London Lead Company
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The London Lead Company was a 19th-century British lead mining company.
The London Lead Company started its Teesdale operations in 1753 when it took a lease on a mine at Newbiggin in Teesdale. This gradually expanded to a further 18 miles and a smelting mill at Eggleston.
In 1815 the company moved its headquarters to Middleton-in-Teesdale where it built Middleton House, the impressive headquarters of the company.
The Company had Quaker origins and tried to provide for its workers who suffered appalling conditions underground and working with the ore.
In Middleton they built company houses (Newtown). A contemporary writer described the part of Middleton built by the Company: 'Masterman Place or as it is sometimes called, New-Middleton, was erected in 1833 by the London Lead Company from the chaste and appropriate design of Mr. Bonomi, and under the direction of Robert Stagg. It consists of several uniform rows of neat and convenient cottages, situated in a spacious garden, a portion of which was appropriated to each dwelling. The increasing population of Middleton had considerably enhanced the rents of dwelling houses there, and it was to diminish this burden that the Company built Masterman Place, in which, as vacancies occur, they place their most deserving workmen, thus combining general utility with the reward of personal merit. The first occupiers took possession of their new abodes in May 1824, accompanied by bands of music, etc’. Temporance was required by the company in their new houses.
By 1890 the company was starting to suffer from competition, both from other materials and imports. From 1895 onwards the Company slowly scaled down its whole mining enterprise, partly due to the age of the main members of the board, or court, but mainly due to the rapidly shrinking lead market at the time. The Company finally wound up in 1905 - selling the mines to the Vieille Montagne Company who worked them for zinc up until the second world war.
Many details about Lead Mining in the NE of England are available from Killhope Mining Museum in Weardale.
