Working in a lead mine, going down down

From the list of alternative careers, I can emphatically strike miner.

On a day trip from Durham we visited Killhope, which was a working lead mine in the 19th century. We took the tour, which included going down into the mine in hard hats and galoshes.



I was cold and claustrophobic after an hour, with proper gear and an electric light.

The miners had neither. The 19th century version of a hard hat was a felt hat covered in mud and left to dry overnight. However, the walls of the mine drip freezing cold water, so that felt hat can't have been hard for long.

And the all that water collected ankle deep on the ground. Wading through it in galoshes was unpleasant enough.



Oh yeah, and about the lights? The miners used tallow candles, which burned very quickly. So for the 45 minutes to an hour that it took them to get to their job site for the day, they went without light entirely, slogging through the frigid water, stooping to avoid hitting their heads in absolute blackness.



Back into the light!