Temple Mine

Explore the crawl through mock up tunnels in the Peak District Lead Mining Museum then head over the road and under the ground for a guided tour of the real thing! Fun, educational and immersive this pair of matched attractions will fill your day nicely and stick in the mind.

The Temple Mine is a still fully operational lead and fluorspar mine from the 1920s and 50s plus a hand mine section some 200 years old, which you and the kids can explore together by guided tour. Even the little touches hard hats for tour goers add to the occasion for kids, but wait til they get to pan for gold and take home what they find! (Mum’s the word, but it won’t be gold.)

Because of the nature of the mine the only way to explore is by guided tour and of course it’s nowhere near ‘accessible’, but there’s also a DVD of the Mine Tour running in the museum to watch so those naturally excluded from the depths can still see the details.

Elsewhere in the Museum you can also find a trove of minerals and gems and the vast Wills Founder Water Pressure Engine, but the highlight for anyone small enough to fit in there has simply got to be the mock up mine tunnels! Neat wooden crawl spaces replicating mine shaft angles. A fantastic imaginative exercise!