Site record MDR3951 - Froggatt Wood Smelt Mill, Froggatt

Froggatt Wood Smelt Mill is a complex site with stone water channels, hearth, much slag and traces of buildings, dating from the 16th-18th centuries. (1). Lead smelting site as above in an amenity woodland, much overgrown. (2). Ruins of an 18th century slag mill, with a water wheel. It is believed that smelting took place at this location. (3, 4) Near Froggatt a smelting site appears to have lain relatively undisturbed, so that heaps of run slag (almost certainly from a type of hearth known as a slag mill), low wall structures, part of a small wheel pit, and a steeply inclined stone trough to convey water to the wheel, give some idea of scale and layout. (5). A very small works. There are ponds and an unusual inclined stone trough leading to a water wheel pit. It is the only example of such a mill from this period in a reasonable condition. (6) Adjacent to the site is a white coal pit, with a centre pillar and some gritstone firebars still in situ. (7) Photographic record. (8) There are no documentary references to this smelting mill. A map of 1799 omits it, but shows that it must have been in an area named The Hay, within the Rutland estate boundary. On the Rutland estate there was one unprovenanced smelting-mill in Baslow lordship, built by John Bromhead of Bubnell by 1639 - however at present there is no firm connection between Bromhead's mill and the site in Froggatt Wood. A pond stores water from two streams on the hillside east of the mill. The dam is stone-built and carries an overflow channel which sent water past the northern side of the smelting-mill. Water reaches the mill by a race of channel-section stones. The fragmentary walls of the smelting-mill contain a choked wheel-pit, partly covered by a loosely-built wall parallel with the eastern end of the building. No traces of hearths can be seen within the structure, which is filled with rubble and disturbed by tree-roots. The tail-race is culverted, emerging in rubble outside the south-west corner of the mill, to rejoin the stream 15m to the west. Large quantities of slags from ore-hearth and slag-hearth are visible south-west and north-west of the mill. A white-coal kiln with well-preserved internal stonework is sited south-east of the mill; to the west of the kiln is a platform whence fuel could be taken to the smelting-mill. (9)