The Van Mine

In 1865 a trial working north-east of Llanidloes cut into a lead vein of exceptional richness. Within a few years the Van was among the most profitable metal mines in Britain and its shares were being traded in London on the strength of dividends that most mining ventures never came close to.

By the early 1890s it was effectively over.

The scale of it

At its height the mine employed several hundred men, women and children — women and children generally on the dressing floors, sorting and washing ore, rather than underground.

It generated enough traffic to justify its own railway. The Van Railway opened in 1871, running six and a half miles down to the Cambrian line at Caersws, built specifically to take ore out and coal and timber in. Almost no metal mine in Wales was worth a dedicated line.

A settlement grew round the workings: houses, a chapel, a school.

Why it ended

The ore ran out at workable grades, and at the same time lead prices fell as cheaper foreign ore reached British smelters. That combination finished most of the mid-Wales lead industry within about twenty years.

The mine limped on with intermittent reworking of spoil into the twentieth century. The railway carried freight until 1940.

What is there

A great deal, and it is one of the more complete metal mining sites in Wales.

Engine house ruins. Wheelpits, the rectangular stone-lined slots that held waterwheels. Dressing floors, terraced flat areas where ore was crushed and washed. Buddle pits, circular settling basins used to separate ore from waste by water. Leats running along the contour for a considerable distance, bringing water to the wheels. And spoil, in quantity.

The Van Railway alignment is walkable in places.

Safety, and this is not a formality

Shafts on this site and others like it are deep, sometimes uncapped, and frequently hidden in vegetation. Adits — the horizontal entrances — are unstable, often flooded and occasionally contain bad air. People have died in mid-Wales workings within living memory.

Lead spoil is genuinely toxic. Do not handle it, do not let children play on it, and keep dogs off it and out of the streams draining it.

The site is a scheduled monument. Digging or metal detecting on it is a criminal offence.

Visiting

The site is on private land with public footpaths crossing part of it. Stay on the paths. The Cambrian Mountains and the roads round Llanidloes give good views over the workings without going onto them.

Llanidloes museum and the county collections hold material. Dylife, on the mountain road towards Machynlleth, is the other major mid-Wales lead site and is more accessible.