Leadhills Mines and Miners
This is the story of John Taylor who is buried in Leadhills graveyard
The leadminer had not only to contend with the usual dangers of mining, he also risked being slowly poisoned by the minerals he worked and, in the Lowther Hills, he faced the hardships of living among isolated moorlands. However, many miners reached their allotted span of years, and one miner at Leadhills greatly surpassed his prescribed three-score years and ten.
This man was John Taylor, 'Old John', who is believed to have been 133 years of age when he died in1770. As there is no record of his birth, this cannot be officially considered a record, but it does seem probable that he reached an exceptionally great age.
Taylor was born at Garrygill on Alston Moor in Cumberland, and was employed while still a small boy in dressing ore at the lead mines there. Knocking ore, as the operation was called, was the usual way of introducing a boy to the craft of mining; and Taylor went on to work as a labourer assisting the miners underground. It was whilst at this task that he recorded the first landmark in his life: the eclipse of 1652. This occurred on what was later called 'Mirk Monday', and afterwards Taylor was to recount how he came up from the depths of the mine where he worked to find the day had turned into night. By his account, he was about 15 years of age at the time, and it is not likely that he was younger than this for boys were usually 16 years old before they were allowed underground in the lead mines.
From Alston Moor, Taylor moved to a mine in County Durham where he not only worked as a miner but also looked after the pumps and water-wheels. He was now regarded as a skilled mining engineer and was sent to the island of Islay by his employer, a Mr Doubleday, to report on the mineral prospects there. After this commission he seems to have spent most of his time in Scotland, working in mines in Ettrick Forest and as a refiner at the mint in Edinburgh as well as returning for a time to \islay to take charge of operations there.
Some time about the year 1730 he was mining lead at Strontian in Argyle. The mines there were so isolated that the miners lived on salt meat and whisky. On such a diet, Taylor became ill with scurvy and had to return to Glasgow where he had left his family. Then followed a short time at the silver mines at Hilderstone until, in 1732, he and his family moved to Leadhills.
The Leadhills mines were then at an important stage in their development. The Earl of Hopetoun, who had been working all the ground on his own account, had begun to lease some of the mines to other operators, and new ground was being opened up. There were therefore opportunities for skilled men and, with nearly 90 years experience behind him, Taylors services were probably in great demand. He was to work at Leadhills until he retired some 19 years later.
An account written shortly before his death describes Taylor as being a thin, spare, man with a long, ruddy face. He breakfasted on oatmeal porridge and his dinner was of broth and meats washed down with malt liquor. He enjoyed good health and said he only lost his teeth after he had given up chewing tabacco.
Old John spent his last years in a cottage near the Gold Scaurs, some two miles from Leadhills, and there are numerous accounts of his hardiness in old age. How for example, he recovered after a careless surgeon, having bled him for a fever, allowed the wound to run until the blood soaked through the ceiling onto the heads of the people in the room below; how he got lost in a snowstorm while fishing the burns in the high hills; how, at the age of 129 years he walked from his cottage to Leadhills and entertained his children and grandchildren in the ale-house there.
He appears to have married only once, in 1709, and his wife bore him nine children of whom four reached maturity. One of his sons was an overseer for the Scots Mining Company at Leadhills, and shares his fathers grave in the graveyard there. The gravestone gives the old mans age as 137 years, a figure not supported by contemporary accounts. A grandson also named John Taylor, was manager for Gilbert Meason in the mines at Wanlockhead, while another was the James Taylor who was associated with William Symington in his early steamboat experiments.
Apart from its extraordinary length, Taylors life was probably very typical of the itinerant lead miners of the 18th and 19th centuries. Even when explosives were used, the only 'machine' available to drill the rocks was human muscle, strength and skill. That value of the skilled metal miners was reflected in the way they moved around the country from one venture to another. Miners from as far afield as Wales and Cornwall found their way to the mines at Leadhills and Wanlockhead, helping to put them both at the forefront of mining technology.
