timber machine would have toiled away crushing the raw copper mineral from probably several mines across the mountain before it could be sent off for smelting. We've asked the local caving society to drain the mine closest to the mill using a pump to see if there's anything Elizabethan in there as well. Warren, what was the function of this tunnel? This tunnel was driven to the vein purely as a drainage tunnel to drain the workings above. Yeah. And also to bring the ore out to the stamp mill that we think we found outside. Yeah. And the other interesting thing since we drained the tunnel... Yeah. ...is that we're starting to see timber in the floor. Still in situ. Yeah, yeah. And what we think they've had is, to get the material out of here, we think they've wheelbarrowed it. God, what a job. 24 hours a day. And now if you just look in front of you, you can start to see the shape of a coffin. And that's what these were known as when they were known as coffin levels. Narrower for your head, wider for your shoulders, narrower for your feet. That's eerie. We've just about come to the end here. Yeah. It actually branches off. This right-hand branch, you can see how it's... they've actually started to work the rock. And these chippings in the floor is actually from when they were actually working this mine. By this time, it'd be 1617. This is what I love. Talk about evidence of 500 years ago. This is almost like snake skin. It's so worked by all those picks and tools, isn't it? Come on, let's follow the wheel run back. The effort it took to drive this mine 80 yards into the rock is almost unimaginable. But this wasn't the only hardship the miners had to endure. What did the local people think of all these Germans arriving on their doorstep? They weren't so keen. There's an account here, it talks about the unwillingness of the people in the area because they don't feel they're getting sufficient recompense for their lands and for the damage that's being done. And it gets worse. The man who sets this all up, Daniel Hochstetter, talks especially about one naughty man called Visser. Naughty is actually quite a serious word in the Elizabethan period. And the villainous murdering of Leonhard Stolz, who's a German, who defended himself, it says, a long space against 20 of them. And then they all fell upon him and piteously murdered him. So did they stay, the Germans, or did they shoot off at home as quickly as they could? Incredibly, no, they didn't. And we know this because we've got parish registers and we can find German names. So we've got one, Barbary Suckmantle here. We've got a nice German name up here. We've got Margaret Holm. So actually the Germans are staying, settling down and remaining in the area. The Germans may have stayed, but our time here is running out. Back on site, Phil has closed down building number one. Apart from the 17th century clay pipe, it's almost completely empty. Branches, look what I got here. Look what I got here. But he's widened his search in our remaining building and found a piece of timber, which may be a door. I think it's sawn, isn't it? I think that's fantastic, Phil. It's proper structural timber, woodworking timber. I mean, it's sawn too, I think. Well, you know one thing, it ain't a beer. It ain't a tree root. No, it isn't. There's a big investment of labour bringing wood up here. What do you know about radiocarbon date in France? Quite a bit. Could we get a radiocarbon date out of something like that? If it's ordinary household timber, then yes, I think you get a radiocarbon date. It'll certainly tell us if it's not pewter. Ah, well, then I better get on and expose some more of it. I think you better, Phil. In fact, we did get the piece of wood tested and it turned out to be bang on the money. Radiocarbon dating confirms that the tree which the door was built from was cut down at least 400 years ago during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, or perhaps even earlier. So we've got a Tudor building, but did it belong to the copper miners? Well, after almost three days of hard graft, Ian has finally found the floor surface for our second building. Look how shiny that is as well. Oh, it smells of copper. You can smell it. It smells of copper. Yeah, you have a sniff. Smell that. Oh, that's weird, isn't it? Yeah. Here, Phil, try that. I'm allowed to smell the dirt as well, aren't I? That's bizarre. Oh, my. It's a funny old tinny almost. Yeah. I've always said Phil Harding can literally smell archaeology, but his nose isn't proof enough that this is copper. We need something a bit more 21st century. It's time for Gerry and his ray gun. The suspense is killing, isn't it? Is it? 20%. 20? And that's an honest reading. That's honest. No, no, that's honest, true. That tells me you've got copper working. Yeah. Absolutely spot on. What it generally says then is that we can directly associate this building with the work in a copper ore. I would think so, yeah. Yeah, or the storage of copper ore that's perhaps been processed, that the people are dealing with a lot of copper. I mean, you know, presumably it's a floor trample or something like that. And it's all on, as you said earlier on, it's all on their boots. I'll tell you what. Well, from his point of view, it's been a hell of a lot of graft, hasn't it? Yeah, it's been a lot of hard work. But it's been worth it. Oh, yeah. This means we can finally tell the story of what went on here. Our two huts were probably used for storing raw copper ore, which had been dug out of the nearby mine. A vital part of the Tudor industrial process. The material stored here would have been broken up by hand before being sent down the mountain to our stamp mill for crushing. A simple but efficient process that continued for hundreds of years. And given this long history, there's just one question left. Francis. Why is it that we've had virtually no finds at all? We have, Tony. I mean, we've had tons and tons of mining waste. They're finds. All right. You know what I mean, though. Domestic stuff. The kind of thing that can help us date the site. Well, you haven't had domestic finds because there's very little domestic life as such going on up here. The miners were living in their huts on the top of the hill here and they probably had leather bottles, wooden platters, things that didn't break when taken into a hostile environment like this. So they'd bring their stuff up with them at the beginning of the day and then when they went back down, they'd take it down again? Yeah, I think so. Yes. It's quite ironic, really, isn't it? It's just like us. We've got a thermos. We've got our coffee. But we'll take it back down again. We will. Yeah. And I mean, frankly, I'd look at you a bit oddly if you were sitting next to me with a teacup and a saucer drinking like that. It wouldn't be right, would it? What about money? Everybody drops money, even poor people. Yes. Now, we do actually have a historical record to the fact that the German miners weren't given coins but they didn't particularly, you know, get on with the local population. Well, they were just handed out their food and clothes and things. Exactly. Precisely that. So not even any coins? Not even coins. So as we head down the mountain for the final time, we leave our site as we know those brave German pioneers did, taking everything with us. And it's time for a celebration. Well, it's been a tough old dig, hasn't it? It has, Tony, but, you know, anything worthwhile doing is worthwhile making an effort. You know what, for me, is the biggest irony? One of the things that we came here to try and do was find out what life would have been like for those German miners in Elizabethan times. In a way, hacking up to the top of the mountain every day, back down again, being deluged by the weather, going in and out of those freezing cold mines. Well, maybe we got a little feeling of what life must have been like for them. And how appropriate is this? In order to recreate a little bit of southern Germany here in the lakes once again, ladies and gentlemen, I have the privilege to introduce to you the Beerhof Umpire Band!