Chain Migration from the Lead Mines of Yorkshire to the Coal Mines and Cotton Mills of Lancashire

Abstract

Lead mining families migrated en masse out of Swaledale in North Yorkshire as the mines
failed in the late nineteenth century. Many emigrated overseas, and many more left for other
industrial areas of England to find work. One attractive destination was North East Lancashire,
with particular focus on Burnley and nearby settlements. Analysing transcripts of all individuals
listed in the censuses of the 1800s shows that 92 entire groups of people with the same surname
(isonymic groups or ‘clans’) left the dale (or became extinct) over the course of the second half of the
century. The clan with the greatest decline in the number of individuals in Swaledale over this
time period was that with the surname Alderson. Family reconstitution from census data shows
that 42 people called Alderson made the journey from Swaledale to Burnley between 1851 and
1911. Migrant men found employment as coal miners and their wives and daughters worked in
the cotton mills. Arrivals concentrated in the vicinity of other migrants in the cotton town of
Brierfield and the south-eastern part of Burnley. Family units tended to reside in their destinations
close to other dalesmen in a pattern of chain migration.