FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Jesse Fisher]

Roger,

You have a bit of geographical confusion here. Nenthead is a village in the county of Cumbria (not Northumberland or Gloucestershire) where a number of zinc and lead mines were located. There is no "Nenthead Mine" that I am aware of. Your specimen could be from the Smallcleugh Mine, which was one of the larger mines in the Nenthead area.

Cheers,
Jesse

[Roger Warin]

Hi Jesse,
Thank you very much to correct my label, I do not know the area.
Cheers,
Roger.

[ian jones]

Roger

Northumberland and Cumbria are separate counties. Nenthead itself is in Cumbria, it is a small village and was the centre of lead-zinc mining in the area. There is no Nenthead Mine as such.

Several mines there produced good specimens of sphalerite and were heavily collected from the 70s onwards. Smallcleugh Mine was probably the most prolific, an area known as "hydraulic shaft" produced an huge amount of really good sphaleite. Brownley Hill Mine also produced some good pieces, albeit fewer.

ian

[ian jones]

Have just realised that this has been placed in Gloucestershire - it needs to be relocated to Cumbria. Also, have just seen that that well-known British collector, Jesse Fisher, beat me to responding.

[Jordi Fabre]

[ian jones]

Hi Jordi

Guess that it should just be labelled Nenthead without a specific mine as there is nothing to really tie it to a particular location.

ian

[Jesse Fisher]

I always find it interesting to know something about the history of older specimens that I acquire. Too often a specimen will come with one or more old collection numbers painted on the back, but no accompanying labels to identify the former collections/owners. Once in a great while an old specimen does come with a collection of collection labels, this one being such a case.

The fluorite is from flats encountered in the mine around 1930. The first handwritten label is from William Davidson (1907 - 2002), a collector and part time dealer from Penrith, Cumbria (formerly Cumberland). During the 1950s - 1960s Davidson regularly supplied minerals to Scott Williams, who's business, Minerals Unlimited, was then located in Berkeley, California. I do not know who purchased the specimen from Williams, but in the early 1990s it ended up in the inventory of Kristalle (Wayne and Dona Leicht) in Southern California. It was acquired from the Leichts by Lindsay and Patricia Greenbank (Secured Minerals) in 1992 and returned to England. There is no label present from the Greenbanks but there is one of their distinctive inventory numbers printed on colored paper glued on the back of the specimen. Lindsay confirmed that they had gotten the specimen from Kristalle and subsequently sold it to Ralph Sutcliffe. From there, the specimen next shows up in the collection of Dave and Liz Hacker, who sold a portion of their collection to Mark Wrigley (Thames Valley Minerals) in 2005. I acquired the specimen from Mark and after making another transatlantic journey, it now resides within a few miles of its former home at Minerals Unlimited.

The name of the mine - Rotherhope Fell - is often spelled "Rodderup" on older labels. This is possibly because "Rodderup" is how the name would be pronounced in the local dialect.

[Jordi Fabre]

[Ru Smith]

Something tiny from Cumbria.

[Mike Wood]

Jesse, your two Rotherhope Fell Mine fluorite specimens are incredibly beautiful.

Rotherhope-F355-7730r.jpg

F258-7871r.jpg

Thanks for sharing these wonders. It almost makes me want to start collecting North of England fluorite. I'd have to find them though; no way could I afford specimens like these.
Isn't it a shame that although one can walk along the adit and peer into the flooded shaft, the Tynebottom Limestone is so far down...
Maybe I'll take up cave diving...!

Regards,
Mike

[Jesse Fisher]

Hello Mike,

Thanks. The more I see of the fluorites that came from the Tynebottom Limestone flats in Rotherhope Fell, the more I am convinced that they were among the best ever found in the North Pennines, though an argument could be made for the Boltsburn as well. Sadly, both are now far under water, and I doubt that any specimen no matter how beautiful would pay for the pumping, even if you could get a permit from the county to do that. Fortunately, there are still a few places like the Rogerley that are above the water table, and only require a small fortune to get at!

Below is a photo of another Rotherhope Fell fluorite, this one from the Russell collection in the Natural History Museum, London.

Cheers!

[Ru Smith]

These Rodderup/Rotherhope Fell Mine fluorites are very beautiful. I also like the calcites from there.

[James Catmur]

I saw this one of those fantastic fluorites in Copenhagen

[ian jones]

Getting away from this fluorite love-in - a couple mimetites from Dry Gill

[Leon Hupperichs]

I love fluorite, so here is a typical sample from the Hilton Mine.