Esclusham Mountain

The area shows signs of use by Neolithic and Bronze Age farmers, and evidence of early inhabitants of the area exists in the form of several stone cairns and other features. The high ground was good summer pasture, and in the mediaeval period there are references to hafodydd (summer houses for those overseeing the grazing flocks) in the possession of Valle Crucis Abbey on the northern part of Esclusham Mountain. Though there may have been small-scale mining of lead on the mountain in earlier periods, development of the area's mineral resources started in earnest from the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth, with the application of techniques brought from Cornwall. The mines were…