Smeltmill
Smeltmills were water-powered mills used to smelt lead or other metals.
The older method of smelting lead on wind-blown bole hills began to be superseded by artificially-blown smelters. The first such furnace was built by Burchard Kranich at Makeney, Derbyshire in 1554, but produced less good lead than the older bole hill. William Humfrey, and a leading shareholder in the Company of Mineral and Battery Works introduced the ore hearth from the Mendips about 1577. This was initially blown by a foot-blast, but was soon developed into a water-powered smelt mill at Beauchief.
A typical smelt mill had an orehearth and a slaghearth, the latter being used to reprocess slags from the orehearth in order to recover further lead from the slag
