Middleton Mine is located around 4 miles from Matlock. The mine works the Hopton-Wood Limestone which occurs underneath Middleton Moor in the White Peak.
It's unknown when surface operations first started on the site, but dimension stone operations continued until the 1950's when due to the rapid (if not unfortunate) development of concrete technology the demand for natural stone products fell. Derbyshire Stone, the then operators and owners of the site, had pre-empted this fall in demand by developing a small processing plant to crush the limestone to supply the steel and sugar industry.
Towards the end of the decade the situation with the surface operations reached a point where it became increasingly uneconomic to keep stripping the overburden (which was increasing in depth as a quarry cut into the moor) to gain access to the high purity Hopton-wood beds. The Company was reluctant to lose the customer base it had built up with the processed products, so the decision to commence underground operations was taken.
The company at that time were operating a lead mine in Matlock and moved two of the personnel to Middleton. Work on a drift access was started on February the 4th 1959 and to date approximately 16 million tonnes of high grade limestone have been extracted for the underground workings.
At present Middleton Mine consists of 35km of workings covering an area of 1400 metres west to east and 800m north to south. Middleton Mine is divided into five main production areas by normal faults. The method of working is room and pillar, with rooms 13m wide and pillars 17m square. The extraction height is 8m. This is an increase from the original pattern of 11m wide roadways and 14m square pillars.
