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Description: | 'From the 17th to late 19th centuries, Alport was a very different place to today. For a period of nigh on 300 years, this area was an important lead mining centre. The Alport Mining Company used no less than 6 water pressure engines (as invented by the great engineer Richard Trevithick) to prevent flooding in its mines. Today this clean and peaceful village is very different to how it was in the 19th century. The Cupola lead smelting works that was operating at that time produced large volumes of unfiltered toxic gases and other pollution. Cupolas superseded the original bole hill type of smelters in the 16th and 17th centuries. They had well developed flue systems leading to their chimneys. In the flues, lead condensed from the waste gases and could be collected by hand, maximising the output from the smelter. A grim job indeed and possibly more dangerous than the lead mining! The Alport Cupola is reputed to have been one of the best developed flue systems in the Peak District. Lead mining ceased in the area in the mid 1800s and smelting followed suite in the 1890s.' Extracted from http://www.peak-districtvisitor.co.uk/alport.html. | Format: | JPEG/IMAGE | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/ | Publisher: | North East Midland Photographic Record | Subjects: | Industrial_Revolution | Source: | Picture the Past OAI feed | Creator: | Nixon, Frank | Identifier: | http://www.picturethepast.org.uk/fronten... | Language: | EN-GB | Format: | JPEG/IMAGE | Go to resource |
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