Old Gang Smelting Mill

A ruined lead-smelting complex above Gunnerside Gill in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. The lower mill was built in 1846, incorporated an existing flue system, and worked into the late nineteenth century, with small-scale smelting continuing before the site was closed by 1913.

Stone ruins with arched openings and a chimney and flue fragment on a rocky, heather-covered slope. The wider complex also takes in an older smelt mill, a large dressing floor, levels, hushes, shallow shafts and a spoil heap over 500 metres long.

Plan for 6 km there and back at minimum. Use the public toilets in Reeth, which include RADAR access, before you set out, as no approved facilities are verified at the ruin itself. Footwear that copes with stone and loose surfaces helps once you leave the graded track and move among the remains.

The graded surface does not last the whole way, and the historic remains themselves are uneven underfoot. There is nothing to do here but walk and look: no verified facilities at the site, and the nearest toilets are back in Reeth.