Tyndrum lead mine, Tyndrum, Stirling, Scotland, UKi

Regional Level Types
Tyndrum lead mine	Mine
Tyndrum	- not defined -
Stirling	Council Area
Scotland	Country
UK	Country

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The vein runs vertically up the hill south of the village, and the mine tips are a prominent local landmark. It was discovered in 1741 by Sir Robert Clifton, of Nottingham, who had taken out a lease in 1730 from the Earl of Breadalbane. He built a smelter a few kilometres away at the river confluence at Dalrigh, but he lost heavily. In 1747 the Mine Adventurers of England took over and drove deep exploratory levels. Presumably losing money too they transferred the lease in 1760 to a group of Yorkshire investors led by Messrs Pickersgill and Hassel of Ripon, but they only lasted two years before passing it on again to Richard Richardson of Chester and Thomas Patten of Warrington. They operated the mines until the lease expired in 1768 at which point the Scots Mining Company (then growing rich at Leadhills) made a better offer (including a £200 gown for Lady Glenorchy) than Richardson & Patten could afford, so they got the new lease. They rebuilt the smelter and exported lead bars as far afield as Russia. Their accounts indicate that they probably made a profit for a while, before production and transport costs, and depletion of the rich upper parts of the vein, rendered the operation uneconomic and they pulled out in 1791. The Alloa-based Caledonia Mining Company took the lease in 1804 and managed to get the smelter going again before they collapsed in 1807. The 5th Earl and 2nd Marquis of Breadalbane reopened the mines himself in 1838 but lost heavily. In a superb resignation letter (now in the National Archives of Scotland) a disgruntled manager, Sigmund Reckendorf, sarcastically told his boss "You keep an Emu and deer and pheasants and a museum and other remarkable things for your pleasure, not for any use. I am of opinion that you have in the same way, a mining officer, miners, a mine, a railway, a crushing mill all ‘in majorem domini glorianus’" [Latin: the greater glory of the Lord]. The mines closed again soon after the Earl's death in 1862. A final revival in 1919 ended in tragedy when 15-year-old William Walter M'Intyre was caught on rotating machinery in the mill and fatally injured in October 1925. The mines closed shortly after having siphoned off a fortune from the parent company, the otherwise very profitable Kinta Tin Mines, whose chairman, William Antrobus Luning, was also on the board of the Tyndrum Lead & Zinc Mines Ltd. A conflict of interests he neglected to tell Kinta's shareholders when he persuaded Kinta to buy into the operation.
The mine was worked by a series of levels into the steep hillside, several of which are still open. Vugs are very scarce, and it was never noted for fine mineral specimens. Note: Tyndrum used to be in Perthshire until that county was abolished in 1975, and split between Central and Tayside Regions. When they were abolished in the 1990s, it became part of Stirling District.

Commodity List

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Mineral List

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15 valid minerals.