Miners'
Housing in the Shropshire Hills
Ivor
Brown, SCMC Journal No.3
There have been several drawings reproduced recently of imposing double
storied "miners cottages" in the Stiperstones area - but were the
miners' homes really as grand as these? For a start, until the 1870s there
seems to have been few whole-time miners dependant on that craft in the area.
The average lead miner's working day appears to have been short, reportedly
sometimes as little as six hours, in order that they could continue their
principal life-supporting occupation of subsistence farming, albeit on a very
small scale.
All of this is made clear in the Kinnaird Commission Report of 1863. It
contained evidence that very few of the miners lived in the villages but were
"scattered over the hills". Captain Henwood of Snailbeach said that
"during the week the miners use cabins and barracks near the shaft and the
smelters have bedrooms in the melting house yard". At busy times on the
farms and smallholdings, work at the mine took second place and it was a common
complaint of the mine owners that their workers were firstly farmers and only
secondly miners. In the owners' view, this was also often the cause of closure
of many a mine.
While dossing down in cabins and barracks for a few nights each week
solved the itinerant miner's own problem, he still had to provide a home for
his family and, from this, the practice of "squatting" grew up. This
involved the construction of a simple dwelling or hovel on any odd piece of
land. It was often actively encouraged by the landowners and mine owners who
felt that they would be better served by persons who lived close at hand and
who were dependant on them for the space of their habitation. The process of
squatting was first described to me by the last of the Bennett family, who
lived in
"In those days it was customary with the mining population for want
of better accommodation to select a site on the mountain, then obtain
assistance of a few of their fellow workmen. Some of (these) would then repair
to the adjoining plantations and for a nominal price purchase a quantity of
larch or other small poles that had been cut down to give room for the growth
of those left standing. Meantime the other portion of men could be employed
building walls with sods. The first consignment of timber arriving, one or two,
who were considered to be the most expert with axe and saw, would commence
forming a roof to the habitation. This would be 'slated' with the class of
material the walls were built of. When convenient a scanty coat of straw,
generally mixed with heather, may be laid on the top to ensure it was
waterproof. The ground floor (would) consist of the natural subsoil."
"Usually the whole family would quarter in this (structure). The
following morning the next on the scene would be the farmer terribly chagrined
at the damage done to the mountain sheep run. Following hard after him would
come the Lord of the Manor or his Agent to demand a nominal rent. In most cases
(they would) grant an allotment adjoining for a garden plot. Many of these
structures as time went on, and with an agreement between the Landlord and the
squatter, have been made into convenient dwellings and a cow, sometimes two,
have been kept thereby greatly enhancing the value of what aforetime was
nominally a barren mountain."
"Out of these huts have come many a stalwart, intelligent miner to
find his way to different parts of the mining world and his family to respectable
positions in society. The discovery (of Perkins Beach Mine) was made one
moonlit night by a miner ditching round one of these aforementioned gardens. He
struck a very fertile lode in which he found a fine lump of rich lead ore close
to the surface."
Genuine "ruined miners' dwellings" would today most often be
found as broken down walls on flattened platforms scattered around the
hillsides. The walls of the living area would form small enclosures while
alongside there would be one or two larger enclosures made to keep stock in or
to keep sheep out of the garden plots. The buildings would have been covered
with sod or thatch roofs, long disappeared although some thatched cottages
remained at Pennerley until recently. Others will of course have been re-roofed
by later generations with slates or tiles or more often the ubiquitous
corrugated sheeting .
Several surveys have been carried out by various authorities over the
years of the conditions in which the workers of the Shropshire Hills lived.
Even as late as 1869 a Government Survey (quoted by Trinder in his History of
Shropshire 1983) found that labourers' cottages in the county were worse than
in any other English county apart from Dourest. The situation in Pontesbury
Parish is described in the Victoria County History. "... Most of the
cottages erected between 1785 and 1848 were originally hastily contrived turf
huts". Two such cottages had been recorded as early as 1793 and in 1836 a
"vestry resolution" refers to "huts wherein several men, women
and children are living together in one room, whereby the morals of many
children are corrupted and vice and immorality encouraged to a great
extent". The VCH continues by stating that nearly all of these huts had
been replaced by stone cottages before 1857. In the later 19th century, the
common house type was a single storey stone cottage having two or three bays
but by 1968 very few remained, at least 30 having been demolished in this
century.
All of the evidence therefore must lead to the view that the Shropshire
Hills' miner lived in much smaller dwellings than those considered to be
"old miners' dwellings" today. The buildings that survive as ruins
may well do so only because they were non-miners' dwellings. Several other
styles of miners' housing are of course to be found, including detached houses
built for key personnel at particular mines such as the engineman, manager or
agent. Purpose-built groups of dwellings, most commonly in the form of rows,
were built to accommodate essential workers at times of expansion. Another form
of dwelling is that of a conversion from enginehouse or workshop to houses and
outbuildings. This was a fortunate practice for the industrial and social
historian because it has preserved so many of the features that are cherished
in