Lead mining at Minera is thought to date back to the Roman period, The Mountain mines appear to have been active from the 1820s This states that the mines were worked from 1720 to 1824 when work ceased due to the problem of water.
John Wilkinson (the ironmaster from
Bersham and later
Brymbo) was a partner in the Maesffynnon mine near the lime works, from 1783 and installed a steam pumping engine in 1784. A second pumping engine was added in 1799, and a third later, but the cost of pumping made mining at the Western end of the "Old Minera Mines" uneconomic by 1817. At the Eastern end similar problems lead to closure of the mines in 1824. One of the problems was that the water that caused so much problems flowed between mines, so the installation of a pumping engine by one company could end up pumping water from another. Mining restarted here when
John Taylor & Sons (a large international mining company originating in Cornwall) formed the Minera Mining Company in 1848. An extensive investment resulted in a new drainage adit from near
Nant Mill (a distance of 1711 yards) completed in 1852, new steam engines for winding and pumping, including a large
Cornish pumping engine to raise water to the level of the adit 108 yards below the surface (the engine had an 80inch cylinder and was made by
Harvey's of
Hayle), and the laying of a railway branch from Minera Lime Works. With the water controlled, further exploration was possible and significant veins of lead ore were discovered. The Lead Mines Country Park is close to Meadow's shaft, and a walk along the railway trackbed soon passes the site of Taylor's shaft, both about 300 to 400 metres deep. In 1870 there were 14 shafts along the course of the rail branch. The last new mine was the furthest East, and the shaft was sunk in 1888 by the New Minera Mining Company. Although productive in 1893, by 1894 they made a loss, and in 1897 they merged with the long established Minera Mining Company to form the United Minera Mining Company. John Taylor & Sons had used a £30,000 investment by 1851 to restart the mines, yet the profits for 1864 alone were £60,000 (equivalent to over £4 Million in 2008). By 1900, the price of lead and zinc had fallen dramatically, while the price of
coal used for the steam engines rose. In 1908 the United Minera Mining Company announced that the mines were no longer economic, and the pumps would be turned off leading to progressive flooding of the workings over the next 2 years. The mines were worked until the rising waters shut them, and all the assets were sold by 1914. ==Transport==