Marrick in the 18th century

The Blackburne family retained the actual site of the Priory itself and through this presence, alongside the Marquis's, continued to maintain substantial lead mining interests into the eighteenth century. The most ambitious of these was the creation of a new smelt mill at Marrick known as the Cupuloe. The collection contains many documents relating to this venture which failed in the 1720s after numerous disputes about its management. Remains of the Cupuloe and other physical evidences of Marrick lead-mining are still visible in the landscape, memorials of an industry that effectively had died out by the twentieth century, leaving only the local agricultural interests that had coexisted with it for over eight hundred years.