A Bole hill (also spelt Bail hill) was a place where

lead Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cu ...

was formerly

smelted Smelting is a process of applying heat to ore, to extract a base metal. It is a form of extractive metallurgy. It is used to extract many metals from their ores, including silver, iron, copper, and other base metals. Smelting uses heat and a c ...

in the open air. The bole was usually situated at or near the top of a hill where the wind was strong.

Totley Totley is a suburb on the extreme southwest of the City of Sheffield, in South Yorkshire, England. Lying in the historic county boundaries of Derbyshire, Totley was amalgamated into the city of Sheffield in 1933, and is today part of the Dore ...

Bole Hill on the western fringes of

Sheffield Sheffield is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is Historic counties o ...

consisted of a long low wall with two shorter walls at right angles to it at each end. At the base of a bole {{convert, 20, ft, m, sing=on long were laid great trees called blocks. On these were laid ''blackwork'', partly smelted ore about half a yard thick. Then came ten or twelve trees called ''shankards''. On top of these three or four courses of ''fire trees'' were laid with fresh ore. This was ignited and burnt for about 48 hours. This smelted lead, which ran down channels provided for the purpose and was cast into sows of about 11

hundredweight The hundredweight (abbreviation: cwt), formerly also known as the centum weight or quintal, is a British imperial and US customary unit of weight or mass. Its value differs between the US and British imperial systems. The two values are distingu ...

. A single firing produced 16

fother The load, also known as a fodder, fother, and charrus ( la, carrus, "cartload"), is a historic English unit of weight or mass of various amounts, depending on the era, the substance being measured, and where it was being measured. The term wa ...

s of lead (about 18

ton Ton is the name of any one of several units of measure. It has a long history and has acquired several meanings and uses. Mainly it describes units of weight. Confusion can arise because ''ton'' can mean * the long ton, which is 2,240 pounds ...

s) from 160 loads of ore (about 40 tons) and 30 tons of wood. Much of the ore was left incompletely smelted having become ''blackwork''. Some of this was smelted in a foot-pump blown furnace, but some was left to be used when the bole was next fired. Bole smelting was replaced by smelting in

smeltmill Smeltmills were water-powered mills used to smelt lead or other metals. The older method of smelting lead on wind-blown bole hills began to be superseded by artificially-blown smelters. The first such furnace was built by Burchard Kranich at Ma ...

s in the late 16th century. That was in turn replaced by smelting in cupolas, a variety of

reverberatory furnace A reverberatory furnace is a metallurgical or process furnace that isolates the material being processed from contact with the fuel, but not from contact with combustion gases. The term ''reverberation'' is used here in a generic sense of ''rebo ...

in the 18th century.

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