Swaledale: Wuthering Heights filming in Yorkshire Dales may revive interest in lead mining history

The gradually fading fellside imprints of the 18th and 19th century lead mining industry can occasionally be seen from the valley bottom road. There are still stone mine buildings.

Beginning in the Roman era, the Yorkshire Dales was one of the main areas in the country and the mines and spoil heaps now collide back into the landscape.

The Swaledale area including Keld and Arkengarthdale has often been a hotspot for filming TV shows and they have called attention to its history, reviving interest among tourists and locals alike. More recently, the new film adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights was filmed at the Old Gang Smelt Mill, one of the obvious remains of lead mines.

The project manager at Keld Resource Centre, Helen Guy, 57, who also runs the Old School Living Heritage Museum in Keld, believes that this may generate a new lease of life for the centre and revive interest in Swaledale’s lead mining history.

“Since the pandemic and spiralling cost of living, people just do not have the same disposable income,” Ms Guy said.

“From my point of view anything that reignites interest and a desire to come up to Swaledale, and indeed the Yorkshire Dales, can only be a good thing given the current test in economic climate.

“Last year I did some filming with Helen Skelton and Dan Walker and we featured Crackpot Hall which is a ruin on the Coast to Coast.

“After that programme, it was amazing the amount of people who came down to Keld asking where Crackpot Hall is because they wanted to explore it.

“A feature on a TV programme certainly generated a lot of interest and of course I’m getting a lot of calls asking about Ravenseat and Amanda Owen, so I can only imagine what a major film might do.

“Swaledale was the biggest producer of lead at one time. The Smelt Mill is a relic to those earlier mining days back in the 17th and 18th centuries when the industry was at its height.

“It would be interesting to see what they’ve done and if the Smelt Mill is included in the filming because I’ve read Wuthering Heights about twenty times and I can’t recall it ever mentioning lead mining.”

The Keld Resource Centre gets a lot of enquiries from Americans who want to trace their ancestors from the lead mining era and establish their roots, said Ms Guy, from Swaledale.

“When the lead mining industry finished here in the late 1880s, quite a lot of them went over to America and started mines in the mid-west,” she said.

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“They’re absolutely overjoyed when I can tell them when their forefathers shipped out to America, it’s wonderful.

“To have to pack up everything, sell the meager belongings you had, say goodbye to your family and friends knowing that you would never come back, board a ship to Liverpool, gosh that must have taken some courage and hope to do that.

“But they had no option because after the mining collapsed up here, families were approaching starvation so they had to go and seek work elsewhere.

“We [also] get a lot of Americans who like to complete Coast to Coast. Keld is the crossroads for the Pennine Way, Coast to Coast and the Herriot Way, so we get a huge amount of walkers who come through the village as well.”

In previous years, the area has also been used to film various TV shows including All Creatures Great and Small, Yorkshire shepherdess Amanda Owen and ITV’s Vera.

Ms Guy said that they still get a lot of interest from people.

“The tourism started with All Creatures Great and Small, then of course we had Amanda Owen as the Yorkshire Shepherdess who also brought a lot of people into Swaledale, particularly up to Keld,” she said.

“They filmed a few episodes of Vera up at Tan Hill. I think in the pub they’ve also got a framed photograph of her.

“We do get an awful lot of people who come up here asking about Amanda Owen and they are still talking about All Creatures Great and Small even though the new series is of course [filmed] in Grassington.

“So I can imagine this will only add to that and generate further tourist traffic up here.”