Smeltmill

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Smeltmills were water-powered mills used to smelt lead or other metals.

The older method of smelting lead on wind-blown bole hills began to be superseded by articifially-blown smelters. The first such furnace was built by Burchard Kranich at Makeney, Derbyshire in 1554, but produced less good lead than the older bole hill. William Humfrey (the Queen's assay master, and a leading shareholder in the Company of Mineral and Battery Works introduced the ore hearth from the Mendips about 1577. This was initially blown by a foot-blast, but was soon developed inot a water-powered smelt mill at Beauchief (now a suburb of Sheffield).

In its fully developed form, a smeltmill had two hearths, an ore hearth and a slag hearth, each having bellows operated by a waterwheel. The slag hearth was used to extract more lead from the slags removed from the ore hearth. The fuel was white coal, effectively dried wood.

[edit] Further Reading

  • L. Willies, 'Lead: ore preparation and smelting' in J. Day and R. F. Tylecote, The Industrial Revolution in Metals (Institute of Metals, London 1991), 93-102.
  • Various articles in L. Willies and D. Cranstone (eds.), Boles and Smeltmills (Historical Metallurgy Society, 1992).
  • M. B. Donald, Elizabethan Monolopies (Oliver & Boyd Edinburgh 1961), 142-78.


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