Metalla Mendipensia
About
Roman lead ingots stamped from this Somerset hillside reached the legionary fortress at Chester within six years of the invasion of Britain, making Charterhouse one of the empire's fastest industrial start-ups. Silver skimmed from the ore helped pay soldiers' wages. A small amphitheatre built for the mining workforce is the only one of its kind linked to a Roman mine anywhere in southwest Britain.
What happened here
Work goes on underground by lamplight in shifts, and the lamp is also the clock. Galleries follow the ore, propped with timber, drained by wooden screws and bucket wheels worked by hand in stages up the shaft. Ventilation is a second shaft and a fire to draw the air. The labour is convicts, slaves and paid men working side by side on different terms, and the paid men do the skilled cutting. Above ground the ore is crushed, washed in long channels, and smelted, and the smoke kills the vegetation for miles. Mines of any size are imperial property, leased to contractors under written regulations covering shifts, drainage, bath-house charges and who may open a new gallery. Settlements grow around them fast and empty just as fast.
In ancient writing
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History 34.164
Notes that in Britannia lead is found so near the surface, and in such quantity, that a law had to be passed limiting how much could be produced.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →