Nab Gill: The Lost Industry of Eskdale

Cross the little packhorse bridge by Eskdale Mill in Boot, glance left, and you will see stone ruins that have long been forgotten. The remains stand upon a loading platform, above the overgrown site of Boot railway station. These are the offices and works of Nab Gill Ironstone Mine, named after the great cleft high on the hillside where a vein of hematite once lured men and money¹National Trust Heritage Records Online. Nab Gill Mine. Record ID: 20378 / MNA115506. https://heritagerecords.nationaltrust.org.uk/HBSMR/MonRecord.aspx?uid=MNA115506.

Above the ruins, the slope is strewn with spoil heaps that still scar the land. Five adits once drove into the fell, served by three inclined planes and a web of tracks, now almost lost beneath a luxurious growth of bracken. At the summit the ground is disturbed, marking the collapse of underground workings. There are prospecting trenches, and two shafts sunk to ventilate the dark below.

Eskdale is today a place of walkers and waterfalls. Few would think of ironstone. Yet this valley once hummed with industry. Ore from these hills gave birth to the now famous Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway, “La’al Ratty”, whose wagons conveyed the ore to the coast at Ravenglass and from there onto the Furness mainline to Barrow.

Among the Eskdale mines, Nab Gill was the greatest. By the mid 1880s all had been abandoned, but this one flickered back to life in 1909, and again in 1917. Neither revival lasted. The seams proved too thin, the returns too small.

The story began in 1845, when Messrs S and J Lindow leased the ground, including Ban Garth above Fisherground. They soon shifted all their efforts to Ban Garth, but by 1871 the rights had passed to Whitehaven Iron Mines Ltd. In those years Nab Gill produced more than any other Eskdale mine, a fact still written in its ruins.

The 1909 reopening pushed a new level beneath the old workings, but the ore was meagre and the mine closed three years later. In 1917, four men tried once more, toiling for a year on the bottom level. Again the tonnage was pitiful. Nab Gill again fell silent, and the hillside was left to bracken, collapse, and the slow return of nature.

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  National Trust Heritage Records Online. Nab Gill Mine. Record ID: 20378 / MNA115506. https://heritagerecords.nationaltrust.org.uk/HBSMR/MonRecord.aspx?uid=MNA115506