THE many ways water has been used to help miners in Cumbria and the North Pennines was described by Graham Brooks in a talk to the Cumbria Industrial History Society.

He was speaking at the group’s spring conference held at the Shap Wells Hotel on the role of water in Cumbria’s industries.

Water was used as power – through waterwheels or turbines – wherever possible.

He said: “Usually, water is fairly abundant.”

The North Pennines had coal but not of the type suitable for use with steam engines.

He said: “Generating steam power for metal mines is quite rare.”

Among areas which did rely on steam power were the low-lying iron ore mines of Millom and Furness which lacked the upland streams and rivers common in the Lake District.

Water could be used in a variety of mine processes such as ore separation and crushing.

He said: “Water was used a lot to explore the mineral veins by a process called hushing.”

The surface covering would be washed away by running water down the hillside from a dam – exposing the underlying rock.

He said: “You would build a dam, let it fill a pool, break a hole in the dam and let the water go down the slope.”

Widespread use of hushing could turn mines into bad neighbours.

The sediment it disturbed by the process would get into rivers and there were complaints by fishermen on the Eden that it was killing the fish.

By dropping water down a pit shaft it created a water blast to improve the flow of air in mine workings.

Water could also be used to compress air – which was then used underground to power rock drills.

You can even create an elevator on steep mine tramways where a pair of vehicles on rails with big tanks beneath can rise and fall, depending on which is carrying the greater weight of water.

An example - above ground – can still be ridden on at the cliff tramway at Saltburn on the Yorkshire coast.

One of the key uses of waterwheel and turbines was to operate the pump rods needed to keep mine passages and workings clear of water.

There was a large waterwheel at Coniston’s copper mines but the biggest surviving example is the Lazey Wheel on the Isle of Man.

At Coniston the mine pump wheel pit can still be visited on the fellside where pump rods once reached almost 1,400ft to the bottom of the mine workings.

Another clever way to get power from water was with a pressure engine.

Using the pressure created by water dropped down a vertical pipe of at least 150ft was first used by German miners in the mid- 18 th century.

He said: “They seem to have caught on very quickly.”

Five of these water pressure engines were in used in the Pennines by 1768.