When lead mining on Grassington Moor became more intensive in the early 18th Century, miners were granted mining rights on areas of land on the mineral veins, called meers, in return for a share of the smelted lead being paid to the owner of the mineral rights. A meer was about 30 yards square, and originally a miner was granted rights on up to three meers. Later, as the investment required to extract the ore became greater, the lease was granted on increasingly larger areas, such as ten meers by two.

To help mark out the extremities of the leases, meerstones (meer stones) were set in the ground. These varied in style, some being merely earthfast rocks, and others being set in the ground; some have lettering and numbering carved into them which identified the holder of the lease, and some are devoid of markings. When Dr. Raistrick originally mapped these, he found about 150 spread out over the moor, but some have now disappeared. Many of the meerstones have been correlated with plans of the moor showing the lease holdings.

This document records some of those which are still to be found on the moor. The grid references were taken with a GPS instrument, and are probably accurate to within about 5 metres. More details on the individual stones may be found by following the links.

				M-5
TL P	20 ES	FAW & Co	IH	R 8
PW OVEREND	W B	FAW & Co	DD	I:A
LS	DaVID WESO CO FOUNDER	SF MHGA	none	none
none	GEO FLETCHER & CO	I A	W B	FAW & CO
96	none	18	I:C & Co	134
M-26
TR	I: MORLEY & CO FOUNER	SUMMERS & CO FOUNDR	87	88
3	S.RAILSFORD	RW ?	9

Source of background material and further reading:

Grateful acknowledgements to Tom Knapp for pointing out some typographical errors.

You may email your comments / corrections to the author.
Page last updated: Tuesday 02 October 2007 .