An Illustrated Talk with David Joy

Join The Stripey Badger at The Octagon, for an Illustarted Talk, with author and local historian David Joy. As he talks about the quest for lead in Grassington in his latest book 'Digging To Doom: All Hope Lost at Grassington Mines'. 

About Digging To Doom. This title is to be published late August. 

To pre-order your copy of the book, click here

Digging with hope but dread of failure was ever present at Grassington’s once great centre

of lead mining. Digging on windswept moors to discover the richest veins of lead lasted for almost 300 years. Miners ventured deep underground by candlelight to wield pickaxes and shovels and survive the explosive

uncertainties of gunpowder.

Doom was a fear that if anything strange happened down the mine, it was a portent of death and disaster

that stopped all work. Hope was so often high and then lost. Miners had unswerving convictions that times would get better, as did owners of the mineral rights. Earls, heiresses and dukes depended on mining wealth to meet gambling debts on an unimaginable scale.

This book portrays these three elements of the Grassington mining saga in a readable style. Special

emphasis is given to the period when they combined to produce the ‘Duke’s Folly’. Men dug for over 20

years through solid rock to revive the ailing mines by means of a mile-long tunnel built to the wrong size

and in the wrong place. The quest for lead ended with all hope lost but Grassington survived to become a major tourist centre. The final pages of this book cover a waymarked trail round surviving landmarks from the great age of mining. Specially taken photographs capture monuments to past endeavour both on the Moor and underground.

David Joy MBE is the author of over 50 books including a companion volume Men of Lead, which takes a

broader look at mining throughout the Yorkshire Dales.